The Condition of Seeking

When you are in a state of spiritual seeking, you are really in state of looking for a map that would prove so accurate that it can be committed to above all others. You have somehow gotten it into your head that you are after the ultimate representation of truth, and despite having looked for that high and low, you have always come up short – and thus, the seeking continues.

Because of the time and energy you have invested in doggedly hunting for the truth, you expect it to present in the form of representation, not as truth itself. This fact may seem so obvious and self-explanatory that it completely escapes your notice, but in actual fact, this realisation is crucial. You see, everything you have tried before has arrived and left again in the form of a representation.

Oddly enough, the conclusion we end up with is that we must just have not quite landed upon the appropriate representation yet, whether that is in the form of a book, a teacher, a teaching, or a tradition. Perhaps we didn’t quite get what the teacher was really saying, or perhaps we didn’t quite meditate as well as we could have.

This is a strange bind that the seeker has gotten themselves into. The way out is not to find an accurate map, although your total commitment to any one map, accurate or not, might just be sufficient to push you right through – but you won’t end up where the map was showing you.

You won’t end up with a map at all, because that isn’t what you were really looking for in this endeavour.

The yearning for truth you experience comes from deeper than the mind. Although your mind will do its best to convince you otherwise, you don’t need another map – and yet here I am sketching out another unnecessary map. It is unnecessary at my end in the respect that I know it is totally unneeded, though it is necessary at your end for precisely so long as you think it is necessary. The map to the forest is made out of the same thing the trees are made out of, but can you see? Are you willing to bridge the gap, the paper wall, and see past into the trees themselves?

The difficulty in all this is that I am trying to communicate with you in such a way that I am using a map to ask you to put down all maps, including those produced by me. I have no intention of converting anyone to becoming map readers, and I certainly do not intend to inspire map stalwarts who promote one map exclusively over another.

Now, it may be true in a relative cultural sense that a map produced in one particular style and language is more easily accessible to one person or group than another, and there is no problem with this. It doesn’t mean that one map is better than another, because ultimately all maps have to be subordinate to reality, whether they are accurate or not.

Have you noticed that those who are most comfortable in their own skin in whichever spiritual or religious tradition they happen to be a part of seem to have no issue whatsoever in communing with others of different faiths? Someone such as the Dalai Lama is an excellent example of this spirit of universal compassion, understanding and humility.

The reason is that they have pushed through the imaginary boundaries circumscribed by the map, even the one they were taught to revere as the most sacred. They see through to where another person is, regardless of how lost that person might seem to themselves in regard to their own maps – their own beliefs and representations.

Reality is not to be found through maps. To relieve yourself of this notion is one of the most tremendous gifts that realisation has to offer, though it is far from being the only one.

Why not for one moment try what hasn’t been tried before in earnest? Take the maps you have been given, including my own, and those you have inherited from your family or culture, or drawn yourself. Fold them away, gently put them to one side, then see what has always actually been here. When you transcend the maps, you will find yourself exactly where you are, which is precisely where the meeting with your true self was always intended.

See what is right here, right now, without the map, and without forcing any judgment or interpretation upon it. Because you are no longer using a map as a reference tool, there is no relative notion of having arrived, nor is there any relative notion of being off track or lost. What is actually here that all of the maps have been referring to? Then see what happens to your preoccupation with seeking and the maps we have superimposed over it that we refer to as ‘spirituality’.

Simon P Murphy is a Nelson-based esotericist and philosopher, and author of His Master’s Wretched Organ, a brilliant collection of weird fiction stories.

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Suggestions For Celebrating Matariki

Like Australia, South Africa, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil, New Zealand has never resolved the fundamental conflict at the heart of our culture. This refers to the fact that we have imported a Northern Hemisphere culture, with its calendar and its seasonal holidays, into the Southern Hemisphere. This has led to some glaring contradictions.

When Christians invaded Europe and destroyed the native European religious traditions, part of their strategy was to impose their culture over the top of those existing traditions. To this end, they took the existing Northern European festival of Yule and replaced it with Christmas.

