Book Talk, TIGM/es 01

Post 1 in a series related to Edwin Steinbrecher's book "The Inner Guide Meditation."

I may ramble about related stuff or other thoughts through this. But I'm going to walk through my current re-reading of the book (last time was about 15 years ago) and thoughts I have. This stuff is key to the inner work I do -- though in my opinion, the inner work has no real limits and the book of course does -- and key to others understanding more of the down to earth structure of this kind of work, and maybe more of the ideas that it rides in on. Not all of which may be accurate, of course. I don't think anybody has all the final answers.

Re-reading is a dilemma of sorts, though not as much as some books can be. It's like this: on one hand, he is brilliant, and insightful, and has documented important stuff, and is worth quoting and modeling. On the other hand, perhaps because we are not the same person, I don't agree with him on every point.

Most the areas where I start differing, are when I sense that he has a paradigm, or that he created one while thinking he was 'objective' because multiple people were involved in the shared experience-set he used to map out 'what happened, when, where, etc.'. My remote viewing and hypnosis background both lean heavily on the idea that we influence others when we work with them; and that expectations can and will do so; and there is even some evidence scientifically that whomever is in charge of, or considered the expert for, a given group-effort, will have an undue influence on the 'spontaneous experience' that others have--yes, even if those others don't know their views.

You only have to see how a tasker's intent affects double-blind viewing to understand that these things happen without regard to whether other people know about something; energetic connection apparently exists below that. He on the other hand, seems oblivious to this point. So if he is the central person with a given belief, and others intentionally working with his ideas to report back to him for the sake of his work and writing the book, have experiences falling into his existing belief or his own prior experience, he considers this proof that "that's the way it must be for everybody," because he considers the two experiences to be unrelated and therefore objective. I don't.

Steinbrecher was also a serious astrologer, which seems to have given him the tendency to think that there is a map and the options and details and what they mean are the same for everybody, even though 'which' of those details are called varies based on the person. I respect astrology, thanks to a friend I respect very much who has been seriously involved with it for many decades. And I think it is great used in conjunction with shamanic archetype work. And maybe Edwin is right about some of the ways he applies it (eg he insists that what your guide looks like, depends on a specific thing in astrology). But I don't think any 'framework', including that one, should be used to seal the record on what is allowed to 'be' or 'be valid', and in places it seems like that's in danger of happening.

So when I see stuff that I doubt, or feel I've experienced differently, I'll be talking about it.

But it should be stated here in this intro post that I think Steinbrecher did fabulous work with all this, very important work that lets ordinary western folk take a combination of ancient shamanism, jungian psychology, and work it into something anybody can use to directly affect change in themselves and their reality -- the definition of 'magick'.

Israel Regardie wrote of this book:

This book will go down in occult history as one of the most significant contributions to meditation in modern times.

Regardie was probably the most knowledgeable occultist of his era or close enough, and I have respect for his opinion.

Also, he has been in a few of my "deep dreams", the sort that seem more like 'spiritual experiences' than 'dreams' if you know what I mean. So I am biased in his favor for that. I think I only recorded one with him in it, and I couldn't find a date on the doc that google desktop found this in, but here's an example:

The Dream of Israel's Portrait of Alistor
and our Entwining "Tripod of Consciousness"

I was minding my own business. I haven't been even remotely involved with anything related to official magick in some time, I mean as far as reading, talking, studying, practicing goes. So dreaming about it was out of the blue.

Last night I found myself face to face -- close up -- with this painting: a portrait of Crowley.

Not so much that it looked like he ever did; tough to explain.

It was truly amazingly done, it managed to convey a huge amount of emotion and information and depth. Done in thick paints like the days of old, it had real texture as well as visuals. Yet it was dominantly in these odd greens and angles that gave it this rather Saturn-like, weird feeling, a bit of cold, impersonal and unearthly feeling as one of the many overtones.

I turned to Israel (Regardie, who created it) and I said, "Israel, it's beautiful. You've captured so much of his energy it's like the portrait is alive. You always did have such a gift for empathic insight, and this is real art. And yet, I think the greens are partly your own interpretation of him; I would have used less of those, and a bit more deep blues."

And he admitted that was likely the case, and then he reached out for me and we became like long ribbons, or maybe snakes or strings, and we wound around each other like a candy cane all the way out to the ends. It felt so strange, it was amazing! It was like I could feel my (astral?) body just thinning out and wrapping around his in a vortex-like spiral. He was a tremendously warm soul, and he gave me this feeling of real "maturity" is the only word I can put to it; I relaxed into him with a mix of gratitude and sensuousness and decided it had been too long and I'd really missed him.

Later in the dream, after Israel and I had been winding around each other, always going upward, having a tremendously good time (strangely close; not really sexual, I mean we didn't have normal bodies, but so intensely intimate it defies words) Alistor showed up to take a look at the portrait and comment on it.

I had missed him and reached out to him, and he took my hand and somehow was connected to Israel as well when he did. He didn't seem surprised that Israel and I were old friends any more than that he and I seemed to be, and he swirled in with us, and we contemplated the portrait as a "joined tripod unit of consciousness" for a bit.

Then Alistor pulled back so he was an individual and said "Yes, Israel, right about the blues. I see more of them in me than you do, but it's always been that way." And Israel and I directed our long swirled-entwined strings of bodies over closer to the portrait and looked at it again for awhile.

I decided that he is far more understanding of Crowley now than he had been when he was alive; or rather, that he now has fewer personal issues in the way of expressing his insight.

I woke up feeling like I had partly merged with Israel and was now not entirely the same person I had been before I went to sleep.

As trivia, I once had a remote viewing session that has a vague resemblance to one point in this. I was using Win Winger's "Image-Streaming" technique as an experiment on a couple targets.

IS is very good for warmup/state of mind. Horrible for viewing as, like archetype work, it's imaginally-based. RV is greatly harmed by too much of that energy. In fact one reason RV is such a nebulous skill is because like many things, it uses the imagination (and memory) as "the tool for delivery of information", but you want the absolute minimum of imagination (and memory) to be active, ironically. Yet you can't suppress it all or you'd have nothing.

On one side you have memory, and the more you know or even suspect about a target (no matter how subtly), the more memory comes into play, feeding your subtle data based on both static memory and the projections one's analytical mind -- even at the below-conscious level -- create based on that. On the other side you have imagination, and the less you know about a target, the more any data you do get (even if 100% accurate and psychically-derived), because it has absolutely no model, framework, scale, perspective, for the brain to hang something on, the more imagination affects it.

These two polarities of imagination and memory + extrapolation are constantly functioning (as they are meant to do in normal life) through the RV session. The problem is that while these are necessary to functional human life, more than the absolute minimum (it appears) is terrible for RV. One has to hold a state of mind that is kind of 'in the middle' between those points, 'open' and allowing the tools to provide or translate info based on your intended target (for which you have only a random number), yet not going in either direction, and attempting to learn to recognize when you have, when the subtle data is your own translation or assumption, or when it's symbolic etc.

Anyway, in the IS-based RV session, I was sitting back in a recliner, eyes closed, using a tape recorder for data. I suddenly found myself standing right up next to a painting, far too close, and it took me a moment to realize it was a painting because it seemed real for a moment first. The painting was life-sized and had such thick paint it gave a 3D effect. (I had a friend tell me fine old art is like that. But I have only seen prints. I'm sorry I'm uneducated about art. Never lived near a museum or visited, to see 'real' classic art.)

In the painting was a full size skeleton, with one arm up holding something that flashed through rifle/sword/scythe (scythe like the archetypal 'death' carries), and the skull tilted back with the mouth open I felt screaming though in silence. It was shocking, like some archetype work done in a deeply altered state, and I was reacting and literally falling back to escape it so close as I realized it was a painting and got farther away from it, then feeling I was standing on the carpeted, railed balcony of a 2nd story, inside a house or something, looking at it on the wall.

Then I found myself just outside something like a hospital, 'sensed' and only seen in translation like an energy (like an X-ray visual almost, but 3D and subtler), and people were going up the elevator inside it, but many just continued, as if for them the elevator went upward indefinitely.

That was not much data and heavily symbolic, obviously. The target turned out to be the setup for a (in)famous civil war battle. And although it is normal to get data that is key to the existence of a given target (e.g., if the target is welding a WWII airplane, you're likely to get some war data and airplane data before your mind 'settles in' to the focus of some guy up against a metal wall with a welding iron, assuming it ever does), this didn't have enough data to get around to that, so was not any success as a session.

That kind of session in some (not many but some) contexts still might have potential value, but it is neither specific nor accurate about 'the focus'. One of the differences between RV and 'traditional' psi is the very specific targeting (ask a specific question/directive), the specific focus on, to the degree possible, only data which answers that intent (as opposed to 'anything which might be accurate about anything related to this'), and of course that RV is supposed to be done in a double-blind protocol (where neither the viewer, nor anybody with any form of physical proximity to them, knows the nature or detail of the 'intended data' they are to acquire. And in a perfect world, knows nothing about the target 'context' either, but in the real world, sometimes they do). Anyway it was a failure as a session but was still interesting as an experience.

The incredible painting reminds me of that dream. I don't remember the dates but I'm pretty sure the dream came first.

Anyway on my next post I'm going to start at the beginning, and when I run into something I'll be quoting some stuff and writing about it. This is in part my attempt to give more credit to ES and pay more attention to his book than I ever did in the first place. And in my part my attempt to really 'think through' what it is I allegedly believe--and why--and how those paradigms might be, even now, pre-shaping my experiences without my being aware of it.

PS The funny thing about that tripod-of-consciousness dream is that I had completely forgotten about this until writing this. I recently had a super-'lite' version of that... nothing as intense as the dream. And my ex had once told me of this powerful dream he'd had about being three-in-one. But I'd forgotten this one until now. Funny it would come up right after talking about that.

PJ

Auk Sham

Good thing I wrote this down on an e-post-it. I forget everything!

