Dialoguing with your 'Self'

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

Does anyone else here do it? Ie. when you're racking your mind, heart, and soul on life's greatest questions and mysteries - bringing your concerns before something far deeper within you, almost divining with your own reactions, and projecting these on a character whether it be a loving God/Goddess, whatever might speak within you, and probing that general field - ie. a semi-imaginary friend or an image that you've come up with to give you feedback?

I hope this question isn't too inherently problematic but I want to ask it anyway in case any of you have probed this one to father limits than I have.

What is it? Is it the subconscious/Triple Hecate that we're probing? If we imagine it being a godform whether Jesus, Hermes, Sophia, Isis, etc... are we somewhat talking to that entity or are we possibly looping right back around and giving the subconscious something like a tulpa as a mouthpiece and proxy? Is there possibly a glimmer of superconscious in there or is such a concept pure fiction itself or is the separation of subconscious from superconsciousness the real fiction?

I hope this question isn't too deep but....lol....too deep for a magic forum? Almost sounds like an oxymoron or so I hope....

[Hadit]

93.

We can probe the subconscious but I've noticed most people don't try or aren't capable. Understanding oneself and conversing with oneself is certainly one of the most important - probably the #1 important - aspect of discovering one's true will. The talks we have with ourselves are just our mind, same as talking with another but in your own mind with less barriers and talking both sides.

I don't know what you mean by super consciousness. Sounds like new age gibberish to me.

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

I don't know what you mean by super consciousness. Sounds like new age gibberish to me.

Well, 'cept that AMORC, BOTA, Golden Dawn, OTO/A.'.A.'. all have different names for the same thing - Master Within, Soul Personality, Holy Guardian Angel, and it seems to be the same thing John of the Cross was writing steamy poetry about getting love-tackled by. That's part of why I don't worry that a few half-baked new agers have snagged the terminology.

I guess I'm just trying to sort out the different layers and see what might be what. Thanks for the reply though and yeah, probing ourselves does help us pin down what we really think - I just wonder if that corridor has more than just 'us' as we locally know ourselves in the pipeline.

[Nahemah]

I don't think it's too deep, no and we are an Occult forum,so not just about magick, lol, we're happy to discuss ideas and philosophies too. [grin]

...are we possibly looping right back around and giving the subconscious something like a tulpa as a mouthpiece and proxy?

I like this concept and yes, sometimes this is what's being done, but also, not everyone will experience it like this. [thumbup]

Superconsciousness as in Superego?

(I moved the topic here as I think it's s better fit for the subject.I hope that's ok?)

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

I don't think it's too deep, no and we are an Occult forum,so not just about magick, lol, we're happy to discuss ideas and philosophies too. [grin]

I feel like this particular topic is part of dealing with that bridge between doing rituals or meditations and wishing you saw things or got results vs. the 'Wait...other people don't instantly and effortlessly see blue lines of flame when they draw their pentagrams?!'. Seems like this is all about chakra awakening or whatever one might use conceptually in lieu of that in the west (I believe the Sufi's have five instead?).

So I suppose it's the magical development topic. I'm one of those people who still has rather fleeting visualization skills by my own effort, 10 months of LBRP/LIRP and fleshing out my Pattern on the Trestleboard with the ToL seems like it's helped marginally at best, just like writing my dreams in the morning, every morning since February also seems like it's barely delivered a thing.

With the internal dialogues it's the only time I really feel like something magical actually is upwelling and it seems to be the one thing that can get my motivation back up and where I feel like what I had comes pretty close to a supernatural experience if I imagine myself wrapped in Sophia's cloak or in the wings of Isis (not being those godforms themselves but being wrapped in their arms). In that instance I'll feel an influx of energy and get the distinct feeling that something autonomous within myself is smiling dearly back at me.

Part of me is crossing my fingers and hoping that this isn't just a cul-de-sac. I feel like I can occasionally get some pretty interesting information albeit also at these times albeit it's information that I technically *could* have put in their mouths but I would say it's an acceleration of things I sort of knew or felt separate from each other but wouldn't have had it in me at the time to simply connect and bluntly state outright. I know that this is how channeling generally works but again, not knowing the 'physics' rules of this I find myself wondering what brings progress and what's really a distraction.

