LHP & Helping Others (A Q & A)

My friend: A lady came to me with a problem. I was pragmatic in how I felt she could handle it and the lesson to be learned from what had already happened. I found her annoying and ignored several impulses to send her to someone that could help. After sending her to someone that could help. I found myself thinking… I kind of cared about whether or not this lady got good help.

… Except I’m Left Hand. I think I am? Middle hand doesn’t seem right. I am very self serving in the majority of magic I practice. In all honesty… I want to become a kinky sex Goddess using the Left Hand Path. For those that know me? They know I am not joking. (Male body, female spirit. Get over it.)

So, I’ve narrowed this down to one of two things. Either, a lot of people who are Left Hand give the other Left Handers a bad reputation. Or, maybe I’m still Middle hand in some ways. Perhaps both?

I like to help people. But I am self serving and Left Hand. … Or so I think Left Hand. I can’t see any reason why these actions wouldn’t be fitting for Left Hand. I was polite but very directly honest with her.

I’m looking for opinions and thoughts so I have reflections of truth from other people’s minds to help me think.

My answer: Well let me put it this way, does it really matter? You can care and you can be self-serving. In fact it can certainly be self-serving in making sure she gets the help she needs, because it simply makes you feel better.

The fact is, with every religion, every path, if you will, there are those who are give said path a bad name. But there also comes a certain stigma for a “Left Hand Path” because of it’s association with the taboo, being a revolutionary. In the eyes of the Church, Galileo was a heretic.

Being Left Hand Path doesn’t make us not care. Mostly of how I think about it is, we don’t pretend everything is love and light and beautiful laughter. We are often honest and even brutal to a point. You want a good opinion, you usually come to someone from the Left Hand Path. We aren’t the humble type. We are the type that questions.

The Crowd Is Everything

I used to love going to a club, or going to a rave.  But now I’m a bit picky.  See, I like it for the crowd.  I mean I love the music, don’t get me wrong, but the crowd makes or breaks the event.

Like tonight at Elements.  I went one time in the long ago and it was great.  Then I went back this February for Black Sun Empire…the set was great, but I had a horrible time and by horrible I mean, I regretted going and wasn’t to keen on going back.  But then I went tonight for Culture shock and I had a blast.  As my friend said, everywhere you looked, people were smiling.

I was really apprehensive and almost did not go because I really wanted to have a good time.  I’m going about an hour and 45 mins away to Cambridge, Mass for a show and paying $10.  I’m so glad I went though, not only were the crowd vibes wonderful but the local DJ and Culture Shock  (the headliner) killed it.  Their sets were delicious and tore up the floor.

But anyone who doesn’t care about the crowd, shoo.  The crowd is really important.  Yes, people want to go, because they like the music, but some people are super aggressive and ruin an event.  That is what happened with Black Sun Empire.  My friend said it was because Black Sun Empire is like an old skool name in dnb and people of the old skool dnb crowd came out and they are aggressive people. I did try really hard that night to have a great time, but it really did not work out cause of how aggressive and mean the crowd was.

Fear Rambles

I don’t run like hell when I am afraid. I’m used to weathering the storm. When shitty situations arise, I act calmly, except for the one time with my car accident.

But there will always be something we are afraid of. We can face it again and again, thinking we can “overcome” it in some fashion. Part biological response, part in our own minds. When a situation arises where you might die, we often try to push on the breaks and hope we stop before we fall off that cliff. We can risk our lives again and again, hoping to overcome that fear and for what purpose? To not be scared of dying? To not be scared of the unknown that death presents? Or instead is it the fear of being alive?

I cannot say I transcend fear, all I can say is, I embrace it when it happens. If its an issue that affects my life, I work with it. Courage to me, no matter how small it is, is the ability to stand and do while afraid. It took courage for me to drive after the accident. I got into a car accident earlier this year, someone drove into my car, but I’m not “afraid” per se. It’ become more of the cautionary and I am more of a defensive driver now more than ever.