The other day, doing the round, I was with Calmé. This was the day after I'd done lots of merging with her via Marcan. On this day I was paying attention to her more than usual. She has reddish hair, fair skin and freckles, she's half my height and she has wings. Basically she looks sorta like a short Celtic fairy but without the woo-woo element (mostly).

Nero has previously explained that things like this (things like 'wings') is what happens when some aspect of an identity's primary-presentation in the consortium just doesn't match anything else I have an internal model for. I do understand that they (each personal Aeon) are many and which 'identity' I perceive, and the details of how I perceive it, is as much about me as them.

She looked at me closely and said to me with surprising clarity: Auk Sham.

Like she was telling me something. It sounded like "awk shom" but I understood that it was to be spelled like auk sham. I understood she was telling me something about herself and that this was a thing, or a role, or a name, something like that, maybe more than one.

I went googling tonight when I found that note. I don't find anything except this:

In the Gaelic language -- the old Celts coincidentally -- 'Auk' is the name of a large flightless bird (now extinct) from that region, and 'Sham' is a word for 'Friend.' I am pretty certain I didn't know these.

At first I thought, "How could 'bird-friend' be a thing/role/name for her?" and then I realized well ... she is an entity I perceive as half my height and she has wings, right? Maybe some part of her is as much a bird as something else can be a horse.

At the time I was disappointed only to get the two words, as there was this great 'feeling' when I got both the sound and understood-spelling at the same time, and I'd hoped for more of that.

Why Gaelic? Who knows?

PJ

Archmeds on the Heater

Not to complain. OK, to complain. My freaking heater went out. I paid over seven grand for a climate control system about 8-9 years ago. I've had to pay a few hundred bucks a few times now to fix various stuff. And the first night of the long holiday weekend (of course), just as the temperature finally drops to very cold (of course), my heater dies.

So after freezing for just over 5 days, they arrive to check it out and tell me I can either replace the 'heat cage' or whatever it is, or buy a whole new unit. A whole new unit, I know, would be 3-4 grand (recent quote to someone else). So that tells me the price range of the heat thing, if they're suggesting replacing the whole thing as an alternative.

This situation would result in my using a few cheap space heaters through the entire very cold midwest winter and freezing the entire time. This makes me very, very unhappy to contemplate. Very unhappy. Did I mention... unhappy. I actually was trying not to cry about it.

I have a spreadsheet of what to meditate on. I had just finished putting in the Thoth tarot on one page, and the items in our Solar System I want to do archmeds on in another page, and a ton of body parts (a few left to go) in another page. "Obviously," I told IG when the heating guy left, "I need to focus on fixing my life prior to going through a bazillion things as 'standards', yeah?"

"I dunno what I need," I griped. "But my main issue is I want to be warm and I am concerned about not having enough money. Those points need dealing with in an archetype. But you choose whatever is needed for the situation."

So I close my eyes, open up my 'space' from the middle and just walk to the tree on the plateau. IG wants me to be able to 'be anywhere' I feel, so I let her put her me in some kind of pod-thing, and I lay back in it and it closes, and when it's time I open my eyes and sit up and open the door of the pod. I'm sitting in space, in blackness, though I've a sense of various subtle distant things around.

I never know what the heck to DO on archs like that, very frustrating. I did what I did the last time I had one like that: I imagined myself becoming, or becoming aware of, myself as a gigantic energy body that expanded to totally fill that space, and imagined energy-of-me 'cleaning' it all. I had a lot of fuzzies all over while doing this so that seemed ok, but then I didn't know what to do again. I ranted at IG that it seemed stupid and I didn't know what to do. I felt so angry and impatient I could hardly stay still. I know I'm just taking it out on her.

I said, haven't I done enough you can give me another form? I don't like the space arch's! So I find myself back with her and a large medium brown very furry bear-like creature is the arch. I am nice to it and then I pull 'rain of love' and 'light of love' and so on down on both of us, and then I ask it if I can put it on a medical table as I sense it needs some kind of energy work inside, and it agrees. It needs a lot, and I focus on really pouring energy into various parts of its body that felt like they were problematic. I was sorta marveling that I was sending energy through my palms which were held out in front of me palm down, yet I felt it all the way through me in whatever body area I was focused on with him. The 'red dragon' arch had worked a little bit that way as I recalled.

I focused on going into his middle and finding the trace and following the root all the way to core for whatever energy was causing this problem, and healing it at core and then going back up the line as needed until I was at the surface again. By the time I was done (not very long) he seemed a normal size and sorta human and I was going to do the trade objects ritual, but I felt like hugging him and we did a nice body-rush merge at that point.

I wanted to do another archmed -- quick, before the 'manifestation' of the call I get from the HAC owner later with a price, I feel there is more that needs doing -- but felt I had to write this down since I've been insisting I will record my inner work.

{later}

I did another archmed... or most of one... in pieces. I said, this one should be about the 'being cold' and 'being vulnerable and helpless' and 'not having enough money' and whatever else relates. The arch was a person except they had a really big, long head, that was white, and had the weirdest solid-curly-flesh, I have nothing to compare it to. I suppose the more noteable point was that he had an arabic scimitar sword right through the middle of his head, as if someone had put it through his chin (which was abnormally low on his alien-ish yet kinda fishy face) and it was coming out the top back of the head.

I did all the basic stuff for archmeds with him. I shrunk and softened the scimitar and removed it, and dissolved it, and filled the hole with healing energy. I didn't really 'feel' anything though. I had this surprise visual of this big gold round thing sticking out horizontally from a wall, like a table with no legs but higher, and realized it was a giant gold coin, like say 10' diameter. I went to the top of it and it factured into a zillion pieces. Alien-head was getting less fishy and less alien on me and shrinking a little though. Still not human but getting closer.

We were to 'get into something' and holding his hand I took him to the edge and a rollercoaster car came up. We got in, did some swerving and speeding around (I felt that more than any other part so far), then it shifted and we were in a boat floating through some huge, dark but indoor area. Can't remember what happened after that, only that the last time I saw him he was getting pretty close to human, though still the funky solid white skin, and we were merging. I think. I felt a little, not a lot.

Seemed like I need to do a ton more work on this issue but I feel such upset it's hard to focus for it. This whole not having money with major expenses is really setting me off. I'm a renter, but the owner is my dad, and he has no money--he bought the house on sheer credit with me agreeing to do the payments/tax/insurance--so the major expenses that are all arriving with this 60 year old house, like needing to totally replace all water ductwork, totally rewire and ground it electrically, needs a new climate control thing and I already paid a ton for the last one, plus I need a car, and there's other stuff, all this and I have next to no money... it's just freaking me out I guess. I think I'm reacting to this with more than just the emotion of the heater, as if it summarizes every huge damn house expense I cannot begin to afford.

But, that's what meditative magick is for I guess. A new unit I know will cost me $3-4K. They are suggesting I consider that as an alternative to whatever the replacement thing turns out to cost, perhaps due to the unit's age and apparently huge expense anyway... I don't know how meditation can help with this, I only know the energies of my life are better if I let IG give me stuff to work with about it and I sincerely do it, so I'll have to hope for the best.

Seems to me this is the stuff -- the "watching my reality break down piece by piece" -- that archmeds are made to deal with. Of course, just DOING all the meditation/energy work I do, almost guarantees to bring my 'issues' and 'problem energies' up front and center to be 'dealt with'. Here's hoping I can do that... while not freezing to death.

PJ

Aeon Round, 01dec09 & "Becoming"

My 'additional and often newly-dominant perspective' is settling in just fine. I'm not always aware of it, but sometimes. I have the feeling that over time I will have this same effect but, of course, in very different ways, different energies. I also have the feeling that I'm lucky it is so specific, clear, limited and recognizeable; that it might not always be. I just "want to be aware" so badly, I think that's driving being-so.

It's a common thing that my kid eats hers and my food too if it's yummy, or the-best-of or biggest-of whatever we have to share. This is a given and kind of constant. It's a mom thing. I'm biologically hardwired to feed her and to put her first food-wise. Never mind that she is not remotely starving and it's simply allowing her selfishness now, the dynamic still lives.

Up close, she is spoiled, I am told. Single mom, works from home, very close. I let her walk all over me, I know that. I "don't mind" because I love her so, but the few observers close enough to us have mentioned it with some concern. It affects her personality too of course, not in the positive, when her primary/main associate, mom no less, pretty much "lives to serve" her, seldom complains even if she is somewhat unfair, demanding or selfish toward me. (Or complains but doesn't act on it.) Now at age 13 it's time she got through that. But 13 years of habit is a lot.

We are in the kitchen and she has her food. I have my food. She wants extra, the 'best of' what I've got, and giggling carelessly she is diving into it with her fork despite my protests. Then I feel the change inside: different perspective is dominant, now I-as-body am acting on that. I whack her hand away from my food, not hard enough to hurt (she laughed) but hard enough to mean business, and her laughter abruptly stopped when she realized I was serious and not playing around. More than that, I wasn't emotional or focused on that or her; I wasn't mad. I was simply intolerant of the behavior. It is MY food, she cannot have it, back-off, nearly like watching cats eat. I had already carelessly returned to eating when she stopped and stared at me. She was clearly put out and surprised, not just that I did this but how I acted 'around' it -- that I didn't even care enough about her response to need to BE mad to do that.

Here is the point, it isn't the trivia of this incident: the amazing part is, I did not care. You have to understand that I have more "artificial guilt" than any human alive. I feel pre-guilty about things I won't even do. I "take on" guilt for pretty much everything in my universe including things I am literally the victim of. I think it's one of the side effects of my childhood. It's a fairly overwhelming effect in my life, one my few close friends have pointed out to me more than once and that I have seen do me consistent harm for eons.

But for the first time, I felt NO guilt. Not just no guilt that I wasn't sharing. Not even just no guilt that I'd whacked her hand away. But recognition that she was shocked and a little insulted and hurt - and no guilt at all about THAT either. "None" to the point where I did not even care to bother to say anything, to smooth anything over, to explain, nothing.

