Lying or Lying?

Meditation, magic, psychology, occult, Buddhism

[lyinglyon-blog]

Images: (1) Chakrasamvara Heruka (Father) in YabYum union with Vajrayogini (Mother) symbolizes the union of compassion and wisdom.

(2) Tomb of King Ramses the Great 

'Also, when we try to cultivate divine pride or the sense of identity as a divine being in the practice of deity yoga, we try to overcome the feeling and perception of an ordinariness. I think this helps us to make the potential of buddhahood within ourselves more manifest.

To attain a firm pride of being a deity requires a stable visualization of the form and appearance of the deity. Normally, because of our natural tendency and consequent notion of self we have an innate feeling of 'I' and 'self' based upon our body and mind. If we similarly cultivate a strong perception of our own appearance as a deity, we will also be able to cultivate divine pride, the sense of identity as a deity, by focusing on the divine body.'

"Because the object of meditation in the practice of Highest Yoga Tantra is yourself in the form of a deity, and also because of the practice of single-pointedly focusing your attention on certain points within your body, you are able to bring about movement of the elements in the body. Some meditators have related their experiences of this to me. When you are able to hold a clear image of the deity single-pointedly for a long period of time, this obstructs your normal sense of ordinariness and so leads to a feeling of divine pride. However, during all these stages of meditation, it is very important constantly to reaffirm your awareness of emptiness."

Dalai Lama - A Survey of the Paths of Tibetan Buddhism

"I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”"

Ozymandias - Percy Bysshe Shelley

"A slow tumbling against a mountain crest,

Breath, slow and heaving, controlled and unbridled.

A memory well settles near the peak

And dips it's basket through a silted past. /

A road has been trenched out along its belly. At the peak

of each breath a rumble beneath the surface.

We are a crew on our journey. 

Passed halfway, the fog rolls in. /

Passed halfway we cannot tell:

Is this ascension or do we 

Plumet across an impossible canyon

Between the body and anything but? /

There are time when the mountain feels upside down, 

Or, more accurately, inside-out, that sediment

Has flipped and we shuffle along

The innards of a funnel to a point unknown.  /

A black hole that rises out of a trajectory, 

Eternally confuddled by fog-drifts and shifting

Cloud layers that paint a kaleidoscopic mosaic

Half-seen through the fog and ever out of reach. /

Yet at points the clouds accumulate around a central axis, 

Whirling ever-slowly against an invisible pillar. 

Ascending or descending from the haughty peak. 

While, far below and above we fall backwards into peat /

Bogs, whose nature is ever-evolving, a multivalent

Clamor of creature,  texture,  flora and facsimile,

A patchwork of ever-rolling life-like mosses

And ancient metal,  stone,  fabrication, and beetle dung.  /

And  the face of the mountain is a bright angel, 

Curls fountaining endless against their cheeks, 

And the other, this fermentation and reproduction

Of the endless potential of a single wave /

Born of some long-ago explosion, born from 

A bomb, atomic or otherwise,  birthed into the bog

By a mother whose face held an expressionless ecstasy, 

And whose baby ripples as an afterimage /

Of his molten-made body.  And us,  our bodies

Extending, stretching fingers into the bog

And legs striding towards the funnel snout

To an unresolved heaven, undecidedly

Skywards or otherwise, yet always urging us, 

Begging for our feet to touch her heights

And ferry her into the moist bog-land below. "

Trenches - Personal Piece

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XIR74qry3IM

The main theme in this collage is that of arrogance versus pride. To the Tibetans, there are two forms of pride. The first is that of 'mana,' or an inflated sense of self, an arrogance. The second is that of pride of being a deity, represented in the first quotes from the Dalai Lama. To the Egyptians there was a clear salesmen that the pharaoh was a divine ruler, one with the gods, and thus would have a certain god-like pride.

Is there a way to have pride, even arrogance, in a healthy way, which can lead others forward in a manner which brings higher states of happiness? Could this be what the pharohs of the past did? If they were authentically ferrying down a higher source and generating prosperity for a large number of people, are they not god-like? Another question would be if they understood the Buddhist concept of emptiness of the material world. This might be so,  considering their ritualistic culture and belief in the after life, and their ability to control reality at higher degrees than we believe possible today (were the pyramids built with levers, a bunch of pushing slaves, or using vibration to lower the surface friction of the sand?)

