ParaTopics: Segregation, Balance, or Wheat From Chaff?

[Simulist]

I disagree. It really is a spiritual crisis, as per Baraccuda's most recent comment. We are so far gone that the only solution is spiritual. Not in a "let's all hold hands and sing Kumbaya" kind of way, but in a willful redirection of consciousness kind of way. And we are so far behind that the initial acts are necessarily individual, before we can even reconnect in any kind of convivial way. I will be more direct than I was in my last post: a critical step is recognizing that we are living in one of the hell realms. Perhaps not the deepest one, but a hell nonetheless. Happiness is not possible on this plane of existence. Once we accept that fact, other possibilities of consciousness open up.

Slomo, I am very interested in what you're saying here. This is an idea that has been staring me in the face since I was a small child, and I think it's a terribly important idea.

In case you're not inclined to describe this further here (if you are, please do), would you please provide a link or two for those of us who want to explore this idea further?

I'd sincerely appreciate it.

[barracuda]

Take the BP clusterfuck, for example. It is convenient to scapegoat BP, its management, and its execrable enablers at the very highest levels of our government. But the reality is that each and every one of us Americans is to blame. We are the ones that drive the cars, we are the ones that keep buying shit made of plastic, and we are the ones that keep eating the corn-based-HFCS-laden pseudo-food that is made possible by the existence of petroleum. Sure, we've been brainwashed to love our plastic products and have been coerced into living in suburbs, but fundamentally we are complicit in this process. Until we demand at a deep and collective level some different way of life, we guarantee that the oil will keep spilling and befouling Neptune's domain.

I'm not altogether convinced of this. We are slaves to the desires of the transnational corporations and their political enablers, and our choices are strictly limited by those options they wish to present. There is a top-down solution to these problems which it is possible to merely legislate into existence, but for the impasse presented by the obligations agreed to by our "leaders". The masses have voiced their opposition many times to these crimes, (e.g. the worldwide pre-Iraq invasion protests),but they are routinely ignored by an elite with plans and motivations of their own that we are not fully privvy to.

This is not to say that we are immune from or uninfected by the same social sicknesses top to bottom. We are not. But the blame for the BP spill, for example, is hard put upon the "paper or plastic?" consumer whose very life is at the mercy of the trillionaires making affective decisions that superscribe the outlines of the possible for billions of persons on earth. The very floor of the world's oceans were divided up and owned by corporations before most persons on earth had any idea this was even possible.

[slomo]

I disagree. It really is a spiritual crisis, as per Baraccuda's most recent comment. We are so far gone that the only solution is spiritual. Not in a "let's all hold hands and sing Kumbaya" kind of way, but in a willful redirection of consciousness kind of way. And we are so far behind that the initial acts are necessarily individual, before we can even reconnect in any kind of convivial way. I will be more direct than I was in my last post: a critical step is recognizing that we are living in one of the hell realms. Perhaps not the deepest one, but a hell nonetheless. Happiness is not possible on this plane of existence. Once we accept that fact, other possibilities of consciousness open up.

Slomo, I am very interested in what you're saying here. This is an idea that has been staring me in the face since I was a small child, and I think it's a terribly important idea.

In case you're not inclined to describe this further here (if you are, please do), would you please provide a link or two for those of us who want to explore this idea further?

I'd sincerely appreciate it.

I don't have any links. This is my conclusion after at least a decade of meditation on the subject. The cues are subtle, though numerous. Little clues from different sources, some of them intuitive, some of them written down on a webpage, some of them told by "gurus" secondhand through a friend. Great pains are taken to conceal this fact from the general public, and yet for the individual, it is in plain sight, once one or two of the veils are removed. Because of the cognitive dissonance caused by the recognition, most people recoil.

And there is a danger of nihilism once you accept it. What point is there in trying anything if the world is irredeemable? I've been stuck there for awhile, and am just coming out of it. It's as much a cognitive error as any of the other clever traps. There are choices that can still be made after coming to terms with the matter.

[slomo]

Take the BP clusterfuck, for example. It is convenient to scapegoat BP, its management, and its execrable enablers at the very highest levels of our government. But the reality is that each and every one of us Americans is to blame. We are the ones that drive the cars, we are the ones that keep buying shit made of plastic, and we are the ones that keep eating the corn-based-HFCS-laden pseudo-food that is made possible by the existence of petroleum. Sure, we've been brainwashed to love our plastic products and have been coerced into living in suburbs, but fundamentally we are complicit in this process. Until we demand at a deep and collective level some different way of life, we guarantee that the oil will keep spilling and befouling Neptune's domain.

