'The "Third Method is the Dramatic," perhaps the most attractive of all; certainly it is so to the artist's temperament, for it appeals to his imagination through his aesthetic sense...
...In the third, identity is attained by sympathy. It is very difficult for the ordinary man to lose himself completely in the subject of a play or of a novel; but for those who can do so, this method is unquestionably the best.'
Ch.1, MITP, AC
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Strategic Drama IV - The Alchemist
You are the control centre at the middle of your own reality but the only real way you can tap into the controls is through the use of your Mind. Felix the Perfect Helix and his three spheres is an effective map of this personal reality and by fixing this map in your mind it is possible to open up the information contained inside the 'nucleus' as well as unlock the gates to the various different magickal, mental or psychic powers that are contained within the 'cell'. These different powers come with lessons.
We posit since ultimately all functions of the body, such as the production of various hormones and pheromones, the control of blinking etceteras, are ultimately under control of the Mind, it is possible to tap into these forces at will and via will. It is your Mind after all! Climb your spine and clasp it!
These powers/controls are locked away from your normal consciousness (ego) into the realms of your 'subconscious' because most people are not responsible enough to consciously look after things such as digestion and sweating, and if we were to consciously manage such processes it wouldn’t leave that consciousness much time or concentration to do anything else. It is best that way, for if the functions of your body are being controlled by your subconscious then it leaves your consciousness able to concentrate on other things, such as the accumulation of the Flux (attention, food, etc) necessary to keep it going, and keeping your guard against outside threat.
The practical upshot of this condition is this, if one can take control of one’s own consciousness in totality, at least temporarily, it is possible to switch on certain functions and actually use them to your own benefit. Bear in mind that the body is a massive storehouse of potions, chemicals, electricity, power - even biological weapons - and you are the owner of this incredibly flexible Alchemist.*
*Control* must be taken before it is possible to undertake any of the techniques of Strategic Drama that we are about to discuss. You will achieve no real success in this field except through stoicism in the social world, and meditation in the inner world. Since the secret of success is being able to imagine the moment, desire and motive result in the formation of poor shadows, not exact mirrors because desire and 'motive' are in essence a form of time-travelling. You must mirror the moment and in order to do so your mind must be clear. You must focus yet let go. Do not push - but pull. Think with the back and bottom of your brain not the front. Imagine a fluid floating around inside your head. Tip your head back and feel it slosh to the back and bottom. Now think.
Once control has been taken however one of the simplest routes to accessing the Alchemist of your body is with the power of your imagination, as the magi and alchemists of old were prone to use. If the correct mind-state can be achieved you can simply will a person towards you and they will correspondingly make the move. The sphere of perception acts as a kind of 'interface' between the will and the body. This maybe works because the Alchemist generates the pheromones of attraction for you, in the same way you can generate those for anger. Moods collect in the air around people, most of us can sense the chemical mist. If one person comes back from work in a bad mood, all those around them are plunged into a bad mood, unless the forces of 'good mood' can prevail. Or maybe your Alchemist changes the bioelectromagnetic field of your body in order to attract the person; maybe it is some form of ''energy'' or even spiritual etheric link - all is Mind after all and these are words to label the fluctuations within the One thing.
If memory or ambition blinds us however our senses can be dulled and eventually masked. Memory and ambition bring us out of tune with the moment and propel us into the past or the future. By judging the character of the moment incorrectly one can inadvertently generate the wrong kind of chemical effect. It is certainly possible to make mistakes here.
The word is the most basic form of transmitting a mood or feeling other than simple gesture. By saying something harsh you can make someone feel bad to his or her stomach, his or her body producing all the chemicals they need to make them feel really miserable and in agony, like their arm has been torn off. You can make people physically sick with your words and actions - either by causing stress to the point where the cortisol surge shuts down the immune system or sending people into paroxysms of self-doubt and mental agony. You can say all these destructive things and not even really mean them. You can say something with nowhere near the intensity that it is interpreted with. You can also say and do the opposite - and heal merely with words and kindness. A happy person is less likely to get ill and more likely to fight illness.
How much do we believe in words and how much more in action? This is why all good actors, and we do not mean stage actors, can stimulate the same effects as words with merely a look in their face. They may be so good they are not even conscious they are doing it anymore, but every single look they give seems to mean so much. Saying that you’re angry or in love in well-chosen words is one thing, looking like you mean it is something entirely different. The word or action in order to produce feeling in a different person is a direct influence of mind on matter. A thought conveyed into a word or action stimulates the chemical senses of another person in order and changes their thoughts, the position of their body and even the concentration of hormones in their blood.
However - it is actually surprisingly difficult to simply ‘will’ a person towards you and have them come, to ‘will’ them to do something and have them do it - and by will I mean that these effects are achieved without speech or action but simply by thought. The first difficulty comes in attaining the right mind-state and control of that mind, then focusing what one wants to happen on the environment is very difficult to do without losing yourself in 'desire of result'. This is why for countless generations we have used ‘focuses’ to transmit our will on to the world, ancient magicians used wands and staves for example. The wand, or rather, the knowledge of that wand tied them into reality, grounded them into the moment, if you like, so they could channel their ‘will’ into it. The 'real' caduceus wand though is your spine and your brain stem.
Here is where it will get weird. The person in front of you that you are willing to do something, or trying to heal, etc is not so much objectively real (although we assume they are) as they are an ''apparition'' or even 'spirit' in your Mind - and this is one of the secrets of Magick. The Astral Plane that is referred to does not only mean that sea of images that one enters in deep meditation but also the world which one interacts with when fully conscious. The people in the world around you are the ‘spirits’ of the ‘astral plane’ and one can summon them and bind them as magicians of old did. The mistake remember is thinking that one looks through their eyes rather than at their eyes. You *never* directly experience this 'physical world' you presume exists.
By pulling a certain face you generate a certain emotion, maybe humour, despair, anger (as discussed earlier). Making people laugh is more about your movement and personality than it is the sharpness of your wit. Some people laugh at their own jokes and suddenly other people laugh with them, don’t they? They mirror the moment they wish to unveil. Of course people can see that you’re doing it, which means of course you are clearly responsible for that piece of Strategic Drama and the consequences of pulling that face will be felt.
The *trick* is to pull that face in your mind, if you wish to intimidate someone, imagine a tall, powerful version of yourself towering over them, or shout and bellow at them *in your mind*, if you wish to seduce imagine you are telling them how beautiful they are, etceteras. You must do this while continuing to interact with the environment in a completely normal way. You will find that thought is the more powerful of the three.