My own poem explores the potential we have, and the spiritual urge towards reaching higher states of consciousness while also plumbing the depths of our own history, and maybe that of the plan and before. 

Finally, we can contrast these ideas of pride with a more-modern interpretation of hip-hop artists. Though they doubtfully have a divine sense of being, the shameless presentation of their position in regards to sexually might be considered some kind of divine awareness designed to ruffle the feathers of conservative society. Or, maybe they are just assailed. But, if one looks at their lives, and considers their other music, they may have more to say than first meets the ear with this song. 

--A

[lyinglyon-blog]

Peter Paul Rubens - Head of Medusa (1618)

Print - Pegasus, Medusa, Perseus

[lyinglyon-blog]

Goya - Witches’ Sabbath (1798)

Plus Various 

Luis Ricardo Falero - Faust’s Dream (1880)

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So many Herukas!

[lyinglyon-blog]

Ego as Survival

Mostly we are confused about what an ego is. There are many definitions of the ego, ranging from highly psychoanalytic ones (Ego, id, superego as personality) to conventional ones (people caught in their ego), and more metaphysical ones (an illusion of ‘self’ from Buddhism). But most of these are not very practical as tools to develop beyond the ego, unless we would like to simply dissolve it and become one with the metaphysical force beyond the human. I would like to present a practical, workable model for the ego and will begin to define it here.

The ego is a sense of survival that is generated from our societal and familial conditioning. This can end up taking numerous forms, but mostly they are composed of trauma and learned habits to avoid the impact of further potential harm. Why do soldiers develop aggressive tendencies? In the most simple sense, it can be seen as a defensive mechanism designed to deal with extreme stress in hyper-aggressive environments. Schizophrenia is more connected to lack of personal space in the mind as a child. These are defensive mechanism utilized to combat trauma in their most-gross manifestations. 

The more subtle manifestations of these and other psychological conditions are exhibited in almost every single individual in society. This is because society, in general, wants to normalize trauma in an attempt to control attention and intention. This cannot be in the most-gross forms of course, society doesn’t function is everyone is walking around as manic\depressives or in hyper-schizophrenic states. society functions in our western world when all humans have just enough trauma to keep them indebted to an external system. This external system began with the pagans and their gods, but especially the emperors, who would use the gods as mechanisms of control, and persisted in a stronger form inside of Christianity. Humans naturally have a tendency to abuse their power, or seek power because they would like to abuse it. It’s almost impossible to prevent this, unless there were only messiah-pastors who didn’t actually want to be in their position but were because it was needed. This is not effective at generating a stable system which can last generation-to-generation except in a few cases. (see Tibetan Buddhism, as the Dalai Lama is always chosen from birth based on special conditions. They are not chosen as an adult. Even still, there are negatives inside of Buddhism, but mostly from the other lamas, scholars, officials, and ‘gurus’).

These survivalistic tendencies towards abuse of power to avoid being abused (among others, this is the most-general way to put it), survive in the culture even after Christianity has passed out of being the power it once was. We see the continuation of this struggle inside of the war of capitalism, which seeks to abuse the minds of its followers in an attempt to control their attention. It wants individuals to assimilate to the structures of power inside of its rule. From the cross to the iphone etc. 

Society normalizes engrained trauma in order to generate indentured servants of its people and keep its own wheels greased smoothly. This ends up causing a lot of problems on the practical level. Almost no individual understands what a healthy balance of mind is. There are balances within the masculine and femine portions of consciousness that need to be kept in order for the individual to be actualized as a healthy being, knowing what to do in any given situation to bring others to higher states of happiness. But, since trauma is normalized, most individuals end up doing things, often times out of a genuine wish to see others happy, which lead to increased levels of suffering. This is, again, because society is normalizing traumatic states of mind in order to keep itself as it is. 

Of course, we know that change is continuous. Every system is always changing, and oftentimes there are huge changes that needed to keep a proper balance. These are not acknowledged by those ‘at the top’ (those producing the information that others consume) because of various attachments to money and other forms of power. This is an abuse of the masculine side of the consciousness. 

