This month has been very trying on me. Although I’ve diligently continued my magickal exercises, Life has seemed to scheme against me and my endeavors. I’ve been distracted by so many things – the urgencies of love and sex, the need to make a living and do my part to provide support for my wife and child, but above all books – religious and spiritual books, occult books, books on psychology. In following the way of the Probationer, I’ve opened up such a broad spectrum of knowledge to tap into. I feel like I’ve read dozens of books, and I find my thoughts spinning the incompatible premises of a dozen philosophies seeking common ground. I’ve also opened the seeming Pandora’s Box of Enochian Magick. I don’t know if I have this right, but I believe Aleister Crowley referred to this as the Ordeal of Nephesh.
Before a career and family, I had an inner drive to seek the truth of things, to find the answers, to experience what lay beyond what my eyes see. But as time went on, my Doors of Perception have become clouded, and those things have been hard to tap into again. The experiences that I have referred to on this board, and where it has been commented my Astral Eyes were opening was the first of some experiences I’ve had since then. But these feel cursory, fleeting. I know I must work beyond this, and I know due to a vision I had while in a very deep meditation.
The vision was essentially that I saw a stern and very thin man whom handed me a large mirror and cloth. He said to me, “Polish it until it’s clear.” I started polishing the mirror in the vision, but the stains were not easy to remove. It would take time and a lot of work. He also said, “Make sure the stains are gone by the time I come back.”
Thinking on it now, it seems clear to me that my mirror has become very much stained, and it will take a tremendous amount of work to remove the stains. But I also feel this sense of urgency. I feel frustration because I’m 29, and when I was 19 and on, until recently, I felt like I had accomplished so much, and had come so far, but when stacked up against the demands of utility bills, expectations of a career and success, those esoteric things faded into the background. This frustrates me to no end.
I have Astral journeyed into the inner depths of subconscious and seen sights and wonders and beings that I could not begin to find the words for. I have performed an act of telekinesis with two witnesses. I have levitated out of my body, and into the sky, where I had a breath taking birds eye view of all that lay before me. But now I struggle for a glimpse of an astral vision.
This is all an inner demon that has welled up against me though, and I must defeat it, banish it, and once that is done, I am of the hope that all will come back, as if in the rush of a mighty wave. I believed at one time that Heave could be taken by storm, if not in a single raid, then with many.
Until I came into contact with the A A, I have had other teachers around – gurus, charlatans, saints, and pied pipers. I shunned them all, secure in the authority of my direct experiences, as referred to by Swami Vivekananda. I remember coming across a line that stated, “your everyday mind is the Buddha-mind.” How could that be? How could this petty, frustrated, time-bound, everyday mind be the Buddha-mind? The Zen literature I have read and am reading is full of maddening paradoxes. Puzzles too. The koans draw me like magnets. My principle theme has been the destructiveness of self-centered thought: “You are the world. You have created the brutality, the wars, the misery.” The corollary, as I understood it, was: “Therefore you must come to an end.” This ferocious admonition has become my secret mandate: “Die or be damned.”
Is this off track? Am I the hunter or the hunted, the seeker or the sought? Over the course of this month, I have to say that the dream of divine union has become a nightmare of self-persecution.
Not a few days ago though, released by a few tokes of hash, my mind shook off the confines of logic and language and displayed itself in its primordial and superhuman dimension. I don’t know what gave me the strength, during one of my ordeals of taking upon myself the infinity of pain forever, but I decided to face the accuser head-on and say NO. This absolute refusal displaced all thought, and it took the visionary form of a giant rock, golden yellow and suspended in space. I concentrated all I had and the rock exploded without a sound. Pulverized fragments flew in all directions. I was devastated, demolished, so totally that there was no ground left on which to resurrect a defense. In that silence, recognition awoke – of emptiness, of space and boundlessness.
I don’t know what it means, or what it bodes, but these are the happenings of my past month, the visions, the experiences, and the thoughts. I understand that my mirror is stained, but if I can take anything positive from this month, it is that I felt, even if for a brief moment, true emptiness, and maybe that’s enough.
As always, I look forward to your wisdom and insight.