Your Options

Alchemically Braindamaged » Blog Archive » Alchemy for the Braindamaged XIX: Controlled Demolition:

"...first possiblity; the voices break you enitrely. you capitulate to your fears, expectations and beliefs about life, and do your best to carve out whatever sort of satisfactory existence your life script will permit you have. welcome to 99% of the human race.

second possibility: you formulate some novel scenario for your life, and by hook or crook, manage to outmanuever the voices that want to hold you in fearfull stasis. You hijack any and every tool at your disposal to accomplish the emotional breakthrough on the other side of the wall, and then go back to sleep. Hopefully you don't commit suicide when your old walls are replaced by brand new ones, and your new world sucks as bad as the old one sooner or later. This is 99% of the remaining 1%. Welcome to an anthony robbins seminar.

third possiblity: you reorient your life to continuiously tearing down your walls and undermining your limiting voices. you alternate between ruthless and somewhat depressing gruntwork to learn new things, and the ecstacy of breaking through old limitations. this turns out to be much more satisfying than actually getting any hypothetical goal or emotional cookie. You eventually learn that having goals makes for usefull focal points, but getting them is not especially important, leading you to set goals as close to utterly impossbile as you can, and enjoying the ride. Conversely, you embrace an outcome utterly for a short period of time and then drop it when you integrate the new perspectives it offers. Hopefully you elude the slight risk of falling into a depression or dependance on something external to make the ride keep going. If you extend this practice long enough you eventually realise the utter transparency or provisional nature of all your identities and inner voices, leading you to notice the larger nigh-infinite consciousness that was always present to begin with. You may count yourself in the ranks of shamans, magi and visionary artists of all stripes since the dawn of time, but that's just one more t-shirt for the collection by the time you get there. Life is funny that way.

fourth possiblity:You utterly relinquish all of your ego attatchments in some profound act of devotional surrender to the vastness of creation. In which case skip to the end of possiblity three, and then some. This option remains open at any time, but it is historically not very popular, although those who pull it off tend to be. Make of that what you will.

Homework:

I'm not going to presume to tell you which option you should adress, so I'll prescribe a course of action for each one.

Option one: Do nothing. Very easy, and the best part is you've already done it! Give yourself a pat on the back.

Option two: Do your best to culitvate some kind of obsessive desire for a carefully specified outcome. Do anything and everything it takes to get it, within the bounds of your morality and conscience. Any of the tools I've offered up so far are helpfull in this regard, but I tend to think of that as a bit of a waste.

Option three: If you've been along for the ride thus far and actually doing anything, you're well on your way. The sooner you move your emphasis from getting the things on your list, towards understanding the progressive growth of creativity, flexibilty, and insight, the sooner you will see the true purpose of the magickal path.

Option four: Dramatic but effective; Spend a whole day tryng to convince yourself you are afflicted with some terminal illness and only have one year to live. Immerse yourself in that sense of despair, frustration, sadness and eventual acceptance. When you feel like you've made peace with it and understood how to live your remaining life in that light, get up the next day and imagine your only have a month to live. This will repeat the experience at a higher level of intensity and dig up any attatchements you missed the first time.

Then do it again the next day, but only give yourself a single day to make your peace with life. By this point it will become very very clear how useless most of your mental activty is most of the time. If need be do it one more time and live out the last hour of your life. If you perform this exercise to the utmost even once, your life will never be the same, and to do it over and over again will lead you to the goal in short order. "