1. There are physical pleasures, metaphysical pleasures, physical pains and metaphysical pains.
2. Physical pleasures involve an imbalance being restored to balance, as when a hungry person restores balance by eating.
3. Metaphysical pleasures also involve an imbalance being restored to balance, as when an ignorant mind restores balance by learning.
4. Physical pains involve a balance falling into imbalance, as when a tired person will suffer increasingly until they rest.
5. Metaphysical pains also involve a balance falling into imbalance, as when a person indulges the material world to such a degree that they lose touch with wisdom and come to suffer.
6. Pleasure strengthens one’s will to perform the action that led to the pleasure; pain weakens one’s will to perform the action that led to the pain.
7. Repeated pleasure and pain can normalise both.
8. Normalisation of either pleasure or pain doesn’t make the world any more pleasurable or painful. It merely changes the perception of it.
9. Because the world is indifferent, normalisation of pleasure inevitably leads to pain, and normalisation of pain inevitably leads to pleasure.
10. The intensity of either equals the intensity of its opposite.
11. Pleasure leads to an increased sensitivity to its absence, and thereby to pain.
12. Pain leads to an increased sensitivity to its absence, and thereby to pleasure.
13. In this sense, pleasure is the Summer Pole and pain is the Winter Pole. Both lead to the other, as night and day lead to the other.
14. When in doubt, consult the Quadrijitu.
15. Everything in this chapter must be considered with reference to the Fourth Tenet. Both pleasure and pain are illusions; the true nature of consciousness is without want.
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This chapter is an excerpt from Elemental Elementalism, the foundational scripture of the new religion of the Age of Aquarius.
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