Feelix in his perceptual sphere is a reflection of the structure of the Alchemist in that it is a structure of the cell in its representation of the nucleus in the cytoplasm. This reflection is very similar to the physiological diagram of the homunculus, a diagram where the human brain is turned into parts of the body, revealing huge hands and feet because of all the brain space devoted to these functions. This is the true secret of the Mask; most people are limited to their knowledge of words, some of actions and gesture and words/actions are limited to the physical, lingual, social, psychological and economic limits of the Conflux however. The power of your thought and your dreams - if you can control them - are not bounded by these rules however.
With some knowledge of physiology, anatomy, genetics and biochemistry you may understand that certain places in the body are responsible for the production of certain chemicals and hormones, substances which if used correctly can greatly enhance physical power, sexuality, concentration, etceteras. Oriental mystics from Japan, China, India, focus on points on the spinal column, the seven chakras and imagine them glowing in their mind. If one is correctly prepared with meditation, this can lead to some interesting physical responses in one’s own body (if one concentrates on the chakra above the head, a pleasant feeling of being lifted up may result, the heart, euphoria, and focusing along all the chakras, can lead to a feeling of rotation, one may even begin to swirl around on the spot, like you were mapping the helix with the movements of your spine). Obviously the sex organs can generate pheromones and attract the opposite sex if they are concentrated on, the adrenals can be stimulated for adrenaline or emotional control. If one thinks about love, the feeling comes from the solar plexus, if one thinks about sex the feeling comes from the genatalia and in between them, for some reason, in the adrenal medulla, is the power of lust. The chakras of other people may be touched in this way imagine the third eye/pineal gland of someone else to be glowing and they may turn to look at you. We all know instinctively that someone is looking at us, don’t we, how does that work? What may happen, although beginning in the mind, concentrating on the back of a brain, our look is translated into chemical messengers, electrical fields, whatever, that are released from our body and sensed by the other person’s Alchemist. Since every chemical medium is a proton/electron network formed into the shape of a molecule, what is essentially happening, when anything happens regardless of will or no, is a mind tapping into the Flux.
Or in fact only the Flux is happening.
*All matter is essentially a condensed form of Mind.
We posit since ultimately all functions of the body, such as the production of various hormones and pheromones, the control of blinking etceteras, are ultimately under control of the Mind, it is possible to tap into these forces at will and via will. It is your Mind after all! Climb your spine and clasp it!
These powers/controls are locked away from your normal consciousness (ego) into the realms of your 'subconscious' because most people are not responsible enough to consciously look after things such as digestion and sweating, and if we were to consciously manage such processes it wouldn’t leave that consciousness much time or concentration to do anything else. It is best that way, for if the functions of your body are being controlled by your subconscious then it leaves your consciousness able to concentrate on other things, such as the accumulation of the Flux (attention, food, etc) necessary to keep it going, and keeping your guard against outside threat.
The practical upshot of this condition is this, if one can take control of one’s own consciousness in totality, at least temporarily, it is possible to switch on certain functions and actually use them to your own benefit. Bear in mind that the body is a massive storehouse of potions, chemicals, electricity, power - even biological weapons - and you are the owner of this incredibly flexible Alchemist.*
*Control* must be taken before it is possible to undertake any of the techniques of Strategic Drama that we are about to discuss. You will achieve no real success in this field except through stoicism in the social world, and meditation in the inner world. Since the secret of success is being able to imagine the moment, desire and motive result in the formation of poor shadows, not exact mirrors because desire and 'motive' are in essence a form of time-travelling. You must mirror the moment and in order to do so your mind must be clear. You must focus yet let go. Do not push - but pull. Think with the back and bottom of your brain not the front. Imagine a fluid floating around inside your head. Tip your head back and feel it slosh to the back and bottom. Now think.
Once control has been taken however one of the simplest routes to accessing the Alchemist of your body is with the power of your imagination, as the magi and alchemists of old were prone to use. If the correct mind-state can be achieved you can simply will a person towards you and they will correspondingly make the move. The sphere of perception acts as a kind of 'interface' between the will and the body. This maybe works because the Alchemist generates the pheromones of attraction for you, in the same way you can generate those for anger. Moods collect in the air around people, most of us can sense the chemical mist. If one person comes back from work in a bad mood, all those around them are plunged into a bad mood, unless the forces of 'good mood' can prevail. Or maybe your Alchemist changes the bioelectromagnetic field of your body in order to attract the person; maybe it is some form of ''energy'' or even spiritual etheric link - all is Mind after all and these are words to label the fluctuations within the One thing.
If memory or ambition blinds us however our senses can be dulled and eventually masked. Memory and ambition bring us out of tune with the moment and propel us into the past or the future. By judging the character of the moment incorrectly one can inadvertently generate the wrong kind of chemical effect. It is certainly possible to make mistakes here.
The word is the most basic form of transmitting a mood or feeling other than simple gesture. By saying something harsh you can make someone feel bad to his or her stomach, his or her body producing all the chemicals they need to make them feel really miserable and in agony, like their arm has been torn off. You can make people physically sick with your words and actions - either by causing stress to the point where the cortisol surge shuts down the immune system or sending people into paroxysms of self-doubt and mental agony. You can say all these destructive things and not even really mean them. You can say something with nowhere near the intensity that it is interpreted with. You can also say and do the opposite - and heal merely with words and kindness. A happy person is less likely to get ill and more likely to fight illness.
How much do we believe in words and how much more in action? This is why all good actors, and we do not mean stage actors, can stimulate the same effects as words with merely a look in their face. They may be so good they are not even conscious they are doing it anymore, but every single look they give seems to mean so much. Saying that you’re angry or in love in well-chosen words is one thing, looking like you mean it is something entirely different. The word or action in order to produce feeling in a different person is a direct influence of mind on matter. A thought conveyed into a word or action stimulates the chemical senses of another person in order and changes their thoughts, the position of their body and even the concentration of hormones in their blood.
However - it is actually surprisingly difficult to simply ‘will’ a person towards you and have them come, to ‘will’ them to do something and have them do it - and by will I mean that these effects are achieved without speech or action but simply by thought. The first difficulty comes in attaining the right mind-state and control of that mind, then focusing what one wants to happen on the environment is very difficult to do without losing yourself in 'desire of result'. This is why for countless generations we have used ‘focuses’ to transmit our will on to the world, ancient magicians used wands and staves for example. The wand, or rather, the knowledge of that wand tied them into reality, grounded them into the moment, if you like, so they could channel their ‘will’ into it. The 'real' caduceus wand though is your spine and your brain stem.
