Alchemy or Fool’s Gold?

I'm always on the lookout for good spiritual teachers, but never for a guru.

I don't trust people who want to be treated like they are some kind of god, while treating me like some kind of personal foot-kisser.

Most foot-kissers just come up in the end with nothing but a mouthful of dirt, rather than a nugget of spiritual gold, while the "guru" takes off on clean feet with your gold.

But life is full of lessons and maybe that's one that a foot-kisser has to learn before they can move on in the journey?

'Breaking Bad' Jasun?!

Jasun Horsley over at his 'Auticulture' blog wrote a very timely (or should that be timeless?) piece mining for answers ... and he included a shot of Walter White (Heisenberg) from the TV show 'Breaking Bad', which I happen to be watching for the first time (I'm halfway through season 4 right now).

Communities of the Abandoned: How to Tell Pyrite from Gold on the Spiritual Market?
Jasun writes in that post -

"At the heart of my distaste for these postmodernist, self-appointed fashion gurus is, no doubt, not a feeling of envy but one of “ancient” (primal) betrayal.

Whatever infant wounding I reenacted with John de Ruiter and Whitley Strieber, I continue to reenact in miniature fashion every time I stumble upon the latest piece of socio-spiritual skulduggery.

There are unresolved issues in my psyche that cause me to see red at the first whiff of spiritual power-abuses.

But right next to this visceral reaction is, I think, a genuine soul-response: the imperative to say No to reality distortion in order to say Yes to reality.

There’s really no reason to reject pyrite unless you are looking for gold.

And I have been looking for gold long enough to feel fairly confident in my abilities to identify the stuff of fools.
Some might argue that you can’t judge a book by its cover or an awakened being by his “superficial” behaviors.

Isn’t it better to give the benefit of the doubt than jump to conclusions?

I admit to having a knee-jerk reaction to these people, which is the opposite of measured and clear perception.

Fact is, as a seeker, over-exposure to spiritual hypocrisies has instilled in me the desire to create an impenetrable filter to prevent any more radiation from getting through."

Whitley's no guru,
but I like most of his books

I agree with Jasun about book-covers, but even foolish books can have a nugget or two of real spiritual gold in them.

Be Here Now ... Again

The Third Eye?

I want to live
I want to give
I've been a miner
for a heart of gold
It's these expressions
I never give
That keep me searching
for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old
Keeps me searching
for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old

I've been to Hollywood
I've been to Redwood
I crossed the ocean
for a heart of gold
I've been in my mind
it's such a fine line
That keeps me searching
for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old
Keeps me searching
for a heart of gold
And I'm getting old

Keep me searching
for a heart of gold
You keep me searching
And I'm growing old
Keep me searching
for a heart of gold
I've been a miner
for a heart of gold

"The actual truth, perhaps, is that there is no consistent individual self or “doer,” only a series of actions, and that no “one” of us can ever be consistently one thing or another, only the sum total of all our actions (and then some).

But the way we are conditioned to perceive and receive others is on this basis (the belief that people are individuals), and to be honest, I don’t even know how to perceive otherwise.

Maybe that’s the real problem here, and what this post should be addressing.

On the other hand, maybe it is addressing it, since a guru can only become such by allowing people to perceive him or her as not only having but being a personal connection to the divine.

Such a context makes it difficult to perceive such individuals as anything besides all-good, or all-bad."

I guess people like Jasun and I have to keep searching, but be cautious when we see people dangling spiritual carrots on sticks?

Remote Viewing Training?

And here I was thinking that remote viewing was sitting in an armchair watching TV with a remote in your hand so that you could change the channel when a commercial came on to break your concentration;-) 

I've always wanted to have a go at learning to remote view, because at a young age in life I had an O.B.E, but that was something that just happened out of the blue, not something that I consciously brought on.

I've always wondered if I could somehow bring one on at will, but have never really tried to do so again, because I think there is always that "oh, s#it, have I just locked my keys in the vehicle and won't be able to get back in?" type of feeling of panic when you are out of the body.

I would like to have a go at remote viewing, but I would also like to learn guitar, piano and a language, too ... so I tell myself. 

But I never really make the effort to begin learning any of them, while I still have a body to do so.

I guess like most things on our "bucket lists" we'll probably kick it before we tick it.

How Out-of-Body Experiences Could Transform Yourself and Society.

Skeptiko Podcast 369: Dr. Jeffrey Kripal Explores the Erotic in the Mystical & Religious

Episode Three-sixty-nine?-) Hee, hee, hee:-)

I'm a big Jeff Kripal fan, so I was eager to listen to this new Skeptiko podcast episode -
Dr. Jeffrey Kripal Explores the Erotic in the Mystical & Religious |369|
But I also thought it was amusing that this episode was numbered 369, as it has been rumoured that Crowley was accepted into the O.T.O because of chapter 69 in his 'The Book of Lies'.

"The Book of Lies (full title: Which is also Falsely Called BREAKS. The Wanderings or Falsifications of the One Thought of Frater Perdurabo, which Thought is itself Untrue. Liber CCCXXXIII [Book 333]) was written by English occultist and teacher Aleister Crowley (using the pen name of Frater Perdurabo) and first published in 1912 or 1913. 

As Crowley describes it: "This book deals with many matters on all planes of the very highest importance. 

It is an official publication for Babes of the Abyss, but is recommended even to beginners as highly suggestive.""

69 and Ninety-three?-)

"The book consists of 93 chapters, each of which consists of one page of text.

The chapters include a question mark, poems, rituals, instructions, and obscure allusions and cryptograms.

The subject of each chapter is generally determined by its number and its corresponding Qabalistic meaning.

Around 1921, Crowley wrote a short commentary about each chapter, assisting the reader in the Qabalistic interpretation.
Several chapters and a photograph in the book reference Leila Waddell, who Crowley called Laylah, and who, as Crowley's influential Scarlet Woman, acted as his muse during the writing process of this volume."

"In his Confessions, Crowley discusses how the book was to lead to his joining Ordo Templi Orientis.

He wrote each chapter at lunch or dinner "by the aid of Dionysos," with one chapter that was especially troubling.

He eventually was able to get it written after much effort, but he remained dissatisfied and angry with it.

Not too long after it had been published, he was visited by Theodor Reuss, then head of the order.
[Reuss] said that since I was acquainted with the supreme secret of the Order, I must be allowed the IX° and obligated in regard to it.

I protested that I knew no such secret.

He said, "But you have printed it in the plainest language."

I said that I could not have done so because I did not know it.

He went to the bookshelves and, taking out a copy of The Book of Lies, pointed to a passage in the despised chapter.

It instantly flashed upon me.

The entire symbolism, not only of freemasonry but of many other traditions, blazed upon my spiritual vision.

From that moment the O.T.O. assumed its proper importance in my mind.

I understood that I held in my hands the key to the future progress of humanity.
Aleister Crowley sometimes said that this could not have happened the way he remembered it, since The Book of Lies had not yet come out when he joined the O.T.O.

 As previously mentioned, however, Wilson claims that the book lies about its publication date.
Assuming this event did take place, readers have suggested various possible chapters that might contain the secret.

Wilson points to Chapter 69, "The Way to Succeed—and the Way to Suck Eggs!" (sucking seed and sucking eggs referring to mutual oral sex), while Crowley's book De Arte Magica names Chapter 36, "The Star Sapphire", a ritual related chapter."

Just sayin';-)

Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions