Outer Form, Inner Form

Introduction

One of the many discoveries that I have enjoyed realizing is that of the concept of Outer Form, Inner Form.  As I am re-discovering my Celtic & Druid heritage, besides pursuing the tradition I currently follow, I am come to find that there is a presentation of one side, one mask.  You can see what is there to see, but you cannot look beyond the simplest form of it.  In the sense of understanding ONA, all its MSS, generally starting out, you do not see the depth of it.  With the Druids they had a system where everyone can learn it’s Outer Form, but the Inner Form was reserved for Initiates.

Outer Form

Most people present a certain Outer Form to the world.  It can be a mask, it can be armor, a weapon.  Or the Outer Form can also be who are you, but not the depth of who you are.  It’s generally easy to just glance over someone’s Outer Form and think that is who they are.  Even with the mysteries of certain paths is only perceived as an Outer Form.  Though often mundanes let others choose for them what they think of a path’s Outer Form.  I can look at my mother for example, my sister is interested in an alternative path that is not Christianity and my mother was freaked out.  I decided to mess with my mother and got her a book of Buddhism, this will hopefully plant more seeds of acceptance in her.  My mother was disturbed about Buddhism at first too.

However, many people today present an outer form. It can be described as a mark, or even armor.  There is someone who I know, whose mask is that of a funny crazy guy.  It is just the way he presents himself.  My friend does not like the guy, but he does not see past this guy’s Outer Form like I can.  My friend just see’s this crazy outer appearance and so dropped this guy of the radar.  What my friend failed to see, is the sinister nature behind this guy.  This guy is someone who has followed the Dark Path for many years and now is trying to assume part of a numinous nature with following The Numinous Way, or at least similar to it.  Appearances deceive and clearly people forget this.  There are people who make themselves appear homeless, to gain donations from people though they are not.  That smile may hide sinister intent or a deep sorrow.  That’s the nature of Outer Forms.

Paths, or religions, have Outer Forms per se.  The Outer Forms are the basic you generally get to know.  They may provide free material for you, feed your mind, see if your are curious.  With traditional covens, one is supposed to wait a year and a day before being “initiated.”  This gives the person a time to learn the basic knowledge, as well as convenient preview if the person to be initiated can working within the group.  This is the stage of the Neophyte.  They are generally not the receiving end of the inner most teachings of the mythos and mysteries of a path.  Books cannot teach you what following a path means to follow.  Recently I picked up an old book on Wicca, one I read forever ago and as I was re-reading it, it really opened my eyes.  This is generally why the Neophyte does not need the inner most teachings of a path.

Titles and names are Outer Forms.  We often let ourselves be dictated by certain parts of our lives.  When you are customer service you do not swear.  If you are someone who is a salesman you do not curse away.  You dress a certain way, behave a certain way.  Clothes are an Outer Form too.  That person who is dressed as a homeless may not be really homeless.  Just because they are homeless does not mean you understand the circumstances that brought them there.  Think what you will, but Outer Forms are just a glance, a surface of the ocean.  In the middle of the Atlantic, we see only the vary top of the layer, we do not see the abyss all the way below.  That person in vanilla clothes could be a goth, that Nurse?

The Outer Form of any path is a lure as well as an armor/weapon.  It is a lure for those who it should resonate with.  It is an armor and a weapon for those who should not be part of that path.  No path is perfect for everyone.  The path one follows should resonate within oneself.  There are those who are not meant to follow such paths.  Therefore, like ONA, there is a form like a snake waiting to bite those who are unworthy.  Or maybe it should be the other way around, where the snake is tricksey and you cannot catch it, but it is smart and infect only those of it’s kind who can handle such sweet poison.

Inner Form

The discovery of an Inner Form is stripping away all pretenses.  This does not mean we can ever fully understand each other as we are constantly evolving, well some of us are.  When you push past the mask, all that armor, you discover a Truth about the person.  In an Outer Form they may be all bluster, but their Inner Form will reveal if they are weak, strong, if they walk the walk, or they are just talk, if they are fake, or real.  Strip their clothes off and they are naked, they cannot hide their scars.

