t – 8 and counting…
OK, I’ve read this thread carefully a couple of times now and am ready to make a reasonable contribution. To begin, I’d like to say that if, like fenris 23 says of some elsewhere, you did not understand diZzy or if diZzy annoyed you, then perhaps you’d better simply skip over what I am going to say (or if you haven’t read diZzy, then either go read it—it is likely on page six or so of the Magick forum—or struggle through with the linguistic devices being employed here: it might make some sort of sense to you without the pre-reading!).
At the beginning I’d like to say that I tend to see the Self as {nothing, everything}. Or, put differently and with a little more “sense” (as I may have put forth before), s = {self, other}, where this other could be anything that is commonly seen as “external,” “foreign,” or otherwise “unknown” to “self” currently.
Now, “higher” self is a great way to avoid certain traps that beset the traveler on hir path. By this I mean, and as is being discussed, viewing the pathworker part of yourself as “higher” avoids certain pits of egomania and megalomania. When we understand that, in essence, each and everyone of us is a god/dess, and begin to take hold of the power and the responsibility that comes from such a realization it is important to allow ourselves an avenue to get out of our own way and merely enact the acts that need to be acted. In different words, as we come to recognize the extent to which we create the world we live in it often becomes an important device for us to use a category like “higher self” in order to avoid thinking that we are the king-shits of the world because such power will go directly to our little heads, and thus, remove most chances for real accomplishment as we become lost in ever increasing illusions of grandeur. As well, separating our “ego” from our more “magickal” self is a convenient way to avoid taking too much responsibility for the shitty world that we collectively create. As I’ve put forth elsewhere, each and everyone one of us plays a role in creating both a better world and a worse world and it can be hard on the psyche to accept that some of the horrors in the world are our own doing. In short, thinking and employing a notion of “higher self” helps us avoid our own ego traps and cushions the fragile psyche against understanding too much before we are ready to deal with the responsibilities of such understanding. Now, this is not to say that having/creating a “higher self” is somehow misguided or wrong: it appears to be a necessary step in our coming to understand our own identity and also serves as a sort of “role model” by which we can diffuse the darker parts of our egos and aspire towards a brighter, better being.
To borrow from Will, it becomes part of our task as travelers to integrate what he is calling the mundane self with the higher self. Again, to borrow from diZzy, the being that we are is {mundane, divine}. The reality, it seems to me (and borrowing form Buddhist notions), is the middle road between the two extremes (and this is why duality is an important part of our world: without the extremes there would be no interim in which manifestation could occur!). It is the tension of apparent opposites that creates an opportunity for there to be an “interdependent co-arising.” This is a borrowed Buddhist term that recognizes that there is no permanent things, but only the manifestations that occur due to the interaction of empty parts, and such interaction must occur between at least two such empty parts. To rephrase and clarify, it does not make much sense to think of the divine in isolation nor the mundane in isolation: it is the two together that create and define one and other, and it is the two together that create the reality; thus, the being that we are, our self, is in reality {divine, mundane} (like any other thing in the world). As Will relates, we come to a point where we are able to switch, with relative ease, between the mundane self and the divine self, as we might with those psychological drawings (figure-ground) where we can see, say, and old crone or a young woman (or, for another example, a goblet or a pair of faces facing one and other), but we can not typically see both at once. The real trick (as in magick), is to come to see the young woman and the old crone at the same time; that is, to see ourselves as both the {mundane, divine} = S(elf) all at once.
I am critical, but not overly so, of thinking that our journeying is somehow leaving behind our masks, as Ierne puts forth. When we journey (and perhaps this is what Ierne was getting at or meant to say) we simply wear a different mask: the shaman’s mask, the wizard’s mask, or some such disguise. Again, the real trick, from my perspective, is to come to wear all the masks at once, or put differently, to wear no masks at all. I have an intuitive/intellectual sense that this comes to the individual realizing that s/he walks a path that has no beginning, no end, and moreover, no steps! It is hard to put this sort of thing into words because, it seems to me, that the words serve to obscure the reality of something that cannot be adequately expressed in any language we know or would care to create. It can only be non/experienced, and even this is likely less than it {is, isn’t}. In short, we all play roles and don different masks for different circumstances. Each mask (like Ierne points out regarding ego) serves a certain function and is usually not meant to serve other functions. Again, it seems to me that enlightenment might be to wear all the masks and no masks regardless of the “external” circumstances (for the enlightened being comes to live the understanding that “external” and “internal” are also masks that we wear in order to confuse and entertain our own being—maybe!).
In a similar sort of criticism, I would say that I for one have had it up to here [holds hand up above top of head] with the dichotomies that fuel raging debates about what is and is not the case. I am referring now, in part, to the differentiation that Will is attempting to make between the Self as acting by intuition alone and the Ego as acting through rational faculties (I am not yelling at you Will or trying to bring ya’ down, I merely want to point out how difficult it is for us to escape pseudo-dualist thinking: my “up to here” has to do with much more than what you’ve said Will—it is a frustration with the way that Western thought works in general, especially in the academic realm!). Again, it appears to me that the reality of our being is the intersection of our heart and of our mind; this is to say, I think Self is that which acts from the heart as tempered by the mind and acts from the mind as tempered by the heart. Again, if we want to employ the sort of language structures that were developed in diZzy we get:
{Self, Ego} + {heart, mind} = s, where here the ‘s’ is the reality of our being—our “real” identity.
This might echo some of what Bill has said, but then gets lost in notions of levels and such. I want to say that there are no levels, other than the levels that we create to aid our understanding and to shield our psyches from trauma. The realms that we divide the world into mirror the parts the we divide ourselves into and not any of these are anything more than, as Bill points out, ways of mapping the reality that we find ourselves in. But, as readers of RAW know, Korzybski (sp?) enlightened us with “the map is not the territory.” Put differently, the way we carve up the world is relative to the way that we are capable of understanding and functioning in the world, but we mustn’t think that it is the reality and must bear in mind it is only our understanding of the reality. This works the same for diZzying language such as, “{x, y} = s is the reality.” It isn’t, but seems a way to try to get at “the reality” via resolving dualistic thinking. If nothing else, it is device that allows me to attempt to communicate my understanding while at the same time pushing my understanding to places it can’t get to otherwise; put differently “{x, y} = s” is a tool that we can pick up, put down, or leave on the shelf, but it is a tool that works well for me, and I can only hope that it might also work well for you!
I find Will’s inquiries into bodily functions very interesting. I have had some experiences that might be similar to this. I tend to wonder if it is a reminder of the equal importance of the material world and its bodies in contrast to the spiritual world and its forms. Again, because this is the tool that I use, it appears that {material, spiritual} come together to create the manifestations that we experience. To switch up the metaphor, it is as if we are the centre of a circle and as we journey, whether to the local market, the astral world, or whatever, we trace a path away from our centre. Such “accidents” might be a reminder to remember to return to our centre; however, again, I have the inkling that the centre and the circumference share an identity and that their location is both everywhere and nowhere. Which brings me back to my opening statement:
Self = {nothing, everything}.
happy/sad non/trails,
{0, 1, 2}
(I can hear the frustrated cries of “obsfucation” already!  ) |
