Oeaohoo

Aristotle, one of the most influential political theorists of human history, would completely agree with you: Anyway, the type of politics you are describing today is a total sham so you aren't missing out on anything in avoiding it!

There are plenty of Blue stories about all of these things (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, even Beowulf!) and overcoming weakness and temptation are absolutely Blue values, so I'm not sure what you mean by this. These are aspects of the so-called "Hero's Journey" which can be found in even "Stage Purple" cultures... Of course, in saying that "everything in Tolkien is tradition and characters fulfilling their super-ordained and pre-destined role" I didn't mean to exclude all possibility of learning, growth and adventure; all of this, however, occurs within the context of a Blue mythology and worldview. I think, based among other things on his strong Roman Catholic faith, his disdain for modern materialistic expansionism and his love of pagan mythology, that he is a Blue reaction against Orange. Anyway, probably not worth dwelling on this for much longer...

None of the values he espouses in his mythology are Orange and none of his positive characters are Orange. Everything in Tolkien is tradition and characters fulfilling their super-ordained and pre-destined role. The Ring of Power is basically Orange materialism. There are many exceptionally deep stage Blue thinkers; much more than at stage Orange! Makes you wonder… All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. - said no Stage Orange person!

You can investigate reality anywhere. Being in a community confers certain advantages - you are surrounded by people who will trigger your egoic biases and projections and ideally force you to confront them until they are resolved - whilst being alone confers certain others, mainly freedom. This online community seems to be particularly biased against community! Men are interested in truth, women are interested in love. Both can be paths to true awakening. Continuing what I have just said, mental masturbation is generally done by men who have strayed off the path towards Truth, whilst living only for a sense of community, attention and love is generally done by women who have strayed off the path towards Love. Otherwise you are probably right, I don’t see many people on here or elsewhere today awakening any time soon. I’m just here to burn through some karma!

If you are willing to do all of this, why would you waste your time making predictions about the future or getting lost in “astral realms”?

@Heart of Space I agree with @Carl-Richard that what you are speaking of is more of a psychic than a mystic. I will explain why psychic is a more appropriate term for everything you have described: It is true that these psychic faculties are often not consciously willed by the individual and that they are often activated without being deliberately pursued beforehand. Nevertheless, from the point of view of mysticism strictly defined, they are a distraction from the real task; like you said, “it is extremely easy to become attached to the supernatural experiences”. True mysticism is neither masculine nor feminine. Nevertheless, it has always been understood that psychic capacities are found more in women than in men. Even in the modern day, the advocates and practitioners of New-Age channeling have almost all been women: Helena Blavatsky, Annie Besant, Alice Bailey, Dion Fortune, and so on… Relating to your example of the schizophrenic: perhaps this is why women are much more likely to be schizophrenic, while men are much more likely to be autistic. No, the truly mystical state is a unification of subjectivity and objectivity, personality and impersonality! The psychic state, however, is mostly subjective and personal.

For most forms of programming mathematics is not very important. What type of thing are you doing? I suggested the following in another thread about this here a while back: “I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter, from whence derives the famous idea of the "strange loop". You might also like David Foster Wallace's book Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity, tracing the work of mathematicians like Georg Cantor. It is claimed that Plato only ever gave one public lecture titled 'On The Good'. He spent the whole time talking about mathematics, leaving most of the attendees puzzled. Unfortunately, this lecture has not been passed down, but Pythagoras also used mathematics as the ideal vehicle for expressing metaphysics and philosophy. His surviving works have been compiled in the book Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library by Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie. You could also investigate practices such as Gematria and the use of numerology in the Kabbalah. Mathematics today has almost entirely lost its essential nature and is largely the whore of the physical sciences and man's lust for technological power. At best, it is the more or less idle luxury of an elite class of ivory-tower academics who know nothing of true spirituality. On this note, the best book that I can recommend to you is The Metaphysical Principles of the Infinitesimal Calculus by René Guénon.” The last book I mentioned is the best. Guénon would have crushed Spiral Dynamics like an insect but he was at least “Stage Yellow”. Hope this is helpful to you!