I'm not altogether convinced of this. We are slaves to the desires of the transnational corporations and their political enablers, and our choices are strictly limited by those options they wish to present. There is a top-down solution to these problems which it is possible to merely legislate into existence, but for the impasse presented by the obligations agreed to by our "leaders". The masses have voiced their opposition many times to these crimes, (e.g. the worldwide pre-Iraq invasion protests),but they are routinely ignored by an elite with plans and motivations of their own that we are not fully privvy to.

This is not to say that we are immune from or uninfected by the same social sicknesses top to bottom. We are not. But the blame for the BP spill, for example, is hard put upon the "paper or plastic?" consumer whose very life is at the mercy of the trillionaires making affective decisions that superscribe the outlines of the possible for billions of persons on earth. The very floor of the world's oceans were divided up and owned by corporations before most persons on earth had any idea this was even possible.

Top-down solutions are part of the fundamental problem. They will only beget more monsters. Coercive measures will only dig us deeper into the quagmire. And I should remark that the symbolic gesture of mass protest is a metaphor for coercive action -- the threat of mob violence -- rendered symbolic now because of the neutering effects of modern crowd-control technology. There are other, deeper forms of power. John Michael Greer's most recent post hints at some of this.

It is important, in my opinion, to come to terms with the fact that we are accomplices to our own victimization and enslavement.

[barracuda]

Top-down solutions are part of the fundamental problem. They will only beget more monsters. Coercive measures will only dig us deeper into the quagmire. And I should remark that the symbolic gesture of mass protest is a metaphor for coercive action -- the threat of mob violence -- rendered symbolic now because of the neutering effects of modern crowd-control technology. There are other, deeper forms of power. John Michael Greer's most recent post hints at some of this.

Just a moment...

All this is simply to say that magic, like any other tool, is very well suited to carry out some jobs and completely useless for others. If the troubles faced by an individual or a community are primarily a function of consciousness, magical methods can be extraordinary effective in dealing with them.

...

The difficulty, of course, is that the end of the age of abundance isn’t happening because of changes in consciousness; it’s happening because of the laws of physics.

Here I have to disagree. The end of the age of abundance is a result of years of unspoken and unwarranted luxury and privilege and waste coming to bear on practical aspects of world resources. (Maybe. It may also be simply the fruit of a century of rampant greed by a very few shotcallers.) Either way, this is essentially a problem of community and consciousness. People need to live a different way, and to think about prosperity and life satisfaction in a different way. And so ritual, such as the peaceful union of masses of persons for the purpose of demonstrating the collective possibilities of global cooperation, can be effective to positive ends. Summon a fucking egregoire if you must. Greer's idea that we must accept that the future will be progressively worse than the present is predicated on the idea that the present represents an acceptable paradigm at all. It does not. We have lived through the most wasteful and killing period in the history of mankind for the last hundred years.

It is important, in my opinion, to come to terms with the fact that we are accomplices to our own victimization and enslavement.

So once the original sin is acknowledged, where does that take you? To personal redemption while the world continues to burn at the behest of the Old Ones?

The very paradigms seen as "para" may be the only salvation possible. Thus the urgency felt here at times.

[Simulist]

I disagree. It really is a spiritual crisis, as per Baraccuda's most recent comment. We are so far gone that the only solution is spiritual. Not in a "let's all hold hands and sing Kumbaya" kind of way, but in a willful redirection of consciousness kind of way. And we are so far behind that the initial acts are necessarily individual, before we can even reconnect in any kind of convivial way. I will be more direct than I was in my last post: a critical step is recognizing that we are living in one of the hell realms. Perhaps not the deepest one, but a hell nonetheless. Happiness is not possible on this plane of existence. Once we accept that fact, other possibilities of consciousness open up.

Slomo, I am very interested in what you're saying here. This is an idea that has been staring me in the face since I was a small child, and I think it's a terribly important idea.

In case you're not inclined to describe this further here (if you are, please do), would you please provide a link or two for those of us who want to explore this idea further?

I'd sincerely appreciate it.

