Book Club: Angel Tech

[Bu🤠ns]

That's really cool, Kai. I'd love to see it if/when you're ready to show it. 

I've read this book twice...I liked it in the same way i enjoy most of falcon publishing's stuff that is to say with lots of grains of salt. 

I couldn't really ever get into the astrology thing, but I would like to say that I think there might be some usefulness to it.  Astrology, as a system, places the astrologer in a metaphorical time and place.  Regardless if the specific houses and degrees and signs to which you were born are TRUE or not does not matter.  It gives you a point in time and from that you can form your symbols and introspection from a basic set of symbols that coincide with the movements of the planets.  Now, while I won't attribute to our current retrograde of Mercury into Virgo as LITERALLY being a dangerous set of circumstances, it does present, in this system, a particular avenue of very specific introspection and extrospection.

Tarot cards will do this too but the major difference being that the tarot isn't on a moving sequence that corresponds to the environment. 

For me, i really just glossed over this part of the book since I have no interest in learning a complicated system of metaphor.  But that's just how i see it. 

Parts I liked:

• Karma mechanics.  To constantly adjust your 'systems' based upon the new information you're experiencing in relationship to your attractions and aversions. 
• The shear detail of the 8 circuit model.  I almost feel like I should read it again since I feel like I missed some things.  Plus I never took notes.


• Ideas like the PLEASURE>DISPERSION>RESTRAINT>UNDERSTANDING cycle and other ideas here and there gave me the proverbial "!".


• Some of the exercises offered did seem a bit new-agey which didn't really appeal to me very well (like the energy grounding thing...bleh) but some of the meditation exercises left me fairly receptive.  Also, however, I didn't devote as much time as I probably could have.
• The sermons about chapel perilous seemed good and quite necessary.  A lot of new-age books tend to be all "Everything is blisssssss"  but this was a good segue toward the higher circuits chapters. 

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Excellent POV Kai and Burns!

I think Angel Tech is a good example of why Discordians shouldn't believe what they read. 

Esp when written by other Discordians.

[Kai]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: The best part of this book is right before the start of the 1st circuit stuff, where Alli is talking about Judging and Resisting, that I shouldn't judge my excitement or resist it, and I shouldn't resist resistance.

Years of screwed up shit fell away from me when I finally got that through my head, that I should let me be shaken fully by excitement, let it course through me.


And I was disappointed most of all with the 7th circuit stuff because I've had some pretty strong 7th circuit experiences of networks. I wanted to build on those, but the astrology shit was just not accessible to me, even with term manipulation.

[Kai]

I'd still like to hear your take on this, LMNO.

[LMNO]

I think I'm close enough to the end to start writing it up.  I'll get to work this afternoon.

[LMNO]

Here's the first part of my analysis.  More to come.

Angel Tech analysis

So, I guess from the get-go, we have to buy in to the 8-circuit model.  I mean, if you think it's bullshit, you might as well walk away now.  My stance is similar to s few others' here, in that circuits 1-5 sound plausible, but 6-8 are... a stretch, to say the best.  But for now, while reading AT, you sort of have to play along for as much as possible.

The second issue most people are having is the language.  It's... Well, the term I'm using is "annoyingly optimistic".  There's an oppressive positivity in his writing, and sometimes it rubs me the wrong way.  I try to ignore it, but sometimes it gets out of hand, as if he's buying his own bullshit a bit too much.  Anyway, onward to the notes.

He seems to fall into dualism fairly easily.  Even at the start, "The moment this intellect recognizes an Intelligence greater than it's own, it's up against the wall with two choices, 1) It surrenders its authority to serve the Greater Authority... 2) It holds fast to its previous identity..."  But what about a middle path of synthesizing the two in a collaboration? Since he goes on to talk about 8 different kinds of intelligence, the Greater Intelligence you meet may only be greater in 1 or 2 of these kinds.  So you synthesize the knowledge, rather than submit or fight.

This is a good line, "Getting high is information gathering, staying high is the result of transmuting information into living experience."  Knocking your brain into other ways of thinking chemically can be a good exercise (provided you can keep a handle on it), but it's a lot more worthwhile to be able to do it without any outside help.

Another good nugget here: "...it is imperative to interpret for oneself any new information taken in.  To know is not enough."  Regurgitation is too easy.

I liked the insight that the second 4 circuits seem to reflect the first 4, and may be a good way of looking at 6-8 in a new light.  If 1/5 deal with physicality, 2/6 with territory, 3/7 with pattern making and 4/8 with social grouping, then you might be able to see how the higher circuits might function.  I still disagree with a lot of the conclusions (however, as I have not experienced these circuits, I may very well be blind to them for now).