The thing is, I think is impossible to completely eradicate fear. We always fear something. The point is, to not let it control your life.

For example the fear of dying, we could a) try to do crazy shit because we don’t want to die without having done it b) or try to ‘avoid’ such situations. I don’t want to die yet. I however, am not going to let the feelings of ‘death’ drive me crazy. I’m not going to stop getting into a car, or traveling by train, or airplane, or sledding, or ice skating, white water rafting…because I am scared of dying. I don’t let it control me.

It doesn’t mean go be stupid. I’m not stupid enough to walk around the forest at night because of coyotes and fisher cats and god knows what else. I try very hard to be a defensive driver, but my fear of another car accident is not going to stop me driving my car. The other day some old man as he was coming out of the gas station almost hit me. Damn old man, look where you going, but I can’t let that fear grasp me and control all my actions.

Fear isn’t meant to be comfortable. Fear is there as a response for a reason. It used to be us, the fight or flight response, an instinct deep within us even to this day. To me, it’s like the lesson of when you first touch something hot as a child, you understand this is hot, this burns, and it hurts and so you don’t do it again. You become cautious because you recognize the danger. This is where you ’embrace’ the fear. You become aware and cautious.

Success

Success is what you make of the bar itself. How high you put the goal. Yet in building for that Major Goal, you have Minor Goals. Minor goals is still success. The question is how high the bar was for itself. The second would be is it major or minor? Third, does it even matter about the success?

Well say if you set the bar at completing 50 push-ups…then what? 100 push-ups? If you set the goal for loosing 10lbs as a small goal, then if it is healthy choose to loose so-many pounds. Then your goal is to focus on maintaining the weight and healthy light style.I never ever mean to imply in any way that the bar is the end goal. Dare I not say there is Minor Goals and Major Goals? We can set a very very large goal, say if a man is 400 lbs and he wants to make 200lbs, that seems a rather daunting task. Generally most people feel exasperated and give up. So you make Minor Goals, I will start walking for X minutes a day. I will start to do this, not eating 10 meals a day, but 8. There are Minor Goals, minor bars in reaching for the next goal. Then once you reach that “plateau” if you will, that is never the end of struggle. The only end of all struggle is once the threshold of death arrives upon us.

I have to argue against the eternal every going staircase or mountain. The staircase works, but life is more like a valley of hills. Our struggles are uphill and downhill, sometimes rough, sometimes easy. The environment quickly changes. There are times of harsh conditions, times of gentle conditions.

Idols, Heroes, and the slaying of them

“It is a rather strange notion, but an ancient truth, that you must kill the gods if you ever hope to become one.”
~Seti I Shadim

How do you feel about idols?
Or the notion of “god-killing”?
What value, if any, do they have?

“This will all, perhaps, seem quite melodramatic and, of course, it is meant to be. It may seem to be detached from your daily life. But analyze your life as you go through your day. Collect your idols, your quiet gods, and determine their worth. Find those areas where the image you hold in your mind is not your own, but an image you have inherited from someone else. An image that has outlived it’s usefulness. (This part is crucial. Make sure you have learned the lessons.) Honor what it has taught you. Appreciate it as a teacher, as a reflection. Then gently place it upon the altar of forgotten idols, and smash it with the hammer of your will. Crush this idol until it is dust.”
~Seti I Shadim

What gods have you killed lately?
And what, if anything, did you learn from them?

– Draconis

Idols, heroes, and such they serve a reason behind them. We want to model ourselves after them because there is something in them that we see that we like and if we didn’t they would not be a model for us to begin with. Maybe it is why I really do not have heroes or idols or gods for myself. There is nothing in them that I really admire for what I do not have for myself.

