by user_dd | Oct 27, 2020 | Community Conversations
“As within, so without; as without, so within” A timeless Hermetic principle that means something completely new in light of COVID-19 and forced lockdowns that keep you inside and gathering with others less.
It’s like a big mirror constructed in front of you that won’t go away. Everywhere you look, you see evidence of your inner world reflected in your outer reality: the quality and cleanliness of your space, the frequency of your social outreach, the types of food you eat and the content you ‘consume.’
So when you can no longer escape the clear and obvious reminders of who you really are by leaving your home space daily for work or errands, you’ll probably experience that uncomfortable realization that you’re not who you thought you were. Evidence of your subconscious becomes splattered around your home. And the pressure to do something different increases.
Before long, all the things you’ve been trying to avoid are now staring you in the face…and you have a choice. Do you accept them as they are, or do you change them?
This has been hard, because when you spend most of your day avoiding what it means to be human, who you really are after all the masks and lies of your personality, you can get uncomfortable pretty quickly. The prospect of having to look at and change multiple ingrained habits or personality quirks that you don’t like all at once is overwhelming.
(As an aside, sometimes we spend a whole year focusing on just one aspect of our personality in the Kabbalah Ascension program through the Modern Mystery School.)
So here are a few reminders just in case you find yourself in the middle of the second COVID-19 wave with no relief in sight:
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- Be Gentle With Yourself: remember that your negative self-talk is just that, negative. And who needs more negativity in their life right now? Throw that negativity out and write out 5 positive things about yourself. This practice seems cheesy but I promise you there is ample scientific research to back it up. Go ahead, I bet you can’t do it in under a minute.
- Weekly Check-in’s: Ha! You did it in under a minute didn’t you. Reverse psychology works…now back to weekly check-in’s. Schedule weekly check-in’s with a few friends and keep your commitment. Sure, there may be days when you don’t feel like it or it’s just a bad time. Still check-in, whether that means sending a text or rescheduling, but don’t let yourself off the hook altogether here, the point is to express yourself rather than keep it all inside until it boils and explodes somewhere creating a mess. We’ve all done that, so why not try something different?
- Exercise: Lockdown doesn’t mean you can’t leave your house. Get up, walk around, do some push-ups…the increased blood flow will do your body good, not to mention detoxifying and rejuvenating your body. This will boost your mood, guaranteed. So just find the best way that you like to move and get your heartbeat up, OK?
- Breathe: Most people don’t actually breathe, so when all else fails, remember to take a deep breath into the diaphragm and even hold it for a few seconds to let that good ole’ oxygen penetrate your lungs. If you did that, congrats, you just meditated (again, reverse psychology right?)! Now just do that for 10 more breathes, deep ones. Take your time. You’ll feel better immediately after and will have more mental clarity with which to encounter what’s next. And who knows what that’ll be…it’s 2020 after all, so be prepared with a full breathe. With the election in a few days, we’re all going to need it…
by user_dd | Oct 13, 2020 | Transitory Thoughts
My journey seeking truth started at a very early age when my concept of right/wrong seemed so…simplistic. There was always a right answer, and a wrong answer; a right way to be, and a wrong way to be; the right thing to say and well, ok, lots of wrong things to say, to be fair.
In short, there were plenty of things for me to react against and resist. Why can’t I do that? Why can’t I say this? Why do people get so upset over unimportant misunderstandings all the time? Why do people get upset when I ask so many questions. Ha!
Time to Wake Up
At some point, it became clear that there was really no clarity at all—different people experience the world in different ways. An objective way of viewing the world, one that can be measured and manipulated predictably (in alignment with scientific laws), is not how people make decisions or relate to one another. The world operates mostly on subjective experiences which we cannot so easily measure and compare. This is where we primarily hang out.
Expressing our subjective experience is limited by the capacity of our language to contain increasingly abstract concepts within the limitations of language, especially as we try to express concepts like meaning and life purpose.
You and I can agree that the chicken crossed the road because we can see it do so, but the question remains: Why? Is this related to the chicken’s life purpose?
The less concrete the concept, the harder it is to express. Also, the more likely we’ll miss nuances in the experience which differentiate others’ experiences from our own. This is because our brain makes assumptions that may not necessarily be true. When our understanding differs from the message that was actually delivered (aka true reality), we can experience upset proportional to the size of that gap.
And this is where we miss out BIG. By projecting our own experience on to others…that is to say, by assuming their experience is the same as ours, we miss huge opportunities to expand our idea of what’s possible.
Don’t Let Others Put You In a Box
Fairly often I have the experience of people wanting to put me in a box. Ageism, sexism, and racism absolutely play an important part. Often people assume that if they can’t do it, or couldn’t do it when they were my age, that I must not be able to as well. Because we have the same skills, abilities, talents and strengths, right?
What’s hilarious to me is when it occurs to me that different people put me in diametrically opposed boxes. Older white guys almost never hire my ‘Chief Spiritual Officer’ services, while older women are almost always interested in what I have to say about the energy of their people and business.
Some people assume certain things about my education because I grew up on a 100-acre farm in the middle of nowhere Ohio. Others assume certain things about me because I work for myself and own my own home.
And I react to these assumptions. There have been many years of my personal development experience working on not becoming attached to others’ stories.
I actually had someone ask me once if I’ve ever been poor (presumably because I don’t worry about finances anymore). Since when does being well-off financially mean I haven’t experienced poverty?! To me, my past history with ‘being poor’ is my motivation to keep my finances expansive and abundant.
And then I catch myself—how are they to know if I don’t actually express my thoughts, feelings, reactions, and experiences in a way that they can understand?
Instead of being fed the proverbial silver spoon, what I did to excel financially was learn how the system works and then put it to work for me. I often don’t do what most people are likely to do given the circumstances. That’s part of my strategy for success. If you do what everyone else is doing, you’ll get the same results.
There are very few people that I see day-to-day that I’d like to emulate. Not because they’re doing anything wrong or even undesirable to me, just that I have my own unique mission that I’m on, so I’m up to different things than most people.
Know Thyself
In short, if I wanted to end up like everyone else, then I would copy their actions and behaviors. But I don’t, and there are very few people that I’d like to be when I grow up. So what that tells me is that I must discover different actions. Hence the world’s wisdom traditions: Hermetics, Shamanism, Meditation, Magick.
And that’s why I seek. I seek to find an alternative to the predominant narrative, an alternative system to the current paradigm which clearly has not worked out so well for so many people. It’s easy to see that through the immense suffering in this world.
So I encourage you to ask yourself, why are you taking the actions everyone else seems to be taking. What results are those actions yielding, and is that what you want? Who are the people that you want to emulate? What actions are they taking? What’s one different action you can take to move towards the life you want to live as opposed to the life you have now?
The key to getting out of your box is to break down the walls that are keeping you in. Those walls are simply thoughts that keep you in the same field you’ve always played in. It’s time to break the walls, and think (and act) outside the box. It’s time to exit the Matrix.
Looking to exit the Matrix? Join us for our next Empower Thyself program and initiation into the Lineage of King Salomon, a Hermetic Order seeking to bring Light and Love to all people, while achieving our spiritual purpose.