Here is where it will get weird. The person in front of you that you are willing to do something, or trying to heal, etc is not so much objectively real (although we assume they are) as they are an ''apparition'' or even 'spirit' in your Mind - and this is one of the secrets of Magick. The Astral Plane that is referred to does not only mean that sea of images that one enters in deep meditation but also the world which one interacts with when fully conscious. The people in the world around you are the ‘spirits’ of the ‘astral plane’ and one can summon them and bind them as magicians of old did. The mistake remember is thinking that one looks through their eyes rather than at their eyes. You *never* directly experience this 'physical world' you presume exists.
By pulling a certain face you generate a certain emotion, maybe humour, despair, anger (as discussed earlier). Making people laugh is more about your movement and personality than it is the sharpness of your wit. Some people laugh at their own jokes and suddenly other people laugh with them, don’t they? They mirror the moment they wish to unveil. Of course people can see that you’re doing it, which means of course you are clearly responsible for that piece of Strategic Drama and the consequences of pulling that face will be felt.
The *trick* is to pull that face in your mind, if you wish to intimidate someone, imagine a tall, powerful version of yourself towering over them, or shout and bellow at them *in your mind*, if you wish to seduce imagine you are telling them how beautiful they are, etceteras. You must do this while continuing to interact with the environment in a completely normal way. You will find that thought is the more powerful of the three.
Feelix in his perceptual sphere is a reflection of the structure of the Alchemist in that it is a structure of the cell in its representation of the nucleus in the cytoplasm. This reflection is very similar to the physiological diagram of the homunculus, a diagram where the human brain is turned into parts of the body, revealing huge hands and feet because of all the brain space devoted to these functions. This is the true secret of the Mask; most people are limited to their knowledge of words, some of actions and gesture and words/actions are limited to the physical, lingual, social, psychological and economic limits of the Conflux however. The power of your thought and your dreams - if you can control them - are not bounded by these rules however.
With some knowledge of physiology, anatomy, genetics and biochemistry you may understand that certain places in the body are responsible for the production of certain chemicals and hormones, substances which if used correctly can greatly enhance physical power, sexuality, concentration, etceteras. Oriental mystics from Japan, China, India, focus on points on the spinal column, the seven chakras and imagine them glowing in their mind. If one is correctly prepared with meditation, this can lead to some interesting physical responses in one’s own body (if one concentrates on the chakra above the head, a pleasant feeling of being lifted up may result, the heart, euphoria, and focusing along all the chakras, can lead to a feeling of rotation, one may even begin to swirl around on the spot, like you were mapping the helix with the movements of your spine). Obviously the sex organs can generate pheromones and attract the opposite sex if they are concentrated on, the adrenals can be stimulated for adrenaline or emotional control. If one thinks about love, the feeling comes from the solar plexus, if one thinks about sex the feeling comes from the genatalia and in between them, for some reason, in the adrenal medulla, is the power of lust. The chakras of other people may be touched in this way imagine the third eye/pineal gland of someone else to be glowing and they may turn to look at you. We all know instinctively that someone is looking at us, don’t we, how does that work? What may happen, although beginning in the mind, concentrating on the back of a brain, our look is translated into chemical messengers, electrical fields, whatever, that are released from our body and sensed by the other person’s Alchemist. Since every chemical medium is a proton/electron network formed into the shape of a molecule, what is essentially happening, when anything happens regardless of will or no, is a mind tapping into the Flux.
Or in fact only the Flux is happening.
*All matter is essentially a condensed form of Mind.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Raziel II - Muscles of the Mask
Years ago I performed a working with Raziel, the Secrets of God. He was adamant that I abandoned the work with the Tarot deck and the Kircher Tree that I had been doing up until then and research the letters of the Alefbeit as they stand alone. I did this by studying the Sefer Yetzirah for 5 years, using Kaplan's SY in Theory and Practice. Along the way I performed rites and acts of practical Kabbalah. I learned to evoke each letter as a Gate and then walk through it along a Path, reading the symbols that I encountered along that path as a dialogue between myself and the heart of the World. My brain became my crystal ball. I did not do this entirely in the astral imagination. Most of the times the paths I walked were in the physical*. Along those paths I learned to listen, to see and to feel on a Secret level. I also learned to call the letters to manifestation.
During the course of work with the Gentlemen for Jupiter over the last few weeks, Raziel came unbidden to my study in the early hours and requested a 'meeting'. As I retired to meditation I used a Tzeruf like method of the SY and engraved the letters of Raziel on the astral imagination**. This worked instantly. I felt like I was contained within a brass gyroscope contraption like one of those old models of the solar system whirling through space, and engraved into the device, its structures and wheels, were the Secrets - this seemed like a Merkavah of some sort to me. Sadly I began to interpret this experience about 15 seconds in and the vision journey broke up. I was exicted by the immediacy of the success though and took this to be a good indicator that Raziel did indeed wish to talk and it wasn't just in my head.
I resolved then to attempt a slightly different method, that of 'carving' the letters out of the imagination. This is a method I enjoy but I have never been exactly sure as to how it works. The end result is that the letter forms in full dimensions, it is not written so much as it is sculpted, one can feel its weight and hold it. As I began the method, Raziel literally just gave a lesson in how this works, since he was already there attempting to 'summon' him again was a little silly.
I have known for a long time that where one holds ones eyes during vision work affects the vision. For instance distractions from the ego and the body tend to cause the eyes to drop in their socket, holding the eyes forward increases auditory effects and holding the eyes up in the socket increases the visual quality. The actual optic nerve to the visual cortex acts as a kind of 'joystick'. Now bearing in mind that what we experience is the consciousness of the muscle of the eye as opposed to the muscles directly when one gets good at this one can manipulate the consciousness of those muscles *indepedently* to the muscles themselves.
What Raziel taught me during this lesson was that essentially the 'letter' can be 'held' by the facial muscles, or rather the consciousness of the facial muscles. Weirdly you imagine you are gripping it between your brow and your cheekbones. If you close your eyes and then scrunch up your face like this you will see and feel this scrunching in the ''dark vision'' of your eyes. The trick is to take the consciousness of 'feeling' or 'holding' something in these muscles and make it indepedent of the muscles themselves.
