Daily Reflection 1.27.21
Jan. 27th, 2021 07:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
readoldthingsLet's have some more Sun Tzu.
I want to think about this passage especially in regard to the Spiritual Warfare we've been discussing.
Three thoughts come to mind:
1. Have you ever tried to engage with angry people on the internet? If so, how did it go? Have you ever told yourself "I'm just going to check the news real quick," and then found yourself an hour later having ingested a dozen different articles on any number of random topics, most of which left you feeling at once angry and powerless?
This is an example of a small force succumbing to a larger force. The Internet is bigger than you are, it is infested with demons, and most of the people on it are possessed or obsessed to one degree or another.
2. Of course, the Internet isn't the only vector of demonic attack. These days, the astral environment generally is very bad. From what I can tell, it is much worse in the cities than in the countryside. That isn't an absolute rule, though. I've been in rural environments that were positively Lovecraftian in their overall feel. There does seem to be a difference though. Unwholesome places and spirits in the countryside, at least in my experience, feel like dangerous nature spirits. They're like sharks or mountain lions-- when you're in their territory, you respect them, and try to stay out of their way. The things that travel from mind to mind via the internet feel much worse to me.
On the other hand, what is the internet but a sub-natural environment held together by the enslavement of natural forces? Perhaps we should expect that its native spirits are of the unsavory kind.
The point, though, is this: When we are on the enemy's ground, we are weak and outnumbered. But the same is true in reverse. Our first object in the Spiritual War should be to reconquer our own minds and our immediate psychic environment. And here there is a great deal that we can do, as we've discussed before.
3. Ultimately, what we want to do is to outnumber the enemy. We can do this in a few ways. If we learn to master our own mind, and if we spend our mental energy on devotion, charitable work, and self-development-- the gods, the other, the self, to say it another way-- then we will, in time, be able to overwhelm the Enemy Within. Our immediate environments can also be reconquered with a bit of effort. Pick up the clutter in your room, vacuum the floor, and place some purifying herbs in a simmer pot on the stove, and the astral environment in your home will improve markedly.
There is much, though, that we simply cannot do. Many of our fellow citizens are something close to insane. Confront them, and you won't win-- the madness will spread to you. The only thing to do is to avoid them. "If unequal in every way, we can flee."
Ultimately, as I wrote yesterday, we need to go beyond our own minds and personal spaces and network with others. Only in this way will we come to outnumber the Enemy-- at least some of the time.
More on this as we go along.
It is the rule in war, if our forces are ten to the enemy's one, to surround him; if five to one, to attack him; if twice as numerous, to divide our army in two.
If equally matched, we can offer battle; if slightly inferior in numbers, we can avoid the enemy; if quite unequal in every way, we can flee from him.
Hence, though an obstinate fight may be made by a small force, in the end it must be captured by the larger force.
If equally matched, we can offer battle; if slightly inferior in numbers, we can avoid the enemy; if quite unequal in every way, we can flee from him.
Hence, though an obstinate fight may be made by a small force, in the end it must be captured by the larger force.
I want to think about this passage especially in regard to the Spiritual Warfare we've been discussing.
Three thoughts come to mind:
1. Have you ever tried to engage with angry people on the internet? If so, how did it go? Have you ever told yourself "I'm just going to check the news real quick," and then found yourself an hour later having ingested a dozen different articles on any number of random topics, most of which left you feeling at once angry and powerless?
This is an example of a small force succumbing to a larger force. The Internet is bigger than you are, it is infested with demons, and most of the people on it are possessed or obsessed to one degree or another.
2. Of course, the Internet isn't the only vector of demonic attack. These days, the astral environment generally is very bad. From what I can tell, it is much worse in the cities than in the countryside. That isn't an absolute rule, though. I've been in rural environments that were positively Lovecraftian in their overall feel. There does seem to be a difference though. Unwholesome places and spirits in the countryside, at least in my experience, feel like dangerous nature spirits. They're like sharks or mountain lions-- when you're in their territory, you respect them, and try to stay out of their way. The things that travel from mind to mind via the internet feel much worse to me.