"Make maps as fast as you can absorb information, so that you keep integrating.  Adjust the maps you have to synchronize closer with the territory... Without this kind of continual updating, it's very easy to begin living in the past..."  This is the easiest way to stagnate.  It's also fairly exhausting, so it's understandable why some people don't really want to make the effort.

A line even TGRR would like: "The Truth Will Set You Free But First It May Make You Uncomfortable."  That could fit into the memebomb thread nicely. 

He does a good job explaining social institutions like churches, et al: "This kind of Church offers members rewards from Grades One through Four: 1st Grade Food, Security, and Protection; 2nd Grade Status, Land, and Work; 3rd Grade Money, Documents, and Maps; 4th Grade Membership, Religion, and Retirement.  These rewards and others may be ours if we let the Church own us" [emphasis added].  Most people forget that adopting the rules of a social institution runs deeper than they realize.  And they treat it like reality; Cf: the Map-Making quote above.

Part of the Annoyingly Optimistic thing that gets to me is an a priori conclusion of an afterlife, of reincarnation, and that we feel anxiety if we start to think there is No Future.  The 8-circuit model, as I understand it, doesn't need to this far out, and should be able to accommodate different cosmic models. 

[Rumckle]

Yo, that's great LMNO, and I'll let you finish but before I respond

[LMNO]

I'm still just a third of the way through my analysis at best; you might as well pick up and run with anything interesting you find.

[Kai]

I'm still just a third of the way through my analysis at best; you might as well pick up and run with anything interesting you find.

What you've got so far is good. I like hearing this from another perspective.

[Bu🤠ns]

I didn't really recognize the overly optimistic outlook until you mentioned it.  I wonder how much of that is tailored to an intended audience of new age hippies or if it's just simply Ali's 'voice'.

[Rumckle]

I liked the insight that the second 4 circuits seem to reflect the first 4, and may be a good way of looking at 6-8 in a new light.  If 1/5 deal with physicality, 2/6 with territory, 3/7 with pattern making and 4/8 with social grouping, then you might be able to see how the higher circuits might function.  I still disagree with a lot of the conclusions (however, as I have not experienced these circuits, I may very well be blind to them for now).

I'm not so sure, yes he talks about it at the start, and in the first 4 circuits he mentions their respective higher circuit counterparts, but in the second half of the book he didn't really refer back to each circuits lower counterpart (at least no more than he mentioned any other circuit). So at the start he seemed to say "I'm just mentioning this even though you won't quite understand it yet", but then later on he didn't talk about that stuff he introduced. (Unless I missed something, as I said a lot of that stuff was pissing me off, so I may not have been giving it as much attention.)

Part of the Annoyingly Optimistic thing that gets to me is an a priori conclusion of an afterlife, of reincarnation, and that we feel anxiety if we start to think there is No Future.  The 8-circuit model, as I understand it, doesn't need to this far out, and should be able to accommodate different cosmic models. 

Yes, that kind of bugged me as well, I just don't like the assumption that the audience needs an afterlife to be happy. And because he included the afterlife thing, it diluted the "real life" messages he was trying to get across.

[rong]

sorry to but in, as i haven't been reading angel tech, but as i was reading these reviews, it dawned on me that 8 is 2³ (i know i know ZOMG law of fives). 

i.e. there are 8 3 digit binary numbers.  so, maybe there is a correlation to the id, ego, and super ego being in a high or low state and one of the 8 circuits.

0 0 0 = all three in a low state, 1st circuit (not to pick on triple zero)
.
.
.
1 0 1 = two in a high state, one in a low state 6th circuit.
.
.
.
1 1 1 = all three in a high state. 8th circuit.

anyhow, just a thought and thought i'd share.

[Telarus]

Hmmmmm. That is interesting. Not sure how to directly apply it to the theory. Interesting, tho.......

[LMNO]

Similar to our, "yeah, we're monkeys, but we understand that": "The sooner we come to accept our mechanical, robotic self, the sooner we can find the 'mold' and break free... The challenge is in the ability to respond creatively to the unknown."  Simply denying our Monkey Mind is the best way to accidentally fall back into that kind of thinking.

The way that A.A. (OMG, Crowley!) describes "the Robot" could be paralleled with the BIP, with the added aspect of constant uncertainty. His "always in doubt" matches our "never escape" bits.  

There are unfortunate implications when he says, "Why should I change the world when I can change myself?"  It can be taken totally wrong, and seen as apathy, escapism, and a serious need for a barstool.  He seems to be saying that if the world looks to be a dead end, just turn around and take another direction, but it comes out sounding like "fuck it."