I don't have any links. This is my conclusion after at least a decade of meditation on the subject. The cues are subtle, though numerous. Little clues from different sources, some of them intuitive, some of them written down on a webpage, some of them told by "gurus" secondhand through a friend. Great pains are taken to conceal this fact from the general public, and yet for the individual, it is in plain sight, once one or two of the veils are removed. Because of the cognitive dissonance caused by the recognition, most people recoil.

And there is a danger of nihilism once you accept it. What point is there in trying anything if the world is irredeemable? I've been stuck there for awhile, and am just coming out of it. It's as much a cognitive error as any of the other clever traps. There are choices that can still be made after coming to terms with the matter.

In my opinion, you're touching upon the crux of everything we talk about on this site. Also, in my opinion, all roads lead to this.

Because of the religious baggage attached to the terms, words like "hell" (or even "purgatory") can be problematic, but in lieu of better terminology I think it's best to use the word rather than to fail to speak of these matters altogether — which is not only normally what happens, tragically, but is also the preferred course by those who KNOW this fact of the human condition, and also KNOW how to exploit it.

That "great pains are taken to conceal this fact from the general public" is axiomatic, as far as I am concerned — and these "great pains are taken" for many of the same reasons magicians don't want their secrets revealed publicly.

I saw some things as a child that I wasn't supposed to see.

Because of this I remain absolutely convinced — to this day — that we are living inside a great deception. This deception has human perpetrators, obviously, but its instigators are not human. I understand that most people will dismiss this kind of talk (and its messengers) outright; that is to be expected.

Although I'm not sure that this world is "irredeemable," I am absolutely certain that no single one of us is its redeemer — but this "willful redirection of consciousness" you speak of is absolutely essential for everyone concerned, both individually and collectively.

And it is also the single thing that will be opposed with all the might of hell.

[JackRiddler]

Top-down solutions are part of the fundamental problem. They will only beget more monsters. Coercive measures will only dig us deeper into the quagmire. And I should remark that the symbolic gesture of mass protest is a metaphor for coercive action -- the threat of mob violence -- rendered symbolic now because of the neutering effects of modern crowd-control technology. There are other, deeper forms of power.

These concepts require parsing. Does top-down mean the solutions of a small, remote and even secret elite in charge of a single structure dictating to all? Or does it mean forging a vision that encompasses the planet's realities holistically, rather than accepting whatever ceasefire lines the thousand tribes decide make good borders? Those are two different things. Sovereignty of territorial nations is a grand illusion, and anyway its peoples who should be sovereign. Global solutions are the only kind for a fragile species burning its own habitats in so many ways on a small and well-wired planet. It doesn't mean that standardizing every spot on the globe is a solution - that's more the problem. Real solutions will be molecular, not modular, but the molecules will fit into a sustainable whole or die. As for mob action, that's usually staged and wielded, see Kyrgyzstan for today's example. Yet awakened crowd action is a necessary part of any positive solution - see Kyrgyzstan a few months ago for a different example. We need the least likely-seeming agency: a bottom-up global solution with one vision, or visions that complement into a possible, livable whole.

[vanlose kid]

...

I disagree. It really is a spiritual crisis, as per Baraccuda's most recent comment. We are so far gone that the only solution is spiritual. Not in a "let's all hold hands and sing Kumbaya" kind of way, but in a willful redirection of consciousness kind of way. And we are so far behind that the initial acts are necessarily individual, before we can even reconnect in any kind of convivial way. I will be more direct than I was in my last post: a critical step is recognizing that we are living in one of the hell realms. Perhaps not the deepest one, but a hell nonetheless. Happiness is not possible on this plane of existence. Once we accept that fact, other possibilities of consciousness open up.

As for Reiki and physical ailments. Medical treatment on that level of consciousness requires the participation of the patient at multiple levels of awareness, and that is rarely the case, given that most people ultimately invest in the primacy of the physical plane, and are severely conflicted about incarnation. But I have experienced self-healing by means of conscious will power, and been witness to almost miraculous bouts of healing. Because it is rare, unreliable, and institutionally nonviable does not mean that it is not true.

*

[Project Willow]

Why the sideshow here?

What do you mean?

Is not enough that I have expressed a feeling of identification with zoo animals that you must persist? Please, leave off the challenges, I have stated my opinions and my exasperation and its source. I am human.

Those secrets will be less and less important. That's a shame, because so much injustice took place and takes place under those auspices, but short of another Church Committee--and with Obama's More-Bush-Than-Bush Friendly Fascism (assassination lists of citizens? really?), that's not going to happen--it's unlikely that they will be revealed or there be any accounting.

