Oeaohoo

I’ve just started using this as well as this forum strains my eyes!

I thought this part about the UFO phenomenon was very interesting: This reminds me very much of Twin Peaks: The Return, especially the 8th episode about the nuclear explosion, a vivid depiction of how dark forces have taken over the world. I know that Mark Frost was interested in Kenneth Grant so that makes sense… This is the water And this is the well. Drink full and descend. The horse is the white of the eyes and dark within.

But the age of Anti-Christ is necessary so that the false idol of Christ can be negated and Christ’s true nature as absolute nothingness can be realised. In this way, Trump is an unknowing servant of God!

The very end of this essay felt particularly relevant to the mistakes I have made on my own spiritual journey:

Thanks for improving the forum.

I think this dilemma is common nowadays, especially since it isn’t easy to fully commit one’s life to spirituality anymore. Your approach of trying to integrate the two and make one’s career an expression of spiritual practice seems like the best one available. As a fellow musician it’s something I am also still figuring out.

In this way, the satanic rule of Trump is actually the secret hidden path to supreme liberation and enlightenment!

Feminism is just a symptom of living in a collapsing culture. It’s really that simple. It will end when the new dawn rises, when new civilisations arise to take the place of this one.

Roman emperors feel like more relevant examples since they were at least ruling over an empire. Henry VIII’s corruption seems irrelevant in comparison to Trump because his sphere of influence was much smaller. I also think that corruption in post-modernity has taken on a particularly vulgar, juvenile and moronic streak.

You might be right. If you have some good historical examples I’d be interested. I know that, in the ancient world, Sardanapalus was held up as an example of an extremely corrupt and decadent ruler.

Most spiritual teachers in modernity have been somewhat corrupt: Osho, Chögyam Trungpa, Gurdjieff. Even Sri Aurobindo had a weird fetish for his body surviving after death… You also have the Aleister Crowley and Kenneth Grant variety of occultist who embraces corruption and evil as a path to awakening, reminiscent of freemasonic organisations like the Skull and Bones Society which many of these political perverts are known to be a part of. Given the corruption writ large, the Left-Hand Path might even be more powerful in our time, for those who can take it without falling. Sri Ramana and René Guenon stand out as the purest spiritual teachers in relatively recent times.

In this way, Trump - as an avatar of the Anti-Christ - has been sent by God to destroy the false idol of Christ so that we can realise our true nature as absolute nothingness. “Go ahead! Achieve all your goals! Break all the dams! Faster! You are unbound. Go ahead and fly with faster wings, with an ever greater pride for your achievements, with your conquests, with your empires, with your democracies! The pit must be filled; there is a need for fertiliser for the new tree that will grow out of your collapse.” It is nowadays. Maybe it used to be otherwise… Not on anything like the same level of corruption.

Exactly, I think that’s what a lot of this comes down to. Immature people will seek satisfaction in sex. Mature people will recognise that sex, as a form of lower-chakra jouissance, is inherently unfulfilling and will therefore sublimate that energy into something more profound. Unfortunately I seem to have fallen into the former camp…

Exactly. If you’re married for years and your highest priority is sexual satisfaction, you’re probably doing something wrong. Incidentally, that’s one of the themes which runs through Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut: their eyes are being opened sexually whilst their eyes are closed to their obligations as parents. The times where it feels like the God in you sees the Goddess in her and vice versa. The boundless ocean of death and love, mort and amor, in a unison with the infinite light of pure awareness.

Until eventually you end up like this: Crede experto!

I don’t know. The most fulfilling experiences I have had with women have been on a soul-level and not sexual. I think I do agree with Leo that one woman will never fulfil you sexually, if that is what you are looking for. Of course, especially as the years go by, you will probably never fulfil one woman either…

Joking aside, according to a recent blog post from Leo, it’s not possible and you need to learn to satisfy yourself.

Exactly, the author is trying to argue that working with dark, destructive and demonic forces can create a “dark night of the soul” which purges the ego of its attachment to ideals and abstractions as well as base desires. I'm not sure that I agree with this, by the way, especially as a practice. However, if one has already made a deal with the devil, it could be useful to consider how this might be reframed as still part of an overarching spiritual trajectory…

Well, in Barry Lyndon, it does feel good until he has to reap all of the bad karma that he has accumulated… I agree though, lying and cheating rot the soul. Like the Faust story, it is trading the ephemeral for the eternal.

Your narrative reminds me of the beautiful film Barry Lyndon in which the protagonist, who is lied to and cheated, becomes a liar and a cheat himself to beat them… On the subject of films, the part of your post where you describe how the Devil speaks to you when you feel wounded and betrayed reminds me of the recent Robert Egger’s film Nosferatu, in which the female protagonist summons a dark and evil ancient spirit to cope with her loneliness and isolation: The good news is that, from an esoteric point of view, a deal with the devil can be a path to the True Self as absolute nothingness. Some quotes from a book I have been reading recently, Dark Enlightenment: The Apotheosis of the Self by Jack Fox-Williams: I liked your post, especially the part about not giving up on the heroic quest. This also reminds me of Wagner’s Parsifal…

Modern people are too atheistic and nihilistic to care about blasphemy. They have other false idols, but not God. If blasphemy has relevance today it is in the political sphere.

Master Ma was very sick. The head monk asked, "How is your Reverence feeling lately?" Master Ma said, "Sun-faced Buddha, Moon-faced Buddha".