Yesterday my big challenge was the fixity of matter and how things really are so stubborn that most people would look at what we're doing and say 'F that - I'll just stick to science, way easier to get results'. To extent they're very much right about that. At the same time I think my own internal pressure along this path is the realization that most people don't believe this option really exists at all and it breaks my heart to see the world as straight-jacketed as it is on options. It's like I really want to show people something to the effect of "See - this is a valid route of inquiry". Add to that, even if it often feels like this stuff just won't budge, things like the double slit and quantum eraser, the number generator research at PEAR, etc. seems to suggest that if someone insists on doing things like mineral or plant alchemy they may very much get their intended results so long as they know their 12 processes and are intimate with their experiments. I'm reading some Mark Stavish right now and I'm interested in seeing what spagyrics can do for a person developmentally (and I'd love to see things that synergize - results, spiritual growth, spiritual growth, results). I might put some of my other spare-time things aside like ceremonial practices to maybe work on tinctures or plant stones when I can get my energy and motivation back.

For right now I'm hitting quite the motivational cold spell. Not worried about whether or not I'll stick with things, just that my body seems to instantly say 'NO' when I ask myself if I have the energy to try one thing or another. For that I think I may just roll back to the bare minimum for a minute and stick with my BOTA/AMORC work with little garnish over and above that.

Superconsciousness as in Superego?

Lol, you might have to help me there. That's a Case vs. Young and while I know Case relatively well I don't know the particular differences on how they stack up.

(I moved the topic here as I think it's s better fit for the subject.I hope that's ok?)

That's fine. Thank you!

[corvidus]

Add to that, even if it often feels like this stuff just won't budge, things like the double slit and quantum eraser, the number generator research at PEAR, etc. seems to suggest that if someone insists on doing things like mineral or plant alchemy they may very much get their intended results so long as they know their 12 processes and are intimate with their experiments. I'm reading some Mark Stavish right now and I'm interested in seeing what spagyrics can do for a person developmentally (and I'd love to see things that synergize - results, spiritual growth, spiritual growth, results). I might put some of my other spare-time things aside like ceremonial practices to maybe work on tinctures or plant stones when I can get my energy and motivation back.

Spagyrics is good for producing herbal remedies, but if you want to take that path for development, than think of anything you make as a form of fluid condenser--something you'll concentrate your intentions/energy into via ritual or meditation.

For right now I'm hitting quite the motivational cold spell. Not worried about whether or not I'll stick with things, just that my body seems to instantly say 'NO' when I ask myself if I have the energy to try one thing or another. For that I think I may just roll back to the bare minimum for a minute and stick with my BOTA/AMORC work with little garnish over and above that.

Mercury is in retrograde motion right now (until the 24th I think), so it's probably good that you're feeling this way.
If you work too much, you'll end up getting burnt out.

[RoseRed]

I think it depends on the person. Some are talking to themselves and others are speaking with entities or gods.

[Hadit]

I don't know what you mean by super consciousness. Sounds like new age gibberish to me.

Well, 'cept that AMORC, BOTA, Golden Dawn, OTO/A.'.A.'. all have different names for the same thing - Master Within, Soul Personality, Holy Guardian Angel, and it seems to be the same thing John of the Cross was writing steamy poetry about getting love-tackled by. That's part of why I don't worry that a few half-baked new agers have snagged the terminology.

I guess I'm just trying to sort out the different layers and see what might be what. Thanks for the reply though and yeah, probing ourselves does help us pin down what we really think - I just wonder if that corridor has more than just 'us' as we locally know ourselves in the pipeline.

93,

Things like the HGA in no way resemble anything I'd call super consciousness. It sounds like a mysticized take on Jung's collective unconsciousness.

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

Spagyrics is good for producing herbal remedies, but if you want to take that path for development, than think of anything you make as a form of fluid condenser--something you'll concentrate your intentions/energy into via ritual or meditation.