I began with Alef and rapidly the form was held by this procedure, once I had used the facial muscles to attain consciousness of 'holdingness' I dropped the actual facial muscle 'scaffolding' and held the form with consciousness itself. Raziel then told me to breathe into Alef. The same technique was applied, the breathing I experience is not the direct breathing it is the consciousness of breathing. Therefore that consciousness once separated from the physical act can be used to do other things. In this case filling the form of Alef with (the consciousness of) breath. What happened I guess was a little like glass blowing, except the form did not grow as it got filled with breath it began to shift from a stone like grey black to bright white (but not hot). This produced an intense euphoria. After this I carved the letters of Raziel's name out and placed them mentally under my pillow, I then had a lucid dream relating to the Gentlemen for Jupiter (which I cannot go into details of here, suffice to say it was very vivid).
n.b. When I was looking for an image of Raziel I ended up on a new-agey type site where it described Raziel - 'Raziel speaks about the DNA within us holds the light codes that access the God Source energy, when we begin to acknowledge that we are of the God Source energy, we change the light codes to activate and become the MerKaBah (Star of David, Vehicle of Light) that changes into the spinning motion and accelerates our Spirituality of the Self into the vibration of creating a new Earth inside of ourselves even before it is manifest into the physical plane of existence.' Normally I dismiss these websites out of hand as I actually understand DNA but I shouldn't be so mean this is pretty much the experience of the first vision.
*By 'physical' I mean most condensed form of the Mind. The A47 and A4 were two highly memorable paths walked with a variety of letter-Gates.
**Imagine the astral void of swirling colours and pixels like a taut black cloth of many threads and with a sharp (also imaginary!) tool, scratch through that cloth by writing the letters of Raziel's name. 'Light' will come through the slits.
During the course of work with the Gentlemen for Jupiter over the last few weeks, Raziel came unbidden to my study in the early hours and requested a 'meeting'. As I retired to meditation I used a Tzeruf like method of the SY and engraved the letters of Raziel on the astral imagination**. This worked instantly. I felt like I was contained within a brass gyroscope contraption like one of those old models of the solar system whirling through space, and engraved into the device, its structures and wheels, were the Secrets - this seemed like a Merkavah of some sort to me. Sadly I began to interpret this experience about 15 seconds in and the vision journey broke up. I was exicted by the immediacy of the success though and took this to be a good indicator that Raziel did indeed wish to talk and it wasn't just in my head.
I resolved then to attempt a slightly different method, that of 'carving' the letters out of the imagination. This is a method I enjoy but I have never been exactly sure as to how it works. The end result is that the letter forms in full dimensions, it is not written so much as it is sculpted, one can feel its weight and hold it. As I began the method, Raziel literally just gave a lesson in how this works, since he was already there attempting to 'summon' him again was a little silly.
I have known for a long time that where one holds ones eyes during vision work affects the vision. For instance distractions from the ego and the body tend to cause the eyes to drop in their socket, holding the eyes forward increases auditory effects and holding the eyes up in the socket increases the visual quality. The actual optic nerve to the visual cortex acts as a kind of 'joystick'. Now bearing in mind that what we experience is the consciousness of the muscle of the eye as opposed to the muscles directly when one gets good at this one can manipulate the consciousness of those muscles *indepedently* to the muscles themselves.
What Raziel taught me during this lesson was that essentially the 'letter' can be 'held' by the facial muscles, or rather the consciousness of the facial muscles. Weirdly you imagine you are gripping it between your brow and your cheekbones. If you close your eyes and then scrunch up your face like this you will see and feel this scrunching in the ''dark vision'' of your eyes. The trick is to take the consciousness of 'feeling' or 'holding' something in these muscles and make it indepedent of the muscles themselves.
I began with Alef and rapidly the form was held by this procedure, once I had used the facial muscles to attain consciousness of 'holdingness' I dropped the actual facial muscle 'scaffolding' and held the form with consciousness itself. Raziel then told me to breathe into Alef. The same technique was applied, the breathing I experience is not the direct breathing it is the consciousness of breathing. Therefore that consciousness once separated from the physical act can be used to do other things. In this case filling the form of Alef with (the consciousness of) breath. What happened I guess was a little like glass blowing, except the form did not grow as it got filled with breath it began to shift from a stone like grey black to bright white (but not hot). This produced an intense euphoria. After this I carved the letters of Raziel's name out and placed them mentally under my pillow, I then had a lucid dream relating to the Gentlemen for Jupiter (which I cannot go into details of here, suffice to say it was very vivid).
n.b. When I was looking for an image of Raziel I ended up on a new-agey type site where it described Raziel - 'Raziel speaks about the DNA within us holds the light codes that access the God Source energy, when we begin to acknowledge that we are of the God Source energy, we change the light codes to activate and become the MerKaBah (Star of David, Vehicle of Light) that changes into the spinning motion and accelerates our Spirituality of the Self into the vibration of creating a new Earth inside of ourselves even before it is manifest into the physical plane of existence.' Normally I dismiss these websites out of hand as I actually understand DNA but I shouldn't be so mean this is pretty much the experience of the first vision.
*By 'physical' I mean most condensed form of the Mind. The A47 and A4 were two highly memorable paths walked with a variety of letter-Gates.
**Imagine the astral void of swirling colours and pixels like a taut black cloth of many threads and with a sharp (also imaginary!) tool, scratch through that cloth by writing the letters of Raziel's name. 'Light' will come through the slits.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Kether - Alternate Names
You cannot conceive the many without the one.Plato, Dialogues, Parmenides
Within most texts explaining the mysteries of the QBL you will see oblique and opaque references to something called 'God' as if we all know what this means. The etymological beginnings the word God or a God in its true meaning refers to spirit or a spirit – not necessarily a wise, omnipotent, all knowing all loving being. However the QBL provides us with many words to “know” this God more completely and avoid the often poorly understood common usage of the word: En Sof, the Limitless; El, the Mighty; and Adonai, Lord, amongst many many more*. God in its general use is often seen to be an ineffability an unknowable force beyond human, beyond sense, beyond reason and as such, beyond discussion. We may come to the something called “God”, this “spirit” with many names through an understanding of its works, its creation – and in the QBL these works are undertaken through and with the Sefirot.
From reading the Sefer Yetzirah this essay recognizes the ten Sefirot as not only the tools and processes of creation but also as a map of the absolute directions of existence – spatial, temporal and observational. The ten Sefirot are the ten directions of the five polarities of the hypercontinuum of the universe – up-down, east-west, north-south, beginning-end and good-evil. This essay on the alternate names for Kether will avoid spurious references to God and instead use the rich literature of QBL to describe Spirit and its mode of operation within manifestation, the Sefirot – we will use and provide explanations of the meaning for God names, alternative names used in core texts, the Sefirot as universal directions of existence, and the letters as the pathways we take within it to provide the most precise meanings we can.
