From the Many to the One: A Short Guide to Complete Awakening
Daniel Pineda, New Dawn
Waking Times
Complete awakening happens on all levels. This includes the realisation there are some very serious enemies to personal/spiritual liberty who will work against you. They might say they are looking out for your best interest, or that of the greater good, but it is really always about control.
Thanks to archaeology and anthropology, we have been given some very clear information of the characteristics of each age of human societal development. For thousands of years, the glue that held societies together was conformity as well as the judgment that ensues when this conformity was not met. Conformity to accepted cultural, religious, racial, and economic norms held together the collective identity pretty well. This worked just fine as long as populations were relatively small and homogeneous. If wealth is concentrated and accessible only to the very smallest portion of such a society, then dependence is a natural survival instinct that proves successful in most cases. If the group is small and each member procures food, shelter, and clothing in the same way, then the instinct of perceived fairness aids in the preservation of justice. In these societies positions of power are usually inherited by birth or military skill.
As a nation grows in size, population, and wealth however, new ways to relate and understand each other are needed. The old glue of conformity is just not flexible or elastic enough to hold together groups of individuals with widely differing views on almost every issue. Our sense of fairness that we developed in our early stages of evolution actually starts working against us. The very things that would actually create more wealth and leisure time can seem as a threat to our perception of fairness, such as specialisation, contractual agreements, as well as the risks inherent in a marketplace.
Our palaeo-brains are hardwired to think that in order for one person to have, another must go without. In a free-market society, this is not necessarily so. The pie is not limited. Due to profit motive that rewards risk taking and competitive pricing, the entrepreneur is free to add to the pie rather then just redistribute a fixed portion of it.
The new glue must be independence. This glue takes longer to set, yet it is much stronger. It relies not upon conformity, but upon respect, love, and the potential loss of sovereignty for those who would thwart the rights of others.
Communism/Statism/Progressivism is a re-emergence of outdated stone age communal instincts wrapped in the garments of post structuralism (discipline and therefore structure is essential to liberty; the anti-structuralist is a peddler of the worst kind of lies and superstitions as he is promising the ignorant person an impossibility) and political correctness, defended from any real scrutiny by the professed pure intentions of the enviro-marxist-radical.
I am a MAN and I will not COMPLY
The collectivists/Statists don’t like to be challenged. They demonise their opponents because the truth about their plans would expose them as the radical enemies of liberty they know themselves to be. People should speak up and defend positions as long as they genuinely believe them. It is when we begin defending ourselves rather then debating ideas that who is right no longer matters as much as who is left. This degeneration puts us back.
The collectivists want the revolution of one so called class against another, rather then the transmutation of the entire culture. Positive societal evolution happens best when it arises from within people as an entire cultural shift, not as a protest group or one class against another. Equal justice first requires the acknowledgement of all being equal before it, otherwise it’s just another empty phrase.
Every single mass murder has been produced by people using the government to enforce their will upon others. The government, especially in a society that has become as complacent about REAL civil liberties as ours, can do these things and has done these things in the past. The inquisition was big government, as was the holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany, the Native American tragedy, the Soviet murders and planned starvation, the Taliban, Iran, etc.
The foundation of future civilisations will rely upon the supreme sovereignty of the individual. The defence of the rights of humankind must be the only occupation of the state, any other function being a siren calling the ship of culture to ruin.
The ethic of liberty is a royal ethic, its morality is that of enlightened self-interest and non-interference. “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” And also “Love is the law, love under will.” These must become the essential core ingredients of society’s new glue if we are to continue to grow and advance the well-being of the race.
What must we learn?
In birth a human being arrives to this world with no knowledge or understanding. He possesses nothing; not even that which he will some day come to call “himself.” The newborn is, if anything, a mass of tendencies. His plight would be completely hopeless if among these tendencies were not also the capacity for growth. Our ability to learn, to mature, and to change is truly the strongest of our natural gifts. Yet, even this great virtue of our race, unguided by the star of inspiration can produce terrible and destructive engines that perpetuate darkness, dependency, and tyranny.
