Aphorisms 1
Everyone can and will change, although some may have the illusion that it takes forever. Stretchable times.
--
The Hermetic Operating System has a lot in common with the Mythological OS.
Kernel: transformation through epiphany.
Interface: ethical tale.
See Frances Yates' Giordano Bruno and Joseph Campbell's Hero with 1000 faces.
--
"Are you ready to die for your beliefs?"
How many would realize the kabbalistic interpretation of this classic movie phrase and perceive the epiphany?
--
Traagheid
Adults have lost mosbunall sense of wonder. It fits their material form: growing slightly older every day so slowly it's almost imperceptible, towards a perfect, static world. What a difference with the period from childhood to puberty, with its impressive bodily transformations, and even more, how miraculous were the first nine months in the womb: from a singularity to a foetus, as a speeded up reenactment of the primordial soup. Imagine an adult human being evolving into something completely different in the course of the same period. Doesn't that sound like cheap science-fiction? That is the amount of how our sense of wonder is numbed down.
Why does the physical transformation start to slow down from the moment of birth? And why does the mental flexibility follow the same pace if we're not extremely self-cautious? It's almost as if we're born into a sea of hardening concrete, swimming forward like in Zeno's paradox, performing at each crawl half of the remaining distance, never reaching our goal. Jarry imagined death to be the slowing down of time, to the point of never touching the ultimate in a perpetual state of dying. Death as penultimate stasis.
Maybe from conception to demise we keep evolving at a regular pace, but it's our perception of this process that changes? Or maybe what we naturally define as the only constant, our consciousness, is anything but static and is in perpetual transformation. Consciousness ("I") seem to be a verb. Something to work on at every moment, in the realisation of what is blatantly shown to us on the world stage: the initial velocity in which our physical form is shot into the world, permanently slowed down by our natural entropy. If we're not permanently aware of this process our consciousness will follow the same path into the hardening concrete.
In Dutch catholicism the capital sin of lazyness is called 'traagheid' or slowliness.
--
On one side of the door is written "Gnothi seauton" and on the other "Arrête! C'est ici l'empire de la mort".
But on which side are we?
--
Truth
The golem is a magickal creature born from words. Isn't that that a metaphor for how we realize reality? The golem seems to be the key, the symbol of the ultimate illusion. We create our reality by continuously feeding our neurological networks with symbols. We create our own mind. A world made of words.
But there is no moral indignation in the previous statement. It's just an assessment of how the Flow works, of how the Work flows. Le Grand-Oeuvre devoilé.
The golem is brought to life, after having combined the four elements (yet another formalisation of reality), ultimately by engraving the word 'EMET' on his forehead. A word which means... Truth.
--
Maybe sometimes nothing happens for a reason. The absence of cause leading to this very moment.
--
Prayer
I pray all the time. And I do not believe in god at all, at all.
One of the biggest misconceptions in the history of religion, next to the assumed correlation between fear and faith - fear of death and faith in an all-knowing comforting superior being - might be the use of prayer as a functional tool. Most people pray to fullfill a need: to receive a new chance, forgiveness, health, wealth, happiness, status quo.
Prayer has nothing to do with balancing exterior assets. Praying is digging deep down and acting as one should act in the given circumstances, with the given talents and shortcomings, towards the one goal alongside the chosen path. Prayer is the activity needed in order to wake up and know thyself.
This means facing every aspect of the self and seeing through the illusions of the world we live in. The perceived duality might be one of the hardest illusions to dissolve. In this regard, no god nor demon is needed to ascertain this point of view, in fact quite the contrary in my opinion. But I don't exclude (in fact, in rare moments of epiphany it even seems quite plausible to me) there might exist higher levels of consciousness once the veil is broken. What appears as complete quackery to me though is the idea that some higher being would feed on our praise and in return would grant us some wishes. The traditional depiction of god the father in catholic imagery always reminded me of Santa Claus and his wrapped-up presents for the chosen ones.
The core goals of organised religion seem to restrain quite some aspects of spiritual growth. Indeed trust in a superior force opposes true responsability, fear of its anger opposes serenity, desire of its abondance opposes acceptance to let go. In a general manner every organised religion keeps its followers in a blissful state of eternal childhood whereas an individual, conscious of hirs spirituality, needs to transform perceptions and assumptions continuously in order to evolve out of this state.
It seems to me any spiritual activity must start from the individual. In order to dissolve the individual. And organised belief systems, into which I'd reckon not only religion but pretty much most sociological games, from politics to science, appear to bring about a sense of superior force while its most blazing effect lays in the fondling of the individual ego in the confinment of canned dogmas.