As for God himself, I think people want to hold onto their abstractions about him. They can blame him, lean on him, feel comforted instead of relying on themselves. It is easy to say “God willed it…” then “I messed up.” It is easier to believe someone controls the crap that you go through then saying you are the captain of your ship. God is a “reason” instead of your own personal reason. Yet when you doubt, when you become to be a skeptic, it changes your perception, your world-view. So when you slay this belief in God, you slay yourself and become more than your former self.

We can all be like the phoenix at times. We should be more willing to slay and let go of that which no longer serves us in our pursuits. An extreme example of this if your leg is infected and it cannot be saved, do you keep it and let it kill you or do you get it removed? Why should you hold onto an ideal that has tired out? Why should you hold onto someone who is to far gone in Alzheimer’s? They are not the person who they were and they never will be again.

The hardest part for us to get rid of, is getting rid of as Axael said, the false gods, or false images. I can give just a personal example, pretending to not be angry, pretending I am not aggressive. I had this image of myself that I am very peaceful and in a sense, I can appear to be. On the surface is still water, but the currents run very deep and fast. I worked very hard for the self-control I do have now, but the image of who I thought I was, was something difficult in breaking through.

We acquire the strength of what we overcome. Once we overcome the false images of ourselves, we really grow into our own skin. False images are limitations. It is like instead of playing a role, you assimilate yourself into the role. There is a danger in that. Just like there is a danger in assimilating yourself in the role of your God, your hero, your idol. You are not them. They are not you. You have to take for yourself the qualities you want to build in you. Their journey to get those qualities will be not be the same as yours. To think so, means you just want a cookie cutter format which does not exist in real life. The way of (bushido, jedi, buddha, sith, any religion) are tools to create yourself and tools to deal with the way. Yet within those spheres you are still you, similar but you.

Be not too wise, be not too foolish

Wisdom

This is a bit of Druidism wisdom that I have been exposed to.  I have a feeling most mundanes would understand be not to foolish but why not be to wise?  When one is supposedly to wise it can mean a variety of feelings or situations.  Being to wise and thinking you are such means you have placed yourself at the status of Buddha, or at least, some great enlightened figure.  There is a saying that I adore and it goes, “If you see the Buddha on the road, kill him.”  Why kill the Buddha when people want to personify Buddha?  It means you have stopped learning, stopped growing.  Life is ever changing, constant in that form.  As we grow older we gain experience and we know what works and what does not work.  Within a spiritual practice this means you develop a certain tradition and way of what you do, because it works.

If one is to wise, we do not wish to make mistakes.  We may unconsciously avoid certain situations to create the illusion of our ever impending wisdom and twist of omnipresence.  Many people like to think they know it all, but this is a quality of homo huberis and mundanes a like.  An enlightened individual realizes they do not know it all.  I use the phrase enlightened individual lightly because in the end who is enlightened?  We have moments of enlighten but are we ever enlightened individuals?  This too is wisdom, questioning and skepticism but let it not that we become so wise and so jaded that we become the shadow of ourselves.

Foolishness

Foolishness is a quality that we look down upon in society.  We point out someone who is foolish and ridicule and attempt to humiliate them.  This is the modern day troll culture homo huberis as well as many mundanes.  Sarcasm is one thing, but this modern day troll is a culture that does not understand what it means to be Satan. A mistake is considered weakness and mundanes will jump at a chance to cut each other down.  Do they understand the meaning of being an obstacle of an obtuse that does not fit?

However the ability to act like a comedic fool is a quality that should be desired or least ways, the ability to laugh at yourself for trying something new and look like a fool.  Some people don’t like to dance, others don’t like social situations, so we avoid them because an association of looking foolish.  The people who worry the least about being foolish are usually less stressed over every little thing they do.  To say that “What will they think of me?” should not be a worry is not far from the truth.  Trying something new gives way to a learning experience no matter how foolish, which is why I am always interested in doing an activity I have not done before.  Next year I have a goal to either go skydiving or white water rafting on 4’s and 5’s.  If I worried about what people think of me, I probably would not dance.  I have been to so many raves and while there are some people who do stand on the side, some people dance so strange and yet do they seem to be worried about what I or others think of them?  I do not think so.