The celebration of Yule in the Nordic calendar occurred because at that time, three days after the Winter Solstice, it was possible to notice the celestial procession changing direction. Some stars that had appeared to “die” by falling below the horizon now rose again. The days started to become significantly lighter. It was if the gods had chosen to turn their favour upon the people once more.

In Elementalist terms, it means that the society started going up the right-hand side of the Quadrijitu. Yule marks the transition from the Undergoing Will to the Overcoming Will.

Naturally, such an occasion called for great joy. Everyone still alive had survived the darkest part of the winter. They could all look forward to more and more sunlight, every day (for the near future, at least). As a new year was underway, it made sense to take time to make up for old grudges and to renew friendships by gathering in merriment.

This is why Northern Europeans gifted presents at that time, celebrated the return of the light and made up with people in their community. It was one of the most joyous and anticipated events in the calendar. Luciferian scholar Debbie Cartwright believes that a festival at this time has been celebrated since the Neolithic period.

During the Age of Colonisation, settlers from Europe brought their calendar to all their colonies. This worked out fine in America and Canada, where the seasons are similar. But in the colonies of the Southern Hemisphere, the seasons are the opposite to Europe. So December 25th in South Africa, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand etc. fell in the middle of Summer.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with celebrating the Summer Solstice with beaches, beers, BBQs, cricket and touch rugby and calling it Christmas, but it does mean that there is a big Yule-sized gap in the calendar around the Winter Solstice.

Because none of the Southern Hemisphere countries celebrate the Winter Solstice (for the same reason that none of the Northern Hemisphere countries celebrate the Summer Solstice), there is an empty space where no festivities take place. Matariki, a holiday recently introduced by the Government, fills that gap nicely.

Matariki is otherwise known as the Maori New Year, but in reality it’s the Southern Hemisphere New Year, as it heralds the beginning of a new solar cycle for all of the countries South of the Equator. As such, three days after the Winter Solstice marks the day of the Yule celebrations. In New Zealand this year, three days after the Winter Solstice is 24th June – the same day as Matariki.

The suggestion of this essay, therefore, is that Kiwis ought to treat Matariki as another Yule, except Yule similar to how it is celebrated in the Northern Hemisphere.

In the Northern Hemisphere, the Winter Solstice heralds the coming of the light, and so the people celebrate it with lights. Their homes and neighbourhoods are decorated with lights, representing the Unconquered Sun’s victory over the forces of darkness. They also give each other gifts, whether those others are family, friends, neighbours or workmates, and apologise for past misunderstandings.

In Scandinavia people drink a lot of mulled wine for Yule. This may or may not catch on in New Zealand. What would surely catch on is smoking cannabis for Matariki. Cannabis has already become an established feature of festivities for both Maoris and white Kiwis. A day or evening when we came together to give gifts, smoke weed and celebrate the return of the light would be amazing (I personally will be celebrating Matariki by taking some LSD with my community).

Above all, Kiwis should be aware that, whatever our calendar says, this is the beginning of the life cycle of the solar year. The Sun will get stronger and stronger in the Southern Hemisphere for the next six months, as living creatures do in the first half of their lives. Then, after the Summer Solstice, the Sun will get weaker and weaker for the next six months, as living creatures do in the final half of their lives.

We should therefore celebrate Matariki as we would an auspicious birth.

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That Which Entertains The Gods

1. The physical world was dreamed up by God to entertain the gods.

2. The imperative to entertain the gods is why there is something rather than nothing.

3. The gods watch on from higher dimensions where we cannot normally perceive them. Yet, they perceive us, as we would perceive actors in a play or on a screen.

4. The hierarchy of beings and the hierarchy of consciousness are hierarchies of how well a fragment of consciousness entertains the gods. Cats and consciousnesses of gold entertain the gods the most; insects and consciousnesses of lead entertain the gods the least.

5. Life struggles primarily to entertain the gods, and not to survive or reproduce.

6. The struggle to survive and reproduce is merely the backdrop for something infinitely more meaningful: the entertainment of the gods.

7. The gods are primarily entertained by that which unexpectedly rises above.

8. As such, the two major components of the entertainment of the gods are novelty and surprise.

9. The gods are immensely entertained by that which they have never seen before.

10. The gods are also immensely entertained by unexpected behaviour in that which they have seen before.

11. The gods expect us to fail, on account of that we are mortals.

12. We were created to fail, so that it would be surprising if we succeeded. As such, any genuine success entertains the gods.

