Help me, I can't stop paradigm shifting!

[Moongarm71]

How do I stop? Everything seems somewhat meaningful and interesting to me! I get nowhere!

 

[OberonFromTheHills]

You are a chaos baby.
Trust the process.

 

[Robert Ramsay]

How do I stop? Everything seems somewhat meaningful and interesting to me! I get nowhere!

My advice would be to see if you can isolate any factors that different paradigms have in common and see if you can generalise those factors into a system of your own

 

[giusma]

Honestly, I get that, but maybe don’t try to stop paradigm shifting completely. Just choose one frame for a while and commit to testing it in practice. Give yourself a time limit, like a month or a week, depends on how frantic is your shifting, then review it later.
On the other hand not every interesting thing needs to become your path or part of it, some things can just be interesting, and that's it

 

[echoprism]

I'd recommend "take what you need and leave the rest". I also feel like i am shifting paradigms once or twice a year. I can't say I have a solution but I am trying to isolate the common denominators in each paradigm and, like a previous user said, construct my own personal paradigm with them. I hope this helps.

 

[nunaphael]

TL;DR:

You're fine, don't even worry about it. It's totally normal and just part of the process. It will pass eventually.

Long version:

It's because your unconscious is particularly good at recognizing archetypes and patterns, you are seeing the actual deeper structure that underlies all of these different regional variations and permutations of the same universal, eternal, infinite processes that all of these different forms of theurgy and goetia are trying to work with and describe and master.

And simultaneously, you are searching for "the one" or "the truth", which has created a singularity into which you are currently falling and everything you try to begin just collapses into the singularity, it has too much gravitas in your life, so you cannot escape it. There is no choice then, you must simply accept it and embrace it. Go with it. Continue to study, and continue to branch out, and continue to fail for now. Have patience and allow the process, allow the fever to burn itself out. You are growing, this is a phase you will emerge from, but it may take a very long time.

I'm 43 and started studying western esoteric traditions and occult philosophy when I was 14. I've had a different academically translated primary text in my hand ever since. My personal library is quite extensive and full of such books. I would pick a topic and spend up to a year immersed into it. I had my chaos magic theory phase with Peter J Carroll and Phil Hine. I had my Golden Dawn phase with Eliphas Levi and Mathers and then obviously I studied Thelema after that and Crowley, and then I studied Wicca and Gardner and the other variants of it like Alexandrian Wicca and Ecclectic Wicca. I got into neopaganism and heathenry, studied Galdr and Seidr norse magic. Pivoted to astrology, got into horary, electional, natal, hellenistic astrology. I read Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Valens, Ptolemy, all the way up to medieval and renaissance astrology like Guido Bonnati, William Lilly, and Johannes Kepler. Read the Picatrix, got into astrological magic, read Agrippa's Three Books on Occult Philosophy and the Corpus Hermeticum, and a shitty little book I highly recommend you avoid called "The Kybalion" that was a waste of time and an awful plaguarism of actual hermetic writings. And I'm only just taking the time to list a few of these books, I cannot even remember all of them. I don't even just read occultism, I've read Jung's Red Book and his Psychological Types and Man and His Symbols, and even the work of his colleague Marie Louis von Franz and her work on the "inferior function", and I've studied Jacque Lacan's psychoanalysis and Freudian analysis as well, and plenty of other more contemporary forms of psychology like adult attachment styles by john bowlby, maslows heirarchy, the cognitive behavioral therapy triangle, etc etc. My god now I'm getting flashbacks to my bachelor degree program. I majored in psychology because I was so fascinated by human consciousness and how we form our identities.

Anyway, I'm rambling about this because I want to try and impart to you how long, how vast, and how deep this journey you are on can potentially be, if you actually take it that seriously. And this is not a bad thing. It means you are well versed, it means you are deeply educated about the topic, you have an academic level of education in the topic, and you are therefore able to make very informed decisions about your personal theories and practice which resonate deeply with you so you feel like what you are doing really makes a lot of sense and feels necessary to do. That is where you want to be. You want to have studied so much of this stuff that eventually you "just get it" and you can finally stop reading books and studying it, and actually start doing it in confidence and get results right away.

I read books and didn't really start practicing or doing any rituals or ceremonies, not even simple things like banishment or consecrations, because I wasn't sure yet what I believed in or what really resonated with me and clicked down deep. Everything made sense to me but that was the problem, because everything seemed to make sense equally well, it was impossible for me to pick specific techniques and consolidate my practice, because I didn't have any basis on which to trust that any of it was going to work "better" or "worse" than any other method. And of course, everyone was always telling me "just try shit man, just experiment, just do the practices, just do it" over and over. They always tell you that. Everyone wants to rush you, tell you to start practicing it right away, just do the meditations, jump in the water, get your gnosis on, just start banging away. I dunno, I'm not sure that's actually good advice for everyone, personally. It didn't work for me anyway.

So don't think you need to settle right now, don't live your life trying to prove yourself to others, you are not an imposter. You are not larping. This is not a larp. You are not pretending. Anyone who judges you on your path, the way you walk it, how long it takes you to get where you are going, or even if you have no idea what you are doing, or where you are going right now - anyone who criticisize you at this stage of your development and tries to be like "just do this, this is what I did, so you should do what I did, and be like me" - just ignore that stuff, it's bad vibes they are projecting onto you coming from somewhere inside of them that they need to face and address. You do you, always. Always trust yourself.

