Oeaohoo

Feminism is just a symptom of living in a collapsing culture. It’s really that simple. It will end when the new dawn rises, when new civilisations arise to take the place of this one.

It sounds like your anger is trying to drive you to change your unsatisfying life… Me too. Maybe it’s a way to avoid changing one’s own life by projecting the problem externally. Do you think these other sources could be to blame? I partly see this as a problem with modern life, living in a managerial, “pass-the-buck” society, where one rarely confronts anything real. All of this anger builds up but there is no one to truthfully direct it towards, so you end up scapegoating whoever is convenient.

Roman emperors feel like more relevant examples since they were at least ruling over an empire. Henry VIII’s corruption seems irrelevant in comparison to Trump because his sphere of influence was much smaller. I also think that corruption in post-modernity has taken on a particularly vulgar, juvenile and moronic streak.

You might be right. If you have some good historical examples I’d be interested. I know that, in the ancient world, Sardanapalus was held up as an example of an extremely corrupt and decadent ruler.

Most spiritual teachers in modernity have been somewhat corrupt: Osho, Chögyam Trungpa, Gurdjieff. Even Sri Aurobindo had a weird fetish for his body surviving after death… You also have the Aleister Crowley and Kenneth Grant variety of occultist who embraces corruption and evil as a path to awakening, reminiscent of freemasonic organisations like the Skull and Bones Society which many of these political perverts are known to be a part of. Given the corruption writ large, the Left-Hand Path might even be more powerful in our time, for those who can take it without falling. Sri Ramana and René Guenon stand out as the purest spiritual teachers in relatively recent times.

In this way, Trump - as an avatar of the Anti-Christ - has been sent by God to destroy the false idol of Christ so that we can realise our true nature as absolute nothingness. “Go ahead! Achieve all your goals! Break all the dams! Faster! You are unbound. Go ahead and fly with faster wings, with an ever greater pride for your achievements, with your conquests, with your empires, with your democracies! The pit must be filled; there is a need for fertiliser for the new tree that will grow out of your collapse.” It is nowadays. Maybe it used to be otherwise… Not on anything like the same level of corruption.

Exactly, I think that’s what a lot of this comes down to. Immature people will seek satisfaction in sex. Mature people will recognise that sex, as a form of lower-chakra jouissance, is inherently unfulfilling and will therefore sublimate that energy into something more profound. Unfortunately I seem to have fallen into the former camp…

Exactly. If you’re married for years and your highest priority is sexual satisfaction, you’re probably doing something wrong. Incidentally, that’s one of the themes which runs through Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut: their eyes are being opened sexually whilst their eyes are closed to their obligations as parents. The times where it feels like the God in you sees the Goddess in her and vice versa. The boundless ocean of death and love, mort and amor, in a unison with the infinite light of pure awareness.

Until eventually you end up like this: Crede experto!

I don’t know. The most fulfilling experiences I have had with women have been on a soul-level and not sexual. I think I do agree with Leo that one woman will never fulfil you sexually, if that is what you are looking for. Of course, especially as the years go by, you will probably never fulfil one woman either…

Joking aside, according to a recent blog post from Leo, it’s not possible and you need to learn to satisfy yourself.

Exactly, the author is trying to argue that working with dark, destructive and demonic forces can create a “dark night of the soul” which purges the ego of its attachment to ideals and abstractions as well as base desires. I'm not sure that I agree with this, by the way, especially as a practice. However, if one has already made a deal with the devil, it could be useful to consider how this might be reframed as still part of an overarching spiritual trajectory…

Well, in Barry Lyndon, it does feel good until he has to reap all of the bad karma that he has accumulated… I agree though, lying and cheating rot the soul. Like the Faust story, it is trading the ephemeral for the eternal.

Your narrative reminds me of the beautiful film Barry Lyndon in which the protagonist, who is lied to and cheated, becomes a liar and a cheat himself to beat them… On the subject of films, the part of your post where you describe how the Devil speaks to you when you feel wounded and betrayed reminds me of the recent Robert Egger’s film Nosferatu, in which the female protagonist summons a dark and evil ancient spirit to cope with her loneliness and isolation: The good news is that, from an esoteric point of view, a deal with the devil can be a path to the True Self as absolute nothingness. Some quotes from a book I have been reading recently, Dark Enlightenment: The Apotheosis of the Self by Jack Fox-Williams: I liked your post, especially the part about not giving up on the heroic quest. This also reminds me of Wagner’s Parsifal…

My friend has access to some 2C-B and I am considering trying it. Do any of you have experience with 2C-B? Do you have any thoughts or advice on how to use the trip effectively? I know Leo had an old video where he described experiencing physical death on it. Most other people seem to report fairly superficial experiences, though, at least compared to other psychedelics. I have also heard that it can have quite a heavy body load.

Modern people are too atheistic and nihilistic to care about blasphemy. They have other false idols, but not God. If blasphemy has relevance today it is in the political sphere.

Master Ma was very sick. The head monk asked, "How is your Reverence feeling lately?" Master Ma said, "Sun-faced Buddha, Moon-faced Buddha".

@LambdaDelta How does vasoconstriction manifest for you on psychedelics? Do you find that one reacts to it differently given the change in mindset?

This is an interesting idea. So God has no agency or will of (His/Its) own? Why does God have to expand indefinitely and explore all possibilities of consciousness? That seems like a constraint on God’s freedom. At the same time, I suppose it is infinite freedom to create reality…

Here’s a joke for you: A man goes running to his psychiatrist and says: “Doctor, doctor! Please help me… My whole life is a joke!”

But that disappointment is one thing that drives people towards spirituality. So in that sense, it is designed to be disappointing — to inspire and encourage you to wake up from the dream.

A friend told me that 2C-E is a guaranteed bad trip. Looking it up now, though, it doesn’t seem to be the case… Thanks for the advice and sharing your interesting trip report. I don’t think I’ll be able to get hold of clonidine but I might be able to find an equivalent alternative. The tablets are supposed to be 25mg. I’ll probably start with one and see how it goes. It’s interesting you say that as other people who have taken it told me that one and a half tablets gave the best experience.