On the other hand, what is the internet but a sub-natural environment held together by the enslavement of natural forces? Perhaps we should expect that its native spirits are of the unsavory kind.
The point, though, is this: When we are on the enemy's ground, we are weak and outnumbered. But the same is true in reverse. Our first object in the Spiritual War should be to reconquer our own minds and our immediate psychic environment. And here there is a great deal that we can do, as we've discussed before.
3. Ultimately, what we want to do is to outnumber the enemy. We can do this in a few ways. If we learn to master our own mind, and if we spend our mental energy on devotion, charitable work, and self-development-- the gods, the other, the self, to say it another way-- then we will, in time, be able to overwhelm the Enemy Within. Our immediate environments can also be reconquered with a bit of effort. Pick up the clutter in your room, vacuum the floor, and place some purifying herbs in a simmer pot on the stove, and the astral environment in your home will improve markedly.
There is much, though, that we simply cannot do. Many of our fellow citizens are something close to insane. Confront them, and you won't win-- the madness will spread to you. The only thing to do is to avoid them. "If unequal in every way, we can flee."
Ultimately, as I wrote yesterday, we need to go beyond our own minds and personal spaces and network with others. Only in this way will we come to outnumber the Enemy-- at least some of the time.
More on this as we go along.
no subject
Date: 2021-01-28 03:10 pm (UTC)With the internet type of memetic infection I've not had the same experience, to be honest. I've seen myself and others deal with bad ideas, but having gotten close enough to nature spirits to see the shape of the trap they had, the internet beings seems much easier to handle, at least in my experience.
While there are some very nasty things on the internet, I think it's easy to avoid them by avoiding all video content. With videos they have an eerie advantage, but much less so ,with text, at least in my mind, because text requires so much conscious work, at least for me. With video one can lay back and the video transports one to....another world and it is as easy as it is mindless, and mindless as it is narcotic.
Also I do not participate with facebook, twitter, or the like. Those scenes strike me as lugubrious and bleak in the extreme, and exemplify all of the worst aspects of human brains interacting with text.
I guess I view the internet as a multifaceted entity, and so that website with the 8000 volume of classic occult texts is, strictly speaking, just as much the "internet" as Tik-Tok. That website doesn't seem like a vector for anything gross, and has a nice vibe. Other portions of the internet, the quiet, library-esque, html portions with a focus on text tend to likewise have good vibes, in my experience. Of course this website is in that category, in every way.
I wonder to what extent "the medium is the message" and the internet now is compromised of heterogenous media accessed through the same computers. To my mind, the internet became increasingly nasty with the proliferation of Java script, for whatever it's worth. It seems to me that there are multiple internets, with entirely different sets of values and messages.
no subject
Date: 2021-01-28 04:06 pm (UTC)Regarding the internet and its spirits, that's a very good point. The time a Siren got me, I felt simply overwhelmed with the need, felt as a deep and desperate longing in my soul, to go down to the sea, and when I got there, to first raise my energy by doing a long qigong practice and then to go into the water and "rebaptize" myself to the sea-God. At the beach, I was led to a very specific place to practice. I convinced myself, or allowed myself to be convinced, to ignore the fact that there were paramedics on the beach at that time, that the tracks of their ambulance led directly to the place I was going to practice, and that therefore someone had been seriously injured or killed in that same place only minutes before.
Eventually, I pulled out of it, but the sheer compulsion that I felt is certainly worse than anything I've ever seen online. I think the issues with the Internet's demons are less about their power, and more about 1. their ubiquity, 2. the support the have from many of our national institutions, and 3. their *wrongness.* Whatever the drowning spirits are, they are a part of our world, and have a right to their existence. Of course this may simply be a matter of personal preference, but it seems to me that whatever the things that inhabit the worst corners of the internet are, they simply don't belong in our world, and ought to be driven speedily into Outer Darkness!
no subject
Date: 2021-02-02 03:55 pm (UTC)I totally get that feeling of the wrongness of the spiritual tone of the internet. It's certainly trashier --- in the full sense of the word! --- than malevolent nature spirits!