Post by dudetyson on Sept 11, 2011 21:08:37 GMT -6
1: THE NAME
I really don’t care about your name.
Two good things to mention. One, it shows your commitment to your religion, that you actually really do imagine yourself by your self-selected religious name. Two, I’m glad you call yourself a messiah because it has helped me realize that to an extent, maybe I am one, as well.
But anyone dwelling on the name is probably not taking the philosophy very seriously anyway. Nietzsche said, don’t follow your followers. Focus on what you believe is the core of your religion, and always sharpen and sharpen and sharpen that core. Ignore the bullshit debates that the Internet may draw you into. Lose your need to defend yourself, and spend that time on the Essence. That is how you will get the momentum that will make the flood of stupidity around you insignificant. On that note – next subject.
2: THE GAME
First, I don't really think the Cult is terribly screwing up or anything. At the very least, it's a good ideological synthesis. It has a figurehead who has stuck with it and a few other insightful voices. The Lovecraft mythos was begging to be utilized.
There are the usual critiques, like hey, we could do better at organizing an in-person religion, but you already know that and the only thing to do in that regard is to keep trying and experiment with new angles. Laboring without lust of result could help here -- just work or socialize with people on any facet of the religion, or just seek any cluster of free minds, and develop relationships.
My take on the definition of LHP is not really so crucial but at least worth a think-over. It is the second section, however, that I think the Cult (and all religions) could learn something from.
(PART I: SELF)
I am gravitating towards a definition of Left-Hand Path that, while still religious, can include atheism. (This isn’t the same tired old angle.) No matter who’s talking about it, whether a hedonist or discipline fanatic, theist or atheist, the one thing the LHP always revolves around is the Self.
I am beginning to think someone is LHP if they undertake the practice of self-becoming. This does not include simple hedonism, as Styx Hexenhammer pointed out. It includes people who strive very, very hard to find the Essence buried deep inside themselves. In my experience, that Essence is not simply a state to achieve or insight to discover, but is instead a Mission, which you must then carry out in the objective world. So a true practitioner would have to pursue and persist in their higher calling.
There is one more criteria, which makes it more religious than simple secular discipline. Even if the practitioner is an atheist, they ought to live in their dreams. They need to live moments where they decide that their dream is more important than any other rules, perhaps even more important than the truth. This often requires a bit of suspense of disbelief, which if not ritualistic, often resembles ritual. However, when I say they should live in their dreams, I do not mean being an unfocused daydreamer, but simply that a person ought to have ideals and goals – great, terrible visions of things that could be, things that ought to be, and a practitioner should dwell on these things. In fact, these are the things toward which their self-discipline should be focused.
In short, I think an LHP practitioner is a visionary-ubermensch. Where they believe their visions come from is hardly significant, as long as they are true to their visions. Having a true passion, and living in reverence of it, and in commitment to it, is the greatest magic of all.
(PART II: WORLD)
I no longer believe it is valid for a person or group of the Left Hand Path to sit on the sidelines of world history. We basically live in an era where the scales are wobbling between apocalypse and some kind of new, unprecedented freedom. We have catastrophes and revolutions happening side by side. If you’re not addressing it, I don’t see how you could possibly matter. I doubt even the greatest mystic master is capable of purging themselves of attention to the incredible process unfolding around us. But even if they are, why should they? This is the stuff of life! And not just crappy, stagnant life, but the vast changes of ALL life!
I’ve said this before – I don’t think any already-marginal religion can hope to gain a mass following, or even hope to survive, without addressing the material conditions of the majority. This would be my primary critique of the Cult, and of all Fourth Way Schools.
We are wise to realize that, no matter what insights we offer at the moment, we are all still at least partially beings of flesh. If we want to reach people, we have to offer solutions for their material problems (besides telling people to de-emphasize their problems in the name of spirituality). Don’t expect people to come to where you are (spirit): go to where they are (matter). We live in a material world that I am not sure is going away anytime soon. At least while I’m here, I can’t dismiss this place as something to ignore while I prepare for the next thing. I want to push it to its greatest potential. Indeed, this is probably the best practice for the next life anyway.
However, I do not believe Fourth Way Schools should give up or cease to consider themselves Fourth Way Schools. I think there need to be two layers.
The inner core layer would be the traditional Fourth Way School – a teacher, extremely direct discussion of concepts, a focus on personal progress and Awakening. The outer shell layer would be political. It would teach people the simple but profound idea they are worth it, they are worth fighting for themselves, that they can fight back and win if they stay true to that vision. The School would also catalyze the basic gathering together of people in common situations for political struggle. We could be the voices injecting consciousness into the often-unconscious process of resistance, or we could pat on ourselves simply for getting it rolling, because once initiated, the process often breeds Awakening on its own.
