Setting conscious boundaries

“As a myth, the death-instinct is a counterpart to the Devil, the Devil, like the death-instinct, is the Spirit that continually negates. Both constructs point to something devoted to spoiling the quality of life. ” “…the human soul is divided against itself, as much, perhaps, in love with death as with life. Against all claims of reason, self-interest and morality stands the insidious lure of the death-instinct. Above and beyond politics and ideology, steeped in the hidden byways of our civilized way of life, is something else with which we have to reckon: the thanatos conspiracy. ” – — Michael Grosso, Philosopher, from his book The Final Choice This card is inspired by a dream I had earlier this morning. In the dream a person I know in the waking life, a person known to have many dark, neurotic qualities, is berating someone and attacking their sense of self-worth. I am in an upper story of the house where this is happening and I am filled with a desire to tell certain people about the sadistic behavior of this neurotic person. The urgency awakens me, but as my waking personality and awareness kick in I realize, in a figure-ground reversal [...]

Be wary of those who approach with hollow intentions. Choose your companions with infinite care. Know the difference between an acquaintance and a friend or spiritual ally. Are you hanging out with people with whom you would trust your life? Life is too short to spend in hollow company when it could be lived with true friends, soulmates, spiritual allies, or creative solitude. Some people approach us with hollow intentions; they seek us for pleasure, manipulation, money, power or just out of impulsive, neurotic chaos. We must be discriminating and set strong boundaries between those who approach with unworthy intentions and ourselves. T.S. Elliot wrote a haunting poem entitled “The Hollow Men.” Here are a couple of excerpts: We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless… The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley You are not the first to notice that there are amazing numbers of hollow people. Lacking a strong individual core, hollow folk are inevitably determined by outside conditioning. Hollow folk in the Fifties lived [...]

Be wary of those who approach with hollow intentions. Choose your companions with infinite care. Know the difference between an acquaintance and a friend or spiritual ally. Are you hanging out with people with whom you would trust your life? Life is too short to spend in hollow company when it could be lived with true friends, soulmates, spiritual allies, or creative solitude. Some people approach us with hollow intentions; they seek us for pleasure, manipulation, money, power or just out of impulsive, neurotic chaos. We must be discriminating and set strong boundaries between those who approach with unworthy intentions and ourselves. T.S. Elliot wrote a haunting poem entitled “The Hollow Men.” Here are a couple of excerpts: We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless… The eyes are not here There are no eyes here In this valley of dying stars In this hollow valley You are not the first to notice that there are amazing numbers of hollow people. Lacking a strong individual core, hollow folk are inevitably determined by outside conditioning. Hollow folk in the Fifties lived [...]

Keep secret work secret. We live in a cult of confession society where people go on national television to spill out their personal lives. But consciousness work, esoteric work, is depotentiated, loses power, when you share it with those who haven’t earned access. As Aleister Crowley said, “If I tell a man something he isn’t ready to hear, it is the same as if I told him a lie.” Don’t spill your pearls before swine, save them for your spiritual allies, those that share a deep commitment to consciousness. Often it is safer and in a variety of ways advantageous to be cloaked and to evade unnecessary attention. Deng Ming-Dao, a modern Taoist sage points out, “Useful trees are cut down. Useless ones survive. The same is true of people. The strong are conscripted. The beautiful are exploited. Those who are too plain to be noticed are the ones who survive. They are left alone and safe. But what if we ourselves are among such plain persons? Though others may neglect us, we should not think of ourselves as being without value. We must not accept the judgment of others as the measure of our own self-worth… Thus, to be [...]

Giving audience to others from a kingly stance. One of the greatest services you can do for others is to give them a fair hearing from a calm, clear, compassionate place, meeting them neither more nor less than half way. The ability to do this interpersonally rests on your capacity to do this intra-psychically. Empower a stable, central witness personality that gives kingly audience to the various sub-personalities and voices within. Do not allow yourself to be persuaded by inner or outer voices to do anything that compromises your inner dignity, and do not compromise the dignity of others. If inner or outer personalities approach with undignified, unworthy intentions, then lovingly withdraw your energy from them while they are in the state of eclipse.

Meeting halfway is the touchstone of relationships. You don’t want to meet others less than halfway — shy retreat, neglect, etc — or meet them more than halfway — doing too much, compromising your dignity by pushing forward where unwelcome, giving unasked for advice, etc. The halfway point may shift moment by moment. A key skill in relating to others is to be, as Carol Anthony puts it (approximately), “attuned to the subtle minutiae of openings and closings in the other person, ready to advance or retreat at a moment’s notice.” From A Guide to the Perplexed Interdimensional Traveler: Meeting Halfway ‚Äî The Touchstone for Relationship At the center of relating well to others, cautiously moving outward from your center of inner independence, is the I Ching principle of meeting halfway (Hexagram 44). Less than halfway would be, for example, to neglect others to whom we are connected by inner ties. More than halfway would be, for example, giving unasked for advice, proselytizing, self-important intervening, lifeguarding others, etc. So if you go to a party and see someone you’re attracted to, but you’re so shy that you hide in a corner and never approach them, then you have met less [...]

Keep secret work secret. Consciousness work should be shared with the worthy — spiritual allies that share your commitment to consciousness. Proselytizing indicates an imbalanced psyche with a compulsive need to get others to share the imbalanced belief system. And even if the belief system you would like to offer is sound, remember what Aleister Crowley said, “If I tell a man something he is not ready to hear, it is the same as if I told him a lie.” Consciousness work is depotentiated if you spill it out to the unreceptive. When a pick-pocket sees a saint, he sees only his pockets. Consider this a propitious time to keep your pearls to yourself, or to share them only with the most trustworthy spiritual allies. Keep it secret, keep it safe.

We all have our blind spots, the areas of perception to which we do not pay attention. This is a propitious time to listen to that which we have not been listening, to see what we would not see, to feel and accept what we were in denial of. When other people are not receptive, however, we should not try to change them and intervene. Instead, we should lovingly withdraw our energy, clinging in our hearts to the image of their highest potential. As Aleister Crowley pointed out, “If I tell a man something he is not ready to hear, it is the same as if I told him a lie.” Expand what you can perceive, but don’t cast your pearls before the willfully unperceptive.

You may never know all the mysterious depths that cause some people to stand so much closer to you than others. There is the often-monotonous carnival of circumstantial acquaintance, and then there are those certain people you are connected to by inner ties. They are like planets with orbits aligning, even intersecting with the orbit of your planet. You need the whole field of relationships, the acquaintances in outer concentric bands, the strangers you have never met in more distant and diffused bands. And then there are those few in the close bands… those connected to you through karma you can’t fully discern, those who light up your eros, those who are spiritual allies that help you to recognize and fulfill your great work, those whom you are called to help on a depth level, those who may be all of the above. All the concentric bands of relationship deserve your mindful awareness. Be the wise alchemist overseeing the asymmetrical and ever-shifting flows of energy happening at each of the bands of concentric relation.

So many things — animate and inanimate — are toxic to us and the only intelligent stance is to keep your distance. Many dangers are not to be overcome but wisely avoided. There is a Native American story about a woman who befriends a wounded snake. She loves it and nurses it back to health. Then one day the snake fatally bites her. In shock the woman slumps to the floor and has the strength left to ask a single question, “Why?” The snake replies, “What did you expect bitch? I’m a snake.”