Sometimes the problem with Outer Forms we lose touch with the Inner Form.  Being out of touch with the Inner Form creates imbalance and strike.  There is a general symptom of feeling unhappy.  The Outer Form though can be so well on that we forget and the only feeling we’ll get from it too, is that something is out of place.  We don’t feel the depth of our being.  We think that what is on the surface is all there is to us.  Often we disguise our Inner Form with our jobs, our social groups, our clothes…They are still part of us, but they are not necessarily part of the Inner Form that we all have.  Inner Forms do change but they are the sum of us, our experiences, thought, words, emotions, actions, and ethics.  They reflect our Character, which is what we should be judged on, not the silly Outer Forms that we front.  Our Character changes over a casual time of accumulation. As we add in experience, of knowledge, actions, and emotions, it builds the Character (Inner Form) of someone.  Just like a house is not made up of one brick, one piece of wood, so it is for our Character.

Religions, or “paths” as I like to call them, is a tool to build the Character, an Inner Form.  They provide us tools (MSS, meditation, tasks, community, etc) to begin an inner alchemy to achieve a change within ourselves.  The inner teachings of such pathways are important, but not necessary for someone who is a neophyte.   Do you teach calculus to a 5 year old?  Not unless they are a very brilliant 5 year old and those are rather rare.  I remember reading this one book, I did not understand it when I was 13 years old.  I went back recently to read it, as I am using it to help teach my sister, and I am picking up little tidbits of information I never realized about it.  It’s easy when one is just an initiate to mistake certain teachings, wisdom, as foolishness, or to pass over and not think of it.  The beginner cannot grasp often the “advanced” teachings especially when they have not facilitated an inner alchemy.  We begin with the basics and build up upon it, that is the nature of how we all learn.  All the science and knowledge we hold dearly in our society, is built upon discovery by discovery.  I am sure to such Ancients, or even people from 100 years ago could not imagine the life and wealth of knowledge hold in the palm of our hands.  The internet is such an abused example of knowledge at our fingertips.

Some Synthesis

However, an Inner Form and Outer Form can be interesting enough inter-changeable, because they are both us.  I am an unfriendly person, but I am also a friendly person.  I am nice, I am cruel, and I can be cruel with my kindness.  Just because we may put a constant mask of one appearance, does not mean the inner form changes.  I am generally a quiet person, but do not let my quietness deceive you.  I can be incredibly loud when I desire to, I can be the life of the party if I so desire.  This is interchangeable for me, but generally I like to be quiet, over-looked. Outer Forms is like a many-sided dice that gamers use, you know those with 20 some sides? People are rather complex and often we only see a couple sides of them.  That whole dice though is the entirey of themselves, with a “core” in the middle.

Outer Forms can serve a purpose, as a mask.  They can be insight roles that are informative.  Pretend to be a Christian.  Pretend to be a Homeless person.  You have to really apply the mask to believe it. The lessons you learn from these Outer Forms are interesting, one’s in which is necessary and only learned by those who do such insight roles.   Outer Forms are important like this, especially when you can deceive so easily.  I often think of the Outer Forms I use as various “selves” that I have.  I have spent a lot of time destroying and ripping them down in a matter, of trying to understand who I am and what I am capable of.  I find another “Self” I destroy it.  It is a brutal process but has been much rewarding and eventually I will arise like a pheonix from all the ashes.  So I keep my Outer Forms, keep a smile on my face, but people don’t understand how amoral I am.

Des’tai with Fate & Karma

*** To be edited at a future date. First rough draft.

When I speak of The Path of Synthesis it sounds often like it is associated with fate and even more so karma.  I feel a good way to explain it is when you go from point a to point b.  Let me break it down to an easy semantic.  You decide to go to a certain club for whatever reason.  Many reasons can crop up while you do not go tonight but another night, but eventually you do go.  Though say the night you do go there are many routes you can take, back roads, highways, maybe you don’t take a specific road because of an accident or construction.  Des’tai is the realm of possibilities and it shifts constantly.  It can be like a realm of quantum physics, you ask for an OJ at the bar, but you might not get an OJ.

On Fate

Fate obviously means something per-destined.  In such, there are such things that we cannot change in life.  This is what I would term an Absolute, but as such, Absolutes can change too.  Right now people who have Huntington’s Disease or AIDS, has a death sentence.  Eventually through the development of gene therapy and the manipulation of genes we can eradicate Huntington’s.  We may eventually develop a cure or at least something preventive for AIDS.  Evolution may handle that too, because people who had a certain gene did not catch the Black Plague.

Let us discuss a semantic of personal situations instead of genes and death.  By choices we can create a conjecture of an absolute though impermanent.  If one indulges in heresy, crimes, becomes an outspoken, an absolute would be the government puts an eye on you. If you do this in a country that does not let you have speech, you will probably be put into jail or worse death.  Free speech is not valued everywhere mind you and the U.S.A. where I live does not value it much either.  Furthermore if you are to indulge within a life of activities that is against the laws of the mundanes, you will face resistance, the hunt goes on, and if you are stupid and slip up you will be caught and thrown into jail.