Or maybe he's implying the next good quote, "In all seriousness, there's a lot of anti-life influence going around in the mass media.  The messages we get every day from television, radio, newspapers and everybody's brother are so crossed and confused that if you don't start thinking for yourselves, you'll be woven into the social fabric of a great dying beast.  For many of us, it's too late."  In this sense, "changing your self, not the world" means, "not getting sucked into The Machine™.  

He raises an interesting point with the explanations of Excitements and Resistances, in that both become focus points of attention: Excitements because you intuit and bond with them, and Resistances because you consciously avoid them.  "Whatever is resisted soon develops into patterns of habitual avoidance... We become what we resist."  He goes on to say that the only way to balance and deal with these forces is "...a scathing self-honesty and an encompassing self-acceptance."  In short, you can't run from what you don't like about yourself, you have to face it.

Because we're getting into the meat of things now, there will be talk of "energies" and "forces".  I hate the terminology, but it's easy enough to treat it as experiential metaphor.  That is, if you do the exercises he describes, you feel something happening.  What it appears to be are "energies" swirling around your body.  Of course, we've been through all of this with MW and TCC, and have underlined how ridiculous it all is.  However, for the sake of convenience, we will use the clunky and inaccurate terms that A.A. uses.

So, onward to the First Circuit: "First Gear processes fear, both mechanical and innate responses to danger.  The Robot naturally contracts to a security threat."  (As we begin each Gear, I'll just remind us what we're supposed to be looking at.)  This seems pretty basic.  I'm pretty sure if we're buying into the 8C model, there's not much argument here.  As babies, our environment can be safe or dangerous; typically, our parents are the ones who keep us safe.  "You have the choice of reclaiming your body: Become your own parent and protect yourself... Be Safe Enough To Take Risks."  That last line is important.  It isn't that we have to hide ourselves away and never be exposed to danger.  That actually seems like an indication of some problems.  A strong First Gear is a physical self-confidence.  You feel safe enough to get out there and get your hands dirty.  "If the basic reality of safety has not been programmed into Gear One, then it is quite possible that a basic distrust and fear remain."

On the other hand, while he seems to have a good grasp on some of this, other times he leaves us hanging: "It is possible to (re) stabilize basic trust through alternatives other than trying to recover it from our actual genetic mothers or by projecting this need on our mates or friends."  Um, ok.  How?  Oh, by getting into an isolation tank and doing a "rebirthing".  Fuck that.  Then he makes some oblique crack about "for a dearer definition, consult a practicing expert who is not fat."  What the hell?

He's much clearer when talking about how to wreck it.  "Body-trashing is when we think poorly of our bodies.  The most powerful form of this is contained in the crux of any doctrine, spiritual and/or otherwise stating a belief about the body as being "bad" or separate from Life, or Spirit." Pretty much the entirety of modern Western Culture, in other words.  As TV tropes.com says, "Freud Was Right".

But again, he seems to go too far in his zeal.  "The body is the fingerprint of the soul, a Rorschach of the Self."  Well, maybe.  Sometimes, the body simply breaks down.  A.A. gets too close to Thetan Bodies and blaming the victim, here.  I'm pretty sure my tendonitis isn't because my First Gear is blocked.  The knot of muscle under my shoulder blade?  Absolutely.

I do find some resonance when he talks about how to communicate with the First Gear, though. "If messages to the body are too defined or spelled out, the body naturally resists.  The organism loves space and knows itself by its movement in space...It has to do with a style of communication which recognizes the element of space as a value."  For some reason, this reminded me of music, and dancing.  

He mentions that if you declare a personal thought, but frame it in the language of "Most people..." then you are negating yourself as an individual and that in time, if it becomes a habit, you can destroy your sense of self.  While this may be a danger, there is also a danger of solipsism or egotistical narcissism.  Even though you shouldn't get lost in the crowd, you can't declare yourself higher than the crowd, either.

Wrapping up first gear, A.A. once again loses me.  "Physical Intelligence naturally avoids what is toxic and approaches what is nourishing."  I call bullshit.  The animal's desire for unhealthy and intoxicating substances, far before any repressive belief system can set in, is long-known.  This is like a psychological variant on "if we set the cows free, they will migrate to where the hungry people are."

Anyway.  Next post will cover Second Gear.

[Kai]

I thought the short section on Excitement and Resistance was worth the rest of the book. It was just PERFECT.

Also, I'm finally addressing second circuit needs, which can be seen by the personal boundaries I'm setting. Feels damn nice. I wouldn't have gotten there without impulse from this book.

I like your analysis of the first chapter. Maybe I was less willing to rip it apart when I read it, but I'm glad someone else here took that leap. Gives me perspective.