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Underground > Temple >

A question about belief...

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10:16 / 23.07.04

Seth:
Belief is Enemy. I love that.

Send us your address and I'll put you on the T-shirt list if you want.

> it is also presupposed that there is such a thing as an
> enemy (a belief in itself). Of course, the point could
> be exactly that contradiction in terms,

You got it

> highlighting that even if the idea is to abolish all
> belief, that goal must also stem from a belief. This
> whole area is wonderfully recursive.

Correct. If belief, as in "convictions cause convicts", is the enemy, then either that stems from a belief, or the term "belief" is itself, as RAW puts it, "an obsolete Aristotleian category".

Leading one to a Proudhon-like formulation of "Belief is freedom", "Belief is slavery", "Belief is impossible", "Belief is meaningless".

And the statement itself is clearly non-serious, since it uses the verb "to be", and is therefore meaningless.

But back to brass tacks. If the term "Belief" seems problematic, even without the verb "to be", then what do we replace it with? It's easy to distinguish between "belief" and "faith", sure, but how does one introduce a sense of relativism and dynamism to... errr... the fabric of one's reality tunnel. Lovey. Sweetie. Darling.

Unconditional Love

10:31 / 23.07.04

Are the thoughts thinking you? or are you thinking the thoughts?

which one feels safer, more comfortable.

perhaps concentrating on the sound of thinking rather than the thoughts themselves, or perhaps healing the habit of thinking.

id be intrested to see the techniques around belief you spoke of seth.

12:01 / 23.07.04

2stepfan: Which is where the thread started…

If you could believe anything you want, what would you want that belief to do for you?

This question already hypothesises a world in which we can choose and change our beliefs in accordance with our desires, at will. I asked it as a “What If?” question to encourage posters to play with the idea…

So the premise of the thread has already accounted for the “belief as prison” theory and gone several stages further suggesting that beliefs are just a bi-product of our subjective experience, that they can be changed, and that they can be in service of what we want (although the thread itself is more even handed than that summary allows for). And several people (yourself included) have already posted to state what you want your beliefs to do for you: in other words, the word belief here has been transformed from a prison into a playground.

I guess we’re in total agreement in everything besides linguistics. Given that the way that everyone sees the world isn’t the world, even if we changed the terminology we’d still be chatting about the same concepts.

There are no problematic words in any universal sense, nigger.

12:33 / 23.07.04

wolfangel: I've got a ton which could be relevant. When I get time I'll see if I can post something that gives some hint as to the structure of believing (as much as that's possible - it won't be the truth, but it might be useful to you).

12:46 / 25.07.04

Your choice, but purely as an experiment, come up with a belief or a set of beliefs that fulfil your objective but make absolutely no reference to magic. Try answering the question as if you were someone who had no prior knowledge or experience of magic at all…

Thanks, i'll try this and post back.

Nalyd Khezr Bey

20:31 / 28.07.04

My relative meta-beliefs have worked for me so far. I do not believe in anything and yet I do if I feel like it.

20:56 / 28.07.04

man, hell of a head twister there.

i would like to believe in myself to such an extent that i can just let the rest slide by, assured in the knowledge that whatever i'm doing, it's the right way to go.

at the moment i'm too caught up in other beliefs from outside my head to truely know wether i have any inherant belief in my self, or am i just believing what someone else has propagated in to my consciousness.

hmmm, tricky..

"still i proceed, giving chase to the persuit itself, and turning back becomes a paradoxical notion, word play, meaningless."

03:06 / 29.07.04

the cat's iao: Given that "M/magic(k) does not tolerate belief." constitutes a belief in itself, what deeper truth do you reckon ze was tryng to communicate?

Quite right, chappy, quite right.

I doubt that there is a “deeper truth” being communicated here, and by this I mean that I feel that this is more of a guide or signpost of one person’s path than it is of any attempt at peddling a “truth.”

On a meta level analysis certainly it is a belief, but then it becomes something of a contradiction. In this sense there is an alchemical-like formulation of the hermaphrodite perfection, where 1 = 0. Or, “I believe not to believe.” So there is this in this statement at one level.

On a different level, it is a beckoning not to become entrapped either in one’s own beliefs or the beliefs of others. The writer has a particular theme in his work: magic has much to do with meaning, and the discovery of meaning is spontaneous. Thus, belief is the antithesis of such a pursuit since belief typically requires fixed meanings in order for it to function as belief. For example, the belief that certain items and symbols are associated with such and such a god require that the meanings of those items and symbols are fixed in the mind of the worshipper. Thus, the meanings become static, and really, a collection of “dead metaphors.” Hence, if magick is linked to spontaneity in meanings, then there is no magick in the fixed meanings attached to some set of beliefs.

15:56 / 30.07.04

I want a belief I can truly drive into the core of my being and keep there at all times. A belief that changes me and changes with me.

11:41 / 31.07.04

the cat's iao: fair enough about the *truth* comment. The word doesn't necessarily have that connotation for me, but you were right to look past your own preconceptions to make it synonomous with *meaning* or some other equivalent.

What if you were to believe that belief allows spontaneity in the play of meaning? Something like, "I believe that nothing is fixed?"

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