Where it should not be valued is where someone continual speaks and make a fool of themselves.  To put it laymen terms, you keep doing the same shit again and again and do not learn from it.  Whether Einstein said it or not, this quote rings true, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.”  While quantum physics is something different in the real casual world, stealing from the work place and it being noticed it going to get you fired.  How can we expect anything different?  They are loosing money from their business and it is going to you.  I have a rule that I apply in my life to relationships, I put in and you give back, this creates a symbiosis within it that neither party is taken advantage of.  I was foolish when I was younger and I would give and taking nothing from relationships because I tried valuing being unselfish, in the casual world, this does not work.  My kindness to those I value is not a weakness and I do not let people take advantage of that.  Through all these experiences of relationships, I have a developed a true kindness and a kindness for selfish manipulative reasons.  These experiences have learned what does and does not work.  I am still experimenting on the manipulation part and sometimes I am fool and make mistakes, but I learn and I never forget.

Synthesis

This is where it all circles around into a subject we all know well, comfort zone and being comfortable.  There are certain situations or actions that make us all uncomfortable.  These situations that push us out of our comfort zone should be valued.  We step into a zone where we are foolish and can make mistakes.  As someone once said on a forum, “The ability to fuck up should be celebrated.”  It really should for many reasons.  I like to think of my mistakes as a humbling learning experience.  They are like a Drill Sargent in an army getting in my face going “You maggot!”

There is something to say about comfort zones in that they allow us to flourish.  With being comfortable allows issues such as being a sloth, or to trusting, thinking you know it all, or a certain pride that shouldn’t be deserved.  I like pride and I certainly have an odd sense of it, but there always seems to be someone better or worse than you.  It is foolish to think one is the best at what they do because you also have peers.  The other coin is that wisdom teaches to take pride in what you do, because you have built the experiences to be where you are at.  This is synthesis, the joining of both.  Flip a coin, heads or tails?

Limitations

Freedom is an illusion.  We think freedom is choice, yet we are locked into constant choices, and we certainly are not free to choose when and where we die.  The freedom is an illusion and we are limited.  Certainly people have more limitations than others based on various circumstances.  We can be limited in our expression, our grab, our way of life from the program (religion, government, parents), that is installed on us as children.  We children are blank slates knowing nothing of the world, but our parents teach us what is right and what is wrong.  Our parents install in us our religion too.  Without realizing it, we let ourselves become the captives to the limitations from our parents, religion, government, and various titles we have.  We act a certain way because we are expected too, like being a cashier, that means no cursing in front of the customer, right?  If we are Christian we do not indulge like a Satanist does, right?  We do not steal or sell drugs because that is against the government, right?

Even when we think we have obtained freedom we really have not, we just have chosen another program to follow.  Even we de-plug ourselves, choose a red pill or the blue pill like the matrix, we lock ourselves in and take away some freedom too.  When we remain indecisive and try to not make a decision because we have difficultly choosing, a decision is made for us by missed opportunity.  So making a decision and not making a decision does not really matter, because trying to not make a decision is already making a decision.  For example Person 1 must make a decision between choice A and choice B, but this person is hoping for an ideal choice of say choice F, but choice F does not come and instead choice A and B disappears leaving them with choice C which can be less or more ideal than choice A or B (which is often less).  Our lives are simply not free from choice.

