Daily Advice 1.16.21

[readoldthings]

Let's look at The Art of War, Chapter 2.

Sun Tzu tells us:

When engaged in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, the men's weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.

Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain.

Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.

Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been associated with long delays.

There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.

Sun Tzu is certainly right that countries do not benefit from prolonged warfare. But it is worth noting that one side will invariably have the ability to prolong a war beyond that of their opponent, and that is the side that is going to win. This is why the North Vietnamese won the Vietnam War despite superior American firepower, and why the Taliban will ultimately win in Afghanistan.

How can we apply Sun Tzu's points both to (1) our personal goals and to (2) the spiritual warfare that we have been discussing?

I'd like to suggest the following for consideration.

(1) If you want to accomplish anything at all, persistence is critical. If you want to write a novel, the novel is your goal, and an unwritten novel is your enemy. (How many half-finished novels do you have stored on your computers, writers? I know I've got at least a half dozen.) The Enemy will use every device to outlast you, to damp your ardor and exhaust your strength. But every day that you outlast him, you weaken him and strengthen yourself.

On the other hand, when it comes time to publish your book, haste-- though not stupid haste-- is preferably to a long delay. A Christmas recipe book will not sell very well if its release is delayed until February.

Perhaps we should break our goals down into two types: Those that resemble training, and those that resemble combat. In those that resemble training, discipline, patience, and persistence are key. The head of the tai chi lineage that I've been training in for a number of years recently accepted me as an instructor. I was able to get to that point thanks to daily practice over the course of seven years. When I started, I was terrible, and I couldn't make it through a form without hurting myself. On the other hand, when I start teaching public classes, swiftness is preferably to delay. Hemming and hawing won't bring in any students! 

(2) Applying these thoughts to the spiritual war, how can we make use of them?

One way to think of the ongoing crisis is as a build up of energy in the Lower Astral Plane. This happens from time to time. It dissipates when the pressures in the Lower Astral are discharged into the Physical Plane. Unfortunately, that discharge is never pretty; it takes the form of war, death, natural disaster, conflict, plague and so on. We're clearly in the middle of that phase right now.

Outlast the enemy. Demons may be smart, but Patience is a virtue, not a passion. When you find yourself pulled into the conflict, give the enemy nothing. Pray. Do a banishing ritual. Go outside. Work on something truly important to you-- something that expresses the highest part of yourself, not the lowest. Do it every time. And do it quickly. Don't linger over your anger; do something else right now. If whatever triggered it is actually important, you can come back to it later, when you are calm; chances are it isn't, though.

Remember that your psyche is your territory; the Enemy is an invader. Outlast him, and give him nothing that will feed him, and he will be forced to retreat in dismay.

Comments

[temporaryreality]

Bless you for this (this post, the effort and time you share in general). I will reread this one a few times, for sure (while considering my several half-finished novels).

I appreciate the extrapolation of Sun Tzu's text to what's going on today. A few decades ago, I'd read it but at that point hadn't yet picked up on how to metaphorize "warfare" and so I didn't go very far with it.

[readoldthings]

Thank you!

A while back, I happened to read parts from The Art of War and the Picatrix on the same day, and it was clear how they could inform each other. I find my best ideas come from combinations of two very different things.

[violetcabra]

If I may: As always I find your essays helpful, interesting, and enjoyable to read. That said, I imagine that a major portion of the problem here is right now Uranus is in his Fall in Taurus and historically that's linked to things like WWII, Bleedin Kansas and the Revolutionary War. That is to say, I think that reasons astral conditions are so bad is because of the astral conditions rather than people screwing up personally or collectively. Of course people screw up personally and collectively and there is a steep price for that, but also Uranus is literally in his worst condition since the outbreak of WWII, after all!

