Alchemy / Occult Aspects of Self

[Shade]

This thread is open for discussion on your experiences or questions in working in different self alchemical traditions whether it be the Kabbalah - Hermetic, Lurianic aka “traditional” Kabbalah or via the Qlippoth or anything related to Carl Jung’s DNotS.

Bottom line, this thread is about anything to do with self discovery and the occult aspects of the self.

Your experiences and any tips for beginners on where you started and what you would have done differently.

For those who just started it will be interesting to hear your take on your experiences thus far.


Discuss v

 

[Anziel_Merkaba]

Initially I wrote this as a response on this thread...

Your experiences and any tips for beginners on where you started and what you would have done differently.

...but it kinda turned into a whole big thing. I don't know exactly what I was channeling besides myself, but the words I wrote didn't come from me thinking about them. It didn't feel right to post this whole thing on @Shade 's thread because it deviated so far from the topic in such a way, so I decided to make it a separate thread.

---

Everything begins and ends with the self.
Before the self there is only All.
After the self there is only All.
I am All, we are All, All is All.

Everything you can imagine and everything you can't is rooted in experience; you can only see what you understand, and what you understand is only the self. We are but shadows of our own minds and experiences, and the worlds we see are only what we can understand. Just as the one trapped within Plato's Cave cannot imagine the light of the Sun, a person cannot imagine what they have not experienced in any form. Everything you think you know is only what you think, and real or not what you think you know is real to you. And to those who haven't seen what you have seen or know what you think you know, they will not know that what you think you know is real until they see and experience it for themselves, either through sight or touch or smell or hearing or taste. And when they do experience it, they will either accept it and believe or deny it and it will cease to be real to them.

For all I think I know and reasoned for myself, I cannot assure that anything is actually real, just that I believe it to be real. So we are all either real or not, and I don't know how to feel about that.

 

[jkeller293]

There are 2 major ways to approach looking at life and they are:

1) "I am the only conscious being and everything i see is me."

2) "I am not the only conscious being in this reality."

The first one can be a very horrifying idea — that is if you look at it as a horrible revelation to realise if that is truely the reality. From my point of view i have no way to tell if everyone i speak to is technically myself. Of course the world would speak to me and say "no thats definitely not true," but how do i know its not just like a distorted echo of my own voice?

Say if the reality truely was that everything exists simultaneously like past, present, and future — different versions of YOU or I could exist as an illusion we interact with like they are independant from you or I even though they would not be in this case.

I noticed two things about all living things — they all require to feed and reproduce.

Lets translate this to take energy and divide energy.

So if we look at the ALL as a singular unit, how does it feed? How does it reproduce? It can't at that state right? Because it is the ALL and there is no other ALL. So the ALL desires to feed so what can it do? It must divide itself producing "what it is not" in order to get "what is." That "what is" i would say is experience itself and that i think is the ALL's food.

 

[Anziel_Merkaba]

There are 2 major ways to approach looking at life and they are:

1) "I am the only conscious being and everything i see is me."

2) "I am not the only conscious being in this reality."

The first one can be a very horrifying idea — that is if you look at it as a horrible revelation to realise if that is truely the reality. From my point of view i have no way to tell if everyone i speak to is technically myself. Of course the world would speak to me and say "no thats definitely not true," but how do i know its not just like a distorted echo of my own voice?

Say if the reality truely was that everything exists simultaneously like past, present, and future — different versions of YOU or I could exist as an illusion we interact with like they are independant from you or I even though they would not be in this case.

I noticed two things about all living things — they all require to feed and reproduce.

Lets translate this to take energy and divide energy.

So if we look at the ALL as a singular unit, how does it feed? How does it reproduce? It can't at that state right? Because it is the ALL and there is no other ALL. So the ALL desires to feed so what can it do? It must divide itself producing "what it is not" in order to get "what is." That "what is" i would say is experience itself and that i think is the ALL's food.

It's both as far as I can tell, but it's awkward to really explain it, so bear with me as I try.

This is kinda mindfucky but you know how everyone gets idle or intrusive thoughts when they aren't doing anything? What if we all are just the intrusive thoughts of the All and not really real in the first place? I mean I don't know if the All is a conscious being or a mindless existence, but it is similar to Zhuangzi's butterfly dream.