In a sense, we do have freedom, even if we are slaves.  We have a freedom to chose to act now in attempting a revolution, or waiting for that prime moment, biding your time when it is most ideal for a revolution.  All sorts of problems arise from both options.  Nothing can stop us from our thoughts, not even people who claim to be our masters.  They can try to stop ideals, but ideals never stop.  If  you want something to spread like wildfire you should try to suppress it.  Suppressing it channels it whatever you are trying to stop to go underground and then it becomes even harder to try and stop.  It is best out on the open and not taboo, because when it is not taboo, people do not care.  People are fascinated by the taboo, the left hand path.  Those of us who follow it, recognize and understand this.  Then again we also have to recognize that the mundane let their herdsmen do their thinking for them.  Sometimes even the herdsmen is just blindly following an ideal, letting themselves being driven instead of them doing the driving.

So the question is, have we chosen our own personal limitations, or have we let others limit us?

Thirsty Guidance

You come to me thirsty.  You see this glass in my hand filled with water? I pour it out onto the ground.  Now that liquid that was mine is on the ground, you can’t have it.  Even if I give it to you, it will only quench your thirst for a time.  Maybe you don’t understand why I have given it, or why I with hold it, or poured it out.  That’s the crux, I can not give you anything.  You have to take for yourself.  Just because you listen does not mean anything.  You have to take what I write, speak, do, take it, twist it, form it into yourself.  Regardless you have to take it, as I cannot give you the answers.

You can lead your horse to the water but you cannot make him drink.  Just like the Zen Master I point towards the moon.  You can take the meaning of my words however you desire.  They are just mere words, expression of the inner form that I put into practice every day.  There is a reason behind exercises as beginners, the reasons why we re-hash various subjects.  The re-hashing part is very important to learning because it reinforces what one has learned. For a subject like math, we start off with basic counting and then go into basic addition.  Then we go into subtraction, multiplication, division, trigonometry, calculus and such.  It grows more and more difficult, but without those basics you cannot make a leap from basic addition to calculus.  It takes dedication and accumulation of casual time to reach the level that is desired.

I hate how people sometimes expect instant gratification from a religion or path.  The casual of accumulation of time yields to knowledge and wisdom.  In essence you have become experienced within a certain tradition.  Various traditions have their system of development, some with grades and tasks to go with it, others not.  ONA which is what I am most familiar with has the grades of Neophyte, Initiate, External Adept, Internal Adept, Master of the Temple/Mistress of Earth, Grand Master/Mistress, Immortal. Everything within a system should be designed to test you, to push you further, but you also have to grasp at it, to take it.  You have to make it your own, because no one else can do that for you.  I think it is often where people fail.  They expect results when they do not do.  They expect results when in people change does not happen instantly.  Changes happen, “slowly.”

The other day I decided to look back at my livejournals.  My writings from then are very different from where I am now.  Even looking at my old tumblr posts, there is a difference from livejournal, from then, till now.  The style, the feel of what I wrote seems different.   If you are not changing, then what are you doing? Being a stagnant nitwit?

Wyrd

I am going to write a rather personal entry.  You can ignore this if you like.

In the past year, I have really felt the call to walk the Dark Path.  I have felt this push to go this way.  In a sense there was always an attraction and always a resonance within it.  I have found a home within it that I have never found from other paths.  You know how you find something you want, its everything you want, and you go this?  Or someone who you know you can spend the rest of your life with knowing regardless of how you two change, that this is it?  This.  This.  This.  That is what speaks inside of me.  Though it is more than that, it is synthesis, a gnosis of all that I have learned.  An accumulation of casual and acasual knowledge.

However, I feel an approaching wyrd in my life.  It was like seeing the pattern within the chaos for the first time, following a trail to the end result.  This time period in my life is rather important for my Self and it’s continual development.  I have been on this path for over 10 years now, though not always following the Dark Path.  Lately, it feels like everything I have learned in the past years has come to full circle, that every moment and little gift of knowledge is a seed that is blooming.  All these lessons from wandering about, from spiritual, paganism, focusing on real life, all this, every moment, every dream, every possibility accumulates to this moment, to this stage in my life.  This stage is important for personal gnosis but to also reach the next level.