In the Sefer Yetzirah, the Sefirot are described as depths and the letters as infinite so although our essay will attempt to provide a comprehensive but concise account of the metaphysics behind the system, it must not be taken as fact or as all that is known and the student who would follow his own path should use texts like these only as guidelines for his own journey into the mysteries.
Crown/Keter – A crown sits on the head of a king as a sign of his majesty and influence; to crown a work is to perfect it. A king without a crown is bereft of recognition in his kingdom; a crown alone is ring of rare metal and precious stones enclosing nothing. In the Early Kabbalah (i.e. Bahir), the Sefirot were all called Keter (Keterim) – that is, per the Sefer Yetzirah, ten crowns of nothingness.
Existence/Ahyeh – Keter is known by the God-name of Ahyeh or existence. We have in Keter then the simplest concept of being or doing – existing. Taken in its fullest context we have the idea of Keter as all existence, and therefore the universe – creation itself as the crown of “the King of creation”.
Nothingness/Ayin – When we look into the universe we see immense reaches of nothingness, untold billions of leagues of empty space, distances so vast that even light itself takes epoch-smashing amounts of time to cross – so much so that when we look into space we look back into time at the light from the stars that has journeyed millions of years to reach and show us what once was. Since space and time are so intimately linked it is not only space that is mostly empty, but time itself as well.
Absence/He’der – Within this boundless ocean of emptiness we do observe little islands of form and matter but further observations, penetrating into the nature of matter itself, reveal tiny particles of opposing and neutralizing charge orbiting each other, from their perspective, at yet more vast distances of empty space. Indeed, were one atom a football pitch, the nucleus would be a ball on the kick off spot, and the opposing electrons would be peas circling around the lines of the edge of the pitch itself! Nearly all of the field is empty! Our islands of matter within the empty cosmos have been shown to be hollow and empty themselves, spheres of absence punctuated by the tiniest flickering sparks that oppose and neutralize.
Obliteration/Hefsed – Atoms are composed of protons, neutrons and electrons. The charges on protons and electrons are opposed and cancel out within the stable atom or molecule, but the mass of a single atom concentrated within the nucleus, the tiny football in the gulf of atomic absence, is composed of titanic energies which when released can destroy whole cities and worlds. When one is heading with love towards the highest of the worlds the Kabbalists counsel one to withdraw in fear and trembling for fear of being obliterated; the core of the Earth is a super dense sphere of molten uranium which no man-made vehicle could penetrate without being ripped asunder.
Darkness/Hoshekh – In Lurianic Kabbalah, Keter is said to be the light of En Sof (a limitless expanse) concentrated to a single point within a hollow sphere. Concentrating atoms into an ever increasing density leads to a monstrous magnification of the forces of gravitation, and ultimately to the phenomena known as a black hole. Built in the imploding core of a supermassive star which gives light by crushing matter, black holes are so powerful they bend both space and time and even swallow light. At the very core of our galaxy, the primum mobile itself, there may well be clusters of giant black holes, their rotation and their swirling gravitational pull dragging the stars into their familiar spiral arrangement. Black holes themselves look white because we can only see them by the light they suck in – light itself travels along grooves in space-time caused by the gravitational maelstrom caused by the interaction of all celestial bodies.
Unity/Achad – Keter is one, the unit, the basis of mathematical reasoning which is the crown of the intellect. Keter is the everything that did not come from something, and will always be what it is forever; it fails to know even nothing as its father for as we have seen, the stuff of it is nothingness, and it operates within nothingness – the nothingness is the one. This everything certainly contains some things but these things by virtue of there being from the one thing that is everything are united in that one thing. It is impossible for us to take our existence outside of the existence we are within and look at it, but if we could we would surely see only the tiniest spark and this is all. From within this existence that is our existence, we simply see it streaming off in all directions; spatial, temporal and observational.
Thought/Machashavah – The oneness of Keter that serves maths, serves the mind as well for 1 is not so different from I. Keter is said, by Isaac the Blind, to be “thought” – it is the idea of one, i.e. Me, that the self depends on – as Adam Kadmon, the essential self awareness which is the true identity of man and the fifth and highest world, the tip of the Yod; as Arikh Anpin, the partzuf of Keter, the “Long Suffering One” who experiences all the countless identities within the one thing, and suffers as we suffer.
Alef, Yod and Qoph – These letters by virtue of their numerical oneness (1, 10, 100) take from and lend to the idea of Keter. Alef, the silent inbreath before speech, the airiness that blows leaves, the ox that symbolizes work about to be done. Yod, the closed hand, a sign of concealment, or as a fist, force about to be unleashed – with the fingers closed the five dimensions are clasped tight. Qoph the back of the head, that which we cannot see, and that part we rest upon when we close our eyes to the darkness of the self that cannot be known, when we close our eyes on the great concealment.
Keter is the sefira that symbolizes both everything and nothing. It is everything that it is existence, the cosmic crown of universal perfection, the unity that binds all form to the singular master and the building block of both mathematics and identity. But it is also nothingness, the emptiness that gives the form of things their structure and power, the darkness of our acknowledged ignorance that separates the tiny sparks of matter and knowledge that are scattered within the limitless cosmos.
*Enlil --> Ellil --> Eli --> El --> Al --> Allah
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Theory of Knowledge - Consciousness
I've been working on speeding up the journey to enlightenment, and I think I have it down to 45 mins + some homework.
We start with the myth of the cave (watching an 8min version of it - Allegory of the Cave)
We then move on to the structure of the eye and how that relates to their 'experience of the moment'.
Now we know that we are in the cave, I posit the question what then is the route out of the cave (informing them that the sun outside the cave referred to is not the physical sun but a metaphor) implied by Sokrates in his story? Where does one actually go when one 'leaves the cave'? How does one leave 'consciousness'? Sokrates is not talking about a deeper understanding of the physical world in leaving the cave, but a deeper understanding of the mental world.
'What is behind this door right now?' I ask. 'The corridor!' they say. What is beyond your consciousness of your perception, this door represents that limit right now, you can't see through it (you can't really hear through it, its bloody thick!). We finally understand that our consciousness of our selves** (our egoic consciousness if you like) is enclosed in the larger , deeper and vaster consciousness of our mind***. That behind that door of our perception is that world of vaster deeper consciousness! How then do we leave?
