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Personal Apocalypse

Started by Payne, June 25, 2008, 06:36:57 PM

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Payne

Suddenly, everything has changed.

There are times when your mundane life is changed irrevocably by an unforseen circumstance. It doesn't have to good or bad. All it is is an event that changes all sorts of little things. Like love at first sight, or losing your legs in an accident.

The event has to be relatively huge to make the kind of differences I'm talking about, but it's effects will reverberate throughout your life and everything you are.

For me, my personal apocalypse was what set me on the path here. The circumstances surrounding that time are related elsewhere and don't need repeating here, but it was like a distillation of the Paths and Shrapnel discussions we've been having.

I was free falling down one of my paths, which was suddenly a dead end, and I ran right into it. The dead end was the biggest piece of shrapnel you've seen in your life, it forced me down another path. It also forced me to take some measure of control over the paths I was walking.

Others I have talked to have related some similar tales, of how some specific event that seemed huge at the time (and may still seem huge, even now) have set them on the path to PD.com.

Personal Apocalypses is something I used to talk about with LHX quite a lot (I never see him around anymore). It seemed to be an intrinsic part of who many of us are and what we're about.

Is it possible to take something from this idea, and use it to either move paths/shrapnel forward, or maybe even a new concept?

***I am aware of some of the parallels with filters and circuits and what have you, I'm looking to see if there could be something original (gasp!) in this...***

Cramulus

see also: Black Swan

which talks about events - even ones in your life - which are important, unpredictable, and change the future forever



the trick, says Talib, is to maximize your opportunities to be hit by Good black swans (getting your book published, finding god, whatever)
while minimizing your chances of getting hit by bad ones (losing your legs, etc)

Reverend Loveshade

If you walk any path long enough, you'll eventually step in some shit.
"Threats should not be tolerated. They're demeaning, they're violations to human rights and no one deserves them."

-- navkat, 20 June 2007, principiadiscordia.com

Bebek Sincap Ratatosk

In my case it felt more like a holocaust of beliefs, rather than an apocalypse. It completely destroyed the path directly in front of me, and it would have been a helluva detour to find my way back ;-)
- I don't see race. I just see cars going around in a circle.

"Back in my day, crazy meant something. Now everyone is crazy" - Charlie Manson

P3nT4gR4m

Mine was a doozy - reality itself actually fell to bits and my whole fucking mind caved in. Looking back I wouldn't have missed it for the world  :lulz:

Rough details ITT

I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
Not actually a meat product.
Ass-Kicking & Foot-Stomping Ancient Master of SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK
Awful and Bent Behemothic Results of Last Night's Painful Squat.
High Altitude Haggis-Filled Sex Bucket From Beyond Time and Space.
Internet Monkey Person of Filthy and Immoral Pygmy-Porn Wart Contagion
Octomom Auxillary Heat Exchanger Repairman
walking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy

"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark

LMNO

Also possibly known as satori, "enlightenment", Chapel Perilous, Da'ath, or "A boot to the motherfucking head".



edit: also, some people have posited that imnetizing the eschaton is actually an internal thing.

Bebek Sincap Ratatosk

Quote from: LMNO on June 26, 2008, 05:40:21 PM
Also possibly known as satori, "enlightenment", Chapel Perilous, Da'ath, or "A boot to the motherfucking head".



edit: also, some people have posited that imnetizing the eschaton is actually an internal thing.

I think Chapel Perilous works as a great metaphor for this sort of thing. The idea that Chapel Perilous isn't just a way point on the path, but likely something that you may revisit time and time again. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Chapel Perilous was my most favorite thing to hear RAW talk about... he could so easily talk about getting OUT (23 Skidoo) and then right back in and out again, only to discover that you weren't out yet, but just in the cloister.