Thanks and yeah, I've heard both Bardon and Frater Ashen Chassan (Gateway Through Stone and Cicle) say good things of condensers. It was one of those things that sounded so involved however just in the quantities of different herbs and timing required that, per what you seem to have a great sense of below, I would have been overspending my motivational budget at the time I was reading about it. Seems like that changes as we gain understanding of what things are worth to us in the immediate.

Mercury is in retrograde motion right now (until the 24th I think), so it's probably good that you're feeling this way. If you work too much, you'll end up getting burnt out.

Thanks for saying something on that also. I really should start into astrology as it seems like this kind of knowledge is just mandatory for people in our field not to question ourselves at every odd twist and turn or wonder if we did something wrong, had a series of negative thoughts materialize, or whatever else.

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

Things like the HGA in no way resemble anything I'd call super consciousness. It sounds like a mysticized take on Jung's collective unconsciousness.

Paul Foster Case used it in a very HGA-ish way. He always relates the 22 major arcana of the tarot as symbolizing the interactions and stages of three things - conscious, subconscious, superconscious which he assigned to sulfur, salt, and mercury accordingly (even though really he classed 'superconscious' as what our conscious comes from so in that usage the mercury/sulfur distinction seems to be a matter of degree thing than any major difference and we'd be just back to sun and moon). Reading Mark Stavish and comparisons between his thinking and BOTA get strange because I notice Mark is more on the AMORC, TMO, and French occultism path and what he seems to be assigning salt, sulfur, and mercury to reminds me of the three components AMORC always talks about and he has mercury as mediating substance rather than highest substance. No idea how many more big surprises I'll have in that direction but I understand at least a bit better in theory why people like to flip air and water in their Briah/Yetzira assignments for either a by density formula or even to follow the Aristotelian wheel smoothly. Getting back on track here - I suppose I don't have much personal vestiture in the term 'superconscious' so Higher Self, Master Within, Soul Personality, I'm fine with those and I can refrain from using the term HGA if it's deemed proprietary to a particular school.

I'd agree with you though however that Jungian collective unconscious and HGA are apples and oranges. To me collective unconscious sounds like group subconscious, race mind, or perhaps a layer of Teilhard de Chardin's noosphere.

I suppose the problem with these terms is that if one tried to write a standard occult dictionary you'd find that almost every order would have its own dictionary and they'd all have major variances on how they'd assign vernacular.

[corvidus]

Thanks for saying something on that also. I really should start into astrology as it seems like this kind of knowledge is just mandatory for people in our field not to question ourselves at every odd twist and turn or wonder if we did something wrong, had a series of negative thoughts materialize, or whatever else.

Understanding the qualities of the planets are most helpful, I think. These days I usually only pay attention to Sun position, Moon phases, and when Mercury goes in and out of retrograde motion; but when I started learning about it, I studied it all

[Hadit]

Things like the HGA in no way resemble anything I'd call super consciousness. It sounds like a mysticized take on Jung's collective unconsciousness.

Paul Foster Case used it in a very HGA-ish way. He always relates the 22 major arcana of the tarot as symbolizing the interactions and stages of three things - conscious, subconscious, superconscious which he assigned to sulfur, salt, and mercury accordingly (even though really he classed 'superconscious' as what our conscious comes from so in that usage the mercury/sulfur distinction seems to be a matter of degree thing than any major difference and we'd be just back to sun and moon). Reading Mark Stavish and comparisons between his thinking and BOTA get strange because I notice Mark is more on the AMORC, TMO, and French occultism path and what he seems to be assigning salt, sulfur, and mercury to reminds me of the three components AMORC always talks about and he has mercury as mediating substance rather than highest substance. No idea how many more big surprises I'll have in that direction but I understand at least a bit better in theory why people like to flip air and water in their Briah/Yetzira assignments for either a by density formula or even to follow the Aristotelian wheel smoothly. Getting back on track here - I suppose I don't have much personal vestiture in the term 'superconscious' so Higher Self, Master Within, Soul Personality, I'm fine with those and I can refrain from using the term HGA if it's deemed proprietary to a particular school.