To sum it up, there are certain absolutes we cannot change and others that are determined by our choices.  Our choices is like a snowball effect that you see in cartoons, it keeps getting bigger and bigger until it runs into an object that stops it.  Another good allegory is, once you put the oil paint onto the canvas, it is there forever.  Every decision we make shapes us.

On Karma

This is where I mention Karma, an eastern concept mostly.  I can grumble on about stuff, like the memories of the friends I have from past lives, but I am not sure exactly how karma works out.  My intuition tells me only so much and the feel of the flow towards what I think.  I hear of this mentioned by psychics, that some people are meant to work together in life.  Is this merely karma or also the path of harmony?  If we are meant to work together, there is a certain harmony that arises from this, a certain flow of the universe.  I feel it is symbiotic in nature, like a sperm needed for an egg.

Karma to me, within the path of harmony is what you put in, you get out.  That is the general idea of results in a clear-cut manner.  Life is give in take, we take the life and energy of plants and animals to nourish our body and through this nourishment we live.  We are all young, Elders impart their wisdom to us, we grow old and impart our wisdom to the next younger generation.  This wisdom, oral and written, are building blocks.  One person does not make a society, one log does not make a house.

I also feel karma is the response to the action.  I take someone’s life, their family is going to want retribution.  That life I just take, they could be a father, a mother, a sister, a friend, they could have the potential to do so much, create life, save life.  The taking of life, is like punching a whole through a painting.  The painting is no longer the same.  Person A murdered Person B, Person A is not known.  The family of Person B want revenge/justice.  The karma of Person A, is possibly being found, thrown into jail with a certain sentence of years or the death penalty.  This karma is not absolute if the culling was successful without a trace.  If Person A culls Person C, D, E, and it goes on, then a serial killer is announced by mundanes and the snowball effect is speeding up.  The mundanes are looking for the wolf in sheep skin.  However, this is just one extreme semantic of what you put into life you get out.

Synthesis

These concepts feed upon each other, like the sperm and egg to create a fetus.  The decisions we make in this life shapes us, forms our life, slowly creating certain absolutes or karma.  From early on our lives are shaped by those around us psychologically that will affect us for the rest of our lives.  We can trick ourselves into forgetting, but those memories are forever in the brain.  The ghost of our past will forever be with us.

Des’tai deals with all of this.  There is a flow of the universe, or a likened will of the universe.  It does not flow linear, certainly the ocean has currents and it does not flow linear.  To say that Des’tai, or the universe “wills” for everything to happen is false.  Every human, object, plant, animal is all inter-connected in a great big system with many different flows (currents) that shape the world.  There are already currents established (past / karma) that influence the now of the casual.  The ocean is not still and storms can change the surface for a time.  The universe (ocean) is the sum of many things, where previous storms or events (past) has shaped what goes on within the ocean (now) and what storms roll through in the future now or in the near future will create an effect (what will be).

A person who is one with the harmony (universe), recognizes these flows of the past and how they influence the now.  They recognize the karma / fate that has arisen from circumstances.  Through casual and/or acasual means they begin to manipulate these flows and the possibilities of what will be to produce a result.  This result depends upon the person manipulating the flows because every person has a different goal, some for the near future others to reach into a new aeon.  Here is a semantic to break down, Person A and B do not get along at their work place.  B will eat food and does not pay for it.  A has a couple choices to make, to not tell or to speak up.  If the manager of the work place finds out and eventually probably will, A & B will both loose their jobs.  A not telling is an accomplice in this since A has observed what B has done.  If A speaks up, they can get rid of B, and home free safe, keep their job.  There are a lot of nuances to the situation, remove the food issue, and A can create a situation through careful manipulation to help get rid of B.  There are a lot of ways A can manipulate B, each having a different goal and possible result.  This is the realm of possibilities, but with Des’tai, what is the will of the universe?  Maybe Person A not working with B, person C arrives and the situation is worse.  This is dis-harmonic, but not necessarily karma.  This is just a natural flow to plug up a void.

Introduction to Des’tai Take 2

An Introduction to The Path of Synthesis & Harmony (a re-working of the first essay, may be edited in the near future)
What is harmony? What does it mean to follow the path of Synthesis?  I like the definition found on the Merriam-Webstar site, the 4th one, “a totality of related parts: an entity that is a complex or systematic whole.”  Ecosystems are very complex and they have a natural balance till you disrupt it with a creature that was not in the ecosystem before.  Our world, Earth, this universe is very much like a gigantic system with smaller systems that support it.  One tree does not make a forest, but a large quantity of trees make up a forest no matter how big or small.  Yet the world is not one gigantic forest either.  Yet life supports itself and goes on, even if one ecosystem dies, another is born, which is part of evolution.  The dinosaurs did not last forever and humans evolved while apes remained apes.