I think that I entered Chapel Perilous after the holocaust of belief. When the scales fell from my eyes and I realized, for real, that almost EVERYTHING I knew was wrong... I had no idea what to do next, my entire life had been full of certainty and then, at that point, there was no certainty at all. Bob said that was sort of like getting up the stair to the front door of Chapel Perilous. Sometimes people get to that point and run screaming right back to their beliefs... for them its better to believe the lies than risk entering the Chapel.

Satori, Da'ath and Enlightenment, to me, seem to fall somewhere beyond this experience. For me, Chapel Perilous appears to link to Yesod... sort of the first point on the crazy journey ahead. The paths lie before you, the potential... but also, people can get completely turned around and spend their whole life never getting beyond that.

The Abyss though, Da'ath... for me represents a much more intentional jump. It's sort of like the final Challenge I think.

So, in my opinion, I think I've entered Chapel Perilous at least once (honestlyI think it's taken three or four trips)... but I also think I may currently be outside the chapel and wandering into another area. I don't think I've achieved Satori though, or jumped the abyss. Unless, 'enlightenment' really just boils down to "Order and Disorder are in our head, along with all those other labels and beliefs".

Part of me would like it to be so simple... but then part of me would be sad, that I don't have some grand adventures and revelations yet ahead.
- I don't see race. I just see cars going around in a circle.

"Back in my day, crazy meant something. Now everyone is crazy" - Charlie Manson

Verbal Mike

I was just about to write, "I've never been through anything like this", when I remembered that actually, I have. It just wasn't quite as extreme as what you guys went through, so I forget sometime how deeply depressing it was to me to realize, at the age of 15, after never believing in god in the first place, what the absence of a omnipotent omniscient deity actually implies.
Thinking back now, that is what started me on the rather gentle slope t'hither. It was definitely a personal apocalypse, but a very small, somewhat ironic one, and, evidently, easily forgotten.
Unless stated otherwise, feel free to copy or reproduce any text I post anywhere and any way you like. I will never throw a hissy-fit over it, promise.

P3nT4gR4m

Quote from: Ratatosk on June 26, 2008, 05:57:10 PM
Part of me would like it to be so simple... but then part of me would be sad, that I don't have some grand adventures and revelations yet ahead.

They do say that the path is a spiral.

Revelation is best served when you think you got it all sussed out  :D

I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
Not actually a meat product.
Ass-Kicking & Foot-Stomping Ancient Master of SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK
Awful and Bent Behemothic Results of Last Night's Painful Squat.
High Altitude Haggis-Filled Sex Bucket From Beyond Time and Space.
Internet Monkey Person of Filthy and Immoral Pygmy-Porn Wart Contagion
Octomom Auxillary Heat Exchanger Repairman
walking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy

"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark

Triple Zero

can i get a short summary on what Chapel Perilous is?

Ex-Soviet Bloc Sexual Attack Swede of Tomorrow™
e-prime disclaimer: let it seem fairly unclear I understand the apparent subjectivity of the above statements. maybe.

INFORMATION SO POWERFUL, YOU ACTUALLY NEED LESS.

Dr. Paes

Quote from: triple zero on June 27, 2008, 11:49:34 AM
can i get a short summary on what Chapel Perilous is?


2nded, I have a fair idea by combining Rat's post and personal experience, but haven't heard the term before now.

P3nT4gR4m

It's a RAW concept IIRC from "prometheus rising"?

Basically when the proverbial 'penny' drops, chapel perilous is where it lands

I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
Not actually a meat product.
Ass-Kicking & Foot-Stomping Ancient Master of SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK
Awful and Bent Behemothic Results of Last Night's Painful Squat.
High Altitude Haggis-Filled Sex Bucket From Beyond Time and Space.
Internet Monkey Person of Filthy and Immoral Pygmy-Porn Wart Contagion
Octomom Auxillary Heat Exchanger Repairman
walking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy

"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark

Triple Zero

i read prometheus rising, but i'm going to need a littlebit less proverb and metaphore and a bit more practical example.

mostly i'm trying to figure whether i'm there now, whether i've already been there last year or if i still got some surprises waiting for me*.

and if it really is what i think it is, i've been there for the past 8-10 years or so and i think i'm staying there for the rest of my life. cause that proverbial penny, hasn't really landed on a solid surface, ever, and i'm really starting to doubt it ever will.