Once, Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering about, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know that he was Zhuang Zhou.

Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuang Zhou. But he didn't know if he was Zhuang Zhou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming that he was Zhuang Zhou. Between Zhuang Zhou and the butterfly there must be some distinction! This is called the Transformation of Things.

Although in this case it's less "a butterfly dreaming of being me" and more "God dreaming of being me". Anyways, it doesn't keep me up at night but I have insomnia so I have to think about something while I'm trying to fall asleep and it is as good as anything else I could be thinking about.

 

[jkeller293]

I suspect intrusive thoughts are our mind's subjucation to objectivity. As we observe and experience i believe its almost like a mirror translating into subjectivity at first — from there it can translate to objectivity as we measure it.

Post automatically merged: Wednesday at 6:01 AM

I suspect intrusive thoughts are our mind's subjucation to objectivity. As we observe and experience i believe its almost like a mirror translating into subjectivity at first — from there it can translate to objectivity as we measure it.

And by measure im thinking in terms of ratio. To reduce this simply with a example of a question we may ask "is this object big?" We do not know if it is big without reference to another object.

Post automatically merged: Wednesday at 6:14 AM

I do not think mind can exist without mindlessness. I see mind standing on mindlessness in order to exist — i also see this as vis versa as well. So its possible that both just always had existed as they were.

But from that model im perplexed about how it can measure itself. Maybe mindlessness could be called female and the mind could be called male. They want to be together but they cannot since mind cannot exist as mindlessness. So when they do try to come together maybe that produces the offspring being conscious experience aka the measurer of both.

Post automatically merged: Wednesday at 6:14 AM

I think im on to something here but im having trouble finding a way to articulate this.

Post automatically merged: Wednesday at 6:22 AM

So maybe the best way to label this is protounconscious and protoconscious.

Which then through interaction with each other produces a quantum superposition containing both the aspects of protounconscious and protoconscious — thus the conscious mind accompanied with the subconscious mind has come into existence from this interaction.

 

[Shade]

Initially I wrote this as a response on this thread...

...but it kinda turned into a whole big thing. I don't know exactly what I was channeling besides myself, but the words I wrote didn't come from me thinking about them. It didn't feel right to post this whole thing on @Shade 's thread because it deviated so far from the topic in such a way, so I decided to make it a separate thread.

---

Everything begins and ends with the self.
Before the self there is only All.
After the self there is only All.
I am All, we are All, All is All.

Everything you can imagine and everything you can't is rooted in experience; you can only see what you understand, and what you understand is only the self. We are but shadows of our own minds and experiences, and the worlds we see are only what we can understand. Just as the one trapped within Plato's Cave cannot imagine the light of the Sun, a person cannot imagine what they have not experienced in any form. Everything you think you know is only what you think, and real or not what you think you know is real to you. And to those who haven't seen what you have seen or know what you think you know, they will not know that what you think you know is real until they see and experience it for themselves, either through sight or touch or smell or hearing or taste. And when they do experience it, they will either accept it and believe or deny it and it will cease to be real to them.

For all I think I know and reasoned for myself, I cannot assure that anything is actually real, just that I believe it to be real. So we are all either real or not, and I don't know how to feel about that.

This woulda been fine, any and all “self discovery” posts

Post automatically merged: Wednesday at 5:00 PM

Bottom line, this thread is about anything to do with self discovery and the occult aspects of the self.

Quote from my thread. This type of convo is exactly what my post was meant to illicit as well as any work with the Kabbalah, Qlipoth DNotS.

2 great examples is the very beginning and very end

Everything begins and ends with the self.
Before the self there is only All.
After the self there is only All.
I am All, we are All, All is All.

And

For all I think I know and reasoned for myself, I cannot assure that anything is actually real, just that I believe it to be real. So we are all either real or not, and I don't know how to feel about that.

but all aspects of the middle as well

 

[Robert Ramsay]

There's a book by Julian Jaynes called "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind' where he hypothesises that what we consider 'normal human consciousness' has only evolved in the last few thousand years. Before that, we were told what to do in difficult situations 'by the gods' which was, in fact, a different part of the brain from where we performed our normal actions, in a similar way to schizophrenics 'hearing voices'.

