Integrated

I'm a bit curious how you define egoic here. Since that seem to be tied in with how the culture of this forum act in general on these topics.

Nice sentiment, but of course it won't go that way. This place is the way it is, because of the stance it has on moderation. Quite okay really, if one want other rules there are other forums. I have not used this forum a lot, but I remember the initial hazing quite well. I was not prepared for it and went into full fight mode back then. But once a mod clarified the rules and I experimented with it and used the ignore-list a couple of times, it wasn't that bad.

Yup! Though I think they knew that. Just desperately tried to bait me deeper in, and blind me from that truth. I somehow found this song fitting to what I've experienced in this thread so far.

@Mskied If you want to discuss this topic further, do PM me! For obvious reasons I think that is a better format right now.

It seems I hit the mark yeah. Enjoy your roll in the dirt alone though, I'm too inexperienced to touch that shit yet!

Haha, I'm no sheriff, but I will defend myself. I see that you have dismounted into the dirt though. I will stay on my horse, as I really wasn't addressing you, but the OP anyway. You guys just became the topic as your heavy participation in this thread warranted mention for the precious context you seem so care so much about when it suits you. As for strawmen and projection, maybe... I'll keep in mind that maybe you are more evolved than me, but I kinda doubt it at this point, just because you are so upset that someone misquoted canon and come to piss in his thread for lacking humor. Which to me, is not a mark of being very far ahead.

Oh did I upset you? I get that he has upset you multiple other places also. The principle you alluded to with beautiful and true and all that, why so touchy if you have evolved past it? I've seen some of those things you refer to so you are wrong about not seeing the context. I just don't care, he is obviously a special guy. I like what he is sharing, even if he is humorless. Sure I could be viewed as taking a white knight stance on this. So what? Are you going to tell me that I have to be a moral relativist just because you are? Even though you seem to only have given up your morals, and gained little equanimity for the trade. As for my high horse, that is just a warning to play nice in this semi-anarchistic backyard of the internet. I'm not beyond rolling in the dirt with you if that is what you bring, but I hope that we can stay on our horses for this.

Yawn! Why don't you take out the splinter in your own eye and all that first? [sic] If his opinion is so annoying, then I wonder what part of you is in disharmony to a strike cord with his difference. As for his qualifications I don't doubt them, but I don't intend to allow him to use them as a club either. He is entitled to his opinion on stuff just as anyone else of course. If he acts properly and civil, he will be treated as such, else he will be relegated to whatever treatment matches whatever garbage morality he might be subscribing to. Well-read isn't moral superiority, neither is qualifications, it is just other people vouching for one, for whatever reason they had to do that... I will accept that he is well-read, but won't stretch it beyond that. As I've already observed that his character deserves a couple of question-marks.

Yeah but if they only look as they follow the flow, they do have a real stake. Hence why it is so hard to judge people on the surface, cause it is hard to know what is actually the case. I doubt that there really are people with "no soul", but that in turn comes from what I view as that word. I'm not sure if the higher self is the soul for me, I think the higher self transcend the soul. Which is blasphemy for some people, to view the soul as not the highest inner principle. But I really do view the soul as something that is very reflective of our flawed nature, it sort of is the broken glass shards on the floor that necessitates the quick-fix we call ego. We obsess over it in the same way as someone who wants to find glue and put it all together. Which is sort of impossible when there is tons of tiny fragments, and even the larger fragments are so many that it becomes this crazy difficult puzzle.

Makes sense, the ego is too limited to be able to deal fully with any of the sefirots. Isn't that what the number of the beast is about anyway? The ego can just accept three of the sixes (as in four elements), hence why mans number is 666. So the ego can only handle 3/4 of Tipheret, yet that is still pretty beautiful and powerful. As for the higher self, it will carry on its mysterious stuff regardless of what the ego can handle. I do think however, that the more the ego can handle, the more gracefully it can follow along with the higher self. Turning this into this sort of

I'd call that being identified with ones persona. To just go with the flow with no real stake other than physical and social survival. If I would go as far as saying these people don't have any soul? I'm unsure, I've never thought about it like that. But right now I think that is a misnomer, though I fully feel the frustration of dealing with such people.

