Post by dudetyson on Sept 4, 2011 14:59:27 GMT -6
True Will without religion???
A long conversation I had with someone got me going on a submerged, yet-unarticulated train of thought.
The Fourth Way seems to be a methodology, a system of self-analysis and self-construction that . Parables and images can be used to explain a point, but once you understand it, do you need the image? Or do you just live it?
I often wonder if getting swallowed up in a world of imagery, art, illustration, and symbols is actually an obstacle and distraction from my devotion to True Will, which is of course the point of it all.
There is something very powerful about trying to live with no crutches at all. Just you and hideous isolation. It reminds you that everything really all just depends on Your Efforts.
I feel this train of thought is best expressed in the following passage of "Demian," emphasis mine:
"You know that I have the desire to be a priest. Most of all I wanted to become the priest of the new religion of which you and I have had so many intimations. That role will never be mine -- I realize that and even without wholly admitting it to myself have known it for some time...
But I must always have things around me that I feel are beautiful and sacred, organ music and mysteries, symbols and myths. I need and cannot forgo them. That is my weakness. Sometimes, Sinclair, I know that I should not have such wishes, that they are a weakness and a luxury. It would be more magnanimous and just if I put myself unreservedly at the disposal of fate.
But I can't do that, I am incapable of it. Perhaps you will be able to do it one day. It is difficult, it is the only truly difficult thing there is. I have often dreamed of doing so, but I can't; the idea fills me with dread: I am not capable of standing so naked and alone.
Someone who seeks nothing but his own fate no longer has any companions, he stands quite alone and has only cold universal space around him. That is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, you know.
There have been martyrs who gladly let themselves be nailed to the cross, but even these were no heroes, were not liberated, for even they wanted something they had become fond of and accustomed to - they had models, they had ideals.
but the man who only seeks his destiny has neither models nor ideals, has nothing clear and consoling! And actually this is the path one should follow.
People like you and me are quite lonely really but we still have each other, we have the secret satisfaction of being different, of rebelling, of desiring the unusual. But you must shed that, too, if you want to go all the way to the end."
A long conversation I had with someone got me going on a submerged, yet-unarticulated train of thought.
The Fourth Way seems to be a methodology, a system of self-analysis and self-construction that . Parables and images can be used to explain a point, but once you understand it, do you need the image? Or do you just live it?
I often wonder if getting swallowed up in a world of imagery, art, illustration, and symbols is actually an obstacle and distraction from my devotion to True Will, which is of course the point of it all.
There is something very powerful about trying to live with no crutches at all. Just you and hideous isolation. It reminds you that everything really all just depends on Your Efforts.
I feel this train of thought is best expressed in the following passage of "Demian," emphasis mine:
"You know that I have the desire to be a priest. Most of all I wanted to become the priest of the new religion of which you and I have had so many intimations. That role will never be mine -- I realize that and even without wholly admitting it to myself have known it for some time...
But I must always have things around me that I feel are beautiful and sacred, organ music and mysteries, symbols and myths. I need and cannot forgo them. That is my weakness. Sometimes, Sinclair, I know that I should not have such wishes, that they are a weakness and a luxury. It would be more magnanimous and just if I put myself unreservedly at the disposal of fate.
But I can't do that, I am incapable of it. Perhaps you will be able to do it one day. It is difficult, it is the only truly difficult thing there is. I have often dreamed of doing so, but I can't; the idea fills me with dread: I am not capable of standing so naked and alone.
Someone who seeks nothing but his own fate no longer has any companions, he stands quite alone and has only cold universal space around him. That is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, you know.
There have been martyrs who gladly let themselves be nailed to the cross, but even these were no heroes, were not liberated, for even they wanted something they had become fond of and accustomed to - they had models, they had ideals.
but the man who only seeks his destiny has neither models nor ideals, has nothing clear and consoling! And actually this is the path one should follow.
People like you and me are quite lonely really but we still have each other, we have the secret satisfaction of being different, of rebelling, of desiring the unusual. But you must shed that, too, if you want to go all the way to the end."