It was my food and my right. It was not her food or her right. Her behavior was inappropriate and injust. It was not allowed in my reality because it shouldn't be.

Any I felt NO guilt whatsoever. I swear this may be the first time in my life, certainly in the 13 years of hers, that I have been so FREE of the constant, crushing sense of chronic-guilt. It's actually such a huge shift that it has taken me days even to realize what it IS, it's that big.

I realize now that this is affecting me life-wide, internally. Not saying I'm totally over 100% of it or anything. But a really significant chunk of that neurosis -- for that's what that is -- has simply vanished. Like some part of me just suddenly stood up and accepted permission for defending my reality, my territory, whatever.

Yesterday evening she chose, as usual, to come sit on my bed with me and watch some SG-1 episodes on hulu. I had other things to do on my laptop but wanted to spend some time with her. On nights where I work the next day that's limited and I give her priority. Well, lately but often in general, she has this thing where she comes into my room but then decides how I get to live the few hours I have before bedtime. Whether it's what she wants to watch, or whether the light must go off as she wants to fall asleep beside me, or the climate control temp, or whatever. It is a long-term minor frustration for me that it's MY room, she has her own, she even has the heater in hers while our main system is being fixed, and I argue, this is MY life, go to your own room if you don't want to do what I want to do, but she is insistent and I usually give in, just because I love her and want her to be happy.

So we finish an episode and she climbs under the covers and turns over. "Turn it off," she demands. "I want quiet for awhile." "But I want to watch!" I say. "I just want quiet for awhile!" she insists. "Look, it's my room, and I do NOT want quiet. Go in your own room if you want to sleep or whatever. I stopped what I was doing so we could watch this. But I'm not going to sleep or be sitting in silence in my own room in what little time I have in my life. You want quiet, go to your room." This was just the normal-me but vastly more "push-back" than I usually give her.

She snapped something about wanting SILENCE! and turned over in a pout. And it was like my New, Improved Evil Twin took over. I'm teasing--no, it doesn't feel like that--but I felt the 'shift' in which 'perspective' took 'dominance' at that point. And, with a hilarious sense of humor suddenly -- and feeling almost like a big brother in some way -- I did this high funky voice of the line in that 60's song, "Silence is Golden, Golden!" which struck me as so funny. She bellowed at me to stop it and be quiet, and I said, "Hey, that's a good old song. I think I'll find it on grooveshark!" and I proceeded to loudly sing the chorus as I found it -- and many other Frankie Valli songs like "Sherry" and "Walk Like A Man", all similar male-soprano chorus riffs -- and started the playlist.

She leaped out of my bed, whirling around angrily at me -- and looking like she really just couldn't believe it. Couldn't believe I would be so 'inconsiderate to her' or whatever. And she snaps, "I'm going to MY room!" like it's a punishment of me or something, and I said, "OK!" with a big smile and continued singing along. With another look at me like she'd never seen me before in her life, she stomped off to her room and mildly slammed the door.

And I laughed to myself in some humor. Not laughing 'at', just laughing because it was so fun to find that music again and sing with it, and I did not care about her angst. I didn't feel the slightest bit of guilt about it, NONE. Normally even if I (incredibly rarely) stood up for myself in that way, I would feel so badly that she and I fought even briefly, I would try to convince her to come back or to not be mad, or I would just feel guilty all night. But I had none of that. I simply did not care at all because it was my right, period. Like there was no other consideration; her behavior was injust and my space and time are my own to choose.

It's more of that 'ruthless absolute decision' but the word ruthless is so wrong. It has such a negative connotation. It isn't negative. It's just... it just IS. It's so clean. It isn't surrounded by feelings of diplomacy or gentility or gradual ramping up of response. It's like just a 'surgical strike decision' and then it is over. Totally bloodless and instant.

In a weird way it's like being suddenly released from chronic pain. Like you've so adapted to living with it that when it leaves you are shocked over and over again to realize it's gone. Even though I realize that the chronic guilt is a bad thing, a wrong energy, a terrible burden I've had my whole life, even though I can feel that this has only dealt with some of it or in some areas of life -- still, it feels surprising over and over to realize it just isn't here. Like I keep waiting for the kickback of guilt to kick my ass and it's nowhere to be found.

I don't know what or who I am becoming, but I feel that this is healthy.


The Aeons round tonight was fine--by default this is not exciting. I took some extra prayer time on a few. And a whole bunch with Nedlund, still begging that I want to understand his role.

But when I got to Nero, I was mostly through the mantra when I suddenly realized I had this offbeat thing in my head and I must be daydreaming. I went to discard that when it occurred to me that it wasn't by accident. That this was from Nero somehow, not like 'communication' but more like 'presentation' of some literal thing/energy/being.

But it was hard to wrap my brain around. Something about some person or creature that had no 'automatic healing/regeneration ability' and was a bit wounded. My brain kept trying to get away. I would "hold myself" as if my eyes were closed and I had a rope tied to Nero and the concept but my brain would go blank for a bit, and I would just have to 'stay still' until like a cycle, my brain's ability for active attention returned, and I would evaluate where I was, what I was doing, look at it more carefully, it would expand, and then that space-out cycle would begin again.

I wonder if this is what is happening when I literally pass out, though wide-awake, in the middle of meditations sometimes. My brain just cuts out. I just kept "holding on in the dark" waiting for my 'awareness' which seemed to have just dived out of reach somewhere, to swing back around, and when it did, I would accomplish as much as I could before I could feel my "ability to concentrate" literally vanishing ultra-fast and I would just "hang on in stillness" -- so I would not wander mentally when this happened -- until attention returned.

That is hard to explain but it feels incredibly important that I've gotten aware enough to be able to realize it's coming on, "hold still" until it sort of passes, and then continue. It reminds me of the problems I used to have in archmeds with 'getting lost in bizarre daydreams' until I realized they were 'dreamlings', like physics bubbles popping into existence, dealing with energy, then vanishing, and I had to learn to 'anchor' myself so that the instant it was over I would be where I should, get fast awareness of what I was doing, and be able to continue.

Eventually there was a whole 'people' that had this curious issue of being slightly wounded but unable to auto-heal like we do. But the people felt "small" in a metaphysical way. Although this came through as small like tiny, like I could hold the lot of them as if they were a few chess sets that all fit in my torso, I understood that the 'smallness' was like an entity smallness. Wait, how to explain this...

I have met entities that spanned only one or a few... 'layers'. Dimensions? I don't know what it is. It comes out like 'layers of frequency' in my perception that are crazy 'thin' and there are infinite numbers of them. I (we, as human) span a LOT of those. We're much more powerful than 'elementals' that have a very singular, limited focus (in at least some cases), and it relates to our spanning so many more layers. I can't tell you how or why, that is just how I have perceived it.

Anyway, there is a sense of small that entities from a small span of layers have in my perception. It is not 'small' in physical size, but that is the only translation the logical brain has.

It is active for things 'here' too sometimes. I once (several times actually) "heard" the thoughts of a spider. It actually felt like a teeeny tiny little whisper, incredibly "small" and from so far away in some 'so much deeper in the local layered onion' way, not in a vastly-distant way. It was normal for them but something about the "relative power" of our perspective, and my left-brain translation of the difference in energy, makes it seem "small".

This was much bigger than that. But still very small compared to me.

Anyway. Nero brought 'into' me -- I had to accept this to make it happen -- what seemed like an entire people, though maybe not human just 'beings', though there was only maybe a few dozen, all of which were mildly wounded and needed healing but were unable to heal themselves for some reason, like their nature simply did not build that in the way ours does.

I asked for the Four and as-one we sent a whole bunch of energy to deal with this fully and all at once, rather than it taking eons of my trying to perceive and heal them one at a time. After a bit of time -- me hyperventilating at the power required that I had to allow and direct, and a variety of rushing feelings during -- I felt it was done.

Then I continued on, finished the round and that was that.

I have no idea what that means. But I trust Nero must have had some good reason for it and I have pointedly offset all kinds of resistance, protection, etc. on purpose in prayer with him in my effort to really allow whatever is necessary for us to most-fully integrate.

It hadn't occurred to me until today that such a thing could or would happen. I mean that literally in the middle of my mantra with a given Aeon, that they could kind of... bring in a whole experience, almost like an archetype meditation kind of experience in a way.

PJ

Looking Everywhere But Here

You have my permission to laugh at me about this. I am SUCH a dork!

So I was talking about how, a few days ago, I got very frustrated about how I just don't find 'corroboration' of my weird 'the Four' and 'the Consortium' experiences anywhere, still don't know where it comes from or why it's so incredibly consistent for 15 years now, etc.

I had ordered myself a book I got several days ago (Multidimensional Mind: Remote Viewing in Hyperspace, by Jean Millay), had read a tiny bit and put it down. I put off reading it further so instead, I could do a couple days of googling about the above in my sudden wish to see if I could find anything that might make me feel a little better about it. After two days of a ton of complex, confusing and assumptive stuff, I was grouchy and not much helped at all.

The irony is, I was about 4 pages in my book from coming on this following text. Which was perfect timing; my desire would have felt like I called it up (as often happens when I am reading books). I even FELT like I shouldn't really be doing the googling. But did I go back to reading? Noooo. Ironically one of my friends/clients is a founder of this school and field, which probably would have made me pay even more attention to this. But I was ignoring my gut and my book both, so I missed this until now. Emphasis in original text:

At the International Transpersonal Psychology (ITP) confererence in Prague in 1992, one of the founders, James Fadiman, PhD, [...] reviewed some of the historical theories about personality, such as the idea that we are a single unified being; the idea that there is no self; the idea that we are merely a collection of behaviors; or the idea that we are all multiples. Dr. Fadiman said:

There is a model of the mind which seems to fit both historical experiences of every early people and seems to fit the experiences of most people I meet (except for psychologically trained professionals). [Ed. note: There is much laughter from psychology professionals present.] And the model is that *we are multiples.* Pantheism is a representation of our internal state, and it is not a surprise that psychiatry has used the Greek myths to suggest many aspects of the self because the Greek Pantheon is a more normal representation of who you actually are. So the self, I suggest, does exist. It is not unified. It is a collection of personalities. And the model says that if you work on yourself for many, many years, and take psychedelics, and go to India, etc. etc., that you will become a collection of selves, not unified, but that the collection of selves will be better behaved and you will get into less trouble.... When I listened to Ram Dass's talk, and heard about the demons that used to be large and dark and now are small and friendly, it suggested that as one improves in mental health, one gains a better understanding of the totality of one's multiplicity and is more likely to have the correct Being at the correct time. ...

