7: Repetition and Revolution
The Wheel of Fortune from Carmina Burana
O Fortune, Like the moon you are changeable, ever waxing and waning.
Hateful life, first oppresses, and then soothes as fancy takes it;
Poverty, and power it melts them like ice.
Fate – monstrous and empty, you whirling wheel, you are malevolent, well-being is in vain and always fades to nothing, shadowed and veiled you plague me too;
Now through the game I bring my bare back to your villainy.
Fate is against me in health and virtue, driven on and weighted down, always enslaved.
So at this hour without delay pluck the vibrating strings;
Since Fate strikes down the strong man, everyone weep with me!
– Carmina Burana, Fortune Empress of the World
Newton’s Laws of Motion state that an object in motion will remain so until acted upon by some other force. Likewise, an object not in motion will remain unmoved until some force is applied.
When a ball is thrown into the air, it returns to Earth because the force of gravity is pulling it.
Ask yourself: “What forces exist within me?”
“What is pulling on me?”
Air bubbles always rise to the surface of water, and then pop. Likewise, every thought is a subconscious volition that climbed to the surface and popped into the world of thinking. The same is true of emotions. Only the unexamined person can refuse such easily observed phenomena.
Unconscious volitions (psychological aggregates) pull upon us constantly. The fear of disapproval. The desire for prestige. The wanting of pleasure and avoidance of pain.
What happens when all these factors cease to pull us in every direction? Then, the processes of the ego are shed like a worn-out suit, and the consciousness rises to noesis and bliss.
To temporarily arrest the mechanical activity of the ego is good and necessary, yet it is not the removal of the ego.
Mystical experiences are meaningless if you return to your little miserable ego again, essentially unchanged. The ego needs to be put to death.
Look at the moon. It is a dead satellite. It possesses no light of its own. It repeats itself every month. Endless cycles of repetition, and has it ever profoundly changed? It is stuck in a mechanical orbit.
Our ego is like the moon. We repeat everything, and we think we are changing, but we are just stuck in a mechanical orbit.
Ah, but what about old age and retirement, if you are so lucky? Perhaps external life changes, but honestly, is one’s psychology any different?
People say they left their vices of youth, but really, their vices left them. Such vices will return as soon as conditions are favorable for their expression.
What about your prior lives? Perhaps you do not recall them, yet perhaps you have already forgotten a lot about this life too.
It is said that our prior life is a repetition of our current life. We are like a program that repeats itself. We need to break our programming.
The materialistic view of life contains no agency. Things just happen in relationship to forces which interact with each other. Thus, it is impossible to have agency or free will in this model.
Agency lies within the consciousness. Consciousness is the principle which contains spontaneity.
By spontaneity, we mean that something – knowledge or gnosis – can arrive totally new and not related to prior causes. Such a thing is completely impossible in the theories of modern science.
When the mind, emotions, and instincts are very still, one may receive an impulse, a flash of insight, which is completely new and authentically spontaneous.
Without this, we are just preprogrammed machines that play our algorithm repeatedly.
We have the illusion of agency within the ego. Normally, everyone lives completely enmeshed and asleep within the ego, thinking they are really doing and being ‘me.’
But really, ‘me’ is just a collection of habits, reactions, fears, and other names for complex algorithms which can never do anything authentically spontaneous.
What occurs is a series of iterations or small changes over time in response to the world. The ego goes through evolutions and machinations. It appears as if something is really changing.
The image of the moon is always changing but it never actually changes at all. This is our state.
Part of the moon can be observed easily. The other side is much, much more difficult to see. Our hidden side causes us a tremendous pain. Most people have no conception of it, yet when death comes, they are terrified at what they have never seen.
Those who do know of it, rarely know how to work with it.
The only remedy is to stop being mechanical. Evolution does not produce liberation of consciousness. Evolution just means something changes over time.
Consciousness encompasses an orbit outside of space and time, so you must awaken here and now.