Our lives are terribly brief. The truth is that what we believe ourselves to be as natural beings will spend almost eternity in death. We might want to imagine that it may be otherwise, or that there may be a spiritual existence where we may partake in permanence. According to what stares us in the face day after day, however, these desires are at best a convenient way of coping with the brutality of impermanence, and at worst a gorgon knot of unresolved infantile psychological complexes.
Of course, you may have heard about or even studied the writings and sayings of the great sages and saints who teach about transcendence, salvation, deliverance, cessation or some other equivalent suitable to the culture in which their respective ideologies emerged. But unless you have experienced the states of consciousness or heavenly realms they claim to have attained or visited, this knowledge will, if you are lucky, do little more than comfort you. If you are unlucky then you will be haunted by guilt, inadequacy, or a host of other side effects that come with the dissonance produced by what you perceive directly and the message of authority not lining up very well.
So what is the answer to life’s uncertainty, its impermanence, its sheer lack of meaning? Is there a way up the mountain of being that will give us a better view?
The Mystery Tradition offers us a technology for healing the wounds sustained by the infinite universe limiting itself to the consciousness of a finite, disconnected, and impulsive vehicle. The goal is union with one’s own Holy Guardian Angel, a concept similar to what has been called Christ, Buddha, or Atman. One way of achieving this union is by seeking the transcendental in every single thing we do.
The Mystic Path
We must learn how to unite ourselves with everything. At first our untrained minds will only acquiesce to union with ideas or phenomenon that it considers pleasurable. This must eventually be overcome before we move unto the real work, but in the early stages it will help you stick to the practice. Try to make it easier on yourself by focusing on something with little or no emotional value to you. A button, stone, or some other harmless inanimate object will do just fine. Avoiding excitement will help you get the results that cause a lasting shift and evolution of the mind. This is how we may come to the direct perception of Truth, that is, the agreement of knowledge with experience (agreement without premeditation). This direct line will not come easily.
Our tendencies are inherited by parents, society, or maybe even past incarnations (if you believe these exist, your deductions concerning them will affect you. If not, then your lack of such a belief will also affect you). Starting at the ground floor, the seeker must reconstruct his mechanism for sensing and interacting with the world around him.
Mind Control
Perfect union is produced by the interaction of perfect opposites. The operative word here is “perfect.” We unite parts of ourselves with ideas all the time. Every thought we have is, in this way, an act of Union. Putting this general definition aside, the Mystic Path is that of gaining the kind of control over the mind that will allow us to unite it in every sense to that one idea that will come to encompass the totality of existence.
Our mind, like all things, is made up of a substance proper to its healthy functioning. The stuff of our minds, the Hindu yogis call Chitta, which literally means “mental stuff” (at this point it should be pretty obvious that the terms used in true spiritual practice are utilitarian and must be as simple as language may allow; there is enough confusion inherent in the dismantling and reordering of one’s self without needing any help from mysterious words or concepts). The sum total of our minds includes various functions such as discrimination, desire, or our sense of self.
In controlling these mental faculties and contents, we take direct command of our own perceptions and therefore happiness. Everything a person thinks or encounters is done so through the medium of the nervous system. When we are successful in our subjugation of mental activity and function, uniting all thoughts into a singular one that may then be extinguished, we experience the bliss of total freedom. Freedom from fear, from doubt, from sorrow, yes, but also freedom from the fleeting emotional ups that accompany superficial distractions from their less desirable counterparts.
The Magical Path
It will not be long until you begin to realise that your own mental state can influence what most have been taught to regard as the “outer world.” You focus the mind on a certain thing, and a phenomenon – which corresponds with the nature of that thing – begins to occur. Now, it must be stated that what you should do is ignore these happenings. You should stick to your meditation. But you won’t. You can’t. Because although you are striving to become the unconditioned, un-manifested ONE, you still need to do things like pay bills, clean dishes, and ask that attractive co-worker out to dinner and a movie. In short, you are a real person who cannot rest in inaction, but must live a very active and exciting life!