The other thing that I keep totally boring my friend on the phone about is my brain-crunching over Nedlund being about 'sound', and my trying to imagine the different kinds or levels of 'sound' that make up my experience/self/reality. In the book is this really big scale of sound, never seen anything like that before, very cool.

I mean seriously, I would have considered the book and its timing to be totally synchronous, more than coincidence, right in line with my inquiry of the moment. If I had been reading it, like I'd planned to be. But since I was busy ignoring my gut feeling and googling instead... well I guess that is a good example of how reality experience can differ so greatly at one point, based on some seemingly trivial decision made at another point!

PJ

Identities in the Inner Realm

In spontaneous experience, inside meditations, dreams, mixed states or sudden visions, over the years (mostly since 1993) I have come to accept that 'I' am composed of a "merged multiplicity", and in turn am part of a larger merged identity where I am just one of the parts, as well.

I sometimes see indirect or "philosophical" reference to this concept but I have no doctrine or model I am following, only my own sometimes confusing experiences.

I avoid being too cerebral in my studies of spirituality as I am prone to get over-lost in the intellectual and that is a weakness for me. So I've learned to avoid it, in an effort to "live" vs. "think-about-living." So if there is validating info related to my experiences, buried in obscure metaphysical tracts somewhere, I have not yet come upon it.

I would love to meet others who may have similar experiences. I blog my thoughts and experiences mostly because I have a surreal problem with forgetting things in this genre very quickly, but also in the hope that someday, Google willing, others with similar experiences may chance on me.

I also have other identities and places "in my inner world" that my meditations work with. Or, that are a part of my inner cosmology for some reason. I am making this page to outline all these things in summary, as a reference. You can click any term below to 'jump' to that entry, or scroll.

The Four
The Aeons (aka The Consortium)
Inner Guide
Archetypes
The Teks
The Blue Eyes of Soul
The Private Oracle
Deities

Related Overview Files:
A file discussing the various 'environments' I work with:
History & Environment Review
A file discussing my various meditations:
Personalization, Archmeds, Healing, Realitymeds
A file discussing the various 'identities' I work with:
Identities in the Inner Realm (here)
An alphabetical table of contents of the myPsiche blog:
Alpha Table of Contents

The Four

In Nov 1993 in sudden all-consuming "visions", I met another "me." A simultaneous identity slightly 'larger' than mine, sharing the same "source." Same energy via different interface (different person in a different realm). He was having a spiritual awakening, which 'sparked' me by inner proximity. I call him "my mate" or twin though it's as much brotherly as loverly.

I 'sat in' with him as he pursued a female he loved, and there was a man she in turn sought. They are a higher/older set, with us the lower/younger set. He and I 'merge', and they 'merge', and then the result merges (two sets of two into one) into what seems an identity both singular, yet inclusive of all our individual awarenesses. (The two merged identities also seem to exist.) I am the 4th of Four. (Although if you count the two merged and the one result, I guess technically we are seven. A bit confusing!)

I call us "The Four." I am aware when 'with' them that I am always with them; only my surface-identity attention to being so is occasional. A good deal of the awareness in my daily life seems to depend on how much effort I am making to be aware of my presence with them, and whether I'm doing this in an altered state and really 'allowing' it. I am often resistant.

• The Senior is a tall dark man who is the most powerful and aware and the authority. I don't perceive him clearly unless he wants me to. He is capable of radically affecting my body. On occasion when something in the inner world is overwhelming he steps in to help.
  
• The Queen is a tall woman with long black hair and a long skull. She is 'Spiritual Royalty' and mate/twin to the Senior. I've had past-life dreams where she is dominant in a body and I function as her guide. I often perceive her in Egyptian contexts.
  
• My Mate/Twin once told me he is Noshaimus whatever that really is. I have met him in faery/alien contexts a couple times also. He has white-blond hair and unusually blue, large slightly tilted eyes. He feels like a brother, lover and soldier/priest and I'm closest to him.

I've never gotten anything like names for them, possibly because, as they showed me, each of us have so many different forms (lives/species), as if we are, individually, each a surprisingly large and complex group-soul.

I sometimes perceive us, each two in a gender, as black and white, like polarities. (This seems to relate to a period ('94) when for awhile I perceived everything in polarities and the understanding that these were the same thing.)

When I first really met the Queen, I understood we had 'every possible relationship' with each other that can exist between female humans in my world. One time when we Four were all merged, large white ball-spheres of light (chakras?) within us lit up, and one a little below our feet and above our heads, and then all but the top and bottom one "expanded into 3-D" as multiple spheres and I recognized it as the QBL Tree of Life. I 'grokked' that we compose the universe between us in some literal energetic fashion.

I may have mystical experiences with archetypal symbols when with them. E.g.: high in a mountain cave I am on the ground and the Senior is my doctor beside me. He/mate push me at rapid speed down tiny winding cliff trails in a rickshaw and at bottom lay me into a small flattish boat with my hands crossed on my chest and push me off into a river. Or: the first time I met my twin, he 'claimed his power' and a woman who is also a golden (metallic) bird [one form of the Queen] put a golden cloak on him so bright we couldn't look at it. Some experiences with the Four have this quality of profound with ancient symbols. When I meet my mate one on one, it feels shamanic. But when I encounter the Four of us together, it feels (and the Senior/Queen feel) impactively 'holy'.

I once had a dream that they also had identities 'here' in my reality, though they externally were nothing like the version I meet on the inside. I don't know if that was just a dream or if that might be so, I've never had any other indicator of such a thing. The Senior and the Queen, although I accept that I am part of them, they are on the edge of 'deity' for me, as they feel so "holy" when I am close to them.

Once a few years ago in powerful dreams each of the other three were crucified and I didn't see them for a year. It was horribly traumatic. A year later when I saw them again I bawled at length, begging them to never leave me again. So apparently I have become quite enmeshed with them as more than just a metaphysical model. It was some time after they had returned that they introduced me to what seemed like "the next ring outward" of what composes 'us' particularly 'me'.

I have not seen this kind of modeling elsewhere -- being one of four and that being a larger identity. I vary between not caring that this seems unique to me, because it is real for me and that's what matters, vs. looking for anything which seems to validate such an odd idea.

I once had the feeling that verse 1:51 of Liber al vel Legis somehow symbolically referred to the Four, but of course anything with that number tends to seem like that. The Thoth tarot and its many spheres and cherubs that are light and dark reminds me of it in many places.

I might add that the first time I ever saw a tarot deck it was Thoth, and I understood that Adjustment was "my" card. (I found that nearly disappointing, as I'd heard new-age sorts go on about this, all with much more glorious titles.) I once attempted to work this as an archetype, but it was very difficult for me; I need to attempt it again.

The Aeons (aka the Consortium)
(initially I called it the Coalition)

In 2006-2009 the Four in the Tower brought me a group of new people and I was to 'integrate' with them as part of me. They each had several bright little lights in them I perceived like a constellation, as if all of them added together created the solar system of me (Every man and every woman is a star), a sort of brain-cracking literal-ness to that idea. I was for some reason shocked and felt hugely threatened by this, clinging to my twin in avoidance, and I resisted it greatly.

I met one 'identity' spontaneously and he turned out to be one of them, which opened me to the idea... only a little. I resisted interacting with them so much I ended up wandering the rooftop and avoiding going inside the tower lest they be presented me again. So they started showing up on the rooftop and I stopped going to that area entirely.

Then my inner guide started giving them to me instead of archetypes to force me to meet them. It's the only thing I've ever specifically requested and had her say "no" to me about, was my asking her to stop; she said I needed to meet them and begin interacting with them and there was 'something of a timeline'. There turned out to be 12 total. When it was done and no more seemed to be coming I realized there were 12 total. I had got that it was a multiple of 4 but I had thought it might be 16.

Ironically, once I had met them all and begun a tentative working with them, I started falling in love with them, and now I think of them often, and do a rosary-style mantra with them daily, and often have dreams and meditations and spontaneous experiences or insights with them. They are each quite different. Some I am integrated with and comfortable with much more than others so far. There are 8 male and 4 female although I'm not sure that is relevant to anything. Their names were sometimes hard to perceive or were corrected over time. They are:
(I don't pretend to understand their focus (or names).) This is the order I do the 'round' (a rosary-style mantra) in.

• Ithikah (6.5-7' tall male. Mostly "shapes felt within me".) Focus: public perception
• Bolehren (an ordinary young woman with long brown hair, brown eyes.) Focus: insight for internal issues, personal relationships
• Taan (tall male with huge sense of humor). Focus: both my and the world's perception of my body, and general body-energies
• L'Anna (blonde woman.) Focus: doctor/healer
• Ray (short, very strong man). Focus: don't know.
• Marcan (dark haired man). Focus: creative work and psi work.
• Hot Amanakhaton (a huge statue in physical form, like the egyptian things, but an entity/identity.) Focus: don't know.
• Jared and El Nino (a centurion and his black horse) (they are 'one' somehow). Focus: don't know.
• Calmé (a short winged female, faery-like.) Focus: don't know.
• Laelee (says her energy has no easy equiv in body. Is female.) Focus: don't know.
• Nedlund (male. I've only seen eyes so far.) Focus: 'Sound'.
• Nero (male, dark shaggy hair, strong nose.) Focus: I don't know. I am closest to Nero so far though, who was the first I met consciously.