We can see this abuse stretching back through the history of the West. We have almost always wanted to maintain power, put power over others, the masculine is the high point of power within the Christian framework. God is placed at the center of being, Christ, and a mysterious ‘Holy spirit,’ which is nothing other than the aether of the alchemists or the pranan of the ‘Hindus.’ (Hindu is, of course, a misnomer developed by the generalizations of the colonizers). This leaves poor little Maria Magdelena as the ‘virgin’ mother so pure and sweet out in the cold. The feminie portion of consciousness is relegated to the tail-end of consciousness as one who is meant to bring up babies and stay very pure. 

This is not what was originally intended by the writers of the New Testament, but works awfully well at maintaining the power of the men in the church, the kings above them, and men of the house. This doesn’t look so much different than Islam, except the husbands beat their wives slightly less. It’s easy to pervert a teaching, especially after the teacher has passed. New systems of thought must continually be developed to combat this, but humans dislike instability, another survivalistic tendency to avoid pain (if you know your food is taken care of next week it’s easier to relax, and this is the subtle needing, which blows up into the feeling that systems of power or systems of religion need not change). 

So the ego is this thing that says ‘I need X in order so that I can feel secure.` Whatever that thing is is primarily developed by the tendencies of the family and society. This might include socially stigmatized procuration of iphones, or attachment to having spouses, or avoiding social contact with others. All of these will produce instability inside of the lower nervous system and thus will spring up into the mind as various ideas of what we need to do to survive. This is often much more complicated than actually necessary. If one were to simply sit on the street for a while money would come, food would come, but one would need to give up their attachment to having those things. 

The ego is incredibly complicated at the same time that it’s very simple. It’s simple because it’s only trauma, and complicated because trauma can take on innumerable forms. There are so many different ways to be traumatized that it is impossible to describe them all. Every individual has their own unique trauma and needs to deal with it in a way that is agreeable with their own egoic tendencies. One can use trauma to get beyond trauma, ego to get beyond the ego, desire to get beyond desire, but one has to be very smart about this. The ego is a negative in this sense because it is doing damage to others based on a traumatic history. The personality would be the positive manifestation of this. These are polar opposites in a certain sense, but a personality can have egoic tendencies and the ego can have personality traits. It’s simply a practical tool to differentiate a negative use of personality from a positive one. 

One way to combat this is to begin focusing on the suffering of others prior to the suffering of oneself. If one can authentically hold the other beings suffering in a place before that of their own then the people will naturally manifest that bring the individual to a point beyond their own suffering and allow a happier existence. 

If one still believes that their own survival is the center of the world then they will naturally manifest others around them who become either subservient or dominant, depending on the natural tendency of the individual. If one is more focused on the suffering of others then they will end up attracting those who are in states of suffering for them to focus on and heal. Giving back in this manner will end up generating a safety network around the individual to maximize the benefit that they can provide. 

This is much harder to actualize than to write of course, and one will have to work through their own suffering hugely in order to actualize this. But the benefit is huge and the benefit to individuals and to the world is worth the challenge and the pain that going through one’s own suffering is. 

Overall we can see the ego as a very practical tool used to avoid damage and gain pleasure. It tends to develop most strongly in early childhood and doesn’t change so much through the life of an individual. One can choose to consciously change this through a focus on their own suffering and thus go through the old trauma in one form or another, becoming the king or queen of their own consciousness. Balancing the psyche and actualizing on their true potential will naturally come about once their focus has shifted away from their ingrained defensive mechanism to helping lead others out of the trap of their own. 

[lyinglyon-blog]

Tibetan skeleton dance.

[lyinglyon-blog]

Psychic Self-Possession

When one possesses themselves the world turns around them. There is a certain power this brings to it, confidence and authority which naturally emanate out of those who are truly in control of themselves. It also may bring about strange manners of being, because one perceives something that goes beyond the intuitions and perceptions of those who lack this self-possession. One must rule their being in order to have proper rule.

This is not to say one is highly egoic and out for power, though it could appear as that. Certainly there are numerous rulers who had egoic problems, prone to outbursts and rage and having little care for those under them, and they indeed lacked compassion and insight. Though there are other ways to possess similar qualities but use them for higher purposes. 

In Tibetan Buddhism the way of enlightening is to become a king or queen of one’s own consciousness. This in practical terms can appear like tyranny, simply because others do not see the way enlightened actions work. 

