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Jack/Firewave: I edited my post above to remove the really snarky comments. It was both rude and unecessary. My apologies.
With regard to this:
I'm trying to say that perhaps getting knowledge from spirits, journeying working with energy fields and meditating are just as important as going out into the world and doing stuff with other people. That maybe they are both equally beneficial, that reality is an illusion, maya, and that there's nothing more real that's out there than what's on the other planes if you get through to them in a lucid state. That they aren't different, they are the same thing.
I don't really disagree with the first sentence there. However, I do think you can use those sort of practises as a bloody big excuse. Where I differ, where I'm coming from is may own practice and experience. I've had experiences I could characterise as working with spirits - sme of these have been extremely beneficial, some just seemed like self-delusion. The more beneficial ones were where they had a real world output ie. something turns up in my dreams and tells me I'm behaving like a fucking twat to x person, cut it out (could be I'll be having one of them about my posts to you  )or resolved some other problem I've been worrying about - it's when it touched the world around me. Related so this, I have met several people over the years and who managed to seriously fuck themselves up by doing magick - all of these people, without exception, focused on the astral plane, spiritual matters, to the exclusion of all else. I couldn't help but feel they were using magick as a way of avoiding and escaping from the world around them. Can't pay your gas bill? - go on the astral plane to keep warm, don't worry about getting a job. Beating up your girlfriend? - "oh, it for her own good, the spirits told me so. At the same time when they told me I was the reincarnation of Aliester Crowley". I think all of these people could have done with a bloodly good slap, and kicking out their temples, out the front door, pointing in the direction of real world. This is perhaps why I get ticked off when I hear people banging on about spirits, energy and other astral gubbins and taking it all on board without criticisng it at all, with what seems to me to be little experience.
As to that thing about "maya" - well, I disagree with you that it means simply "all is an illusion" and I disagree with you even more stongly that you can extrapolate from this that therefore we're all equal with spirits etc. because "nothing is true". Every magician worth their salt has come up with a more subtle and nuanced understanding of what spirits might be. When you assert that it's all a illusion, or the reality or otherwise of spirits - what's this based on? Is it based on experience? Extensive practice? Or uncritical acceptance of ideas?
Anyway enough for now, as I fear I'm veering into rudeness again. Apologies for the comments above (I deleted them straight after I wrote 'em btw), your posts just seem to "bring out the beast" in me. Cheers. |
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