I have gradually come to feel that they compose me. I mean that all 12 of them are individual identities in one or probably many human lives of their own, however, when all 12 of them join together, the singular identity resulting is "me" (I am the 13th that is the 'result'). The more % of them I am able to consciously integrate with, it feels like the more of me is clear and powerful. By the way when I say 'me' I don't just mean the body-me of the present, I mean a larger, more complete 'me'. Parts of that me are merged with a nature spirit (body) symbiote and that resulting joined personality my online friends call "PJ". That is my 'interface' but 'I' am a larger self.

I called them the Coalition at first (as it seemed like a petition to join me) and then The Consortium (as it seemed like a diverse group that made joint decisions). They sometimes talked to me, in a way I could only relate to "guides" as I have read now and then, so I called them guides for awhile, but promptly began to understand that the guides I do have (outer and inner) are something quite different in nature. Every time I wondered what to call them I got the term "Aeons." This made no sense to me as that is a time-span not a thing. (...and it made me sound stupid.) It happened so many times though, I gave up and began calling them my Aeons.

Later, when googling to see if I could find any references to my spontaneous experiences, I discovered that 'Aeons' is a term used in the old Sethian Gnostic religion. Something like what they called some deities. I have no part of that religion and know nothing about it besides the wiki stuff I found that day. So, it's just a coincidence of terms I guess.

Inner Guide

In the interior world, there is a shamanic discipline that allows a creative yet semi-autonomous interaction between a person and ... other identities. Primarily "archetypes." The imagination is the "tool" through which information and this interaction is happening. But although the individual initially is 'helping' this creativity until they begin to 'allow' it, once some fluency is developed and especially when done in altered state, they are not 'creating' it consciously. The identities and even environments range from slightly to fully 'autonomous' in the interaction, although the person can intentionally create as they choose. There are several traditions for this kind of work, the best known being Jung's 'active imagination' approach. Done well these are amazing, surprising, truly exceptional experiences.

These can be powerful to the point of mind-blowing, they can radically alter your reality overnight, and in some unfortunate cases it can be fairly dangerous to health and sanity to go it alone. A few decades ago Edwin Steinbrecher, an astrologer and occultist, had the idea to "look for a guide" in that realm just as he'd been looking for archetypes, as he'd had a bad experience and wanted protection and guidance. He found one, an identity which he named "Inner Guide" and I call "IG". After years of his own work and sharing that of others, he discovered certain predictable qualities that an IG would have (it would look and act like their 9th Koch house astrology qualities) and sequences that people would have with them (eg the first 3 are male, the 4th is female). He wrote a book called The Inner Guide Meditation that is well worth reading (I have some notes on it, click on 'book talk' in my tags). Israel Regardie wrote the foreword.

IG knows all. It's difficult to explain this entity and relationship except to say that while my first three IG's started out difficult to perceive and a little uncomfortable, they ended up with great affection, the third I had such great love for I wouldn't let go for a long time, the Four had to come make me, and I bawled like a child about it. I'm currently on my 4th IG, a female I am completely adoring of, who is wildly creative and I consider one of the best things ever to happen to me. I do not know precisely why or when they change and a new one arrives, only that I hope I get to keep this one for a long time more.

IG is the arbitrar of the inner realm. He/She can control anything there, guide and protect. I used to ask for specific archetypes, and sometimes still do, but now that I know IG better I just whine, gripe, complain, wish, rant, or otherwise convey my feelings to IG and then ask her to come up with whatever "creative composite of energies" that would make the best archetype to work with. The experience with her has been different than previous IGs in some respects, the archs and environs are often far more complex and difficult to figure out how/what to do, but cooler in some respects too.

Because IG is not only the guide for my archetype work, but originally brought me the Aeons and can manage everything in that realm, I tend to talk about "IG" a lot both directly and in passing. I suspect that IG is a part of the-larger-me, but I'm not sure. In any case it is a "named Entity" that anybody can find if they're open to it.

Archetypes

I began my active-meditations via "archetype meditations" (with Inner Guide, above). An archetype in my somewhat expanded definition is any identity, and identity is "an arbitrary collection of consciousness assigned a title". However some collections are more-often-collected and seem to have a great deal more innate 'power', such as Tarot trumps, Constellations and planets, and probably any other culturally-common and ancient way of 'dividing up the energy of the universe' such as the Tree of Life, the i Ching, etc.

Most archetype work I do is not on the standard archetypes mentioned but on personal archetypes, based on events, people, situations and feelings in my immediate reality. In my paradigm, "experiential reality" is an outer reflection of inner energetic relationships. So I "go inside" and work with the energy from there. Examples might be my archetypes of: My relationship with a person; my success at a coming event; my problems with a given person, situation, issue, etc.; any pain, illness, injury, etc.; as well as cultural models that represent certain energies I feel may have issues in my reality (e.g. 'Mars' or 'The Knight of Wands'). There are some archetypes that seem to have a strong positive relationship with me right from the start (e.g. 'the Sun') and some that were problematic (e.g. 'Saturn' when I was 29 years old).

The archetypes themselves may sometimes be difficult to perceive (you can improve that with effort), may be hostile, may be gross or wounded or mutated or bizarre, in my case they are not usually human and may be objects, machines, alien-ish, creatures, environments, or offbeat combinations (eg a collection of cubes). There are repeating symbols or elements that one learns to understand. Archs that are dusty are energies neglected; dirty-sticky dust is repression; wounds and deformities represent problems with clarity in the energy relationship; fish-related stuff seems to relate to natal stuff for me, and insect-related stuff represents fear; blackness esp. combined with insect qualities usually means profound fear and suppression ("spiders in the gooey dark"); things difficult to see I don't have a good rapport with, things huge and with very large teeth, claws, etc. are usually problematic... you see most of this is pretty intuitive. If your archetype is a hostile claw-teeth-fiery dragon 2 miles high there's probably some energy needing work there. If your arch is a disgusting black pit of muck with crawling insects, that needs some real work. On the other hand if your arch is a normal person or something you find lovely, and you hug them and "merge" with rushing feelings through your body, then your relationship with that energy is pretty good.

When the meditation is done you usually 'trade' something on or in the body to begin a 'sharing' of energy, if you are not to the point of being able to 'merge' with the archetype. Inner Guide will bring, and remove, the archs as you request. IG can also just give you archs you most need to work with... you may or may not be able to get what they are from her or from them.

The Teks

I have over time come up with several other kinds of meditations. 'Reality Meds' are based on geometries/shapes. I have a 'Control Center' and a 'Cleaning Room' and a general room, and all of those are staffed by an identity(s) I call "Tek". They sort of overlap in energy but are slightly different from one another, but I call them all Tek.

The Blue Eyes of Soul

Back in '94 after meeting the Four and some other things, I had an experience of "Nothingness" that was really pretty horrible. I came very close to committing suicide as a result of it (I am just a walking corpse without the God-light inside me, I wrote in my journal back then). Just as I was getting to the worst point some time after that, I met an entity. He was "my core" -- I didn't have any other way to describe it. I mostly focused on his eyes and the feeling that unlimited love was pouring through my middle and that I was not alone, could not possibly ever be alone, and so on. Crying in relief and joy doesn't begin to describe it. I felt a state of worship for him, he was the holy center. I have not met him like that since that day, but feel amazed and honored it ever happened at all, and hope sometime before I die I might get another opportunity.

Later after all this, I discovered that much of my experience (at least prior to The Four and The Aeons) was almost embarrassingly predictable. It fit a well known set of development stages in occult studies, or so some people reading my accounts later told me. The Nothingness horror that seemed to "vacuum out my insides" for a long time, they called that "The Abyss". The geometric 'kinesthetic soul language' that WAS the-thing-itself they called "The Angelic Language." The blue eyes of soul, my loving holy core-of-self, they called "The Holy Guardian Angel" or "HGA." Frankly I imagine it would have been easier if I had known all this prior to the experiences, as everything has always seemed "out of right field" and shocking and confusing to me instead. But I think most of my most impactive experiences (those that don't fall solely into psi, ufology, psychology, or other categories) are pretty yawningly-predictable. I don't think the Four and the Aeons are though as I don't hear about this from anybody else.

The Private Oracle

An entity I'm fond of named Seth, who wrote a few books via channeler Jane Roberts, has many 'exercises' one can do experimentally. One thing he suggested was that everyone had something called 'The Private Oracle'. Out of casual curiosity one day I started talking to IG about it, but he was right there. Very communicative. I haven't really had any specific questions since the first day I met him, but I am hoping to utilize his input in the future.

Deities

Intellectually, for me god was long ago reduced to some nebulous dust of lack of clear definition, some cross between everything and nothing. But subjectively, I have always, since I can remember in earliest childhood, had an unshakeable acceptance of God as a singular identity with which I could have my version of a relationship. A skeptic when I grew up, I even tried to be an Atheist for awhile, until I realized I was daily apologizing to God for not believing in him, and I laughed at myself and became an official Agnostic, praying "To Whom it May Concern" for quite awhile. Now I guess I am best called a Gnostic (I am part of two metaphysical churches, one of which has the term 'Gnostic' in its title, so I guess so).

I will admit that intellectually I am biased and reactive to religion based on my rejection of what man has done with it, which sometimes interferes with my clear thinking about the entire "ball of wax" including the entities and deities which come in that bundle. One thing I can say clearly though is that I believe sincere regular prayer to God, concerning entities and parts of self one meets, personal intent and life plans, are invaluable. I don't think it matters whether there is some objective validationg to God-as-a-single-identity. I think our spiritual technology as beings is via "personalization" and that "personal relationship" is critically important.

As far as other-deities go, I have encountered "religious entities", including Jesus, Mary, and Archangel Michael, and I have only honor for them despite that my intellectual beliefs don't match any official religion that validates them. I put my Senior and Queen in the "semi-deity" category, although they are not such large robust thoughtforms as far as I can tell as those mentioned, but they are still definitely "holy".