 

[Ntea]

TL;DR:

You're fine, don't even worry about it. It's totally normal and just part of the process. It will pass eventually.

Long version:

It's because your unconscious is particularly good at recognizing archetypes and patterns, you are seeing the actual deeper structure that underlies all of these different regional variations and permutations of the same universal, eternal, infinite processes that all of these different forms of theurgy and goetia are trying to work with and describe and master.

And simultaneously, you are searching for "the one" or "the truth", which has created a singularity into which you are currently falling and everything you try to begin just collapses into the singularity, it has too much gravitas in your life, so you cannot escape it. There is no choice then, you must simply accept it and embrace it. Go with it. Continue to study, and continue to branch out, and continue to fail for now. Have patience and allow the process, allow the fever to burn itself out. You are growing, this is a phase you will emerge from, but it may take a very long time.

I'm 43 and started studying western esoteric traditions and occult philosophy when I was 14. I've had a different academically translated primary text in my hand ever since. My personal library is quite extensive and full of such books. I would pick a topic and spend up to a year immersed into it. I had my chaos magic theory phase with Peter J Carroll and Phil Hine. I had my Golden Dawn phase with Eliphas Levi and Mathers and then obviously I studied Thelema after that and Crowley, and then I studied Wicca and Gardner and the other variants of it like Alexandrian Wicca and Ecclectic Wicca. I got into neopaganism and heathenry, studied Galdr and Seidr norse magic. Pivoted to astrology, got into horary, electional, natal, hellenistic astrology. I read Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Valens, Ptolemy, all the way up to medieval and renaissance astrology like Guido Bonnati, William Lilly, and Johannes Kepler. Read the Picatrix, got into astrological magic, read Agrippa's Three Books on Occult Philosophy and the Corpus Hermeticum, and a shitty little book I highly recommend you avoid called "The Kybalion" that was a waste of time and an awful plaguarism of actual hermetic writings. And I'm only just taking the time to list a few of these books, I cannot even remember all of them. I don't even just read occultism, I've read Jung's Red Book and his Psychological Types and Man and His Symbols, and even the work of his colleague Marie Louis von Franz and her work on the "inferior function", and I've studied Jacque Lacan's psychoanalysis and Freudian analysis as well, and plenty of other more contemporary forms of psychology like adult attachment styles by john bowlby, maslows heirarchy, the cognitive behavioral therapy triangle, etc etc. My god now I'm getting flashbacks to my bachelor degree program. I majored in psychology because I was so fascinated by human consciousness and how we form our identities.

Anyway, I'm rambling about this because I want to try and impart to you how long, how vast, and how deep this journey you are on can potentially be, if you actually take it that seriously. And this is not a bad thing. It means you are well versed, it means you are deeply educated about the topic, you have an academic level of education in the topic, and you are therefore able to make very informed decisions about your personal theories and practice which resonate deeply with you so you feel like what you are doing really makes a lot of sense and feels necessary to do. That is where you want to be. You want to have studied so much of this stuff that eventually you "just get it" and you can finally stop reading books and studying it, and actually start doing it in confidence and get results right away.

I read books and didn't really start practicing or doing any rituals or ceremonies, not even simple things like banishment or consecrations, because I wasn't sure yet what I believed in or what really resonated with me and clicked down deep. Everything made sense to me but that was the problem, because everything seemed to make sense equally well, it was impossible for me to pick specific techniques and consolidate my practice, because I didn't have any basis on which to trust that any of it was going to work "better" or "worse" than any other method. And of course, everyone was always telling me "just try shit man, just experiment, just do the practices, just do it" over and over. They always tell you that. Everyone wants to rush you, tell you to start practicing it right away, just do the meditations, jump in the water, get your gnosis on, just start banging away. I dunno, I'm not sure that's actually good advice for everyone, personally. It didn't work for me anyway.

So don't think you need to settle right now, don't live your life trying to prove yourself to others, you are not an imposter. You are not larping. This is not a larp. You are not pretending. Anyone who judges you on your path, the way you walk it, how long it takes you to get where you are going, or even if you have no idea what you are doing, or where you are going right now - anyone who criticisize you at this stage of your development and tries to be like "just do this, this is what I did, so you should do what I did, and be like me" - just ignore that stuff, it's bad vibes they are projecting onto you coming from somewhere inside of them that they need to face and address. You do you, always. Always trust yourself.

This was really helpful in terms of the algorithm and a guide.

 

[lightning]

How do I stop? Everything seems somewhat meaningful and interesting to me! I get nowhere!

I do not know if i understood correctly what you want to say.

but i hold multiple paradigms, for example i do not believe in astrology, but if i see some interesting technique that many approve of, i may try it, if it works then i will believe in astrology when it comes to that specific technique,

that is how i practice personally. I see no problem in it, in fact i believe this is the most powerful way of doing things, since you end up taking the best things from each paradigm,

from my experience, i found that no paradigm is enough, and i always have to keep adding more and more, while having a general vision, but on details i may even hold contradictory opinions. And its ok, as long as it work, also, logically, merging paradigms make always more sense to me. It gives a bigger vision. You are not confined to some view.