Well before teaching lucid dreaming and astral projection, I recount an adventure of my own in this regard. I had been struggling with the astral body of light for a while before moving to Prague. I had been getting severe sleep paralysis on and off for about six years, and sometimes in the depths of those hells only prayer to Isis, Mary, mummy (!) would get me out. When I moved to Prague I was living on my own for about nine months and the attacks became even more severe. One night, as I was lying half-paralysed and electrocuted in bed, I managed to crawl, using my one working arm towards the door of my bedroom, and reaching it found it locked. This can't be true I told myself, in the weird limbo hologram I was in, I wouldn't have locked myself in my own room. Gaining strength from this truth I slowly forced the door open with great resistance, as if someone else was holding it shut on the other side. When I finally wrenched it open I stared out across a vast purplish landscape, replete with mountains, vallys and flying things.
We then look at two methods for exploring the larger consciousness which I referred to as the Trick and the Method. The Trick is essentially you do not roll over when you want to as you lie in bed, you have to trick your body into it thinking that 'you' are asleep so you get sleep paralysis and from there can move into lucid dreaming. The Method uses closed eye visions - the little squiggles and blobs that start appearing in your vision after several minutes of static noise. The Method involves deep breathing, and concentration on the squiggles and blobs until they begin to morph, or you go (pull yourself) into them (if one is lying flat on one's back in death-pose yoga then going into them, actually is going 'up' - this is your classic silver cord astral projection). Important notes here are to keep the eyes forward, if they drop in the socket its typically because one is listening to their own egoic thoughts or worrying about physical comfort (if you want to increase the visual aspect of the experience actually hold your eyes up in the socket) and maintain the breathing. The results are a kind of weirdly intelligent tesselation, emotional colour fields, and then ultimately crystal clear visions (almost more real than your normal waking life) full of beings who will talk to you. My own opinion, on this world outside the cave, is that it is a place we all share rather than our own space (we have our own dream space mind, not all dreams take place here) - in the cellular model I have been building this place is the 'blood' of the larger mind, that feeds all the individual cells with the stuff of consciousness namely Time.
The immediate success rate of this lesson is very high, say 90%. Largely the students understand it. Many of them already have enough shared experience like to know where it is going (after the cave at least). Maintaining the state of contemplation of consciousness, i.e. the truth of your experience is difficult (and perhaps dangerous...) and I believe that 90% of students fall back into the delusional state of being a phsyical object looking 'through' its eyes at the world. The students who, in my opinion are likely to maintain the state for longer and/or at intervals through the rest of their life were the ones who were already prone to lucid dreaming (some actually slept in death-pose yoga and lucidly dreamt virtually every night) and therefore the most important part of this lesson is an authority figure telling you that this experience (and talent) is valuable and that you are not alone. The exploration of one's own consciousness is both wildly interesting and hugely important in the development of the whole being.**** I do believe that this state could be induced in the wider community were it actually part of the curriculum, I believe the recent changes in the ToK syllabus to include 'religious and indigenous' areas of knowledge are an opportunity to explore the 'knowledge' of mystical states and experiences, the akhashic record, the spirit worlds of dreams experienced by 'primitive' tribes, etc. There is a 'spiritual' thread that is permitted in education, but its not widely or wisely used by most schools - it is however the only bridge that can close the gulf between knowledge and wisdom that our Angloamerican obsession with materialism and the natural sciences has opened.
Approaching it from another angle would be to argue that this is not safe - and indeed students have experienced and reported the weirdness, disquiet and often pain that goes with the Trick and the Method (although all agreedit was fascinating and 'worth it') - yet if it is 'health and safety' that is being used to limit students exploring their own consciousness the counter-argument would be, well you let them, indeed force them, to play rugby so how is this lesson in being a physical object in a physical world any more dangerous than learning to become a mental object in a mental world?
*If one is clear that the universal substrate (the one thing) is thought/mind that one can do awesome mind-blowing things with the fragments we have of Parmenides' 'On Nature'.
**Zeir Anpin, the first sphere is associated with Tifereth in the 'horizontal' Tree of Life.
***Arikh Anpin, the fourth sphere and beyond is associated with Keter in the 'horizontal' Tree of Life.
****It is also something that again we have in common - we all know that feeling of dropping suddenly whilst getting to sleep, we've all seen the 'blobs and squiggles'. Its so refreshing to talk about the stuff of the life-world that makes us the same rather than that which makes us different.
We start with the myth of the cave (watching an 8min version of it - Allegory of the Cave)
We then move on to the structure of the eye and how that relates to their 'experience of the moment'.
Then they are told that they are delusional, just like the people in the cave. Their consciousness is so effective at creating an image of the world that their eyes experience inside their mind that they mistake their consciousness of percepetion for the world itself. Their whole life they have been living a lie where they think they look through their eyes at the world rather than at their visual perception (this applies to all the other senses) from someone in their mind.
A practical optional lesson is to take them into a dark room dazzle them with a torch and then return to the darkness. This creates a kind of retinal burn, a coloured blob on the vision that persists in the darkness. It is easy to establish here the existence of mental light and thence to all perception being composed of 'mental light'. There are other interesting learning extensions here*.
This piece of information is absolutely essential in transforming oneself from the bare Feelix, a (delusional) physical object in an apparently physical world into Feelix in his circles of consciousness, a mental object in a mental world.
 |
| BEFORE ENLIGHTENMENT |
 |
| AFTER ENLIGHTENMENT |
Now we know that we are in the cave, I posit the question what then is the route out of the cave (informing them that the sun outside the cave referred to is not the physical sun but a metaphor) implied by Sokrates in his story? Where does one actually go when one 'leaves the cave'? How does one leave 'consciousness'? Sokrates is not talking about a deeper understanding of the physical world in leaving the cave, but a deeper understanding of the mental world.
'What is behind this door right now?' I ask. 'The corridor!' they say. What is beyond your consciousness of your perception, this door represents that limit right now, you can't see through it (you can't really hear through it, its bloody thick!). We finally understand that our consciousness of our selves** (our egoic consciousness if you like) is enclosed in the larger , deeper and vaster consciousness of our mind***. That behind that door of our perception is that world of vaster deeper consciousness! How then do we leave?