You put Martin at Green but Tolkien at Orange? Game of Thrones - or, A Song of Ice and Fire… - was an absolute encapsulation of Stage Orange. Tolkien, on the other hand, was much more Blue than Orange. After all, the world that he created was largely a revival of pre-Christian mythology portrayed through the lens of his Roman Catholic faith, drawing from texts like the Finnish Kalevala and the Nordic Eddas. I recently described Shakespeare elsewhere on here: I would say that Shakespeare is early Orange, with a lot of Blue (inspiration from late medieval literature and even pagan morality) hanging over, and some anticipations of Green (love of perspective, fetishism of human relationships, relativism).

Most spiritual - in the higher sense, and even including many mystical - paths view things such as divination and clairvoyance as distractions to be avoided. The attainment of these supernatural faculties has generally been valued primarily as a sign and reflection of a specific spiritual state. I would also say that in a certain sense clairvoyance is not really supernatural: it is just a sublimated and refined form of nature, like water vapour compared to ice cubes! These are all very feminine applications of mysticism so if there is anyone here like you describe, they are likely a woman… To digress a little, this is a good example of the influence of feminism on the New-Age conception of spirituality. After all, from the Oracle of Delphi to the Nordic Voluspa, female priestesses have always been valued for their capacity to foresee the future and channel various supernatural influences. I hope no one would be upset if I said that their natural passivity and receptivity make them the perfect vessels for wisdom to pass through; that is why in alchemical terms the feminine is lunar and the masculine is solar. This is also seen here in that all of the things you describe as mysticism involve applying spiritual capacities to earthly ends: the woman as Mother Earth/Nature and the Goddess Gaia. Mysticism is a somewhat confused concept, which is appropriate because the forms of spirituality it refers to are generally also somewhat confused. Though the word derives from the initiations and Mysteries of antiquity, whose purpose was the deliberate union of the initiate with the Godhead, it’s meaning today is inextricably bound up with the Christian context in which it emerged. Given the more dualistic nature of this context, particularly the duality between creature and Creator, mysticism came to refer to the emptying out (Kenosis) through various ascetic practises of the fallen and sinful creature so that they could become the perfect receptacle of their Creator. In it’s final phase, which is even somewhat noticeable in the late Christian mystics such as St. Teresa of Avila and certainly in your description of mysticism above, it has come to refer to the passive reception of certain advanced spiritual state which, however, are almost always not Theosis; that is, annihilation of the self and total union with God.

Haha. Reactionary tends to be a term used to denigrate right-wing thinkers who staunchly oppose all ideas of progress. Seems you have something else in mind! Reaction videos and things like that seem to be a great example of postmodern hyperreality, in which you see the progressive loss of all contact between the signifier and that which it is supposed to signify. Online media was already a big step in this direction because all content is mediated through this media itself. When watching a reaction video, it is even worse. You are watching somebody else watch something, and that something itself is generally something not real, adding yet another degree of removal from reality!

@JoeVolcano I will leave this here but the rhetoric is using words like “cattle” and “herd” to refer to society whilst using phrases like the “authentic, self-born” and “atomised individual”. This is a way to rhetorically exalt the individual above all forms of social organisation. I only mentioned neoliberalism because what you say is in exact conformity to this ideology: “there is no society, only individuals”, as Thatcher said! I didn’t mean to convey any superiority. That individual is beyond any distinction between the atomised individual and society!

@JoeVolcano Ironically, I believe you have fallen into the very trap you claim to oppose! This rhetoric of the superiority of the atomised individual over all forms of social organisation is exactly what the present neoliberal society advocates… It is the trap of forgetting to deconstruct the values which you have inherited from society. Corrupt society is a fear-based defence against Truth. The ego is the internalised form of that corruption. You as an atomised individual are just as much of a dream as human society so why exalt one above the other? Society is a diminished reflection of what, who and where I am. I am a diminished reflection of what, who and where I am!

There is still a nihilism and a subtle denial of the uniqueness of the human purpose in saying that human society and ant society are equally significant. A human birth is uniquely congenial to spiritual realisation because we have access to both the transcendent and animalistic realms, whereas an ant is basically just an animal (still being symbolic in a way of a spiritual reality, as all things are). That is why basically all human societies throughout history, from the most "primitive" to the most "advanced", have been oriented around a central transcendent Principle. Human society is an expression of Truth and exists within in reality. A society which is in alignment with Truth will be good and beautiful; a society which is out of alignment with Truth will be evil and depraved. Human society is even more significant to life! It would be very difficult to live without society. This is a very specific conception of society: society as something which seeks to smother your ambition, neutralise your individuality and your desire to express your deepest dreams, beat you down and strip you of your "freedom" so as to make you into a mere cog in the wheel. It is the "Disney-world" conception of society... A real society seeks to make you into a cog in the wheel of the Dharmachakra! Society can be a trap, so can turning your back on society! I do agree that for most people today society can only be a trap, but there is another perspective.