I'd agree with you though however that Jungian collective unconscious and HGA are apples and oranges. To me collective unconscious sounds like group subconscious, race mind, or perhaps a layer of Teilhard de Chardin's noosphere.

I suppose the problem with these terms is that if one tried to write a standard occult dictionary you'd find that almost every order would have its own dictionary and they'd all have major variances on how they'd assign vernacular.

93,

I guess the HGA is archetypal in a way and could thus tie to the collective unconscious. Idk... "Super consciousness".... I think I hate it hahaha.

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

93,

I guess the HGA is archetypal in a way and could thus tie to the collective unconscious.

Heh, the way you said that just got me to thinking.... it behaves like an intimate godform but doesn't have a god-name, ie. we think of Isis as Isis, Thoth as Thoth, Hathor as Hathor, but HGA is something special. It makes me think of Paul (Saul of Tarsis) going to the Greeks in Acts and saying effectively "That altar you have over there for the God whose name you don't know yet? Yeah - I'm talking about Him". It makes me wonder if we do, if we're not careful, deprecate the dearness and intimacy of each and every god, goddess, or archangel, just by giving them a common name and in a way sort of putting them outside of ourselves where they'd be just as special and intimate as the HGA if we left them all alone? Could be totally wrong but it's an intriguing question.

[Hadit]

93,

I guess the HGA is archetypal in a way and could thus tie to the collective unconscious.

Heh, the way you said that just got me to thinking.... it behaves like an intimate godform but doesn't have a god-name, ie. we think of Isis as Isis, Thoth as Thoth, Hathor as Hathor, but HGA is something special. It makes me think of Paul (Saul of Tarsis) going to the Greeks in Acts and saying effectively "That altar you have over there for the God whose name you don't know yet? Yeah - I'm talking about Him". It makes me wonder if we do, if we're not careful, deprecate the dearness and intimacy of each and every god, goddess, or archangel, just by giving them a common name and in a way sort of putting them outside of ourselves where they'd be just as special and intimate as the HGA if we left them all alone? Could be totally wrong but it's an intriguing question.

93.

Well the HGA is a part of yourself whereas Gods are shared ideas, almost like an HGA that we all can access and understand. The HGA has a name too but one only we can discover. The names of deities just strengthen the power I think, because if I say Ra you know exactly who I mean and his attributes. Gods also seem less archetypal than they are representative of the world around us with archetypal characteristics.

[EternalReturn]

Does anyone else here do it? Ie. when you're racking your mind, heart, and soul on life's greatest questions and mysteries - bringing your concerns before something far deeper within you, almost divining with your own reactions, and projecting these on a character whether it be a loving God/Goddess, whatever might speak within you, and probing that general field - ie. a semi-imaginary friend or an image that you've come up with to give you feedback?

I hope this question isn't too inherently problematic but I want to ask it anyway in case any of you have probed this one to father limits than I have.

What is it? Is it the subconscious/Triple Hecate that we're probing? If we imagine it being a godform whether Jesus, Hermes, Sophia, Isis, etc... are we somewhat talking to that entity or are we possibly looping right back around and giving the subconscious something like a tulpa as a mouthpiece and proxy? Is there possibly a glimmer of superconscious in there or is such a concept pure fiction itself or is the separation of subconscious from superconsciousness the real fiction?

I hope this question isn't too deep but....lol....too deep for a magic forum? Almost sounds like an oxymoron or so I hope....

If I understand correctly. superconsciousness could be enlightenment or losing oneself, meaning you don't behave like you mind and moods tell you, but rather see them as a tool, and yourself as a pure consciousness. Point is being in that state continuously so that you may live your life well.

Before I started with this I was contemplating, and had a "arrow from the sun", an instant flash of idea coming from the intuitive part of me, feeling like a plasma (source) with gap between knowledge and truth. There was but thought - do not resist.

I have a habit of asking for help when things go bad or when I need help in finding an answer, and when I stopped resisting and acknowledged that I needed to change, need to be better and strive to it no matter how long it takes, I felt guided. It was like being in a labyrinth which is life, with doors everywhere. It felt like someone had opened these doors for me, showed me the way much in a manner which I feel the world is functioning by.

