09-21-2020, 06:00 PM
I've been planning a short quote roll-up for my earlier time on this forum, gathering the gist of main important exchanges about life and learning, with some added comments.
But I haven't been able to settle on how to begin it. Time dragging out. But now, well, perhaps newer topics can enter first for a simple enough start.
This is growing rather long, so here's in response to Ymarsakar's first post, the rest later.
I prefer less oversimplified descriptions. Some of your "direct channeling" and related thinking echoes the paradigm I'm well familiar with, including from the Cassiopaea community, in which life in this world is compared to "The Matrix". The most level-headed synthesis rooted in that paradigm I've found so far is Montalk's. (For example, I've linked to his article "Methods of Deception" in places, but there's much else to be found on his website.)
There's many levels and ways of looking at deceptive influence and mind manipulation, but the hopeful part is that where there's a will (and a way for it to be informed and active), there's a way. Jumping briefly to mainstream cognitive psychology, there's books like David DiSalvo's What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite, where the faults human brains are prone to are explored. Being informed about that gives a person a better position in relation to the messy ways of the physical self, and - as hinted at - also relative to the opposition of marketing/PR and politics and other deceptive influencers at the ordinary level.
As for the fringe stuff, there's many older and newer sorts of descriptions. An older version can be found in Boris Mouravieff's Gnosis books, where the "General Law" of this mixed-influence world patterns normal life and will tempt and attempt to derail the efforts of the person on a genuine esoteric path. "Satan" is identified with the corrupted "Absolute III" governing this world, corresponding to sub-Logos in Ra's terms. I wrote more on that in an old post.
However it is described, how does the "system" attack individuals? Through the ways they respond, in large part, in a battle of sorts between consciousnesses - and at a more basic level, in a battle against a mechanical mold that limits the growth of consciousness and replaces it with superficial concerns and routines which swallow up life.
It isn't quite the same as "root access" being used. But there's often many a gap in the influence of the spirit in directing life, allowing other influences to play the person like an instrument. And, when consciousness does not grow so that a gap is filled, while in other ways a person looks like an up-and-coming threat to more negative influences, they use the opportunity to strike through that gap, with varying consequences.
I agree with the basic point, as italicized above. I've seen a more general pattern the last half-decade of increasing online "wars" and a generally hysterical climate.
Upon leaving a place where the new great virtue was shaping up to become being a grand "keyboard warrior" battling sociopolitically on social media, I decided to have none of that, and cut out more stuff similar in spirit from the start, and left social media behind.
Here, at first I held back on sharing my old thinking (stuff grown in the old mold and still recognizably the same). I found it more valuable to backtrack and re-examine things more thoroughly first. In the short term that meant having less to say. Currently, I'm beginning to bring out more of a tentative synthesis, with Montalk more or less an inspiration.
I think I've succeeded well in one main thing I've set out to do here, which is to rediscover the missing heart in the spiritual "system" I was familiar with. More on that later...
The paranoid version is at the heart of the Cassiopaea community. I've found that, in hindsight, being influenced by a teaching lopsided in that direction, made me drastically overestimate how "dangerous" people in general in life are for me, and drastically underestimate how detrimental the effect of the propaganda I had taken in was. I brought the worst sabotage on myself through the stuff I had swallowed.
Later, I saw the poisonousness of what I had swallowed, and went through an inwardly harsh detox over time. What I am left with is some questions. How much have I missed, how many potential friendships, how many meaningful exchanges, and not just for me but also opportunities to help others? When I was thinking in advance that "they" have simply chosen to be asleep, years went by in which simpler and more basic positive exchanges were missed.
Leaving the Cassiopaea community was not just about leaving one community and then, say, looking for another. In the long term, it's more like leaving a little island and beginning to explore the oceans again. In the short term, it's even more about recovering an older understanding, something I used to have, something simple and heartfelt which allows much more connection with others - even when they don't have the same or any spiritual system in mind.
Well, yes. I'm not really on the same inner footing anymore. I used to question myself to an extreme, having no way of feeling sure that my life had any value. That's one factor which made the "cult" work for me then, but growing past it made me grow apart so that there was simply no way back to believing in the group as the great collective near-infallible "teacher" and light of the world it presented itself as.
Now no group like that can work for me. But some people, for a variety of reasons, have to work within that old paradigm. As a stage of a journey, whatever the personal journey as a whole turns out to ultimately be like. And whatever the specific group and some of its characteristics may be. Montalk pointed to the problems where people have an ego-based need to belong, but he missed the category of idealistic self-questioners with undersized egos who are driven by ideals above community, and for whom there's more of a general hope for personal development, if they don't remain stuck in a toxic mold too long.
For example, there's a significant portion of people in the Cassiopaea community who would have fit just as well here or in other places, if they simply hadn't been convinced by the group's self-presenting of claims of intellectual and idealistic superiority (on bogus yet sophisticated grounds). And then - for another kind of what I think is an example - another member here, 'ledgerlines', briefly came to this forum and earlier pointed out that there's a French "Leo" group claiming to be the Leo-successors that the Cassiopaeans have prophesied. We mutually wished the best in a later exchange, though I don't share the conviction that that group is great.