I do not believe this is something that should merely be left to individual members, but leadership from the top should set the example of getting this rolling. Messiahs belong in the streets, in the struggle.
3: MY GAME
First, I have resisted the temptation to throw off all attention to Self and delve entirely into politics. I have found this to be the right path. I now feel my old self, my true self, finally flowing back to me. At first I fought and fought for a trickle, but after chipping and chipping away at the dam, the trickle has developed force, and has become a flow, and I hope will grow into a torrent.
I have experimented with that very process of mystification described above. I have sought the Romantic, those moments of suspense of disbelief which allow the stupid chatter in the world or in my head to be pierced. Those moments which allow the true will to emerge. Sometimes it has been ritual, sometimes it has been conceptual, sometimes it has just been establishing mental habits. Overall, what has been changing is the mood. I emotionally dwell on the fact that this planet is a nightmare, that I should seek to change that, but also that I cannot depend on anything external for my sense of fulfillment.
Second, I have stayed true to that great calling of mine, the transformation and liberation of this planet. My method is basically this, and do not give me credit for inventing it: have an established base of people who have a similar analysis of what the central stumbling block/transformative process of the world is. For my people, it’s the belief that economic and political inequality needs to be replaced with workplace democracy. From that core of the convinced, branch out into every group of people that is grinding up against the established order. Help them get organized and use the opportunity to explain your central idea, the idea that a specific social system is holding them back, as well as everyone else. Repeat, rinse, recycle, except that this process is infinitely complicated. The people who join your snowball from one campaign roll into the organizing base for the next, etc.
This isn’t just a theoretical outline but something I have done. I’ve left a swathe behind me of minds that I’ve changed and people that I’ve gotten involved. I know that those who have learned from me and those who have been inspired by me are more than notches I can put on my belt as people I have merely convinced of something. That’s not so glorious. The important thing is that I know they are my contributions to the future revolutionary forces.
But ultimately neither of the above are my true practice of the Left Hand Path, but merely subcategories of it. I think my mere existence is my practice of the path. You can explain it supernaturally. Maybe that’s the case. Or perhaps I am just one of the lucky particles of this complex world, whose million paths of causality happened to intersect in me, causing biographical sparks. I change virtually everyone I interact with. Though a struggle was required to get to this point, I don’t even need to try anymore; it’s what I do as my automatic functioning. Sometimes you have to wonder if you really make a difference in the big pile of six billion people. However, my life experience has showed me time and time again that I’m just something else, and that the world actually would be a different place without me. This is why I am confident that writing novels will be worth it. Summed up in the abstract, I seem to make things connect, or correlate. I seem to put things together, actualizing dormant potentials, uniting disparate fragments into unities for which they seem destined but for some reason were not touching when I found them. The beauty of my life is beyond words. But it has been, and soon will again become, so very, very difficult. So be it.
4: THE FOOD
To anyone trying to do anything, I recommend this:
www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/06/self-discipline/
If I took my own advice I’d be so much further along…
I am not currently in diet mode. I have a job which is a major obstacle, but is seasonal and will be over in a week. What I found in the past, however, were two important tricks. The first is a sensory self-psychout. You have to come to masochistically enjoy the taste of healthy foods, which of course almost always taste awful. If not truly enjoying the taste, at least enjoy the power you are exercising by eating them, while you eat them. Second, you have to totally commit. Don’t give up if you make an exception, but any time you are contemplating an exception, realize that making the exception weakens your ability to keep up the whole project. Ultimately there can be no compromise. The result of continual willpower is a life without pleasure. It seems hideous. It seems like the plummeting of the self into infinite obscurity, down a path of suffering where no one else can follow and no one can understand. It also seems completely counter to the principle of indulgence. But I think of it as a higher indulgence.
“What is good? — Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man.
What is evil? — Whatever springs from weakness.
What is happiness? — The feeling that power increases — that resistance is overcome.
Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, virtu, virtue free of moral acid).” -- Nietzsche, The Antichrist
Finally, what are your motives for dieting and working out? I have three, but I’m curious about yours. My first is obviously the social advantages I get from the cosmetic improvement. The second is health, but honestly that’s not that important to me. My body will die someday anyway. The third is the most important part: exercise and diet not as activities for their own benefits, but for the exercise and increase of willpower while undertaking them.
I believe that your ultimate accomplishment is simply showing up. You are putting yourself out there as a beacon. The determination to do so in the beginning must have required a willed insanity, AKA courage. I'm sure it still occasionally does.