Other

Once in awhile I encounter archetypes or entities that I don't have a clear category for. My archetype of Responsibility (interpret that as 'True Will' in a way), when I was having trouble in an archmed once, talked to IG briefly and then brought me two light-beings he called "The Angelics." They are not Angels. But they are 'the archetype of Angels'. They are still very helpful to me in meditations and now I often call on them.

I have 'outer guides' that I perceive around me on my plateau inner space. I had one I saw 100% clearly, but I released him a short time later. I have one called Stet that I know helps with my daily physical reality but I don't tend to commune with him or the others there. I once had a thoughtform I called Dor that I talked out of being an implanted-energy-block and into being on my side instead, but the Four made me get rid of him one day for some reason. I have sometimes encountered animals in my inner space (particularly a female black panther). (Oddly enough when I introduced my daughter to archetype work around age 10 she promptly met a black panther as well, go figure.)

This is just an overview of 'identities I work with'. For overview files on environments, and types of meditation, and a table of contents, visit the links near the top of the file.

PJ

Shifting Senses in Identity

English lacks the shared-concept words to do most internal work justice.

Even for people with enough internal experience, or intellectual subtlety, to understand, it's still hard to wrap a brain around. Even for people who've had the same experience. I often think that language is the reason it's hard to understand, because it feels like when I can't get something into words that this somehow creates limits. That if our language were different it might support a different way of thinking. Maybe author Robert Heinlein had it right in Stranger In A Strange Land and you have to teach someone a new language that supports a new way of thinking.

It's even more difficult to describe subtle internal feelings. I have felt "merged" with other identities many times but there are specific differences in the experience.

In remote viewing:

If I 'overdo rapport', it feels like I am aware of a sort of 'energy body' INside my physical body, as if it is something less tangible--but still physical or nearly-so--as if it were made out of veils or something is the feeling. Some other astral/spiritual body is "squishing" me, trying to "squish into my physical body with me" and it's uncomfortable. I might add that intellectually I do not think this is how it works, that is how it feels, though.

When that happens, there follows a feeling like of 'adjustment' and more comfort, and then I am 'sharing'. But it is like sharing 'the brain not the mind'. The other identity is specifically separate from me, and different from me. I get mostly flashes of concept and opinion, and so far I have felt more 'emotional tone' from them than anything else. I actually have the feeling that what I am getting from them is nearly accidental as an overlap because we are using the body at the same time. Another way to say this might be that my body is 'merged'--but not my mind.

But the 'side-effect' is that I feel as if I have been "built-out", like someone else was specifically "added-on" to me, and that for that time, I am a sort of 'Me+'. By the next day this is about 95% gone, and usually by the end of that day it is fully gone. If there is anything 'left with me' of the other identity, it's not something I am 'aware' of.

With archetypes, so far there can be a few different experiences of merging. So far:

• A full merge feels as if a 'cohesive grouping of energy' 'came into' my body and I feel a warmth and a buzzing ('warm fuzzy shivers') all through me, as well as outside me on my skin. I call this a 'rush'.
• A partial merge is like the above except I only get it in some parts of my body. This is more commonly the shoulders-to-head region than others, though I am not sure if this is relevant to where/how it is happening, or if that part of my body is simply more sensitive. (For example, you hear about how people can sometimes feel someone staring at them [there is interesting science on this] and it's often 'back of the neck' with the 'sense' of it.) However 'where' it is really does vary, and it can be just one area like a leg or combined areas like feet and a place in my torso and shoulders.
• Sometimes we can merge but I don't feel anything. I do sense that the merge happened. I simply have no perception about it at all, beyond that.
• Sometimes we cannot merge at all, is my sense. Or I sense we merge but one or more parts of me and/or the archetype are "sticking out" and unable to merge.
• Sometimes we merge and I feel it happened, but I felt no rush at all, yet I feel an 'awareness', as if in every cell of my body, that the merge has happened. I felt this when merging with IG once.
• And one time, just once, I merged and it was as if the archetype's energy "became incredibly thin" and it just "slid into every cell of my body" and suddenly I was totally changed. That was following a truly incredible meditation and then a sexual merge so I am inclined to consider that a powerfully good thing, although it's only happened once. Perhaps if I had more meditations at that level I would have more merging of that type.

There are other kinds of merging that might be called 'evoking' or something.

For example if I begin an archetype meditation and I "leave it open" -- I don't finish it -- that energy (in turbulent form) is with me until I do. This can have all kinds of effects on my life, and especially on my mind (in terms of spontaneous thoughts). Since the meditations I don't finish are usually those I have a problem with, the results in my mind and life are not pretty. (This should encourage me to wrap it up a lot sooner!) This is technically a type of merge it's simply that it is turbulent and unsettled. It is "hosted but not integrated" might be one way to put it.

When I merge with 'The Four' (as 4th of 4), the result varies. Often if I am very conscious, there is not a very strong feeling, simply an awareness or acceptance of it occurring. But on the occasions when I meet them in sudden visions, or very altered-state meditations, or deep dreams, then it is different.

When we (the four) are one, I am simply aware of more than one perspective simultaneously. I am not always aware of what the other three are thinking, particularly the two above me and the 3rd. I suspect they can choose what to share, and the 3rd can too, to a lesser degree, but he and I's "twinning" relationship simply overlaps with me a bit.

When we are together, I sometimes get a question, and an answer, sometimes more than one answer, at the same time. The question is usually from me, the answers from one or more of them. Sometimes (I am usually very altered-state during those sorts of merges) my 'awareness' of 'which perspective was me' follows on 'after' that kind of exchange.

OK so recently with my regular attempts and mantra to 'integrate' with 'my Aeons', I seem to be getting a slightly different subtle-sense of this... merge, or integration.

During the experience I don't feel much if anything and when I do, it's no diff than an archetype.

But after the experience is another story. I can feel that I have changed.

This is difficult to explain, but normally, when 'one' sense of identity has two different feelings or perspectives, we call it "ambivalence". Ambivalence is one identity, two views. In the example of the merging with The Four, there is only one sense of identity upon merge, but multiple views. However, at least so far, the views always concur. By that I mean: as the single-identity that results, we don't (as the multiplicity inside) ever diverge in opinion. We only have 'multiple internal points of perspective'. So it never leads to what you might call ambivalence.

The last few days, moreso in an experience today, I feel an awareness than I am changed. It's hard to find words. It is best compared to the feelings with The Four. As if I am a single identity, but my ordinary 'sense of self' is not just one internal 'perspective' -- which I notice simply because now, there is another. I never had another 'internal sense-of-self' before. It doesn't feel like anything other or foreign. It is as much me as any other part of me. It doesn't feel separate. It is like how your eyes work together seamlessly and you never notice the difference in their perspectives until some odd position causes it to become apparent. And even then, even when their vision is different, it doesn't feel like they are somehow at odds, it's simply an observation that the perspective is different.

I can tell an identity change in me. But I am still truly only one identity. I do not feel separated, not even 'within myself'. I simply feel 'more than one perspective'. The word 'separate' implies something that is not present (although I never knew that until I tried putting this into words). The difference from the Four is that in this case, my perspective(s), actually have enough difference that you might call it 'ambivalence'. Though it still does not 'feel' separate, it simply 'is' functioning with differing-perspectives.

The 'internal-I's' (internal-eyes??) communicate with the sense-of-I that is the 'singular' because we're all one, and they-combined-are-the-one, yet at the moment, I have an awareness of this. I think I am only aware because I want to be and I want to understand. I suspect this is normally not conscious and might not always be for me.

It's like I am aware of this and watching/listening as it goes on, but I don't have any prejudice against which perspective actually "wins out" when they differ. They are all equally me and as far as the "dominant perspective", it feels like 'psychic politics' (as Jane would have put it) that is theirs to work out, it happens naturally and automatically on some level and I have no attachment to it. I as the singular-identity running the body act on the dominant decisions.

I've felt this going on but it's been subtle. The first time I felt it was recently in a meditation. The feeling reminded me of the Senior, and other elements of the archmed had the Four so perhaps it was, or perhaps my "integration" with aspects of me as Aeons, has suddenly made me more integrated with some energy that is also part of the Senior.

At the time I ran into it first, it was in becoming aware that an 'identity' who was in my 'sacred space' for an archmed was not 'fully aligned with my intent'. That perspective was dominant for that moment, so I basically zapped it out of identity/form and into energy and consumed it. I felt a sense like 'decisive ruthlessness'. The latter word is a negative and is not quite right.

Later in that same meditation, I became aware that the 'me' had resisted some chakra development and it was necessary. My dominant perspective cared as little about my resistance or reasons as the first issue and made the decision to invoke that abruptly and from this point on. Again I had the vague sense of decisive and ruthless. But again that word is not right. It is more simply making a very clear decision without any ambivalence. No guilt. No emotion. A sense that it is what should be done and that is all.

Off and on for a few days I've had a lot more of that in my life. My kid is interpreting it as anger but it is not. (She is always sensitive anyway to my tone etc.) It is simply flatness. A decision. Something is right, or not. The decision is made. There is no room for my normal wishy-washy-ness, my chronic artificial guilt that is duct-taped onto every decision I even consider.

A number of things, small trivial things, about which I would normally have the tiniest bit of emotion about and wish were different, my dominant perspective has simply made a change. They are no longer at issue. They were unacceptable so they don't exist in my life any more.

I've felt that sort of 'utter decisiveness' before, once when The Four decided my relationship with Dor was over. Not since then, I don't think, except when they have helped me with something I needed real power for like some meditation too tough for me to handle alone. I've never felt it as me though. Until now.


I was in the grocery store earlier. I wanted to get some food. OK, some junk food. Stuff I shouldn't be eating but have been for awhile now. I was looking forward to it. Everything I started to reach for, 'a' perspective 'in' me just 'took' the 'dominance' and said NO. So my decision was changed. This happened repeatedly.