I'm still not sure what I think about this idea, but it's a fascinating book.

 

[Anziel_Merkaba]

Everything begins and ends with the self.
Before the self there is only All.
After the self there is only All.
I am All, we are All, All is All.

Everything you can imagine and everything you can't is rooted in experience; you can only see what you understand, and what you understand is only the self. We are but shadows of our own minds and experiences, and the worlds we see are only what we can understand. Just as the one trapped within Plato's Cave cannot imagine the light of the Sun, a person cannot imagine what they have not experienced in any form. Everything you think you know is only what you think, and real or not what you think you know is real to you. And to those who haven't seen what you have seen or know what you think you know, they will not know that what you think you know is real until they see and experience it for themselves, either through sight or touch or smell or hearing or taste. And when they do experience it, they will either accept it and believe or deny it and it will cease to be real to them.

For all I think I know and reasoned for myself, I cannot assure that anything is actually real, just that I believe it to be real. So we are all either real or not, and I don't know how to feel about that.

Since @Shade said my thing would have been fine to post here instead of taking it to a new thread, I quoted it here so his thread doesn't get lost in the soup.

 

[Magpie]

As a beginner, who read much about alchemy, including 2 or 3 reads of Hermetic Tradition, I'd say... It is difficult. Intellectualisation of those concepts is a pitfall. They warn you against you, but this is a habit, you still end up doing it. Giving it more mystique than it needs - I feel like in essence it is easier than it seems and the issue is with perception or with knowing how to move in a sense. Like if you were given instructions on how to make tea, but you didn't know how kettle, teabag or jug looks like and they were hidden and you didn't even know how to move. Or rather, if you forgot all these things, but once memory is restored, it would be no issue.

So before it turns into a serious schizo-post, I'd say remembering some key assumptions and doing prerequisite work is essential. UR Group says that an ability of spiritual concentration and of the feeling of SIlence is required as well as the descend into the heart (moving the centre of one's self there from the brain) in order to achieve anything in magic. So to demystify, it seems to mean reaching deep meditative states and developing a proper spiritual intuition/perception.

Interesting quote "Any discipline aimed at inducing the death of a certain part of one's will, and at awakening that in us which knows how to obey unconditionally, is an essential component of the magical path." Can it mean that in the silence, the unwanted will dies and allows the mind (nous) to impose its will?

 

[jkeller293]

Can it mean that in the silence, the unwanted will dies and allows the mind (nous) to impose its will?

I would think so. That would make sense.

Post automatically merged: Thursday at 9:03 AM

I would think so. That would make sense.

Even without hermeticism in mind, i believe i am more in tune thinking when in complete silence. So if i were to take one step further silencing my own mind (lets call it the local mind to differentiate from the nous) — i would say its definitely probable that may be the case, but i have no idea.

I like to analyze this a bit much more than may be needed, but i see that what we are exposed to is what we become — so if you are silencing the local mind i guess you would have a stronger connection without questioning it. Questioning would be in the realm of duality and not questioning being the state of nondual or the state of knowing all.

Post automatically merged: Thursday at 9:11 AM

issue is with perception

And i strongly agree with you there.

 

[Flandre]

For those who just started it will be interesting to hear your take on your experiences thus far.

Probably the very first lesson I've learned from Kabbalah was about balance. One of the more obvious themes, but it still helped me change my life.
I used to jump from one extreme to the other. I was very obsessive. Most of the time I was drained of energy to the point of physical illness. I have spent much time in various emergency rooms or laying in bed, exhausted. When I did get some, it was usually in bursts and I often wasted it.
I had a period when I had seemingly almost infinite energy after having met an interesting individual I respect very much; yet all that energy I directed towards a foolish goal. There were very few qualities, interests, states in me that persisted over time. It seemed as if only one thing persisted, that being hunger. For energy, for health, for something more.

And then...

I stopped getting ill. I suddenly decided to eat a more balanced diet, because it made sense to me now. Having learned how to balance emotions, I stopped being a slave to my emotions. I started paying attention to what I was doing and modifying habits. Still learning how to combine both knowledge and experience. Learned how to use pleasurable experiences in a way that fuels me while staying in control.

It gave me the foundation upon which I can build.