Where most would see the above as an obstacle, the aspirant to the Invisible College sees another opportunity for growth. What if you could make every act an invocation of the Most High? Just as we seek to bring our minds under complete control by first mastering a few basic exercises, so may we begin to train ourselves in the complete transformation of our lives by understanding and performing the elementary rituals of Magick.
“Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.” – Aleister Crowley
In the practice of Magick, you will begin to learn about how thoughts, words, and deeds channel the will to create your reality. You will encounter things that are so profoundly wonderful and terrible that they will evade all attempts at description. Ultimately, what you are doing is sanctifying your entire existence. Every act becomes a holy service and not a moment goes by in which you are not focused entirely on the transcendental.
This process is made possible by the theory of correspondence so elegantly communicated to us by the Qabalah. The student begins to understand that when he sees a house that he is witnessing a manifestation of the Hebrew letter Beth, which corresponds to the planet Mercury, and the Lord of Magick. The Entrance to the house is its door, literally Daleth in Hebrew, a letter corresponding to Love. By way of his training he can see in a simple house that the path into true magical power and mystery is love, or union. Crowley taught this principle as the central tenet of his spiritual system, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.” “Love is the law, love under will.”
Introducing Yourself to Your SELF
One of the greatest delusions at the heart of human suffering is the belief that we are our minds. Yes, our minds are part of the complex blend of forces, drives, tendencies, and materials that we call “I.” But, ultimately, we are none of these things. What we truly are is beyond description. Many have learned of this label and gone on in endless metaphysical speculation about whether or not there is a self, soul, or God.
This, in my opinion, completely misses the point and is a colossal waste of time. Our lives are brief. In the path of unification, it does not matter what you think or believe about a thing, because all thoughts must be melted down to the one essence. However, when you find your mind in regards to these ideas, there is no need to change them, only to unite them to every other thought through the practice of concentration.
When the mind is well controlled, then this Truth can fully manifest. This state is not truly a state, but the true form of ourselves, the “I am that I am.” Whenever the mind is not focused and unified, our understanding of truth is bent and twisted, like light reflecting off a dirty, broken mirror.
The matter of consciousness, like all matter, is subject to changes. These can be pleasurable or painful, but at their root, they are all undesirable if we believe they have some meaning or importance. This is a great superstition that is very easy to fall into. We feel something unpleasant, and so this is “bad” while other more pleasant experiences are labelled “good.” The whole cycle of experience, label, and judge is based on the belief that our meaning and purpose can be derived from the right combination or manifestation of these changes.
This is why materialism is generally acknowledged as an unskilful value system, as most can agree that material things are not where one should derive self-worth. A more unorthodox view would also say that spiritualism, emotionalism, or any other “ism” where we look to a set of circumstances for importance would all be equally inadequate in satiating our thirst for the supreme state of being.
The universe does not suffer as we do. It is what it is. It creates and destroys itself without tremor, it is cold and hot, light and dark, containing all opposites and yet transcending them completely. Existence is the reality of nature just as non-existence is. They do not compete nor are they estranged. Galaxies whirl about in both harmony and violence. Stars collide, rivers flow and crash, and lovers dance. It is almost as though our own mental state is really the problem. The stories we believe become our religion, and our fundamentalism has robbed us of our royal place in the greatest party ever thrown.
About the Author
DANIEL PINEDA is a martial artist, practitioner of the Mystery Tradition, and a devotee of liberty. He holds Black Belts in and teaches various Eastern and Western martial disciplines, as well as Qigong. Mr. Pineda has appeared on various media outlets including the Discovery Channel, and is the author of The Book of Secrets published by Red Wheel/Weiser as well as many other articles and essays about spiritual topics.
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The above article appeared in New Dawn Special Issue Vol 8 No 2
**This article was originally featured at New Dawn and is reposted here with permission.**