In the distant background, the other perspective, the one I have been aware of as 'me' for 'longer', was having a thought about it, much like it did when I felt it first in the meditation. Kind of complaining. But what will I eat? I whined. I will do awhile without food, I responded. But I'm making nothing sound good, I griped. Because it is not good, I responded. This went on through an entire grocery store walk.

On the last lane, the other perspective demanded dominance. I will have something special and yummy! I snapped, and since that was dominant, I as my body grabbed a small bottle of chocolate milk off the shelf. Inappropriate, I thought in response. I want it anyway, I thought, defiant. WEIRDLY ENOUGH this was not at all like being possessed hahahaha. This was happening so fast, in the blink of an eye.

I had the realization, much as I did the first time I ever heard 'aspects of myself' in 1998 during a remote viewing session, that it is ALWAYS THIS WAY. That the only thing going on was that my attempt lately to integrate more and be more aware was MAKING me "more aware."

This went on and then I am walking home (the store is very near my house so I walk), and it occurs to me (both perspectives 'recognize' this jointly) that by the time I reach home, Perspective 1 will have resumed dominance, and I will not be able to drink the chocolate milk. Perspective 2 takes dominance with a decision and I as body agree and sit down on a bench, stopping suddenly in the walk home, and shake the bottle and drink a few gulps of very cold frothy chocolate milk. Yummm. And then perspective 1 resumed dominance and I as body agreed and put the lid on, disinterested in it any further, and I continued walking home and gave it to the kid when I got there.

C came today (my housekeeping helper who has two teens the same age as mine). She called from McDonald's asking if I wanted anything. Perspective 2 thought that was a great idea. Perspective 1 flatly refused. So I said no. She came in and handed me a bag of something anyway. Perspective 2 was delighted. Perspective 1 was dominant though and said flatly, "No thanks," and the three teens fell on the extra with delight. It was hours before P1 decided I should go make baked chicken.

I am not clear on whether P1 and P2 are specific Aeons. I'm not clear on whether the 'sense of I' that I have always had, is one or more of the Aeons. I'm not clear on whether I have changed as much as I think, or if I'm simply more aware of what's going on than usual.

I do however feel as if I have... allowed? merged, integrated with?... more of a certain perspective which now has a lot more power inside me for the 'competitive politics', so to speak. I also had the impression that if I continue this road, this is going to change -- flex and flux, that 'dominant-I' will differ at times, as I work with the energies-of-I (the Aeons) inside me.

On the bright side, P1 might result in the "I" being "healthier"!

This is all so complicated to put into words. It is not as drama-queen or complex as it sounds when written down. It is actually quite rapid and subtle. It's just that I am working very hard to really pay attention, to be aware, and to record what I observe.

PJ

Rambling 29nov09

The kid says for the last few days I've been instant to anger, and less 'nice'. I don't feel like this, but I observe she's said this several times now... for the last few days. Maybe she's right. I do feel less tolerant. Not like stressed with less absorption ability, I don't mean it in that (normal) way. More like I just feel a little more ruthless about everything. As if a week ago there are things I would have simply wished were different but sighed and accepted, that now I simply find no room for tolerating them at all; they will not happen as they are unacceptable. This goes even for trivial stuff. Not sure if the meditations are having anything to do with that or not, but I mention it because I expect if the meditations I do are even partly effective, that changes in me might relate to them.

Yesterday I worked to hold Nero in my 'attention' as often as possible, to see if having an Aeon 'ride' the day with me in awareness might build up some kind of greater energy for the next time we were together in the Round. I grant I was not great at this. It's hard to remember to 'stay aware' all the time. It doesn't seem to have had any particular effect that I can discern so far, though. I missed the Round last night as I fell asleep but did it this morning and didn't notice any major difference with him. Or anyone.

So Friday I speed-read a bunch of webstuff mostly on tantra and sex magick which only led to my complete eye-rolling disgust with religion. Yesterday I speed-read a bunch of webstuff mostly on gnosticism which only led to my complete eye-rolling disgust with religion. Wait, there is a common theme here, if only I could figure out what...

You know what? Religion, of ANY kind, is a ridiculously complicated, convoluted, distractive pain in the ass. Because when it's all said and done and we have our 8,001 different sects with their variations on everything from the creation myth to how God feels about musical instruments, all we have is people at odds with each other, people arguing (if not actually AT WAR) over stupid shit that doesn't even matter.

And people NOT focused on the ONLY thing that really DOES matter: an individual's personal relationship with God, or their spirituality, or however they want to model it.

Sure, there are some things I find interesting, intellectually. But it's only intellectual. I feel it, in my gut, that it is dark and chaotic and distracting, that it is not part of "the light of communion." Religion was invented by humans, not God, is badly developed, badly kept, badly implemented, and badly used, by humans, not by God. I don't want anything to do with it.

I find God through my middle, through prayer and meditation and LIFE. That's the path, the Zen of it. All the study 'about' God is a separate thing.

At one time in my life I spent a lot of effort studying theology (by which I mean major sects of the Americas -- about 20 variants of protestant, charismatic, and a few temples. Not the detail of philosophy, which is I guess why I hadn't heard anything more about 'the ancient gnostics' than that term). At one point later, I spent a bunch of time reading on magick and QBL (cabala). In both cases I came to the same realization: that it distracted me, just as I perceived it doing to nearly everybody around me. It had very little if any relationship to one's personal relationship with God. It is an academic topic, as divorced from true Spirit as an analytical review of someone else's art style is separated from a feverish night spent in painter's inspiration.

I know I only read a little, but I don't really understand how the Gnostics also used the Aeons term I'm using, for an entity which I find fascinating as to me I was using the term so wrongly since I thought it meant time. But it seems to be used differently: they seem to be referring to some kind of primal or primary Aeons 'of God', and they're always male-female matched. Mine are like constellations, of a larger galaxy of Me, it is not about some official deity at all, they are not even demi-deities, just... associates. And so far they're not male-female matched unless all their other-halves are hiding.

I considered trying to change the term I use for them because I don't want what I do to be confused with that obscure ancient religion. But then I decided that (a) that's the term I got repeatedly so it's my right to use it if it seems right, and (b) it is obscure and ancient so probably almost nobody browsing the internet knows enough about it to confuse them anyway.

I actually felt BAD even skimming all that material. I felt like I shouldn't be, like it would just cause mental and energetic confusion.

As for all the origin stories, it is hopelessly confusing. In my opinion spirit is all that matters. I don't care what geneticist God(s) may have mucked about with our biological line. In my opinion there is no true god but "the light inside." Whatever guy in the old testament was sending plagues just to make a point, or hovering his UFO over the desert, really doesn't matter to me. The 'earth lords' -- the Archons with Animal heads -- it's interesting those are in Egypt as well as in the gnostic writings found, intellectually -- but what have they to do with spirit?

I see now that I was wrong in the first place. I was feeling that the Four and the 12 of the Consortium were so offbeat compared to anything else I hear of, that I got insecure. No matter that it is real to me, I wanted to find some kind of confirmation from elsewhere, someone else who had walked this road. So I went googling, and all I found is a bunch of complex religious crap that is way more confusion than enlightenment, way more human-says-something-godlike-says-about-god than anything I recognize as 'Of the Light'.

PJ

Aeons, "Sethians", History

Well this will teach me to inquire. Maybe I don't want to know!

I was out Googling when I saw something called "Sethian" Gnosticism. I ignored it the first few times I saw it. When I refer to 'Seth' it's a modern channeled entity, not some Egyptian God or biblical figure, I know that name is those things too, so I wasn't interested. Later, something else I don't recall, caused me to visit the relevant page on wiki, where it says -- I am not kidding:

This original God went through a series of emanations, during which its essence is seen as spontaneously expanding into many successive 'generations' of paired male and female beings, called 'aeons'.

Well I guess we know where my brain came up with the Aeons term as used for some kind of 'entity'. Even though I have zero conscious recollection of seeing that -- I didn't even understand how the term, which I perceive as a measure of time or space, could be used that way. But since it already exists, I have to assume I saw it and simply don't remember.

As a point of humor, a friend of mine once made an archetype blog called "archon" -- I think some comic book had a character with that name. But on that same page, about this apparently offbeat philosophical line, it says:

Using this stolen power, Yaldabaoth creates a material world in imitation of the divine Pleroma. To complete this task, he spawns a group of entities known collectively as Archons, 'petty rulers' and craftsmen of the physical world. Like him, they are commonly depicted as theriomorphic, having the heads of animals.

I guess I should be grateful that I am not working with animal headed identities instead, right, which would sound even more ridiculous.

I had heard of some documents found in the desert once, the 'Nag Hammadi' texts that were some alternate writings related to Jesus's era. I even had a book, not sure if I read it or what its scope even was, about this once, that I think I gave to a friend not all that long ago. I honestly don't remember (not that this means anything) this "religious sub-cult" though, assuming it was even mentioned in it:

The Sethians were a gnostic group who originally worshipped the biblical Seth as a messianic figure, later treating Jesus as a re-incarnation of Seth. They produced numerous texts expounding their esoteric cosmology, usually in the form of visions:

• Apocryphon of John (also called the "Secret Gospel of John")
• Coptic Gospel of the Egyptians (distinct from the Greek Gospel of the Egyptians)
• Coptic Apocalypse of Paul (distinct from the Apocalypse of Paul)
• Trimorphic Protennoia

There are various notes about the "Sethian" philosophy (it is so weird to realize this is a whole terminology about ancient biblical stuff, since I use the term related to modern author Jane Roberts's work!). I don't really understand it all.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. I mean, if my subconscious assumedly knew that Aeons term and felt the Consortium qualified then what the hey, why not, it's not hurting anybody.

On the other hand, I just finished talking about how I don't have any specific theology and dislike labels. If it turns out there is a whole specific obscure religion using the same terms and maybe a couple similar concepts (by accident or design as far as my picking that up goes) I don't want to SEEM like that is my religion when at least consciously and as I recall (which means nothing, I forget all kinds of stuff!), I don't even know anything about it. And maybe if I did I wouldn't even like it, beyond that we happen to use one word the same way, beyond that it is part of the larger field of 'Gnosticism' of which (due mostly to my OTO association) I have considered myself a part.