I'm talking about resistance-release manner. If there is resistance, there is friction, there is energy, there is blockade. If there's a release, there's liberation, elatedness, orgasm. This means you must create some sort of resistance to be able to release.

Just by asking myself in this state of "superconsciousness", say after a good meditation, somehow I find an answer. It is like my intuitive thinking tells me what is and what is not, and in the same time it is experience and intellect/reason/mind. I feel like I'm releasing whatever emotion has been making inner resistance to fuel and hone my skills of perception and making sense of things.

I have to agree that there is something missing in this resistance-release theory and I have to work on it. Working with energy, learning about wuxing, alchemy and elemental magic gave me interesting perspective on this but I'll have to work with it to be able to fully get the system. I have a few ideas where to start so I'm currently studying Hermes Trismegistus as I have a feeling he's talking about something similar.

But to conclude this, what I think this is? No idea. I'll try to give a few thoughts I have about it but be vary, I had not any mystical experiences, I haven't talked to ghosts, entities (not that I was conscious of, or regard it as anything more than a dream) and anything I have done is released myself of some childhood traumas, and meditated for a few weeks with little interruptions.

I have described this to a philosopher friend of mine who said it was similar to the concept of Angels (this plasma thing I described before). Sometimes I feel it as a unified source of energy from which all truth comes but that's just not verifiable, I don't know how to do it. Sometimes it feels like an small army of entities. It is really strange, and it seems like it is in me and at the same time it is not.

But to conclude, somehow it is working for me. I don't know what "it" is, what is the nature of it and how to get it but it is something that I'm very aware that it is there on some level. I cannot verify it, prove it or ask anything else but for it/him/her/them to show me the way. One friend taught me how to read other people's energy (he calls it chi) and I feel it/him/her/them in the similar fashion when I concentrate.

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

If I understand correctly. superconsciousness could be enlightenment or losing oneself, meaning you don't behave like you mind and moods tell you, but rather see them as a tool, and yourself as a pure consciousness. Point is being in that state continuously so that you may live your life well.

The thing that's tough about answering that one is that's just it - I don't know. I know how many traditions consider that we have a consolidated being above us and they vary in their philosophies in just how much that being pulls the strings, runs your life, and essentially has you in it's custody as an alchemical product. The same philosophies would also teach that it's inseparable from you - that if you psychologically stare deep enough back into your own retina you'll find it, essentially they'd say that Kabbalah/Qabalah is all about doing such a thing for years (The word 'Ipsissimus' meaning 'One who is most himself' says a lot).

Could it be an abstract force that the Western tendency is just compressing into a being that's somewhere between us and The One in size and stature? Possibly. Like you I can't say I've really ever 'spoken' with a ghost, sprite (ie. everything from elves and fairies to present day aliens in my opinion), nor ascended master nor god or goddess. I have had automatic communication by sort of scrying my own mind, using my thoughts and emotions like tea-leaves, and something that I figured to be one kind of being or another would speak very clemently. Nothing clear enough for me to to say for sure that it was what I said it was however. I have had very non-visual but utterly vivid experiences with seemingly foreign intelligences around me at given times - most of them delightful - but 'hearing the voice' in a way that I'd know transmission of information to be 'outside myself' (whatever the heck that means to a Hermeticist anyway) I never felt like I've distinctly heard the words of something separate from myself. Maybe I will one day - no clue when though.

Before I started with this I was contemplating, and had a "arrow from the sun", an instant flash of idea coming from the intuitive part of me, feeling like a plasma (source) with gap between knowledge and truth. There was but thought - do not resist.

Sounds like an absolutely beautiful experiences. When I've experienced the light or anything from beings or thought-beings of the light it's a different kind of light than the sun; it's very sweet, almost oily and slippery in a non-tactile sort of way, and its a flirtatious energy. If it went super nova it's not the kind of light that would scatter your ashes in a split second but that certain distinctly maternal sensation it sends out would amplify to some kind of -gasm to where I'm sure like with LSD and other things you'd have your consciousness recompact in a very different and energetically exalted manner after that intensifying hug seemed to amp up to the point of whiting your self-awareness right out phase.