For that reason alone, Hail Satanis.
I really don’t care about your name.
Two good things to mention. One, it shows your commitment to your religion, that you actually really do imagine yourself by your self-selected religious name. Two, I’m glad you call yourself a messiah because it has helped me realize that to an extent, maybe I am one, as well.
But anyone dwelling on the name is probably not taking the philosophy very seriously anyway. Nietzsche said, don’t follow your followers. Focus on what you believe is the core of your religion, and always sharpen and sharpen and sharpen that core. Ignore the bullshit debates that the Internet may draw you into. Lose your need to defend yourself, and spend that time on the Essence. That is how you will get the momentum that will make the flood of stupidity around you insignificant. On that note – next subject.
2: THE GAME
First, I don't really think the Cult is terribly screwing up or anything. At the very least, it's a good ideological synthesis. It has a figurehead who has stuck with it and a few other insightful voices. The Lovecraft mythos was begging to be utilized.
There are the usual critiques, like hey, we could do better at organizing an in-person religion, but you already know that and the only thing to do in that regard is to keep trying and experiment with new angles. Laboring without lust of result could help here -- just work or socialize with people on any facet of the religion, or just seek any cluster of free minds, and develop relationships.
My take on the definition of LHP is not really so crucial but at least worth a think-over. It is the second section, however, that I think the Cult (and all religions) could learn something from.
(PART I: SELF)
I am gravitating towards a definition of Left-Hand Path that, while still religious, can include atheism. (This isn’t the same tired old angle.) No matter who’s talking about it, whether a hedonist or discipline fanatic, theist or atheist, the one thing the LHP always revolves around is the Self.
I am beginning to think someone is LHP if they undertake the practice of self-becoming. This does not include simple hedonism, as Styx Hexenhammer pointed out. It includes people who strive very, very hard to find the Essence buried deep inside themselves. In my experience, that Essence is not simply a state to achieve or insight to discover, but is instead a Mission, which you must then carry out in the objective world. So a true practitioner would have to pursue and persist in their higher calling.
There is one more criteria, which makes it more religious than simple secular discipline. Even if the practitioner is an atheist, they ought to live in their dreams. They need to live moments where they decide that their dream is more important than any other rules, perhaps even more important than the truth. This often requires a bit of suspense of disbelief, which if not ritualistic, often resembles ritual. However, when I say they should live in their dreams, I do not mean being an unfocused daydreamer, but simply that a person ought to have ideals and goals – great, terrible visions of things that could be, things that ought to be, and a practitioner should dwell on these things. In fact, these are the things toward which their self-discipline should be focused.
In short, I think an LHP practitioner is a visionary-ubermensch. Where they believe their visions come from is hardly significant, as long as they are true to their visions. Having a true passion, and living in reverence of it, and in commitment to it, is the greatest magic of all.
(PART II: WORLD)
I no longer believe it is valid for a person or group of the Left Hand Path to sit on the sidelines of world history. We basically live in an era where the scales are wobbling between apocalypse and some kind of new, unprecedented freedom. We have catastrophes and revolutions happening side by side. If you’re not addressing it, I don’t see how you could possibly matter. I doubt even the greatest mystic master is capable of purging themselves of attention to the incredible process unfolding around us. But even if they are, why should they? This is the stuff of life! And not just crappy, stagnant life, but the vast changes of ALL life!
I’ve said this before – I don’t think any already-marginal religion can hope to gain a mass following, or even hope to survive, without addressing the material conditions of the majority. This would be my primary critique of the Cult, and of all Fourth Way Schools.
We are wise to realize that, no matter what insights we offer at the moment, we are all still at least partially beings of flesh. If we want to reach people, we have to offer solutions for their material problems (besides telling people to de-emphasize their problems in the name of spirituality). Don’t expect people to come to where you are (spirit): go to where they are (matter). We live in a material world that I am not sure is going away anytime soon. At least while I’m here, I can’t dismiss this place as something to ignore while I prepare for the next thing. I want to push it to its greatest potential. Indeed, this is probably the best practice for the next life anyway.
However, I do not believe Fourth Way Schools should give up or cease to consider themselves Fourth Way Schools. I think there need to be two layers.
The inner core layer would be the traditional Fourth Way School – a teacher, extremely direct discussion of concepts, a focus on personal progress and Awakening. The outer shell layer would be political. It would teach people the simple but profound idea they are worth it, they are worth fighting for themselves, that they can fight back and win if they stay true to that vision. The School would also catalyze the basic gathering together of people in common situations for political struggle. We could be the voices injecting consciousness into the often-unconscious process of resistance, or we could pat on ourselves simply for getting it rolling, because once initiated, the process often breeds Awakening on its own.