* edit to add: yes i'm pretty confident i still got some surprises waiting for me either way. that's not my point :)
Ex-Soviet Bloc Sexual Attack Swede of Tomorrow™
e-prime disclaimer: let it seem fairly unclear I understand the apparent subjectivity of the above statements. maybe.

INFORMATION SO POWERFUL, YOU ACTUALLY NEED LESS.

Dr. Paes

Found these two quotes in my Googling of Chapel Perilous.


Quote"In researching occult conspiracies, one eventually faces a crossroad of mythic proportions (called Chapel Perilous in the trade). You come out the other side either stone paranoid or an agnostic; there is no third way. I came out agnostic.

Chapel Perilous, like the mysterious entity called "I," cannot be located in the space-time continuum; it is weightless, odorless, tastless and undetectable by ordinary instruments. Indeed, like the Ego, it is even possible to deny that it is there. And yet, even more like the Ego, once you are inside it, there doesn't seem to be any way to ever get out again, until you suddenly discover that it has been brought into existence by thought and does not exist outside thought. Everything you fear is waiting with slavering jaws in Chapel Perilous, but if you are armed with the wand of intuition, the cup of sympathy, the sword of reason, and the pentacle of valor, you will find there (the legends say) the Medicine of Metals, the Elixir of Life, the Philosopher's Stone, True Wisdom and Perfect Happiness.

That's what the legends always say, and the language of myth is poetically precise. For instance, if you go into that realm without the sword of reason, you will lose your mind, but at the same time, if you take only the sword of reason without the cup of sympathy, you will lose your heart. Even more remarkably, if you approach without the wand of intuition, you can stand at the door for decades never realizing you have arrived. You might think you are just waiting for a bus, or wandering from room to room looking for your cigarettes, watching a TV show, or reading a cryptic and ambiguous book. Chapel Perilous is tricky that way."

QuoteThis is what the owner of this web-site had to say about Chapel Perilous.
"Matt, you have stumbled into what Robert Anton Wilson calls Chapel Perilous,
a psychological head-space wherein you are privy to certain clues the
universe is always giving about itself. It is not abnormal. You have a
curious, intelligent mind just like me and millions of others, and you have
not been afraid to ask the right questions of yourself and your world. The
answers are admittedly confusing. Why? Because the universe isn't
simple!!!! And I'm not sure we can fully comprehend all of its workings in
this lifetime...Does any of that make sense to you? Do you see that you are perhaps more priveleged than some of the others
around you, who only see the dull drab colors of the world they live in? That's right you are an initiate in
Chapel Perilous and it is now up to you to find the strength to NOT have
your questions answered in the English language or any other. The answers
are nebulous."

Triple Zero

Quote from: Paesior on June 27, 2008, 12:19:44 PM
Quote"In researching occult conspiracies, one eventually faces a crossroad of mythic proportions (called Chapel Perilous in the trade). You come out the other side either stone paranoid or an agnostic; there is no third way. I came out agnostic.

Chapel Perilous, like the mysterious entity called "I," cannot be located in the space-time continuum; it is weightless, odorless, tastless and undetectable by ordinary instruments. Indeed, like the Ego, it is even possible to deny that it is there. And yet, even more like the Ego, once you are inside it, there doesn't seem to be any way to ever get out again, until you suddenly discover that it has been brought into existence by thought and does not exist outside thought. Everything you fear is (snip)

hehehehe

i just knew i'd still be in for some more surprises!!

.. and i was just starting to like it here ...
Ex-Soviet Bloc Sexual Attack Swede of Tomorrow™
e-prime disclaimer: let it seem fairly unclear I understand the apparent subjectivity of the above statements. maybe.

INFORMATION SO POWERFUL, YOU ACTUALLY NEED LESS.