I have a habit of asking for help when things go bad or when I need help in finding an answer, and when I stopped resisting and acknowledged that I needed to change, need to be better and strive to it no matter how long it takes, I felt guided. It was like being in a labyrinth which is life, with doors everywhere. It felt like someone had opened these doors for me, showed me the way much in a manner which I feel the world is functioning by.

My life's had a way of giving me my resistance and bouncing me on my head and neck up and down the street with it. In that sense I've learned when I really need to just let things go. At first it was with just hard stops in my endeavors that no efforts on my part could bypass. It's gotten gentler as of late since it's coming to smaller things but yeah, I'm starting to feel like something is sort of pulling at the fabric, lining up my situations in the right ways, to me I tend to attribute that to a subconscious that's being educated with more of the right seed thoughts, fewer tyrades and "I'm X" or "I'm Y" abuse of declarations when my temper with life situations or myself gets the best of me, and that guide seems to get more of a sense of humor as well as I've had some odd things happen at work at times recently that seem like they'd take some very interesting alignment, bits of drama that seem like deliberate lesson plan in ways.

I'm talking about resistance-release manner. If there is resistance, there is friction, there is energy, there is blockade. If there's a release, there's liberation, elatedness, orgasm. This means you must create some sort of resistance to be able to release.

Any resistance I hold onto still is more in the lines of stabilizing, keeping myself viable in the world as a guy, being able to keep my defense mechanisms available should the odd emergency arise where I need my worldly prowess in dealing with bad behavior in other adults, and I have a very firm sense that to turn too deep toward Chesed is to high-side and tank-slap on Geburah (sportbike accident analogy). When that embalance happens and life has a person psychologically picking up their teeth it's already a problem, even componded by what that does I think to a person's motivational budget with their esotericism. I'm trying to keep things as sane and stable as I can so that I can ease myself out of the materialism trap that I think most of us are on some level locked in and trying to free our global belief systems of.

Just by asking myself in this state of "superconsciousness", say after a good meditation, somehow I find an answer. It is like my intuitive thinking tells me what is and what is not, and in the same time it is experience and intellect/reason/mind. I feel like I'm releasing whatever emotion has been making inner resistance to fuel and hone my skills of perception and making sense of things.

I'm thinking that meditation could have practically a lifetime of mileage.

But to conclude this, what I think this is? No idea. I'll try to give a few thoughts I have about it but be vary, I had not any mystical experiences, I haven't talked to ghosts, entities (not that I was conscious of, or regard it as anything more than a dream) and anything I have done is released myself of some childhood traumas, and meditated for a few weeks with little interruptions.

On the other hand though there are lots of people who claim to talk to ghosts, entities, etc. and I really don't know how much its given us in terms of wisdom aside from just giving a comparative corpus to tell us that most of what we meet regardless of what it tells us it is really won't have the wisdom to solve our problems. Who knows why, something very different about the deep interior perhaps that most of the world philosophies just don't speak toward and we're left to figure it out still.

I have described this to a philosopher friend of mine who said it was similar to the concept of Angels (this plasma thing I described before). Sometimes I feel it as a unified source of energy from which all truth comes but that's just not verifiable, I don't know how to do it. Sometimes it feels like an small army of entities. It is really strange, and it seems like it is in me and at the same time it is not.

I haven't knowingly spoken with an angel but to give it the old 'people say' it often gets stated that they're more like geometric forms of consciousness that we either flesh out or don't and yeah, I don't know whether they need us to do that in order to communicate. Was it an angel that tapped you on the forehead or shoulder? Don't know, I like the idea that it was the white light of Kether but meh, I'm just throwing more word-salad at it.

But to conclude, somehow it is working for me. I don't know what "it" is, what is the nature of it and how to get it but it is something that I'm very aware that it is there on some level. I cannot verify it, prove it or ask anything else but for it/him/her/them to show me the way. One friend taught me how to read other people's energy (he calls it chi) and I feel it/him/her/them in the similar fashion when I concentrate.