Well, I feel "resistance" to the idea of studying the "Sethian Gnosticism" stuff. Not sure why. Maybe I am just mad that since they are already using that fairly unique term, making me feel like I subconsciously copied it, that something else which I consider genuinely unique to my "spontaneous experience" will turn out to be old hat from a couple thousand years ago. That does sort of take the spontaneous fun out of it, I admit. Not sure I want to know!

PJ

Gnostics and Armchairs

I meant to post this yesterday but hadn't finished with it. (I mention this because it was this post that actually led into the sex magick post that appeared here earlier. I was reading on gnostic stuff that led to magick stuff that led to that topic and I got opinionated.)

I don't much like labels when it comes to experiential things, like spirituality. I think as long as you're sitting in the armchair of intellectualism, as long as you're talking about theology or philosophy or whatever, then fine, we can wax poetic all day, and glue-stick labels onto things right and left. But the moment one gets into the genuine experience of the thing, it's another story. At that point, those labels aren't doorways, they are no longer marking the opening to the infinite one road at a time, but rather, stuffing into uniformity and expectation all truly creative and spontaneous experience.

From wiki:

Jung saw the Gnostics not as syncretic schools of mixed theological doctrines, but as genuine visionaries, and saw their imagery not as myths but as records of inner experience. He wrote that "The explanation of Gnostic ideas 'in terms of themselves,' i.e., in terms of their historical foundations, is futile, for in that way they are reduced only to their less developed forestages but not understood in their actual significance."

I would agree with that. Labeling and categorizing experiential-spirituality is like taking art, real art, the "it moved my soul through the night so I created this" art, and reducing it to an intellectual essay on the form and style, in such a convoluted, footnoted way that the artist themselves would be lucky to even recognize it from that perspective.

Yet if I don't use labels, it is difficult to communicate. Most people do not want an 'introduction' that requires reading a book's worth of material from someone's inner life. They expect a sound-bite.

OK, so:

• I am a Gnostic.
• I am a Thelemite.
• I have an experiential leaning toward Christian Mysticism, not related to the doctrines of Christianity, but related to the deities of such.

That is another way of saying I respect and have had experiences with 'identities', from Angels to Jesus, from Egyptian stuff to the Abramelin entities, from an 'inner soul-being' some might call HGA or Atman, to the conglomerate of Aspect Psychology that Roberts called Psychic Politics. From Kabbalah to Christianity, from Shamanism to Occult magick of a variety of traditions, I've had experiences, insights, and symbols, that seem to cover a little bit of it all. Frankly that has made it confusing that it seemed like "everything and nothing" was true -- no single model has seemed to contain my experiences, but most models contain room for some of them.

I have no serious interest in the various religious doctrines or histories which surround all those identities or models. If I have a vision or dream and I meet entity-X in environment-Y, and interact, then to me, that's XY. If someone later points me to stuff others have written about XY, I do find that mildly interesting sometimes, but only sometimes and only as food-for-thought or trivia, except in rare cases where -- like the Four and the Consortium -- I go out and search in an attempt to get an idea of whether someone's written this stuff down before and what "context" it was found in, if so.

I don't really feel that my experience with XY needs to be measured by, compared to, or evaluated against, anybody else's experience, or anybody's intellectual opinion or doctrine as written down throughout time. I will judge XY and our interaction based on my own experience and prayer. It is not particularly relevant to me whether this or that doctrine has assigned some entity or some activity to being holy, or to being black magick, or to being a 7th branch, French offshoot, of lineage-Z of some philosophy first recorded (that we know of) 140 years ago by someone I never heard of.

I'm not saying that education and study don't have value, because they do. It is that those are easy for me, and I have come to believe, due to my own weak tendency to 'think about living' more than 'living', that what matters if anything is that one most go 'through, not around' spiritual experience if it is to be anything more than armchair philosophy. I used to be so much more ... linear, than I am now. I've worked hard to shift.

I believe that sincere and regular prayer to God, whatever God might really be, that "genuinely good intentions", held with interest, a sense of humor, and a model of sharing and healing and joy, and the most minimum bias for or against or concerning 'the assumed value of a certain thing', that these will take a person through the experiences that provide "education from the inside" about oneself and spirit.

Moving on --

Trivia: I was skimming a tiny part of Tertium Organum (P.D. Ouspensky, 1922), a chart TABLE OF THE FOUR FORMS OF THE MANIFESTATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. This wasn't any analogy to 'the Four' but rather, a sort of "four-stages-of-development". It was peripherally interesting, no big deal, and I speed-read. But there was this one line in it which for some reason felt like it reached out and slapped me upside the head and made me STOP and think. Under 'forms of consciousness', the third of four stages, one of the descriptions said:

The moment when further evolution can be conscious only.

(The fourth stage was then: The commencement of self-consciousness. Ecstatic states. Transitions to cosmic consciousness.) I felt like some part of me pulled out that line and emphasized it inside me, as if it arrived with the sound of a gong and the light of spirit and a logical typed-out business-report answer to some question.

I think this is "why." This is why the weird stuff. The Four, the Consortium of 12, even some of the confusion of my 'Bewilderness' period all those years ago. Because there comes a point in every energy-conglomerate's development when further evolution must be conscious. Where you are no longer able to unconsciously just drift along in oblivious darkness, when it no longer happens at a slow but automatic pace, where basically the escalator has come to an end and if you want to continue you've got to take the stairs.

And since it's new to 'conscious realization', it's just as confusing as the world is to a baby, in some respects. Learning how to even perceive, then how to remember, then how to correctly categorize, then how to understand, then how to consciously modify or interact with, each energy, thing, identity, dynamic, whatever, is a whole development of its own. 'Mysticism' is born and we spend a big chunk of our life then trying to accomplish one or more of these things in one or more areas.

Ironically the point is to get to where it's all a no-brainer background-info, because the larger focus is always communion-with-God, at least that is my perspective. All the rest is like... getting to know the culture and home of your soulmate.

So I was googling, as my friend L had done, trying to find any reference to the four, the twelve, a group soul, etc. I thought this following excerpt was a great left-brain description of The Four as I perceive them/us/etc. -- although I suspect it was not intended to be used for that. It even perfectly matches the bizarre but deep concept of "the tree of life in 3-D" that the Four once showed me we are, and that we "compose the universe", each of us a certain kind of energy that contributes to the makeup of things, although it was more person-based in my perception than... elemental, as it sounds here, but I can imagine that might have been a limit of my perception at the time. Check this out:

...Hasidic philosophy explains that the Merkaba is a multi-layered analogy...

...The four Chayot angels represent the basic archetypes that God used to create the current nature of the world. Ofannim, which means "ways", are the ways these archetypes combine to create actual entities that exist in the world. For instance, in the basic elements of the world, the lion represents fire, the ox/earth, the man/water, and the eagle/air. However, in practice, everything in the world is some combination of all four, and the particular combination of each element that exist in each thing are its particular Ofannim or ways. In another example, the four Chayot represent spring, summer, winter and fall. These four types of weather are the archetypal forms. The Ofannim would be the combination of weather that exists on a particular day, which may be a winter-like day within the summer or a summer like day within the winter.

For some reason this reminds me of the day that I had an 'insight' that Feng Shui is 'localized astrology' -- that wood in a fire region was like virgo in scorpio, an energy 'transit', or whatever.

...A person should strive to be like a Merkaba, that is to say, he should realize all the different qualities, talents and inclinations he has (his angels). They may seem to contradict, but when one directs his life to a higher goal such as doing God's will (the man on the chair driving the chariot) he will see how they all can work together and even complement each other. Ultimately, we should strive to realize how all of the forces in the world, though they may seem to conflict can unite when one knows how to use them all to fulfill a higher purpose, namely to serve God.

Cool. I am not-quite going to qualify as Hasidic though! If that does have some relationship to my experience, then the idea of some ignorant goya like me stumbling over the experientially-real spirituality of their occult philosophies would probably horrify all those serious hasidic scholars. (I remember being Jewish in another life. Does that count?? OK, probably not!)

In googling on 'the Four' I find (of course) many refs to the four elements. I wonder if I should work to find a way to incorporate this into something? Meditation?

Is there a way to apply Feng Shui to the soul? hahahaha!

This is a seemingly channeled page (feels that way to me) on 'soul clusters'. (Later: yes, it's channeled.) Though if I'm going to look at any channeling I would first prefer Seth via Jane Roberts, and I'm not fond of the topic in general and tend to dislike and distrust it (and yes I'm aware my conversations with Aeons sound very similar to exactly that. Sorry, that's just how it keeps working out).

"...A soul group is a circle with an eye, a soul, in the middle and four souls representing each direction. The direction is not necessarily that of nature as on earth, but as in the universe. In our reality as humans on earth it is the four directions with each responsible of the energy and power of the four directions. Each soul that occupies the position of a direction is also an eye or center of their own soul group as well. These soul groups are constantly moving and rotating around each other and through each other..."

Interesting they chose four, yeah? I mean, why that number, why not some other? I guess it doesn't prove anything (like why I get the Four or the Consortium), and I found some of the articles on the same site/source questionable, but I found it an interesting coincidence.

I wrote about the four and our 'pattern of four' and the 'larger patterns' back during my Bewilderness days, calling it "The Linoleum Theory" initially, then expanding it to "The Rainbow of Soul". My original TLT writings said something like:

When I look down at the square tiles in public buildings, I often see that every tile has a 'pattern'. It's all based on each tile being a singular pattern, one of four primary natures. Then, four tiles together are a pattern. And each of those four tiles is a part of yet-larger patterns that have it in different placements within those patterns. And the whole room is a larger, more complex pattern.

To me, 'The Linoleum Theory' described The Four pretty well. The Rainbow of Soul is better, though. I'm glad I came up with a less retarded name and model eventually.

PJ