Des’tai is a bit like that, but it’s a rather complex subject.  It’s a multitude of things that are casual and acasual with both helping to form this path of harmony.  I often liken this to a cosmic dance, or a stage where we are all players.  You have to change your movements at times because it is my crowded and the music changes to, sometimes slow, sometimes fast.  Furthermore, due to the nature of the universe and that we are not omnipresent beings, and cannot be aware of all players at once.  As humans we spend most of our life concerned with here and now, and only a small portion of the future.  Most mundanes are not aware of the multitude of possibilities, what it means, and how to work it aeonically.

What is equally important as mentioned is possibilities.  The path of harmony deals with what was, now is, and what will be.  What was and now is mostly a focus of the casual because manipulating the acasual to effect the past is something not possible as far as I am concerned.  I believe in the possibility of manipulating memories but one cannot undo a bodily injury or change genetics.  What will be is a symbiosis of casual and acasual.  One can affect the future with casual actions which can be the focus of small changes or big changes for the anon or it can be done aeonically as well.  There can be done acasual workings to pull together various forces and energies into creating the desired actions within life.  Some people can think small while others can think of actions that can help found say, a lasting dynasty.  Of course all our immediate actions effect all future tomorrows, with actions done unthinkingly can cause a reaction a thousand years from now.  It’s a ripple effect.

When one follows the path of harmony, it’s like having a little niche where everything feels just right.  This harmony does not mean that there won’t be challenges, or obstacles.  When one is in disharmony, the obstacles that are put in the way are not ones meant to climb but signs that point, “Do not go this way!”  One time I was moving somewhere to be with a boy I liked, but I should have been aware that this was disharmony because even nature itself got in the way and then a car accident that nearly claimed my life.  Some signs are drastic and others are smaller, it just means more pain that could have been possibly avoided.

So what is Des’tai?  It is a bit of the casual with focus on psychology, persuasion, communication and body language.  It’s an awareness of all that was, is, and will be.  It’s intuition.  It’s aware of the possibilities and how choices now can cause ripple effects.  It is a consciousness choice to become more than just a dancer, it is like becoming a DJ where by choosing songs you can help create a mood effect on the dance floor.  You know when a DJ puts on a slow love song to dance to all the singles get off the floor and sit by their lonesome self or with other friends who are lonesome.  It is like that, but some people are aware of how their decisions and workings of both casual and acasual can become aeonic and lasting.

An Introduction to Des’tai (Path of Harmony)

An Introduction

The one thing that been very present with at least me partially living an acasual existence is the Path of Harmony / Synthesis.  There is a certain natural flow to the universe about us, or as I often like to refer to it as, the cosmic dance.  We are all on the dance floor, dancing our own dance, with each other, but in a chaotic harmony.  Have you ever tried to dance outside of the music and not with the beat?  It just does not feel right does it?  I like to dance and be surrounded by music, it’s almost meditative for me.  I like to flow with the music and do what my body wills, whether it’s waving my arms about or jumping around.  I moved with the crowd as well and change my movements to blend in with the crowd.  That is what the path of harmony somewhat is.

Harmony is very important in my life, it is a quality of almost zen like.  When I am not being “harmonic” like on the dance floor, I bump into others, fights occur, obstacles occur, I get hurt far more on the dance floor than say if I moved with the crowd.  When a crowd around you becomes you mob, you must do what the mob does and flow with it or you may become seriously hurt or worse dead.  The saying is “When in Rome, do what the Romans do.”  This is a blending technique for living in life.  I remember in the cartoons the wolf would disguise himself as a cheep and act like a sheep, of course due to the nature of cartoons, the bad wolf always looses.  It is what we are conditioned as.  The saying also reminds me of spies and infiltration.  These are just various examples of going with the flow of what is around you.

The flow is possibilities, and what was, what is, what will be and the connections between everything.  What was and is can be likened to a pond or a river that has already been carved out.  What will be can be like a rain storm or an event creating a new body of water or drying up a body of water.  It’s a realm full of casual and acasual.  To me what magick is, is a bending of the realm of possibilities to create what will be.  Though what we want does not always happen in the manner we want, but such is the nature of magic.