It'll be fascinating I'm sure to see what happens from your perspective as that relationship gathers more proximity and communication becomes more steady. That's what I'm hoping for myself. Good luck to you on your path and I hope you have plenty of truly inspiring experiences ahead!

[EternalReturn]

If I understand correctly. superconsciousness could be enlightenment or losing oneself, meaning you don't behave like you mind and moods tell you, but rather see them as a tool, and yourself as a pure consciousness. Point is being in that state continuously so that you may live your life well.

The thing that's tough about answering that one is that's just it - I don't know. I know how many traditions consider that we have a consolidated being above us and they vary in their philosophies in just how much that being pulls the strings, runs your life, and essentially has you in it's custody as an alchemical product. The same philosophies would also teach that it's inseparable from you - that if you psychologically stare deep enough back into your own retina you'll find it, essentially they'd say that Kabbalah/Qabalah is all about doing such a thing for years (The word 'Ipsissimus' meaning 'One who is most himself' says a lot).

Could it be an abstract force that the Western tendency is just compressing into a being that's somewhere between us and The One in size and stature? Possibly. Like you I can't say I've really ever 'spoken' with a ghost, sprite (ie. everything from elves and fairies to present day aliens in my opinion), nor ascended master nor god or goddess. I have had automatic communication by sort of scrying my own mind, using my thoughts and emotions like tea-leaves, and something that I figured to be one kind of being or another would speak very clemently. Nothing clear enough for me to to say for sure that it was what I said it was however. I have had very non-visual but utterly vivid experiences with seemingly foreign intelligences around me at given times - most of them delightful - but 'hearing the voice' in a way that I'd know transmission of information to be 'outside myself' (whatever the heck that means to a Hermeticist anyway) I never felt like I've distinctly heard the words of something separate from myself. Maybe I will one day - no clue when though.

I like to see this process and the goal as the same thing. Be it Qabalah, elements, alchemy, opening chakras or whatever else. It does feel like losing oneself to Zen Buddhists who train to be in the Now because in the Now you are. When reaching altered states of consciousness, you kinda emanate yourself and lose your full being. So this could be the reason why gnosticism calls it different with this emanations of God and vertical hierarchy which in the East does not exist in such manner.

It could very well be cultural interference; whereas we had Rulers, Demigods, Heroes in a fashion that they were better than mere mortals, in the East they had them but in service to the lesser men. It may be this resistance. We westerners tend to see ourselves as victims, Easterners developed system where they accept things as they go.

IMO they talk about the same thing, the problem is how to describe a feeling. [grin] It really is just subjective experience, and as such we describe things with the words and thoughts we know. Tower of Babel kind of thing [grin]

Before I started with this I was contemplating, and had a "arrow from the sun", an instant flash of idea coming from the intuitive part of me, feeling like a plasma (source) with gap between knowledge and truth. There was but thought - do not resist.

Sounds like an absolutely beautiful experiences. When I've experienced the light or anything from beings or thought-beings of the light it's a different kind of light than the sun; it's very sweet, almost oily and slippery in a non-tactile sort of way, and its a flirtatious energy. If it went super nova it's not the kind of light that would scatter your ashes in a split second but that certain distinctly maternal sensation it sends out would amplify to some kind of -gasm to where I'm sure like with LSD and other things you'd have your consciousness recompact in a very different and energetically exalted manner after that intensifying hug seemed to amp up to the point of whiting your self-awareness right out phase. [/quote]

*meditates furiously* [crazy]

I have a habit of asking for help when things go bad or when I need help in finding an answer, and when I stopped resisting and acknowledged that I needed to change, need to be better and strive to it no matter how long it takes, I felt guided. It was like being in a labyrinth which is life, with doors everywhere. It felt like someone had opened these doors for me, showed me the way much in a manner which I feel the world is functioning by.