@Mskied This turned out to be a very interesting thread, in many ways because a certain pair played bad cop/good cop trying to chase you away. Kudos for sticking in there. As for your question about thought, I really think you got it answered, but I think it got lost in all the noise. I will try to repeat it for you in a less confrontational manner, as I also think coming from a place of kindness is ideal. Even though a lot of people think that you automatically are prey and a potential slave for it. Which can be true, but doesn't have to be. @Desmonddf said The key is indeed Tipheret, the sixth Sefirot of Beauty. To put it simple it is what is innately beautiful to you, and is as pointed out key to your will. We all need to have something beautiful to orient by. But we can't make everything beautiful, because we live in a world of opposites. So to embrace one thing, then one automatically rejects another. To be kind is tricky business as one is then rejecting cruelty. But in a cruel world, cruelty is inevitable, so if one rejects it, it will manifest as a shadow. Some people then turn around and go full cruel persona, in many ways like @Nungali I guess he come from the position of "Kindness is cruelty and cruelty is kindness". Which is an idea I actually encountered first in the Dune novels. Regardless if Nungali can relate to this or not, his sidekick @Earl Grey seems to advocate that view. Now back to you and your issue. You seem to be a naturally intellectual person, which makes intellectual positions something you would find beautiful. Then you tangle with trying to silence that for years and years, and try to embrace the complete opposite. You are trying to force yourself up through the pillar of severity. Not a pleasant trip as you might have discovered. Trying to force enlightenment in that way, I don't know man, it sounds stressful. I've in many ways found myself down that path earlier in my life too. But I realized after a while, that to start with Tipheret and then move over to Chesed, was a much more rewarding way to live. Of course when at chesed one can move over to Geburah, which is a better point of entry I think to that pillar. Moving from Tiphereth to Hod, and then trying to go straight to Binah, so as to get to Kether. That is just torture from my point of view, not that one doesn't learn much from that approach. SAS soldiers get a lot of toughness from being sent to the jungle and such, so I'm not telling you what you should or should not do, just how it appears to me. In that way, I might of course add that this is an assumption of the path you took. It is what strikes me as likely from what I've read so far. Feel free to correct me is your interpretation of what you are dealing with doesn't match my description.

Yeah that is the principle. Yet as principles go, I often feel that they become bloodless when they get that simple. Like they and life sort of are divorced and unable to find each other. But at the same time if no one isolated them, then it would be hard to learn about them. I feel there are so many traps to fall down into, and my favorite may be to over-complicate things. Just as there is just as much danger of oversimplification. Hmm, I'll leave it at that before I go overboard on this.

@Mskied Interesting way of putting it, thx!

@Mskied One of the big challenges with magick is that we all are fed a fantasy narrative about what it is about. Everyone is playing with these forces, some better than others and some more conscious than others. I think fundamentally the barrier that holds us back is inside us and not outside us, up to a point. Obviously one needs to affect external reality, but to do that effectively, things must be up and up on the inside first. I guess the real compromise we all have to make, is to vacillate between inner and outer. As we constantly need to test our new inner reality against what the external world manifests. This is why people who go to far in either direction oftentimes get lost.

I'd say it depends on what the spiritual practice entails. Some mediation is almost like a break, some are more intensive. Doing it everyday is probably good, but how much time one can spare/stand, is both an individual thing, and also something that depends on what it entails. There are spiritual breaking points as well as bodily breaking points. What one identifies as those breaking points depends again on ones tradition and what one actually do. Yet spirituality and psychology are closely linked/intertwined, and hence if one is unbalanced in ones psyche, then one might not be able to stand much spiritual practice before "burning out". Whatever one does, one should test out ones stamina and adjust the level to that. Some things are better measured through repetitions, other by time, and maybe there are some other units that feels natural to you. Whatever one ends up doing, starting small and building is never wrong. Maybe just one repetition or one minute. If one cannot handle that, one should look oneself in the mirror and ponder deeply if that is a reflection on oneself or the practice. It is usually both, and often one has waded into more advanced stuff than one was ready for.

Hey I joined a little while back and figured that the signature option was withheld on postcount reasons. Still having posted a little while, I have still not seen any option to add it, all my searches for it has been in vain. How exactly does one add a signature in this forum?

Ohhh look, I have a proxy-flamewar going on! (To get through my ignorelist) Even dragged in the swedes to help. Consider yourself collateral damage Mudfoot.

Thanks! LOL I had discounted account settings somehow, and went over the edit profile with a microscope!