What a lot of rubbish! Ant = ant = ant = ant, human ≠ human ≠ human ≠ human. That is the difference and why human society is far more significant than ant society. What else is an "authentic, self-born individual"? Have you ever met any "authentic, self-born individual" ants?! I think this itself is one of the traps that seems particularly common around here: retreating into some solipsistic pursuit of self-advancement away from all integration into society. Then again, it is an understandable reaction to the total banality of modern profane society.

Any model in which Think and Grow Rich is two stages more advanced than Homer’s Odyssey is a deeply flawed one! I would say that Shakespeare is early Orange, with a lot of Blue (inspiration from Chaucer and late medieval literature) and even Red/Purple (pagan morality) hanging over, and some anticipations of Green (love of perspective, fetishism of human relationships, relativism). Later English authors like Dickens more or less continue this trend towards Green, though in certain ways Victorian morality constituted a last strong gasp of Blue. Moby Dick and most other American literature is much more solidly Orange, with admitted glimmers of that weird form of intense Blue which you get in the uprooted and desecrated land which is the USA.

A trap will always be specific to the individual. Most of the traps listed above are very specific to a right-hand path of knowledge and contemplation. I would also like to say that if one is on the direct path, yearning for nothing else but total liberation and full of what Zarathustra described as "the Great Contempt" for all mundane and earthly things, even falling into a trap could be a blessing. If there is a trap in this particular path it is thinking that falling into a trap is a problem. Naturally, this is a dangerous teaching to the earthly individual but... sometimes patience is dangerous too! Embrace misery and it may lead you to the ultimate Mystery!

The following is a response to (at the time of writing) the most recent insight on Leo’s blog. So far, so good. It is maybe worth pointing out that in a way it is nothing special: even ignoring the fact that technological capability has been ebbing and waning for millennia, the Industrial Revolution and the subsequent mass mechanisation of industry has already automated many occupations which were previously manual. The AI Revolution that is being described here is actually a pattern that can be seen throughout history: an original Thing A is destroyed by the emergence of a Thing B, only to be itself destroyed by Thing C, which was originally the creation of Thing B. For example, the Medieval Feudal order (Thing A) was destroyed by the mercantile bourgeois order during and after the Renaissance (Thing B), but in the end this bourgeois order was itself destroyed by Democracy and Bolshevism (Thing C), which were originally the creations of the bourgeois order (Thing B)! In the same way, a humanity which had higher priorities than churning out tacky rubbish (Thing A) devolved and created the industrialised world of machines and factories, which were however still run by humans (Thing B), only to in the end be destroyed by the total automatisation of the workforce (Thing C), which has only been made possible by the intermediary period of increasing standardisation and mechanisation of human life (Thing B). It is like Frankenstein’s monster turning back on Frankenstein himself, and Mary Shelley intuited something very profound when she subtitled that book “A Modern Prometheus”… It is at this point that the insight goes downhill. It seems the great prophet of Love has some work to do! “Does mankind have any redeeming qualities at all?” What a question! We act like a herd of blind idiots because there is no shepherd. There is no shepherd because secular progressive ideology tells us that people do not need a shepherd, that the new “stage of development” which has magically been arrived at means that people are beyond the need to command and obey. And when reality proves this wrong, and shows that people will always need a shepherd, such advanced “Tier 2” thinkers prefer to blame the design of humanity itself! Our government systems are especially inadequate for dealing with these challenges because they are based on the same delusional premises. It is exactly as Zarathustra said: “Who still wants to rule anymore? who wants to obey? Both are too burdensome. No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels differently goes voluntarily into the madhouse.” But Leo… the whole problem here is evolution. A humanity which was really serving its function as humanity could never be replaced by robots. Humanity’s function is to be a mediator, a bridge between worlds, an intermediary between Heaven and Earth. Today, however, humanity thinks it has “evolved” beyond this function, preferring to exalt the Earth above Heaven, and so as has just been said it is fast becoming redundant. Like Christ said, “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.” “The universe is too efficient”? Wasn’t the universe supposed to be a Love simulator? Now it is a simulator for churning out products at an ever more efficient rate. How would a fully-automated robot world test God’s Love? It would be a perfect nothing. This insight is an excellent example of the vanity and delusion of most of the self-proclaimed “Tier 2” thinkers floating around on the Internet today: if we could only immediately “evolve” everybody to be hyper-analytic autists like ourselves then everything would be just fine and dandy! The problem is that this is not, has never been and will never be the function of the vast majority of human beings; most people are passive and fit only for conformity to one or another pre-established and super-ordained social system. One thing is for sure: some nerds with nice beards and make-up like the ones in the attached video who think they are ten stages beyond everybody else because they know that “truth is complicated”, and who make sure to mentally shout the magical formula “Nuance!” into their third-eye every time they ejaculate, are not going to solve anything… That might be true, but we should not confuse cynicism and hopelessness with a clear-eyed assessment of reality: Maybe the present world order needs to be allowed to destroy itself so that a new one may bloom? Maybe we should even help it along! Misanthropy and finger-pointing would be totally inappropriate here because the enemy is not humanity! As I have described above, this is one of those situations where Frankenstein’s monster is turning against Frankenstein himself, the Promethean gargantuan monster of industry and mechanisation turning against its human creators. Personally, I will face the future with strength and courage knowing that the immediate future can only be helpless and negative.