My life's had a way of giving me my resistance and bouncing me on my head and neck up and down the street with it. In that sense I've learned when I really need to just let things go. At first it was with just hard stops in my endeavors that no efforts on my part could bypass. It's gotten gentler as of late since it's coming to smaller things but yeah, I'm starting to feel like something is sort of pulling at the fabric, lining up my situations in the right ways, to me I tend to attribute that to a subconscious that's being educated with more of the right seed thoughts, fewer tyrades and "I'm X" or "I'm Y" abuse of declarations when my temper with life situations or myself gets the best of me, and that guide seems to get more of a sense of humor as well as I've had some odd things happen at work at times recently that seem like they'd take some very interesting alignment, bits of drama that seem like deliberate lesson plan in ways.

If you haven't, read Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now. I think I'm being boring to both god and devil with this book but it has made such an impact on my life that I will relentlessly recommend this to anyone. [grin]

But to conclude this, what I think this is? No idea. I'll try to give a few thoughts I have about it but be vary, I had not any mystical experiences, I haven't talked to ghosts, entities (not that I was conscious of, or regard it as anything more than a dream) and anything I have done is released myself of some childhood traumas, and meditated for a few weeks with little interruptions.

On the other hand though there are lots of people who claim to talk to ghosts, entities, etc. and I really don't know how much its given us in terms of wisdom aside from just giving a comparative corpus to tell us that most of what we meet regardless of what it tells us it is really won't have the wisdom to solve our problems. Who knows why, something very different about the deep interior perhaps that most of the world philosophies just don't speak toward and we're left to figure it out still.

I'd like to communicate with higher beings as they are attributed with infinite wisdom and whatnot. There must be a lot what we can learn from them, and by reading some things about them they seem awesome [grin]

If that is the case, philosophy would be a way of translating this wisdom to our uniformed language. At least, whatever wisdom we are willing or allowed to share.

I have described this to a philosopher friend of mine who said it was similar to the concept of Angels (this plasma thing I described before). Sometimes I feel it as a unified source of energy from which all truth comes but that's just not verifiable, I don't know how to do it. Sometimes it feels like an small army of entities. It is really strange, and it seems like it is in me and at the same time it is not.

I haven't knowingly spoken with an angel but to give it the old 'people say' it often gets stated that they're more like geometric forms of consciousness that we either flesh out or don't and yeah, I don't know whether they need us to do that in order to communicate. Was it an angel that tapped you on the forehead or shoulder? Don't know, I like the idea that it was the white light of Kether but meh, I'm just throwing more word-salad at it.

Imo, word salad is good thing. You give more ways to the person you're communicating with to understand what you're talking about.

But to conclude, somehow it is working for me. I don't know what "it" is, what is the nature of it and how to get it but it is something that I'm very aware that it is there on some level. I cannot verify it, prove it or ask anything else but for it/him/her/them to show me the way. One friend taught me how to read other people's energy (he calls it chi) and I feel it/him/her/them in the similar fashion when I concentrate.

It'll be fascinating I'm sure to see what happens from your perspective as that relationship gathers more proximity and communication becomes more steady. That's what I'm hoping for myself. Good luck to you on your path and I hope you have plenty of truly inspiring experiences ahead!

Thank you [grin] best wishes to you too, it will be great to hear your breakthroughs too [thumbup]

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

If you haven't, read Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now. I think I'm being boring to both god and devil with this book but it has made such an impact on my life that I will relentlessly recommend this to anyone. [grin]

I do actually remembering that book and being a little taken back that it was both popular and seemed to have some pretty strong esoteric founding.

For the moment though I'm easing in and not trying to push myself too hard on full thought-clearing or one-pointedness. It's that motivational budget thing and I have a lot more twists and turns of my logical structure I think until that would free up as the next step. Even before reading Tolle I had read one of the study guides to Franz Bardon's Initiation Into Hermeticism by Fr. Veos and that particular angle of it was very big on quietude for hours a day and trying to reduce thought to a minumum. It felt like that kind of quieting, while I could do it, seemed to cause a different set of problems and unease overtime a bit like I was hollowing myself out a little too much too quick. Might be nothing wrong with that but, again, just not sure I'm ready.