Antero Ali on Chapel Perilous

[Cramulus]

Sounds more like "Chapel Nervous Breakdown".

He does have something like a nervous breakdown.

Jude Law's character gets disgusted with his own servile obedience to status. He's put up an attractive front, and over time, a rift grows between his attention to status and the Nice Guy mask he wears. Because it's not a mask, right? It's just another aspect of the self... So deep down, does he actually love the marshlands, or is he protecting them in order to advance his status? By the climax of the movie, he's not sure anymore, and we watch him go through a spectacular jailbreak.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

- how can you can find your individual free will if the self is a confused collective of networked agents?

Personally, I never lost my individual free will.

So I cannot answer your question.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Sounds more like "Chapel Nervous Breakdown".

He does have something like a nervous breakdown.

Jude Law's character gets disgusted with his own servile obedience to status. He's put up an attractive front, and over time, a rift grows between his attention to status and the Nice Guy mask he wears. Because it's not a mask, right? It's just another aspect of the self... So deep down, does he actually love the marshlands, or is he protecting them in order to advance his status? By the climax of the movie, he's not sure anymore, and we watch him go through a spectacular jailbreak.

This is one of those times when "Dinosaur Bob's" (From Dilbert) advice comes in handy.

"We dinosaurs resolve complex issues by stomping them flat and then not caring."

Does it fucking MATTER why he's protecting the Marshlands?  And can't it be BOTH reasons?  I realize I am indulging in the picking of nits, here, but I don't see any "heroism" here.  I see people going through the everyday exercise of dividing their personalities from their activities.  Sure, not everyone does that at all, but I don't think of it as "heroic".  I think of it as self-maintenance.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Let me just simply that a bit:

When all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like the Corning, NY museum of glass working.

[Cramulus]

This is one of those times when "Dinosaur Bob's" (From Dilbert) advice comes in handy.

"We dinosaurs resolve complex issues by stomping them flat and then not caring."

Does it fucking MATTER why he's protecting the Marshlands?  And can't it be BOTH reasons?  I realize I am indulging in the picking of nits, here, but I don't see any "heroism" here.  I see people going through the everyday exercise of dividing their personalities from their activities.  Sure, not everyone does that at all, but I don't think of it as "heroic".  I think of it as self-maintenance.

It matters to him!

A lot of people don't give any thought to the bars of their jail cell. Once you've seen the bars, you can't just go back to acting normally, you have to examine this stuff. The jailbreak involves choosing the meaning of those things, rather than letting the meaning get dictated by your past and your environment (drifting on an inner tube, as opposed to choosing where to swim). "Just smash it flat and don't give a shit" makes it sound really easy. It's only easy on the surface, or if you're making an easy choice.

Self discovery is no small task. And it's not for the feint of heart. It's dangerous too - you can get lost in the chapel perilous and come out more scared, confused, and uneasy than you were before. It took me years to stop getting led around by the selfish, vain parts of myself (which, if I'm being honest with myself, were built to insulate the timid, passive parts of myself). It took me a long time to quiet the rebellious teenager inside that's still taking swings at his father. It's hard to be comfortable with the trials of modern living. And it was hard to address that stuff honestly. I think there's a kind of "everyday heroism" in the personal spiritual journey.

That's what Joseph Campbell talks about in the Hero with a Thousand Faces... there's only one story, and it's your story. Your quest for meaning is no different than Odysseus' or Hercules'. We all have to face temptation and uncertainty. We all try to change our worlds. And because we do this every day, we think there's nothing special about it, it seems mundane. But it is the hero's journey, the source of all myths.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

A lot of people don't give any thought to the bars of their jail cell. Once you've seen the bars, you can't just go back to acting normally, you have to examine this stuff.

I've learned to deal with this by charging into the bars until they break.

And then doing the same thing on the next set of bars, etc, ad infinitum, ad broken head.

[Telarus]

What do you all think about RAW's observation that "the involvement of a (seemingly) mystic force from outside the Self helping or hindering" is an essential component of the experience?

Yes, some people live in a banal little world where every good or bad thing that happens to them is "God's Will" and they read messages from God (or the Devil) into everything. And I mean everything ("Hurricanes are because God hates Gay people!!!").

I think that this is the archetypical "(Christian) Lifer" (to use Antero's categories).

But the experience is one where YOU CANNOT BE SURE that what just happened was an internal projection ("Hallucination") or an actual involvement from something that seems to break how reality "is supposed to work".