Siddhas are spiritual masters who utilize the Siddhis, magical powers, to make change in the phenomenal world. They have mastered a certain kind of compassionate insight. They have cleared out the challenges to the ego which makes one grasp at the self and cause unhealthy thought patterns - those which cause more harm to others than good, more suffering and less happiness. This allows them to attain a state of equanimity even in challenging circumstances. They have also mastered a certain insight which allows them to perceive the full nature of any event, as well as the full nature of any individual. This is not locked to the moment, but rather perceives their full history at the same time as their full potential future from the present moment. 

The Siddhas perform enlightened actions which often seem contradictory to normal perception. One story of Padmasambhava : 

‘Padmasambhava married the dakini Prabhavati and ruled the kingdom according to the Dharma, ushering in a time of happiness and peace. He was known then as King Tortokchen, ‘The Turbaned King’. Seeing that as a ruler he would be unable truly to serve others and bring them spiritual benefit on a vast scale, he begged for permission to abdicate, but was refused. So Padmasambhava employed a skilful device in order to escape. Perceiving that a harmful minister’s son was just on the point of dying and being reborn in the lower realms, he dropped his trident while dancing on the palace roof, and it caused the death of the child, who was liberated and reborn in a buddha realm. Padmasambhava was banished, and roamed in ‘The Chilly Grove’, Shitavana, charnel ground, and then in the other charnel grounds, ‘Joyous Grove’ and Sosadvipa. There, he received empowerments and blessings from the dakinis ‘Tamer of Mara’ and ‘Sustainer of Bliss’, and practised yogic disciplines, bringing the dakinis of the charnel grounds under his sway. The name he was known by was Shantarakshita, ‘Preserver of Peace’’

The act of killing the child brought the child a higher rebirth and freed Padmasambhava from a role which would have not allowed him to liberate as many sentient beings as he could have had he wandered the cremation grounds. Somehow he was able to perceive this and generate action which would lead to his exile and give him the power to bring higher states of happiness to more individuals. This would not make sense given rational thought, because we believe that killing a child is never okay. The child has not been able to grow and make his own decisions, how is Padmasambhava in his right to decide whether the child lives or dies? And yet, from a different perspective - one which spans a much longer timeline than our normal perspective, one so focused on our own suffering at the moment - he was able to generate a mind of knowing. He was also acting selflessly, more concerned about the number of beings he could lead to liberation than being a king or one individual life. This combination of calm abiding in the present gave him a special insight into the potentials of a large number of beings, and thus he was able to make an ‘enlightened action’ which led to a more favorable existence for himself and others. 

There are other stories which are more nonsensical. One master drinks an entire town’s beer and somehow this is healing other beings. Others spent their time as the maid of prostitutes and lead the brothel to an enlightened state of being. This is possession of oneself at a high degree. One knows what to do in the given moment in order to affect the highest possible results in a given system and then generates the action which allows this. 

I am personally undergoing a certain change in consciousness where I am attempting to see this way of being and put it into action. Some of the things my intuition tells me to do are highly negative from a societal sense of things. This creates a huge tension within my being, where the societally conditioned aspect of myself acts at war with the intuitive aspect of myself. This leads me to act only from my mind, as a psychological defense mechanism against doing the ‘wrong thing.’ But actually as I avoid the action through speech I lead myself and others further from liberation and more deeply into the pits of hell that we all experience. 

I am, of course, working through this intensely. Each moment is becoming more and more of a meditation and I am becoming more aware of my power to direct others towards higher states of being. Yet I still remain settled in an old pattern of thought, which disallows further action into the darkness of my being. I am superficially touching on the darkness out of a fear that it will not be proper or that I will hurt another or that I will get in trouble. I have not accepted the trust of my intuition in action because of the opinions of others, from the people in my immediate environment, from the society at large, and from my familial history. 

Of course, part of my darkness is a certain possession of another. And this is another very strange juxtaposition where I find myself trying to listen to my own intuition and completely be in myself while at the same time knowing that the power I have to possess another can lead them to higher states of fulfillment within themselves. These two things also feel intensely different! 

I have dealt with a large amount of negative psychological disorders. Mostly it has been a sort of paranoid schizophrenia, but also some symptoms associated with manic depressive states of consciousness. I am gaining a larger control over the subconscious, which changes the mentalations (word-thoughts) which occur in my psyche. This brings with it an awareness that many people who believe they are at war with themselves, or the world, indeed need someone who has a large amount of control to simply break the negative patterns in their mind.