Wow, an entire page of responses in between, but I still feel the need to put this down on record...

I disagree, or rather, that had better not be the case, because it's not just injustices we're talking about here, and they are bad enough, but the development of techniques that allow some humans to have nearly mechanical control over other humans. Paraphrasing myself here, as a species we need to be aware of those techniques, and our vulnerability to them, in order to protect future generations from living in slavery. Knowledge of MC must eventually proliferate and then solidify into folk wisdom, something we all understand and accept about ourselves.

And in response to the other subsequent responses, I agree generally, it appears much else need be transformed as well.

[American Dream]

I have a real problem with how this issue was constructed, in the OP.

It seems to me like it's not simply a question of paratopics per se, but also distinguishing in that group between the good, the bad and the ugly. It would certainly be a mistake to deny that there has ever been anything disinformational in this realm. By the same token, it would also be a mistake to ignore the reality that there are some serious anomalies from the consensus reality and that some instances are backed up by compelling evidence.

So it's by no means a case of all or nothing at all...

[slomo]

Top-down solutions are part of the fundamental problem. They will only beget more monsters. Coercive measures will only dig us deeper into the quagmire. And I should remark that the symbolic gesture of mass protest is a metaphor for coercive action -- the threat of mob violence -- rendered symbolic now because of the neutering effects of modern crowd-control technology. There are other, deeper forms of power. John Michael Greer's most recent post hints at some of this.

Just a moment...

All this is simply to say that magic, like any other tool, is very well suited to carry out some jobs and completely useless for others. If the troubles faced by an individual or a community are primarily a function of consciousness, magical methods can be extraordinary effective in dealing with them.

...

The difficulty, of course, is that the end of the age of abundance isn’t happening because of changes in consciousness; it’s happening because of the laws of physics.

Here I have to disagree. The end of the age of abundance is a result of years of unspoken and unwarranted luxury and privilege and waste coming to bear on practical aspects of world resources. (Maybe. It may also be simply the fruit of a century of rampant greed by a very few shotcallers.) Either way, this is essentially a problem of community and consciousness. People need to live a different way, and to think about prosperity and life satisfaction in a different way. And so ritual, such as the peaceful union of masses of persons for the purpose of demonstrating the collective possibilities of global cooperation, can be effective to positive ends. Summon a fucking egregoire if you must. Greer's idea that we must accept that the future will be progressively worse than the present is predicated on the idea that the present represents an acceptable paradigm at all. It does not. We have lived through the most wasteful and killing period in the history of mankind for the last hundred years.

It is important, in my opinion, to come to terms with the fact that we are accomplices to our own victimization and enslavement.

So once the original sin is acknowledged, where does that take you? To personal redemption while the world continues to burn at the behest of the Old Ones?

The very paradigms seen as "para" may be the only salvation possible. Thus the urgency felt here at times.

I sense that we are coming to the same point from different directions. I don't agree entirely with JMG on his views about magic, but to first approximation that article is correct. The very assumptions that underly the age of consumption (whether or not it can be maintained) are the source of the problem. Trying to extend the age of abundance is an ontological mistake, regardless of whether it is "physically" possible. There really is no "physical" per se, so in a sense all things are "physically" possible. The problem is that the contradictions inherent in maintaining such a reality are ultimately self-limiting.

Regarding original sin and its acknowledgment. Funny you should phrase it that way, because though I call myself neo-pagan, I have been paying attention to the Jesus Christ myth quite a bit lately. The key point from that myth is cognitive resistance. A decision to willfully turn ones attention in a different direction. This is such a powerful idea that (I believe) it had to be corrupted from the outset or else it would have torn this reality apart. In fact, I suspect that it did, and a "Rapture" of sorts has already occurred. We are the souls, the lines-of-consciousness, that have decided to stay. In this regard, PKD was correct (as loony as he was in articulating the point).

[elfismiles]

Why the sideshow here?

What do you mean?

Is not enough that I have expressed a feeling of identification with zoo animals that you must persist? Please, leave off the challenges, I have stated my opinions and my exasperation and its source. I am human.

Fair enough. Sorry Willow. Wasn't trying to phrase it as a challenge.

