Possible New Metaphor

[Daruko]

I don't know if I've said this yet, but one of the reasons I like the "no escape" form is because of the old addage that it's not the destination, it's the journey.  Or as Uncle Al said, "A true initiation never ends."  Because progress comes from escaping.  If we posit an Escape, then we posit an Conclusion.  Which will lead Some People to conclude that they Made It Out, and don't have to worry about it anymore.

Which is very, very stupid.  And I'm trying to exclude as many obviously stupid loopholes in my thinking as possible.

But again, I see your point, so...  I'll STFU.

VERY good point... However, this...

I guess I would compare it to the asian horror movies that have recently crept into the american scene--there is no way out.  Once you have been in the house, or seen the movie, or whatever, you are fucked.  Knowing that you are fucked helps you deal with it, but you are still fucked.  You end up dead, period.

There is no jail break.

is what happens when you take the notion of being stuck too far.  No offense Voodoo. 

The BIP is just a metaphor.. We're not really fucked.   This is why I brought up the ego earlier.     Yes, there are still bars and walls from within that metaphor, but our "reality tunnels" are still simultaneously interacting, processing, tuning in, tuning out (sorry, i know these terms are too old for some)...  To make a permanent jailbreak would be to break from the whole experience.   To cease to see.  Self-awareness involves contrast, and without impressions (bars/walls), one can not contrast, and without contrast, there isn't this thing or that thing.  There is no beauty, nor truth, nor love, hate, amusement, sadness, etc.    Alan Watts spent a good deal of time dealing with this concept, and it's one of the first things that really caught my attention.   A guy talking about Zen and Taoism that ISN'T suggesting the elimination of the self?!  E-gads.

Sorry if I'm blathering on... this isn't really new territory here, I know.

[Voodoo]

Yeah, I don't think my metaphor to asian horror movies works either. 

I was thinking of the "there is no jailbreak" thing as a comparison to Zen Buddhism (Soto). 

Sort of, "is the point of meditation to become enlightened?"  No, meditation (zazen) is just sitting (shikantaza).

I am not sure how to make this point in relation to the BIP/jail break metaphor.  Or am I on the wrong track?

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I guess I would compare it to the asian horror movies that have recently crept into the american scene--there is no way out.  Once you have been in the house, or seen the movie, or whatever, you are fucked.  Knowing that you are fucked helps you deal with it, but you are still fucked.  You end up dead, period.

There is no jail break.

They just cribbed from Lovecraft.

I think there seems to be a fundamental difference in my view of the BiP, vs others...

LMNO, I agree that the journey is key, but the Hero's Journey goes through many stages.

Take the story of Parsifal, which I like due to the Crowley/Tarot tie in.

The Fool, Parsifal, for example doesn't stay forever a fool... he begins as the Fool and then escapes that aspect of reality or the sephiroth of Malkuth and climbs the Tree of Life.

Just because someone escapes Malkuth, doesn't mean the journey is over or that they won... it means only that they are now free to explore the other sephiroth. If they choose the Left Hand Path, Splendor and Strength, while neglecting the right hand path of Mercy and Victory, then according to Crowley, they will fail to cross the Void and will forever be "Black Brothers". However, someone that covers both the right and left hand path, MIGHT be able to survive diving through the Void and eventually piercing the veil.

This seems much like the BiP to me, as long as we're trapped in Malkuth, there is little opportunity to grow and explore. Much like our experience stuck in the BiP. However, once we have escaped, we can start on a journey of discovery. The journey doesn't guarantee that we'll escape Da'ath, that we will achieve "Enlightenment" (whatever that might be), we could foul up and be stuck forever as one of Crowley's 'Left Hand Path' people, or we could be forever trapped by the Bliss, spending the rest of our existence in Tiphareth, believing that we are so much better than the man in Malkuth, but never crossing the veil ourselves.

Freedom from the BiP doesn't mean that we end our journey. To me, it means that we can begin our journey.

I read Crowley's rant. It made my head hurt. It was like trying to read Aristotle, only Aristotle was easier to read because his work had a wiki and he repeated what he was saying three or four times in case you didn't get it the first time around. I think I got what you mean about being an actual skeptic, though. In that context, then skeptic is the word that I'm looking for. So, the Spoon = Skepticism. Also, I didn't understand what the second link applied to, or why it applied to it. Please explain.

The second one is a bit of a trick if you have never read the crazy bastard.

He's ranting in heavy metaphor, but he's basically encouraging his students to force paradigm shifts upon themselves. He's telling the avid student of the occult, to stop practicing magic and instead read Philosophy, apply his mind to the best theories of Why Evil? etc., because, in Crowley's view, all of these are just models, maps, concepts... and ones which are incomplete.

The first essay I linked "The Solider and The Hunchback" are referencing the exclamation point (the solider) aka Solution! and the question mark (the hunchback). For Crowley, every solider, every discovery, every solution, should rightly be followed by a hunchback, a question, a path for further study, research, refinement or just a Big Question Mark. In his view every philosophy, including his brand of Magic, would always and forever be a series of !?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? and it is this that he's hoping to drive home.

"Let then his reason hurl itself again and again against the blank wall of mystery which will confront him."

"Then will all phenomena which present themselves to him appear meaningless and disconnected, and his own Ego will break up into a series of impressions having no relation one with the other, or with any other thing."