What happens to people who do grow and polarize, towards positive potential but within the confines of a defective mold? Or, as Gurdjieff called it, "crystallizing on a wrong foundation". Go far enough, and following the pain and strain of inwardly breaking down and redoing your personal development, you can emerge outside the bad mold with a purer and more well-rounded version of what you had earlier gained.
I used to think, in my teens, that stupidity is intelligence with something added to it. That's another way of looking at such corruption, and/or what makes it possible. "Dumb as a rock?" What active stupidity can a rock manifest? But a genius can express great stupidity, all it takes is a little something which is like "error" of sorts added to the genius, or the genius formed around it. Most stupidity is somewhere in-between the extremes.
To that can be added that a great extreme of genius-with-some-error lines up well with how some spiritual sources describe the greatest evil minds in the cosmos. The pattern seems to scale from our level to the very top.
Well, minding how some matters of mind affect the mind is not always simple, but it's key to avoiding much of the worst that can happen in terms of subtle corruption.
Ironically, more than a decade ago, I became convinced in several stages to give up on changing the world and force it away from all the wrongness seen in it, and instead focus on changing myself. That's how I first changed when I became committed to the best spiritual ideals I found in the Cassiopaea community. Later, it turns out that their core leadership has developed in the exact opposite direction over the years.
Now? I wouldn't mind changing a few things positively here and there in the world, but I don't expect much. But as for changing myself, there's only so much you can do with that focus before you have to grow a different way of approaching life. With neither old driving force really there, what's there is both simpler and more difficult to describe. More on that later...
But I haven't been able to settle on how to begin it. Time dragging out. But now, well, perhaps newer topics can enter first for a simple enough start.
This is growing rather long, so here's in response to Ymarsakar's first post, the rest later.
(09-16-2020, 08:37 AM)Ymarsakar Wrote: As I perceive things from my pov (a shard of co creation), Satan or if you prefer, Orion type entities that are deceptively polarizing, have gained root hack access to all of humanity's minds at one point or another. As well as emotions.
I prefer less oversimplified descriptions. Some of your "direct channeling" and related thinking echoes the paradigm I'm well familiar with, including from the Cassiopaea community, in which life in this world is compared to "The Matrix". The most level-headed synthesis rooted in that paradigm I've found so far is Montalk's. (For example, I've linked to his article "Methods of Deception" in places, but there's much else to be found on his website.)
There's many levels and ways of looking at deceptive influence and mind manipulation, but the hopeful part is that where there's a will (and a way for it to be informed and active), there's a way. Jumping briefly to mainstream cognitive psychology, there's books like David DiSalvo's What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite, where the faults human brains are prone to are explored. Being informed about that gives a person a better position in relation to the messy ways of the physical self, and - as hinted at - also relative to the opposition of marketing/PR and politics and other deceptive influencers at the ordinary level.
As for the fringe stuff, there's many older and newer sorts of descriptions. An older version can be found in Boris Mouravieff's Gnosis books, where the "General Law" of this mixed-influence world patterns normal life and will tempt and attempt to derail the efforts of the person on a genuine esoteric path. "Satan" is identified with the corrupted "Absolute III" governing this world, corresponding to sub-Logos in Ra's terms. I wrote more on that in an old post.
However it is described, how does the "system" attack individuals? Through the ways they respond, in large part, in a battle of sorts between consciousnesses - and at a more basic level, in a battle against a mechanical mold that limits the growth of consciousness and replaces it with superficial concerns and routines which swallow up life.
It isn't quite the same as "root access" being used. But there's often many a gap in the influence of the spirit in directing life, allowing other influences to play the person like an instrument. And, when consciousness does not grow so that a gap is filled, while in other ways a person looks like an up-and-coming threat to more negative influences, they use the opportunity to strike through that gap, with varying consequences.
(09-16-2020, 08:37 AM)Ymarsakar Wrote: Thus there is no "point" in joining communities just to fight with other communities. The faction one should be fighting, is invisible and never shows itself, and merely hides behind human shields. If this triggers fear... that is not the intent. Rather, the more you know, the more they know you, but what is the alternative.
I agree with the basic point, as italicized above. I've seen a more general pattern the last half-decade of increasing online "wars" and a generally hysterical climate.
Upon leaving a place where the new great virtue was shaping up to become being a grand "keyboard warrior" battling sociopolitically on social media, I decided to have none of that, and cut out more stuff similar in spirit from the start, and left social media behind.
Here, at first I held back on sharing my old thinking (stuff grown in the old mold and still recognizably the same). I found it more valuable to backtrack and re-examine things more thoroughly first. In the short term that meant having less to say. Currently, I'm beginning to bring out more of a tentative synthesis, with Montalk more or less an inspiration.