I recently had a dream about pillars that was organized thus:
: – :
: – :

I was walking, the world seemed so dark, even barren. Starlight above. Emptiness. I come across the pillars from one side and there was light with them. They seemed to radiate sunlight. I followed the bands, ribbons, of energy. Blue and red besides white seems to stick out to me. I discover the pillars on the other side, they radiate a “darkness” or emptiness, void. I discover these two main pillars, they are so incredibly large with height and width. They have a hole in the center. While the pillars connect to the two of the dark and two of the light sides, they connect to each other, but the holes in the middle are the most important part. One pillar had this incredible feeling of strength and power radiating off of it. But I don’t understand the other one. The holes in the middle lead to something “above” that was not there but was. The idea of one comes to mind somewhat. The last pillar.

I think this feeling of wyrd reflect this.  The next stage while is not here, is almost here.  It often feels like I am staring into a great Abyss.  It feels me with a bit of fear and with a bit of anticipation.  I know once I go beyond it, I cannot return.  Yet I want this so I will not turn away.  However, I feel it hangs in balance.  I have to keep pushing forward till I meet this wyrd and either achieve or fail.  There can only be two outcomes.  You just can’t go halfway and be met in the middle with this kind of thing.  If you fall down a hole you do not fall half way down a hole, you fall all the way down.  Unless there is a ledge, but in this matter, there are no ledges.  I could turn back, but I have no desire to.

I will just keep going on.  No matter the fear and anticipation, this is all rather comforting and it feels just right.

The Vehicle of Ideals

I avoid labels often.  You may ask why, but the simplest reasons are the essence of it all that I am not going to constrict myself towards one religion.  I am not going to spend all myself forcing myself onto one path, I make my own path.  I am reminded when I took my pottery class, I had to decide on how much clay to use, what shape it was going to take on, the details of it whether I draw details on it, or what parts are certain colors.  The other example I can think of when I get a blank canvas I have several options I do.  I either draw and work on a white background or I paint it black and work it up that way.  I remember that in painting class I learned that one of the techniques those old painters did would to paint the background a green color and work from there which is where I got fascinated with the black background.  Yet it all takes planning of what I am trying to achieve, how big do I want my canvas?  What is the image going to go on?  The details? Colors?

I love driving cars, there is something about it that is so empowering to me.  It comes from the fact that in my home town, I live in the middle of no where, where the closet store is a forty-five minute walk while by car it is only a five minute drive.  Of course, where does this fit into the vehicle of ideals?  Well for one you certainly do not let your car drive otherwise you would be in constant accidents on the side of the road.  Ignore the advances we are making towards having a car that will drive for us, please, all that does is serve how mindless we are becoming. Do we mindlessly follow our ethics, myths, and scared texts?  Does religion drive us or do we drive it towards some end goal?  When I use my car it is to get to get from one point to another obviously and not the other way.

Earlier this past year I had to go shopping for a new car, due to a stupid decision of an idiot, my car was totaled, it cost more to fix than it was worth.  So I had a lot of choices to consider, just like a spiritual path.  Do I buy a new car or a used car?  What company do I want it from?  What model?  What year?  Do I want AC?  There are many options these days for cars and it all revolves around what you want from the car.  It goes with your spiritual path too.  What do you want out of your spiritual path or car?  Do you want something flashy, something fake, something environmentally consciousness?  Small, big, expensive?  What does your ideals and suppositions offer you?  What is it that you want out of it all?  The end result?  Are you looking for god realization or self-discovery?  Gentleness or harshness?

I know what I want in my car and also for my spiritual journey.  If I didn’t I would not have bought my car and be making long term payments.  I am owning this car for a long time.  Just like my spiritual journey, I have proscribed to a certain doctrine out of choice.  I am here for the long run because it will give me the results that I want.  So I make payments in the sense of initiation grades, of staying true to my path.  You put in what you get.  You can buy a cheap car, a used car, or expensive, you can choose your method of payment.  In the end, the choice is yours.