Hey I have a suggestion about your ignorelist. It is quite nice with all the options one can add about mentions and such. But it would be even better if you managed to include quoting, as it kinda defeats the purpose of trying to ignore someone to get a popup just after that says, "Person you just ignored" quoted you! Maybe it isn't technically possible, I've been on other forums that didn't even have the options you have. If it isn't I understand, just wanted to give my general feedback on how you might make the forum a little better.

From my own personal experience, I've found that my Tai-Chi practice have taken care of my health better than any qi-gong ever did. Partly this is so, because Tai-Chi is more of a full package, while qi-gong is sort of a spread. Depending on the qi-gong system, you might get the equivalent of Tai-Chi or you may not. On the flipside, it is better to have some simple qi-gong you actually do, than a Tai-Chi practice that was too complicated, that you abandon. So yeah it depends a lot, so you need to use your own judgement about your situation and available resources.

Responding to the main topic at hand, I'd say that any system will have it's basics. When you focus on the basics and eliminate the advanced stuff. You are usually left with simple A + B + C steps. The way I look at it, simple steps are mostly something that happen in your own head. You limit and label stuff in such a way that they to your level of insight take on a simplicity. That only happens when what is advanced to you disappear. You can only get rid of the advanced stuff, when you get real with yourself and accept where you are actually at.

@liminal_luke Thanks, hehe, yeah I call myself that as an affirmation, as I know I have a shit-ton of stuff left to integrate. So I need to find some way of prioritizing what to deal with first. The more base and dirty something is, the better. After a bit of reflection I actually started with death. (Hard to get lower than that) In this day and age, figuring out why you actually want to live, is probably key. Cause when you meet nihilistic people who have great arguments for there being no point to anything, you better have figured out for yourself why there is still a point for you. Not that you need to tell them why you believe there is a point. You just dismiss them as irrelevant and move on, safe in your own reason to live. I could go on, but you see the point I hope. (Phun intended) As for people overreaching for the light. I've noticed in my own practice as I slowly build from bottom, how the cost of integrating higher stuff rises. It didn't take me too long to get through each of my "death-topics" as I was hardly suicidal. A couple of days at most for each, now however I'm starting to average a week on each topic. Cause the cost of integrating the higher levels is much more pricey. And I assure you, I'm still dealing with stuff that is pretty base, and "higher creatures of light" constantly try to save me. But since I know I will get up there eventually and probably at a much stabler manifestation than they had, I'm comfortable being told I have run astray and have lost the light. When I get to that level, each topic may well take me months, cause if nothing else when one gets higher, the problems one encounter starts to get more real. Sure I'm not suicidal, but I have many other vices that I'm now slowly having to face in a very uncomfortable way. Hence I often dissociate and think of something else in my meditations, defence mechanisms are a great way to know that one hasn't managed to own something. Denial, projection, etc etc are all great indicators that maybe one needs some more time to deal with a subject.

I meditate every day, but I meditate on a topic. If I lose track on the topic, I have to keep meditating on it the next day. I will have to keep meditating on it until the topic resolves itself in my mind. I get a new topic when I grasp it fully and can keep focus until my stopwatch signal the end of the meditation. Clearing my mind of thoughts strike me as a futile excercise at this point in my journey. I have way too much content to deal with, better to deal with the content than to just clear the slate, cause clearing the slate consciously does not fix the unconscious baggage. Also I find a lot of people running for the light, like they think that if they just get closer to the light the shadow will resolve. Unforunately when you place yourself in front of a light, a shadow naturally arises. The only proper way to deal with a shadow is to accept that it is a natural consequence of the light. Then try to learn to deal with it, after all, there is shade from the light in the shadows. Shadow-work is hard, but totally worth it, when you integrate the "lower levels", nothing can really phase you all that much. Cause you have been down there under controlled circumstances several times. It is like exploring subterrainian caves, if the lights go out you don't panic like everyone else, cause you know your way around in the dark. Sure there is a lot to be found on the surface and up high in the clouds, but you often do not get to chose your starting location, nor what events gets thrown your way. By being a good grappler in martial arts, you don't have to worry about being pulled to the ground. You can then focus on standup fighting knowing that you can handle yourself if and when the fight gets a little dirty on the ground, you can even escalate it in that direction if it serves your purpose.