I think I've succeeded well in one main thing I've set out to do here, which is to rediscover the missing heart in the spiritual "system" I was familiar with. More on that later...
(09-16-2020, 08:37 AM)Ymarsakar Wrote: Any human I know, including family or long friends, can be hijacked to attack me. Because they are not aware. While this may cause paranoia in people at different levels of awareness, there is a critical change in awareness. If anyone or everyone can be hacked/hijacked... what is the point of fearing and fighting with Other people?
The paranoid version is at the heart of the Cassiopaea community. I've found that, in hindsight, being influenced by a teaching lopsided in that direction, made me drastically overestimate how "dangerous" people in general in life are for me, and drastically underestimate how detrimental the effect of the propaganda I had taken in was. I brought the worst sabotage on myself through the stuff I had swallowed.
Later, I saw the poisonousness of what I had swallowed, and went through an inwardly harsh detox over time. What I am left with is some questions. How much have I missed, how many potential friendships, how many meaningful exchanges, and not just for me but also opportunities to help others? When I was thinking in advance that "they" have simply chosen to be asleep, years went by in which simpler and more basic positive exchanges were missed.
Leaving the Cassiopaea community was not just about leaving one community and then, say, looking for another. In the long term, it's more like leaving a little island and beginning to explore the oceans again. In the short term, it's even more about recovering an older understanding, something I used to have, something simple and heartfelt which allows much more connection with others - even when they don't have the same or any spiritual system in mind.
(09-16-2020, 08:37 AM)Ymarsakar Wrote: This idea that if you are in community/Blue team and that the reason you are good and the other community/red team is bad, only makes sense if you think one side is different. If everyone is equal under the eyes of Satan or God... then there's no point. I could be on the right team today, and that team would be crazy shadow workers tomorrow. Potentially. That's the surprise factor. There's no inherent stability here. People can choose to polarize. Or they can be deceived into doing things that are not the best.
Well, yes. I'm not really on the same inner footing anymore. I used to question myself to an extreme, having no way of feeling sure that my life had any value. That's one factor which made the "cult" work for me then, but growing past it made me grow apart so that there was simply no way back to believing in the group as the great collective near-infallible "teacher" and light of the world it presented itself as.
Now no group like that can work for me. But some people, for a variety of reasons, have to work within that old paradigm. As a stage of a journey, whatever the personal journey as a whole turns out to ultimately be like. And whatever the specific group and some of its characteristics may be. Montalk pointed to the problems where people have an ego-based need to belong, but he missed the category of idealistic self-questioners with undersized egos who are driven by ideals above community, and for whom there's more of a general hope for personal development, if they don't remain stuck in a toxic mold too long.
For example, there's a significant portion of people in the Cassiopaea community who would have fit just as well here or in other places, if they simply hadn't been convinced by the group's self-presenting of claims of intellectual and idealistic superiority (on bogus yet sophisticated grounds). And then - for another kind of what I think is an example - another member here, 'ledgerlines', briefly came to this forum and earlier pointed out that there's a French "Leo" group claiming to be the Leo-successors that the Cassiopaeans have prophesied. We mutually wished the best in a later exchange, though I don't share the conviction that that group is great.
What happens to people who do grow and polarize, towards positive potential but within the confines of a defective mold? Or, as Gurdjieff called it, "crystallizing on a wrong foundation". Go far enough, and following the pain and strain of inwardly breaking down and redoing your personal development, you can emerge outside the bad mold with a purer and more well-rounded version of what you had earlier gained.
(09-16-2020, 08:37 AM)Ymarsakar Wrote: There are certain things in this Realm, that the more you know of, the higher chances of you being corrupted, [...]
I used to think, in my teens, that stupidity is intelligence with something added to it. That's another way of looking at such corruption, and/or what makes it possible. "Dumb as a rock?" What active stupidity can a rock manifest? But a genius can express great stupidity, all it takes is a little something which is like "error" of sorts added to the genius, or the genius formed around it. Most stupidity is somewhere in-between the extremes.
To that can be added that a great extreme of genius-with-some-error lines up well with how some spiritual sources describe the greatest evil minds in the cosmos. The pattern seems to scale from our level to the very top.
Well, minding how some matters of mind affect the mind is not always simple, but it's key to avoiding much of the worst that can happen in terms of subtle corruption.
(09-16-2020, 08:37 AM)Ymarsakar Wrote: Ah... Change the world or Change One self?
Ironically, more than a decade ago, I became convinced in several stages to give up on changing the world and force it away from all the wrongness seen in it, and instead focus on changing myself. That's how I first changed when I became committed to the best spiritual ideals I found in the Cassiopaea community. Later, it turns out that their core leadership has developed in the exact opposite direction over the years.
Now? I wouldn't mind changing a few things positively here and there in the world, but I don't expect much. But as for changing myself, there's only so much you can do with that focus before you have to grow a different way of approaching life. With neither old driving force really there, what's there is both simpler and more difficult to describe. More on that later...