I posted this a couple of days ago but the crash removed it! These are the ideas that I see as having the greatest potential to become dogma within Actualized. It is not that they are necessarily intended to be dogma but because they are (to me at least) partial and one-sided truths which lay claim to absolute reality, they are ripe to become so. I partly post this because in my younger life I was very dogmatic and the teachings expressed around here were part of that dogma! If anyone has any suggestions of other potential dogmas or thinks some of these shouldn’t be included I would be interested to hear it. The path to a good life is “the work” of self-actualisation conceived in terms of growth, personal development and the myth of the self-made man. All concepts are socially constructed and invented by humans. Existence is entirely made up of perspective and subjectivity and there is no objective world outside of direct experience. Mankind and the whole universe is constantly progressing and evolving. The “left-wing” are therefore more advanced than the “right-wing”. There is no ultimate purpose to human existence. We are just here to “enjoy the ride”. Your life is whatever you want and make it to be. You determine who you are and who you want to be. Life should be neatly divided into sub-domains which, whilst they might bolster and enhance each other, are to be approached separately. There is a duality between Truth/Love/Consciousness and “survival”. From the Absolute perspective all distinctions vanish. No preference is ultimately more valid than any other. It is almost like there is no truth from this perspective? It might not be immediately clear why these ideas are one-sided so here are possible counter-dogmas for each of the things I have listed above: The path to a good life is to fulfil one’s Dharma: to abide by the super-ordained law of one’s society and creatively express one’s natural traits within that. The Logos is an intrinsic aspect of existence. The human intellect is designed so that it can align itself with truth. Even profane and secular concepts therefore have a glimmer of the Logos itself within them. Existence is made up of subjectivity and objectivity. This is the original duality of existence, Purusha (consciousness) and Prakriti (substance), and the “first” thing in a non-temporal sense to arise out of the infinite unity of God. History is a progressive loss of spiritual potency at the cost of material triumph. In an Abrahamic context this is the Fall of Man, Original Sin and ultimate Redemption and Salvation during the apocalypse and the last judgement, in the Hindu, Buddhist and Greco-Roman context the descending Four Ages of Man (Gold, Silver, Bronze, Iron). The ultimate purpose of human existence is to align oneself with reality, which is comprised of Truth (Logos or Law) and Love (Eros or Nature). Joy comes from being in alignment with reality. Meaning is not just a human creation but part of God’s creation. You have been born with a nature and your purpose is to express and fulfil that nature. Every part of human society should be ordered around a superordinate principle: in the Christian Middle Ages God, in the Hindu and Buddhist world Dharma, in Confucian China Tao. This principle contains all the subordinate fields of creativity within itself and so these are understood as partial expressions of ultimate Reality which are never really separable. There is no conflict between survival and Reality. Survival is an expression of Truth/Love and Consciousness. To survive requires that you be in alignment with these things. From the absolute perspective all distinctions are transcended and included. There is no difference between anything precisely because all differences are contained within God as Truth. I think it’s also worth noting that many of these might be entirely appropriate to teach today but still one-sided from the perspective of pure truth. For example, society, which is supposed to be an incarnation of the divine Law, that exists today is not going to teach and encourage you to express and fulfil your true nature but to mislead and exploit you in whatever way it can. Therefore, the self-help dogmas #1, #5 and #6 are necessary. Additionally, emphasising direct experience can be appropriate simply because many people (particularly worshipers at the alter of Logic and Science who have unconsciously absorbed “Stage Orange” materialism and positivism) are very obsessed with the “external” and objective world. Then again, parts of “stage Green” radically overemphasise the subjective dimension: truth is a social construct, I am whatever I identify as, and so on; it is interesting that a couple of the ideas listed above, particularly #2 and #4, are basically these premises taken to their extreme conclusion.