Well before teaching lucid dreaming and astral projection, I recount an adventure of my own in this regard. I had been struggling with the astral body of light for a while before moving to Prague. I had been getting severe sleep paralysis on and off for about six years, and sometimes in the depths of those hells only prayer to Isis, Mary, mummy (!) would get me out. When I moved to Prague I was living on my own for about nine months and the attacks became even more severe. One night, as I was lying half-paralysed and electrocuted in bed, I managed to crawl, using my one working arm towards the door of my bedroom, and reaching it found it locked. This can't be true I told myself, in the weird limbo hologram I was in, I wouldn't have locked myself in my own room. Gaining strength from this truth I slowly forced the door open with great resistance, as if someone else was holding it shut on the other side. When I finally wrenched it open I stared out across a vast purplish landscape, replete with mountains, vallys and flying things.
We then look at two methods for exploring the larger consciousness which I referred to as the Trick and the Method. The Trick is essentially you do not roll over when you want to as you lie in bed, you have to trick your body into it thinking that 'you' are asleep so you get sleep paralysis and from there can move into lucid dreaming. The Method uses closed eye visions - the little squiggles and blobs that start appearing in your vision after several minutes of static noise. The Method involves deep breathing, and concentration on the squiggles and blobs until they begin to morph, or you go (pull yourself) into them (if one is lying flat on one's back in death-pose yoga then going into them, actually is going 'up' - this is your classic silver cord astral projection). Important notes here are to keep the eyes forward, if they drop in the socket its typically because one is listening to their own egoic thoughts or worrying about physical comfort (if you want to increase the visual aspect of the experience actually hold your eyes up in the socket) and maintain the breathing. The results are a kind of weirdly intelligent tesselation, emotional colour fields, and then ultimately crystal clear visions (almost more real than your normal waking life) full of beings who will talk to you. My own opinion, on this world outside the cave, is that it is a place we all share rather than our own space (we have our own dream space mind, not all dreams take place here) - in the cellular model I have been building this place is the 'blood' of the larger mind, that feeds all the individual cells with the stuff of consciousness namely Time.
The immediate success rate of this lesson is very high, say 90%. Largely the students understand it. Many of them already have enough shared experience like to know where it is going (after the cave at least). Maintaining the state of contemplation of consciousness, i.e. the truth of your experience is difficult (and perhaps dangerous...) and I believe that 90% of students fall back into the delusional state of being a phsyical object looking 'through' its eyes at the world. The students who, in my opinion are likely to maintain the state for longer and/or at intervals through the rest of their life were the ones who were already prone to lucid dreaming (some actually slept in death-pose yoga and lucidly dreamt virtually every night) and therefore the most important part of this lesson is an authority figure telling you that this experience (and talent) is valuable and that you are not alone. The exploration of one's own consciousness is both wildly interesting and hugely important in the development of the whole being.**** I do believe that this state could be induced in the wider community were it actually part of the curriculum, I believe the recent changes in the ToK syllabus to include 'religious and indigenous' areas of knowledge are an opportunity to explore the 'knowledge' of mystical states and experiences, the akhashic record, the spirit worlds of dreams experienced by 'primitive' tribes, etc. There is a 'spiritual' thread that is permitted in education, but its not widely or wisely used by most schools - it is however the only bridge that can close the gulf between knowledge and wisdom that our Angloamerican obsession with materialism and the natural sciences has opened.
Approaching it from another angle would be to argue that this is not safe - and indeed students have experienced and reported the weirdness, disquiet and often pain that goes with the Trick and the Method (although all agreedit was fascinating and 'worth it') - yet if it is 'health and safety' that is being used to limit students exploring their own consciousness the counter-argument would be, well you let them, indeed force them, to play rugby so how is this lesson in being a physical object in a physical world any more dangerous than learning to become a mental object in a mental world?
*If one is clear that the universal substrate (the one thing) is thought/mind that one can do awesome mind-blowing things with the fragments we have of Parmenides' 'On Nature'.
**Zeir Anpin, the first sphere is associated with Tifereth in the 'horizontal' Tree of Life.
***Arikh Anpin, the fourth sphere and beyond is associated with Keter in the 'horizontal' Tree of Life.
****It is also something that again we have in common - we all know that feeling of dropping suddenly whilst getting to sleep, we've all seen the 'blobs and squiggles'. Its so refreshing to talk about the stuff of the life-world that makes us the same rather than that which makes us different.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Strategic Drama III - Control (Stoicism)
"A sage once came to one of the meditators and asked that he be accepted into their society.
The other replied 'My son, blessed are you to God. Your intentions are Good. But tell me, have you attained stoicism or not?.
The sage said 'Master explain your words.'
The meditator said 'If one man is praising you and another is insulting you, are the two equal in your eyes or not?'
He replied 'No my master, I have pleasure from those who praise me and pain from those who degrade me. But I do not take revenge or bear a grudge.'
The other said 'Go in peace my son. You have not attained stoicism You have not reached a level where your soul does not feel the honour of one who praises you, nor the degradation of one who insults you. You are not prepared for your thoughts to be bound on high that you should come and meditate. Go and increase the humbleness of your heart and learn to treat everything equally until you have become stoic. Only then will you be able to meditate.'" Isaac of Acco
The maintainence of poise then is not just a factor of internal self-control, learned from the restraints and the observances it is also a matter of maintaining that poise in a social environment where your activities are constantly being judged and responded to with negative and positive attention.
Many people, including respected magi in the blogosphere have made the mistake that maintaining stoicism equates to a repression of feeling and suggested that if you have no link to external desires and the satisfaction of them then there is no point in existing. On the contrary stoicism results in the identification of the will, and with discipline the magnification of it. Desire pulls one in various different directions throughout the day, by being stoic one increases ones sovereignity in the world.
Why would you want to be exposed to the careless off-hand comments of random individuals some of who may be hurting from their own problems and projecting their internal poison on to the outside world? Stoicism does not mean you become armoured it actually means you identify the source of all of your emotional experience. One lesson I teach in theatre is how to get angry technically. Some actors believe that they need to think of some memory or experience they have had in their life and then link that to their performance. I teach them to close their fist, curl their lips, tense their body and breathe shallow and fast. Suddenly everyone in the class is furious. I then tell them that if you can make yourself angry that easily, then you can make also make yourself happy as easily. If I respond to criticism or praise it is my choice. The emotional body is not repressed. It is held. This is poise and it is the manner of a King.
As one withdraws ever more into the mysteries of the self, it is true that you realise that the objects of the outside world are as shadows, but this is simply the first step. When one has left the cave, and experienced the Sun, i.e. pure consciousness and will, then when one returns to the cave those once-husks now glow with the colour of the Mind, not with the shadow of the physical. Manifestation is not drained of meaning by the pursuit of Stoicism, it is vivified by it.