I do not believe this is something that should merely be left to individual members, but leadership from the top should set the example of getting this rolling. Messiahs belong in the streets, in the struggle.
3: MY GAME
First, I have resisted the temptation to throw off all attention to Self and delve entirely into politics. I have found this to be the right path. I now feel my old self, my true self, finally flowing back to me. At first I fought and fought for a trickle, but after chipping and chipping away at the dam, the trickle has developed force, and has become a flow, and I hope will grow into a torrent.
I have experimented with that very process of mystification described above. I have sought the Romantic, those moments of suspense of disbelief which allow the stupid chatter in the world or in my head to be pierced. Those moments which allow the true will to emerge. Sometimes it has been ritual, sometimes it has been conceptual, sometimes it has just been establishing mental habits. Overall, what has been changing is the mood. I emotionally dwell on the fact that this planet is a nightmare, that I should seek to change that, but also that I cannot depend on anything external for my sense of fulfillment.
Second, I have stayed true to that great calling of mine, the transformation and liberation of this planet. My method is basically this, and do not give me credit for inventing it: have an established base of people who have a similar analysis of what the central stumbling block/transformative process of the world is. For my people, it’s the belief that economic and political inequality needs to be replaced with workplace democracy. From that core of the convinced, branch out into every group of people that is grinding up against the established order. Help them get organized and use the opportunity to explain your central idea, the idea that a specific social system is holding them back, as well as everyone else. Repeat, rinse, recycle, except that this process is infinitely complicated. The people who join your snowball from one campaign roll into the organizing base for the next, etc.
This isn’t just a theoretical outline but something I have done. I’ve left a swathe behind me of minds that I’ve changed and people that I’ve gotten involved. I know that those who have learned from me and those who have been inspired by me are more than notches I can put on my belt as people I have merely convinced of something. That’s not so glorious. The important thing is that I know they are my contributions to the future revolutionary forces.
But ultimately neither of the above are my true practice of the Left Hand Path, but merely subcategories of it. I think my mere existence is my practice of the path. You can explain it supernaturally. Maybe that’s the case. Or perhaps I am just one of the lucky particles of this complex world, whose million paths of causality happened to intersect in me, causing biographical sparks. I change virtually everyone I interact with. Though a struggle was required to get to this point, I don’t even need to try anymore; it’s what I do as my automatic functioning. Sometimes you have to wonder if you really make a difference in the big pile of six billion people. However, my life experience has showed me time and time again that I’m just something else, and that the world actually would be a different place without me. This is why I am confident that writing novels will be worth it. Summed up in the abstract, I seem to make things connect, or correlate. I seem to put things together, actualizing dormant potentials, uniting disparate fragments into unities for which they seem destined but for some reason were not touching when I found them. The beauty of my life is beyond words. But it has been, and soon will again become, so very, very difficult. So be it.
4: THE FOOD
To anyone trying to do anything, I recommend this:
www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/06/self-discipline/
If I took my own advice I’d be so much further along…
I am not currently in diet mode. I have a job which is a major obstacle, but is seasonal and will be over in a week. What I found in the past, however, were two important tricks. The first is a sensory self-psychout. You have to come to masochistically enjoy the taste of healthy foods, which of course almost always taste awful. If not truly enjoying the taste, at least enjoy the power you are exercising by eating them, while you eat them. Second, you have to totally commit. Don’t give up if you make an exception, but any time you are contemplating an exception, realize that making the exception weakens your ability to keep up the whole project. Ultimately there can be no compromise. The result of continual willpower is a life without pleasure. It seems hideous. It seems like the plummeting of the self into infinite obscurity, down a path of suffering where no one else can follow and no one can understand. It also seems completely counter to the principle of indulgence. But I think of it as a higher indulgence.
“What is good? — Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man.
What is evil? — Whatever springs from weakness.
What is happiness? — The feeling that power increases — that resistance is overcome.
Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, virtu, virtue free of moral acid).” -- Nietzsche, The Antichrist
Finally, what are your motives for dieting and working out? I have three, but I’m curious about yours. My first is obviously the social advantages I get from the cosmetic improvement. The second is health, but honestly that’s not that important to me. My body will die someday anyway. The third is the most important part: exercise and diet not as activities for their own benefits, but for the exercise and increase of willpower while undertaking them.
I believe that your ultimate accomplishment is simply showing up. You are putting yourself out there as a beacon. The determination to do so in the beginning must have required a willed insanity, AKA courage. I'm sure it still occasionally does.
For that reason alone, Hail Satanis.