But, when one has a strong mind they often do not want to authentically change, and they need large forces to muster the courage to break through. I am looking to manage and master these forces and cause the appropriate change where I can tell intuitively that it is needed and the right time to do so. But how can one know that to hit another person - or more - is the right thing to do? How can one trust themselves enough to go through with an action which breaks the nature of what they thought themselves to be for so long? These are the kinds of questions that arise as we move through this labyrinth of our own construction and attempt to seize the treasure at the center - a true possession of our our own being.

[magictransistor]

Hevajra Mandala. Tibet. 15th century.

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War and Peace of Consciousness

The way we choose to look at reality influences how we perceive ourself heavily. If one chooses the view the world through the lense of peace then one will miss the war, and if one chooses to view the world through the lens of war then they will miss the peace. Actually these perspectives are completely compatible, as it’s not possible to have peace without war or war without peace. But, in what ways does this dichotomy manifest in the mind, in our psychology, and the thoughts that occur to us through the day?

If we choose to view the world through the lens of war then we will primarily see opposition to our own success and the success of others. We will develop strong negative tendencies which undermine our desires and upset our interests. If one wants to develop a stronger sense of artistic interest they will feel a longing towards this and yet fail to actualize on that interest. One might take up a number of distraction mechanisms, which will play out in place of the desired interest. One might scroll through facebook mindlessly instead of focusing on art, or they might choose to take perpetual breaks with cigarettes, beer, or coffee, and fail to maintain focus on their desired outcome. Not to say any of these are negative in themselves, only when one fails to actualiye on their desires do they become a distraction. 

This can go much deeper into the background of our being. One might want control over their life, and yet continually be confronted with things which upset that control. One might desire a harmonious atmosphere to live in, and yet they will be confronted with frustrating neighbors or people around them, who do not actually want their success. They will be unhappy in their environment and it will make them feel they do not authentically have control. If one wants to go see a movie they may find the trains running late, bad traffic, a full theater, etc. They will simply not be able to actualizer the positives. 

On the other hand, if one is viewing reality through the lense of peace they may feel that they have everything taken care of, even if that’s not the case. One might feel their living situation is under control, and yet they are still hanging around people who do not suit their highest interests. It will, instead of developing frustration and detachment, breed an environment of false peace and security. This then leads to a certain torpor, which will cause unending negative constellations and yet they will appear positive. 

This can be superficial, one feels they have chosen the right movie or song and yet it is not right for the time, or one feels they have their accomodations in order and yet they are living outside on the streets. One might become content in highly negative states of consciousness, such as being highly confused and lacking order, and yet feel that it is completely under control. 

Both of these alternatives generate a spiritual malaise. On the war side it is acute and persecuting, and on the peace side it is hidden and consoling. One will have a challenge getting themselves free of the disordered mind state in either case. The war side will send on to them mental hospital, and the peace side will send one to the old-folks’ home. 

We have personally experienced a huge amount of the war aspects of our consciousness. Essentially a very strong sense of mental chatter, combined with negative feeling states in the body - unacknowledged due to ignorance - created a mental landscape which was highly dissatisfying. Words would appear in our mind like ‘This government doesn’t want you to live your life (literally ‘have a girlfriend’), or it would generate a constant struggle of nothing, ‘you lost’ ‘they won’ ‘you won’ ‘they lost.’ This is not conducive to healthy bodily states or healthy connections to others. If one is always projecting into others that they have lost then there will always be suspicion among friends. 

Still, if one can generate enough control over their mind then they will be able to utilize these negative mind states for the betterment of others. One with a mastery over the war side of consciousness will be able to bring others who are at mental wars with themselves (because that’s certainly the only person we are ever really fighting in our mind - and maybe even if we physically fight) to a certain kind of mental equilibrium where they can choose to contain their negative influences and control them or release them for a consciousness of peace. 

If one masters the peace side of consciousness then they will be able to find those who are too at peace with themselves, and are not living the life they want to live, and bring them to a state of consciousness where they are able to manifest their true potential at higher degrees. When one sees authentically their own malaise and rectifies that through the necessary mental tension, they can teach others this skill as well.