I'd point to examples like the MUFON hypnosis experiments, where they hypnotized people who didn't believe in aliens, and then afterwards, some of the subjects could not say for sure if their experiences were hallucinated or real (they also induced a religious experience via hypnosis and tracked parallels with alien abduction narratives, and again the girl could not decide if her experience was "real" or "not real").

I also find RAW's observation that those who manage to find an exit to the Chapel either come out as Agnostic or Paranoid to be very telling. This doesn't have to involve Aliens, or God-forms or anything. The classic "there a huge shadowy secret society constantly trying to shut me up" Paranoid has probably gone through the Chapel (& been shattered by it). But while a "huge shadowy conspiracy" is more probable than Gods or Aliens, it's involvement in your very Day-to-Day existence breaks the previously held conception of "how reality is supposed to work".

Then, trapped in Paranoia, your whole Narrative becomes about how you relate to this Other.

The Agnostic escape hatch seems a much better choice.

I think this also goes back to "Consensus Trance" or the idea that most of our waking time is spent in a trance enforced by our culture. I'm reading mire Charles Tart to get a better grasp on that idea.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I also find RAW's observation that those who manage to find an exit to the Chapel either come out as Agnostic or Paranoid to be very telling.

Look, you make it out, you're not like everyone else.  Since sanity is in one way defined as "not fitting into the norms of society", then you are by one definition insane.  And if you are aware of dangers to yourself (physically or mentally or to your ego or whatever) that others aren't, then you appear to be paranoid.  But you aren't, because if there IS a danger, you're being rational.

If we're all on the Titanic, and it's sinking, and we point this out to other people, and suggest that maybe they get in the lifeboats (most left the Titanic less than half full, at least at first), they're going to call you fucking crazy.  "This is the ATLANTIC OCEAN, you don't get in a little boat!  And besides, this ship won't sink.  They said so, and besides, I paid money."

So who the fuck is crazy, here?

[Cramulus]

I think this also goes back to "Consensus Trance" or the idea that most of our waking time is spent in a trance enforced by our culture. I'm reading mire Charles Tart to get a better grasp on that idea.

hook us up with choice links!

His piece on Consensus Trance was in the top 3 things I read last year.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Thanks for the history, Telarus.

What I'm basically getting from this is that the Chapel Perilous is the internal struggle you have when you start to realize that the reality you have been perceiving is not necessarily the real reality. That what you think you are thinking and wanting is not actually what you think and want, for example under the seductive influence of a magical temptress, or the TV broadcasters, or a church, or your peer group.

Is that too simplistic a summation? Because I would like to cut the pseudomystical woo-woo bullshit and boil this down to an explanation understandable by your average 12-year-old.

Sure, I'd add its the internal struggle and the psychological experience... including hallucinations in many cases.

Pretty sure that's called a "fugue state", and it isn't good.

Other than that, all this shit about the Holy Guardian Angel, etc, etc, hork spit puke, is beginning to sound like Mahdgjickque.

[Cramulus]

so is "The Black Iron Prison", "Jail Break", "The Machine^TM", "Spiders"... all those metaphors get stretched pretty thin the more literally you interpret them.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

so is "The Black Iron Prison", "Jail Break", "The Machine^TM", "Spiders"... all those metaphors get stretched pretty thin the more literally you interpret them.

Yeah, well then, I guess we've all been wasting our time.  All this shit is already recorded in TEH BOOK OF SHAHDOWS on MysticWicks.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I'm gonna have to elaborate on that a bit.

Spiders, etc, has some sort of meaning for people here, as many participated in the design of the mental model.  Same with BIP, same with The Machine™.  The HGA and all that other shit was someone else's mental model, someone in fact known for being quite the hoaxer.  Good on him, but I make a distinction here.

I mean, it's no different than if we used the Subgenius term "The Conspiracy" rather than "The Machine™".  It's borrowing from sources that have already had time to gel into dogma.

And if we tell a story to illustrate a point, to get people to think, that's a little different than performing hokey rituals to get OURSELVES to think.  I don't need rituals, that's what I have other Discordians for.   

[Don Coyote]

I am still confused by all of this.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I am still confused by all of this.

I don't think I'm confused anymore.

I think the idea is to fill your head with bullshit to counter the bullshit society put there.

But what that really means is, your head now has twice as much bullshit in it.