Uranus is just in a 7 year stretch of his 84 year cycle that is particularly inimical to us. to quote from a blog post I did recently on this: This time around, Uranus entered Taurus on Wednesday, May 16th 2018. He continued in that sign until Wednesday, November 7th 2018 when retrogradation saw him return to Ares until Wednesday, March 6th 2019. Since that day Uranus has been in Taurus every single moment up until the time of this writing. Uranus will first enter the sign of Gemini on Tuesday, July 8th 2025. He returns through retrograde motion to Taurus on Sunday, November 9th, 2025. On Monday, April 27th 2026 he enters Gemini and will not return to Taurus for approximately 84 years. https://violetcabra.dreamwidth.org/84559.html

This timeline to my mind accounts really well for the current level of craziness, and it puts this craziness into historical perspective in which Hitler's rise to power and John Brown's massacres also fit very sensibly.

Here I tend to think that the only way to rise above this sort of influence is to raise up to the mental level of consciousness in which the astral body --- the natal chart and the various forces acting on it --- becomes perceptible as a subordinate body just as we can view the physical body as subordinate and thus under conscious control.

Of course, Steve, I think that we agree with all of the broad strokes. Still, I mention the literal astral conditions alongside what the history shows on them because I'm genuinely interested in your perspective and your thoughts on how the long transit of Uranus in Taurus might play into your analysis!

[readoldthings]

Of course. It's just that this specific post-- and the discussion generally-- is concerned with what to do about current astral conditions, not about their astrological correspondence. It's possible to create a peaceful and stable astral environment in your own home, or, if even that's impossible, your own soul, in the most hellish external conditions. How to do that is what I want to focus on here.

[readoldthings]

To say it another way...

General astral conditions are going to be difficult until Uranus enters Gemini. Now, that doesn't say anything about particular astral conditions. A specific location can resonate more with the higher or lower planes at any given time. A gang-banger's dive bar on skid row is going to be a hell-mouth when Uranus is exalted in Scorpio. I was at the national shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes a few days ago; it was a portal to Heaven, despite Uranus in Taurus. One of the things that I want to do in these posts is to figure out what to do if you find yourself stuck in a hell-mouth-- whether the rest of the country is or not!

Of course, the mere fact of the astrological conditions-- which have worsened considerably with Saturn squaring Uranus-- are necessarily a part of it. "With whom lie the advantages of Heaven and Earth?" Right now, the advantages of Heaven lie with the demons.

[violetcabra]

Excellent points --- many thanks for your considered responses! That is an interesting emphasis of place over time you mention, given the appalling astrological conditions that occur now. Of course too, you imply the space too of one's body and soul as places one can rise above the ongoing problems. That strikes me as very wise. Furthermore, the more astrological research I do the more it becomes clear that a strong natal chart even is no replacement for the cultivation of personal virtue: I've been appalled to see the large number of high ranking Nazis born under pretty highly favorable astral circumstances...it really does seem our will as conscious beings ultimately matters far more than any other consideration concerning who & what we become.

[sdi]

Furthermore, the more astrological research I do the more it becomes clear that a strong natal chart even is no replacement for the cultivation of personal virtue: I've been appalled to see the large number of high ranking Nazis born under pretty highly favorable astral circumstances...it really does seem our will as conscious beings ultimately matters far more than any other consideration concerning who & what we become.

There's a good parable from Chuang Tzu on this:

There was a man whose family had, for generations, made their money by bleaching silk. The process left their hands awfully chapped, but they had developed a healing balm that protected them. A traveler was passing through town one day, and, hearing about the balm, offered the man one hundred pieces of gold for the recipe.

As it so happened, the king was troubled by a war he was waging: it was winter, and the hands of his soldiers were so raw from exposure that they had difficulty handling their weapons. As soon as he had obtained the recipe, the traveler went straight to the king and presented it to him. The balm proved instrumental to the king’s victory, and the traveler was awarded a fief in the conquered territory as a reward.

The balm had the power of preventing chapped hands in either case, but one man never got beyond bleaching silk while the other ended up with fief, simply because they used it in different ways.

These bodies—mere vehicles!—are like that balm. They are versatile enough to accomplish much, but what is accomplished depends on what they are turned towards.