Weird list of examples!

Yes the lower back is the physical reflection of an important part of the subtle body: Hara, the centre of sexuality and death, and Svadhisthana, the “abode of the self”. The fear of death is particularly associated with this centre because your identifications are stored here; naturally, then, liberation from all bondage and limited identity will affect this area! Why don’t you just stop using the drug if you are worried about it? Maybe you are intuiting that by using these chemicals you are burning through your karma too quickly. You could step back for a while and contemplate what you are still attached to and what you still fear.

@Dear Fiona Interesting to see this here! James did an excellent series with Uberboyo on Carl Jung’s Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self which is the only book of Jung’s that is really worth reading. I must confess I find this new phase with the two old Boomers a bit dull!

Absolutely! That is certainly part of the explanation but it doesn’t fully encompass the reality. A new form or context can only rise to dominance when the old one has exhausted itself; however, if we zoom out and look at things from a distance, we can see that the later expressions of a given form or context are generally more chaotic and dissolute as opposed to ossified. I would say that to a certain extent they become ossified and moralistic precisely so as to protect themselves from their inner chaos and dissolution; “civilisations die from suicide, not by murder”! For example, in Christianity the Protestant faith is notoriously comprised of an endless variety of sects and schisms. This is because it denies the authority of the Pope (going so far as to construe him as the Antichrist) and rejects the Catholic mass in favour of individual interpretation of Biblical scripture, facilitated through increased literacy and the invention of the printing press. However, to a certain extent Protestantism often goes along with biblical literalism and itself emerged out of the moralistic and ossified nature of late Catholicism so even here what you say is partly true. It is also true that (partly in reaction to this very phenomenon) in this phase you get certain extreme “reactionary” sects like the New-England Puritans and modern Evangelicals. What do you think are the most important problems it has identified with both of these?

This sounds like the dogma of anti-dogma! One of the things I find fascinating is the way that new dogmas emerge on the other side of the bridge of skepticism. For example, to a certain extent faith in God was a dogma, then there was a phase of skeptical free thought which esteemed positivistic hypotheses and empirical inquiry above all else, and then finally atheism became the new dogma! Yes absolutely. It’s interesting how different stages manifest this narcissism: Stage Orange denies principles and tradition in the name of the worldly self whereas Stage Green denies even the worldly self in the name of the self of subjective interiority. Even the more dogmatic types within Stage Blue tradition (that is to say, basically everybody within this category today!) often deny principles because they can only believe in the principles of their own tradition; for example, Allah, God and Brahman are all the same metaphysical principle but this is often not understood. This reminds me of something David Foster Wallace was always harping on: postmodern society overlooks the obvious and cynically derides what would ordinarily be basic accepted wisdom. Ideally this would create the empty space in which new forms could emerge.

I always though that it was arbitrary and misleading to claim that modern-day hunter-gatherer tribes are an accurate representation of how pre-historic humanity lived. Imagine the following scenario: the present global world order collapses, there are mass shortages of all survival needs and, because most people today are totally dependent upon centralised infrastructure, billions of people die, whilst a few independent bands of “survivalists” manage to pull through. What sort of life do you think these survivors would lead? It would be a much more rudimentary and bare-bones life. Who is to say that this is not the case for modern hunter-gatherers? They are the residues of the decomposition of ancient civilisations.

@Dumuzzi Amen to all of that! Nice to see that someone else has come to similar conclusions.