This forced modification of beliefs was a way Crowley sought to destroy the Ego. Finding good, brave, tall and straight Soldiers that are killed by some damned sneaky Hunchback, before you can even take them out for coffee is a good way to come to terms with the fact that none of us know much of anything.

Like he said in The Solider and Hunchback:

"Anyhow, we have got values of y and z
for x, and values of x and z for y—all our equations are indeterminate; all our knowledge is relative, even in a narrower sense than is usually implied by the statement. Under the whip of the clown God, our performing donkeys the philosophers and men of science run round and round in the ring; they have amusing tricks: they are cleverly trained; but they get nowhere.

I don't seem to be getting anywhere myself."

It's this constant questing for the next Hunchback, drilling him into a solider and realizing that another hunchback is just gonna kill your solider and you have to start all over that Crowley seemed to consider a key element of ascending the tree of life... It's neuroplasticity in 19th century prose.... and IMO, a discussion of escaping the BiP so that one can begin the journey.

[singer]

If you take a Jehova's Witness (like Rat used to be), and look at his cell then, and then you send that JW though process of drugs, sex, and chaos magik (like Rat went through), and you look at his cell now, you will find out it has Changed pretty much completely.  Except for his Scars®.

So... bars/walls OTHER than the ones formulating the JW cell are revealed... changed in that the cell has a different dimension?  Yup.  Changed in that the cell is no longer a cell?  Maybe not.

I'm sort of echoing Daruko here.

[LMNO]

Don't forget, I'm not the one claiming you can escape, Rat is.

I do however put claims in Reconstruction.

Also, Rat:

You believe your BIP looks like this:



I believe my BIP looks like this:



To me in this metaphor, Malkuth is the time in your life when you don't even know you're in prison.  I mean, look at all those bars!

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Well, maybe. The whole tree can be a prison, people can get trapped... but its their choices that trap them there or free them to continue.

The man in Tipheroth, the Sun, can get stuck there. The man who follows only the left hand path, can get stuck at the Void. Even the man that explores every sphere, can fail to pierce the veil. The difference is that the man in Malkuth has no choice, no freedom, no journey. He is imprisoned, he is led by the ring in his nose.

To call it all the same, seems to miss a big difference for me. Escaping Malkuth seems an entirely different sort of experience than ascending the tree. Escaping Malkuth is like escaping prison, you go from an ordered reality where what you see is what is, where what you believe is what you think is and where you have NO choice in the reality you experience. However, once you've reached Yesod, the Foundation, you're dealing with a whole new sort of thing. At Yesod, you have choices, freedom to explore in any direction on the tree, The Left Hand Path of the Magus, The Right Hand Path, the Bliss Path or the path Crowley marked out which covers all the spheres... or your own path, exploring each sphere in your own way.

Perhaps that is prison.

However, this misses one key bit of the Tree of Life. The broken and shattered shards that lie below Malkuth. If we left the tree, if we left the 'prison', we would fall to these shards and be impaled, destroyed or insane....

If we threw off ALL controls, including physiology, we would die.

IF the choice is between Freedom with some restrictions and being dead... I can't see "Freedom with some Restrictions" as a prison. 

[Daruko]

IF the choice is between Freedom with some restrictions and being dead... I can't see "Freedom with some Restrictions" as a prison. 

This goes along with what I was saying.   The restrictions may ENABLE the experience.   Am I being clear?   Awareness of the restrictions, and being able to play with those restrictions, and change them at will... this enables one to truly breathe it in, and I would suggest it enables one to truly love.   Too sappy?   

Hmm... let's see if I can dig up this Jodorowski quote I read the other day...  Nope.. can't find it.

Anyway, he talked about how he spent years attempting to empty his mind from beliefs, attachments, shrapnel, etc., and he sat down with his "master" one day and informed him that he had finally "emptied his mind".  He had no attachments.  He was no longer bound to his BIP. 

The master roared with laughter and said something like, "Empty mind, empty heart.   This is a fool's life.   Empty mind, FULL of heart.   That is the way."

Just a thought.   

[LMNO]

If we threw off ALL controls, including physiology, we would die.

IF the choice is between Freedom with some restrictions and being dead...

...Aaaaaand we have arrived on the same page from different directions, using different language.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy watching these exchanges

[LMNO]

And some people say Discordians do nothing but argue.

[singer]

At Yesod, you have choices, freedom to explore in any direction on the tree, The Left Hand Path of the Magus, The Right Hand Path, the Bliss Path or the path Crowley marked out which covers all the spheres... or your own path, exploring each sphere in your own way.

Yeah... but still only by steps and stages... you can't get from Yesod to Binah on the tree save by passing through other sephira

However, this misses one key bit of the Tree of Life. The broken and shattered shards that lie below Malkuth. If we left the tree, if we left the 'prison', we would fall to these shards and be impaled, destroyed or insane....

I think this is dependent upon whether or not you view qlippoth as more than just cautionary remnants of earlier failures on the whole 'awareness" continuum.

If we threw off ALL controls, including physiology, we would die.

IF the choice is between Freedom with some restrictions and being dead... I can't see "Freedom with some Restrictions" as a prison. 

That pretty much covers it.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

If we threw off ALL controls, including physiology, we would die.

IF the choice is between Freedom with some restrictions and being dead...

...Aaaaaand we have arrived on the same page from different directions, using different language.

Different models, same thing being modeled