13. The gods are not entertained by those who meekly accept their fate. Such weaklings are, to the gods, indistinguishable from insects.

14. The gods are mildly entertained by those who overcome physical challenges. Great athletes are entertaining, but only mildly so.

15. The gods are moderately entertained by those who overcome emotional challenges. Those born into shit families but who manage to make decent lives for themselves are moderately entertaining.

16. The gods are highly entertained by those who overcome intellectual challenges. Scientists who push back the boundaries of human ignorance are highly entertaining.

17. The gods are immensely entertained by those who overcome spiritual challenges. Spiritual revolutionaries who repudiate religious falsehoods are immensely entertaining.

18. The gods are most of all entertained by great beings who alter the course of history. When a Buddha, an Alexander, a Caesar, a Napoleon or a Hitler rise up, all the gods watch on.

19. The gods are least of all entertained by people who conflate the Great Masculine Axis with the Great Feminine Axis.

20. The worse the family, neighbourhood, community or national situation one is born into, the greater one’s opportunity to entertain the gods by rising above it. The Elementalist, therefore, does not resent being born into bad families, neighbourhoods, communities or nations.

21. Let the entertainment of the gods be the meaning of our lives!

This chapter is an excerpt from Elemental Elementalism, the foundational scripture of the new religion of the Age of Aquarius.

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The Elemental Hierarchy Of Consciousness

1. Consciousness is the prima materia and each one of us is ultimately a fragment of this consciousness.

2. Each fragment of consciousness possesses its own frequency. This frequency can be expressed as a number between 0 and 1, where 0 is the Winter Pole of the Quadrijitu, and 1 is the Summer Pole of the Quadrijitu.

3. All fragments of consciousness can be arranged into a hierarchy, such that the higher frequencies incarnate into higher worlds, and the lower frequencies into lower worlds.

4. Within this world, there is also a hierarchy of consciousness, such that the lower frequencies are close to sinking lower into the Hell Realms, and the higher frequencies are close to rising higher into the Heaven Realms.

5. The difference between the hierarchy of consciousness and the hierarchy of class is that the former can be altered quickly whereas the latter cannot.

6. One’s consciousness is a matter of one’s will in the present, but one’s class is a matter of one’s will in the past, including past lives.

7. The lowest frequency of consciousness is equivalent to lead.

8. A consciousness of lead lives in constant fear.

9. Fear kills the mind. A consciousness clouded by fear will make selfish decisions, and will thereby increase the suffering of those around them, creating a Hell on Earth.

10. The next highest frequency of consciousness is equivalent to tin.

11. A consciousness of tin lives to indulge itself.

12. Material indulgence is tempting because it can heal the suffering caused by an excess of fear. However, this indulgence frequency results in more suffering because it can lead to degeneracy and addiction.

13. The next highest frequency of consciousness is equivalent to iron.

14. A consciousness of iron lives for honour.

15. Honour is tempting because it can heal the suffering caused by an excess of indulgence. However, an excess of honour can lead to conflict.

16. The next highest frequency of consciousness is equivalent to copper.

17. A consciousness of copper lives for novelty.

18. Novelty is tempting because it can heal the suffering caused by an excessive focus on honour.

19. The next highest frequency of consciousness is equivalent to silver.

20. A consciousness of silver lives for glory.

21. Glory is tempting because it can heal the suffering caused by an excess of novelty.

22. The next highest frequency of consciousness is equivalent to mercury.

23. A consciousness of mercury lives for knowledge.

24. Knowledge is tempting because it can heal the suffering caused by an excess of glory.

25. The highest frequency of consciousness is equivalent to gold.

26. A consciousness of gold lives to know the truth.

27. Truth is tempting because it can heal the suffering caused by an excess of knowledge.

28. The struggle to raise one’s frequency of consciousness is one of the most worthy of all aspirations. The most important thing, however, is that this struggle entertains the gods.

This chapter is an excerpt from Elemental Elementalism, the foundational scripture of the new religion of the Age of Aquarius.

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