(Cheshire who fell off of his tree smiling too hard)
--
The Hermetic Operating System has a lot in common with the Mythological OS.
Kernel: transformation through epiphany.
Interface: ethical tale.
See Frances Yates' Giordano Bruno and Joseph Campbell's Hero with 1000 faces.
--
"Are you ready to die for your beliefs?"
How many would realize the kabbalistic interpretation of this classic movie phrase and perceive the epiphany?
--
Traagheid
Adults have lost mosbunall sense of wonder. It fits their material form: growing slightly older every day so slowly it's almost imperceptible, towards a perfect, static world. What a difference with the period from childhood to puberty, with its impressive bodily transformations, and even more, how miraculous were the first nine months in the womb: from a singularity to a foetus, as a speeded up reenactment of the primordial soup. Imagine an adult human being evolving into something completely different in the course of the same period. Doesn't that sound like cheap science-fiction? That is the amount of how our sense of wonder is numbed down.
Why does the physical transformation start to slow down from the moment of birth? And why does the mental flexibility follow the same pace if we're not extremely self-cautious? It's almost as if we're born into a sea of hardening concrete, swimming forward like in Zeno's paradox, performing at each crawl half of the remaining distance, never reaching our goal. Jarry imagined death to be the slowing down of time, to the point of never touching the ultimate in a perpetual state of dying. Death as penultimate stasis.
Maybe from conception to demise we keep evolving at a regular pace, but it's our perception of this process that changes? Or maybe what we naturally define as the only constant, our consciousness, is anything but static and is in perpetual transformation. Consciousness ("I") seem to be a verb. Something to work on at every moment, in the realisation of what is blatantly shown to us on the world stage: the initial velocity in which our physical form is shot into the world, permanently slowed down by our natural entropy. If we're not permanently aware of this process our consciousness will follow the same path into the hardening concrete.
In Dutch catholicism the capital sin of lazyness is called 'traagheid' or slowliness.
--
On one side of the door is written "Gnothi seauton" and on the other "Arrête! C'est ici l'empire de la mort".
But on which side are we?
--
Truth
The golem is a magickal creature born from words. Isn't that that a metaphor for how we realize reality? The golem seems to be the key, the symbol of the ultimate illusion. We create our reality by continuously feeding our neurological networks with symbols. We create our own mind. A world made of words.
But there is no moral indignation in the previous statement. It's just an assessment of how the Flow works, of how the Work flows. Le Grand-Oeuvre devoilé.
The golem is brought to life, after having combined the four elements (yet another formalisation of reality), ultimately by engraving the word 'EMET' on his forehead. A word which means... Truth.
--
Maybe sometimes nothing happens for a reason. The absence of cause leading to this very moment.
--
Prayer
I pray all the time. And I do not believe in god at all, at all.
One of the biggest misconceptions in the history of religion, next to the assumed correlation between fear and faith - fear of death and faith in an all-knowing comforting superior being - might be the use of prayer as a functional tool. Most people pray to fullfill a need: to receive a new chance, forgiveness, health, wealth, happiness, status quo.
Prayer has nothing to do with balancing exterior assets. Praying is digging deep down and acting as one should act in the given circumstances, with the given talents and shortcomings, towards the one goal alongside the chosen path. Prayer is the activity needed in order to wake up and know thyself.
This means facing every aspect of the self and seeing through the illusions of the world we live in. The perceived duality might be one of the hardest illusions to dissolve. In this regard, no god nor demon is needed to ascertain this point of view, in fact quite the contrary in my opinion. But I don't exclude (in fact, in rare moments of epiphany it even seems quite plausible to me) there might exist higher levels of consciousness once the veil is broken. What appears as complete quackery to me though is the idea that some higher being would feed on our praise and in return would grant us some wishes. The traditional depiction of god the father in catholic imagery always reminded me of Santa Claus and his wrapped-up presents for the chosen ones.
The core goals of organised religion seem to restrain quite some aspects of spiritual growth. Indeed trust in a superior force opposes true responsability, fear of its anger opposes serenity, desire of its abondance opposes acceptance to let go. In a general manner every organised religion keeps its followers in a blissful state of eternal childhood whereas an individual, conscious of hirs spirituality, needs to transform perceptions and assumptions continuously in order to evolve out of this state.
It seems to me any spiritual activity must start from the individual. In order to dissolve the individual. And organised belief systems, into which I'd reckon not only religion but pretty much most sociological games, from politics to science, appear to bring about a sense of superior force while its most blazing effect lays in the fondling of the individual ego in the confinment of canned dogmas.
(Cheshire who fell off of his tree smiling too hard)
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