[slomo]

I disagree. It really is a spiritual crisis, as per Baraccuda's most recent comment. We are so far gone that the only solution is spiritual. Not in a "let's all hold hands and sing Kumbaya" kind of way, but in a willful redirection of consciousness kind of way. And we are so far behind that the initial acts are necessarily individual, before we can even reconnect in any kind of convivial way. I will be more direct than I was in my last post: a critical step is recognizing that we are living in one of the hell realms. Perhaps not the deepest one, but a hell nonetheless. Happiness is not possible on this plane of existence. Once we accept that fact, other possibilities of consciousness open up.

Slomo, I am very interested in what you're saying here. This is an idea that has been staring me in the face since I was a small child, and I think it's a terribly important idea.

In case you're not inclined to describe this further here (if you are, please do), would you please provide a link or two for those of us who want to explore this idea further?

I'd sincerely appreciate it.

I don't have any links. This is my conclusion after at least a decade of meditation on the subject. The cues are subtle, though numerous. Little clues from different sources, some of them intuitive, some of them written down on a webpage, some of them told by "gurus" secondhand through a friend. Great pains are taken to conceal this fact from the general public, and yet for the individual, it is in plain sight, once one or two of the veils are removed. Because of the cognitive dissonance caused by the recognition, most people recoil.

And there is a danger of nihilism once you accept it. What point is there in trying anything if the world is irredeemable? I've been stuck there for awhile, and am just coming out of it. It's as much a cognitive error as any of the other clever traps. There are choices that can still be made after coming to terms with the matter.

In my opinion, you're touching upon the crux of everything we talk about on this site. Also, in my opinion, all roads lead to this.

Because of the religious baggage attached to the terms, words like "hell" (or even "purgatory") can be problematic, but in lieu of better terminology I think it's best to use the word rather than to fail to speak of these matters altogether — which is not only normally what happens, tragically, but is also the preferred course by those who KNOW this fact of the human condition, and also KNOW how to exploit it.

That "great pains are taken to conceal this fact from the general public" is axiomatic, as far as I am concerned — and these "great pains are taken" for many of the same reasons magicians don't want their secrets revealed publicly.

I saw some things as a child that I wasn't supposed to see.

Because of this I remain absolutely convinced — to this day — that we are living inside a great deception. This deception has human perpetrators, obviously, but its instigators are not human. I understand that most people will dismiss this kind of talk (and its messengers) outright; that is to be expected.

Although I'm not sure that this world is "irredeemable," I am absolutely certain that no single one of us is its redeemer — but this "willful redirection of consciousness" you speak of is absolutely essential for everyone concerned, both individually and collectively.

And it is also the single thing that will be opposed with all the might of hell.

Sure, "hell" is just a word. So is "happiness", and I would like to correct an imprecise statement I made in a previous post: moments of joy are possible, even necessary for spiritual health, but the idea of paradise (a word whose etymology betrays a truth, a "walled garden") is a deception.

"Redemption" of the world is a funny concept, because this world doesn't really exist. Axiomatically, hell exists because the people who are there want it. A world that was redeemed would, by definition, not be this world. And yet, I use the word "irredeemable" because it strikes a chord, because it is so very easy to succumb to nihilism while one sees beyond one veil and understands the hellish nature of this world, but before another veil is removed to reveal that the permanence and solidity of this world are entirely illusory.

[elfismiles]

I have a real problem with how this issue was constructed, in the OP.

It seems to me like it's not simply a question of paratopics per se, but also distinguishing in that group between the good, the bad and the ugly. It would certainly be a mistake to deny that there has ever been anything disinformational in this realm. By the same token, it would also be a mistake to ignore the reality that there are some serious anomalies from the consensus reality and that some instances are backed up by compelling evidence.

So it's by no means a case of all or nothing at all...

Yeah, it was rushed. Mea culpa.

[slomo]

I have a real problem with how this issue was constructed, in the OP.

It seems to me like it's not simply a question of paratopics per se, but also distinguishing in that group between the good, the bad and the ugly. It would certainly be a mistake to deny that there has ever been anything disinformational in this realm. By the same token, it would also be a mistake to ignore the reality that there are some serious anomalies from the consensus reality and that some instances are backed up by compelling evidence.

So it's by no means a case of all or nothing at all...

For sure. Which is why I answered "it's complicated". Know your audience, know that the truth is like an onion, and know that some people can only digest some layers. Unfortunate violations of this rhetorical fact may be accidental, or they may be intentional.

All matters of truth require the skill of discernment. All matters of communication require circumspection.