"Real sharpness comes without effort. No growth without assistance. No action without reaction. No desire without restraint. Now give yourself up and find yourself again. There is a lesson for you. You need practice. I can teach you to fight with the Green Destiny, but first you must learn to hold it in stillness." Li, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
The other replied 'My son, blessed are you to God. Your intentions are Good. But tell me, have you attained stoicism or not?.
The sage said 'Master explain your words.'
The meditator said 'If one man is praising you and another is insulting you, are the two equal in your eyes or not?'
He replied 'No my master, I have pleasure from those who praise me and pain from those who degrade me. But I do not take revenge or bear a grudge.'
The other said 'Go in peace my son. You have not attained stoicism You have not reached a level where your soul does not feel the honour of one who praises you, nor the degradation of one who insults you. You are not prepared for your thoughts to be bound on high that you should come and meditate. Go and increase the humbleness of your heart and learn to treat everything equally until you have become stoic. Only then will you be able to meditate.'" Isaac of Acco
The maintainence of poise then is not just a factor of internal self-control, learned from the restraints and the observances it is also a matter of maintaining that poise in a social environment where your activities are constantly being judged and responded to with negative and positive attention.
Many people, including respected magi in the blogosphere have made the mistake that maintaining stoicism equates to a repression of feeling and suggested that if you have no link to external desires and the satisfaction of them then there is no point in existing. On the contrary stoicism results in the identification of the will, and with discipline the magnification of it. Desire pulls one in various different directions throughout the day, by being stoic one increases ones sovereignity in the world.
Why would you want to be exposed to the careless off-hand comments of random individuals some of who may be hurting from their own problems and projecting their internal poison on to the outside world? Stoicism does not mean you become armoured it actually means you identify the source of all of your emotional experience. One lesson I teach in theatre is how to get angry technically. Some actors believe that they need to think of some memory or experience they have had in their life and then link that to their performance. I teach them to close their fist, curl their lips, tense their body and breathe shallow and fast. Suddenly everyone in the class is furious. I then tell them that if you can make yourself angry that easily, then you can make also make yourself happy as easily. If I respond to criticism or praise it is my choice. The emotional body is not repressed. It is held. This is poise and it is the manner of a King.
As one withdraws ever more into the mysteries of the self, it is true that you realise that the objects of the outside world are as shadows, but this is simply the first step. When one has left the cave, and experienced the Sun, i.e. pure consciousness and will, then when one returns to the cave those once-husks now glow with the colour of the Mind, not with the shadow of the physical. Manifestation is not drained of meaning by the pursuit of Stoicism, it is vivified by it.
"Real sharpness comes without effort. No growth without assistance. No action without reaction. No desire without restraint. Now give yourself up and find yourself again. There is a lesson for you. You need practice. I can teach you to fight with the Green Destiny, but first you must learn to hold it in stillness." Li, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Strategic Drama II - Skill (Attention)
The people of this world require social nutrition in the form of attention - they require praise for work done well and criticism for work done badly. As outlined in Conflux - Masks certain types of behaviour are manifested by different physiognomic characters in order to complete their metabolism. A Lover will seek out physical attention by lightly touching people, an Immortal will seek out attention by restating the group/team position and/or goals, an Angel by engaging in intense conversation about love or death, etc. The responses to their behaviour are both negative/positive and these responses have an effect on the Mask to distort it (to consider this in the simplest possible way think about how saying something nice to someone makes them smile and saying something mean makes them frown) - with extensive bursts of one type of attention producing corresponding extensive distortions. Attention which reaches the levels of abuse (both positive and negative) is that which results in distortion of the mask (and corresponding behaviour) to one suited to a different physiognomic character. The natural state is in equilibrium where the character will seek positive or negative attention and when they recieve it either seek out the opposite for a while or simply withdraw from the need for social nutrition while they 'digest' and return to their natural state.
In terms of moral obligation here an individual is part of this system of social nutrition and should give and take both positive and negative according to their own needs whilst staying true to their underlying physiognomic character. There are times when it becomes necessary to either stave off a Master Player (an individual who is aware of this system and uses it to manipulate people to their own baleful will) or to use it in the form of healing an individual who has had their mask distorted for one reason or another.
A working knowledge of the underlying theory is necessary for advanced applications - one should feel that they have comfortably identified the different archetypal characters which reveal the the nature of the physiognomic character they are attempting to work with so that they have knowledge of the type of behaviour which is naturally suited to this individual.
As detailed in the various sections positive and negative attention have the stated effects on individuals when they recieve it but there are ways to magnify the impact of attention by building individual bursts of attention into attention structures. For instance say one encounters someone who is deeply sad for a reason, who has had their mask distorted negatively and who needs to be built back up in order to restore the equilibrium. One can provide a continuous stream of positive comments (compliments, praise, heartfelt and uplifting advice, etc) but this will have a rapidly reducing effect over time. Imagine now that you have just achieved something really good and everyone is giving you compliments, but then there is one person who criticizes - oh how we hang on to that negative comment amongst the positive! The negative here is magnified by its position amongst the positive, gaining in strength by the contrast. One can use this principle of contrast and magnification and build a structure. If someone really needs a boost a more effective way, although seemingly strange on the surface, is to provide a small string of positives, one negative and then one strong positive at the end - the negative providing the contrast provides a springboard for the last positive. One can reverse this principle, applying a stream of negatives, one positive and one strong negative at the end - if someone needs bringing down (which obviously happens as often as people need bringing up). These are two really simple attention structures that allow one to magnify the effects of attention increasing the yield of said attention over time.
A Master Player is essentially a fevered ego, a mask that has been distorted into a kind of parasitic state where it will feed on attention to maintain its warped state - either reinforcing its negative distortion by seeking out hatred and criticism, or its positive distortion by seeking out compliments. Typically on some level the Master Player is aware of the system I have outlined above, they know what they are doing to get what they want, they know what works and what doesn't work and so typically they will be aware of someone attempting to use those same principles to clear the fevered ego and will fight against it and/or retreat. In this situation, depending on how advanced the skill of the Master Player is or how severe their distortion one must use a third principle amongst the negative and the positive and this is called the neutral (pause or silence). Attention has the characteristics of a drug and one can become hooked on it - in general or for from an individual (see Masks for more clear examples of distorted behaviour in this sense) - with the correct use of the pause or silence one can use the force of the dependency itself to bring the problem to the surface.
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