This is not a matter of ideas or dreams. To be aware of all that you can be aware of, is truly an expansion of consciousness.
To train yourself to live a life of presence, a life of wakefulness, is to be an aspiring gnostic.
To be aware of every impulse, emotion, and thought is the beginning of the gnostic psychological work. At this point, one can be aware of what needs to change within.
Only when we can observe the connection of different states of our psychological algorithm, in response to our experience, can we begin to eliminate our programming.
Every impression of life produces a new state in our psychological machine. If some ‘thing’ – emotion, thought, impulse – is observed to be present in our conscious perception, where did it come from?
Who put the thoughts in your head, and why do you think what you think? What is the antecedent to thought?
Descartes, however sincere and intelligent he may have been, was very wrong when he connected thought to consciousness.
Instead of saying, “I think, therefore I am,” it would be better to say, “Thought is perceived because, already, I am.”
Thoughts can be observed. Emotions can be observed. The state of your body, such as your pulse, your twitches and itches, your tense muscles and your posture, can all be observed.
All these things carry more than just their content. That you think, “Wow, he really was impressed with me,” is just the mere content of your thought.
Through observation, you must know the procedure and process that produced the thought itself: Where is it coming from and why did it arrive? All the thoughts are not spontaneous, they are the product of your algorithm.
When you start asking these questions, then you are starting to live psychologically. The person who wants to live psychologically must first observe their psychology.
This person can use their intellect to reason their way towards new habits and customs. The intellect alone, however, cannot produce an awakening of consciousness itself.
Consciousness awakens only with an application of itself. Meditation is critical.
Through a gnostic lifestyle, the ego is known bit by bit. It is a difficult work.
We must eliminate the ego. All the modernists believe the ego is a good and necessary thing. They are all unconscious beings. They are living in fantasy. They are wrong. They are interested in ‘self-esteem’ in order to prop up good feelings about the ego. It is a fallacy to attribute good things to the beast. Look at the state of mental health systems. Things are getting worse. Suicide and addiction rates are rising. The ego is a psychological cancer and it needs total death.
This is a mystical death which few people have any interest in.
Jesus said the he had come to cast fire upon the world.
How to die mystically? Well, when you comprehend the miserable ego, then you will want to die very much, so that you can experience pristine consciousness.
Tears of yesterday’s pain erupt from the utterly repentant sinner.
Joyful is the repentant sinner.
To sin means to make a mistake.
Every mistake in life is a misapprehension of the world based upon ignorance and psychological conditioning.
When you become very serious, serene and sincere, you will recognize your misery and nakedness.
Do you believe you are beautiful inside? Why do you ignore your psychological misery, nakedness, and ugliness? Do you not recall your hurt feelings? Why do you ignore how frustrated you are, over the pettiest things? Why do you not love others truly? You are hateful, no? You like to see people get what they deserve? Do you not have resentment and critical words for all those who cross your path in unpleasant ways? Do you ignore the anger inside when someone gets the best of you? Do you not yet understand that boredom is a product of misery?
Are you so ignorant to not even know that you are miserable? Where there is contradiction, there is misery…
Do not be deceived! There exists a mixture within you!
Underneath the trash pile of ego, there exists an indescribable beauty, which is your pristine, untainted, consciousness.
There is Mary the Whore, and Mary the Virgin.
You must know how to work in accordance with your highest ideal, while working upon all your worst qualities.
Only in meditation will you experience something not related to the ego. It is necessary to taste the suchness of your own Being.
With just a mustard seed of faith-experience, you can begin to eliminate your ego.
You (as consciousness) reflect your profound interior star, your Abstract Being, which in Kabbalah is called Ain Soph.
When you begin to eliminate your ego, you produce a revolution of consciousness. New things emerge from the light.
The beheading of St. John the Baptist is a profound teaching of mystical death.
When you comprehend the reason and cause for your misery, in meditation, pray for the elimination of your misery.
The comprehensive knowledge (gnosis) of how you have suffered and made others to suffer unlocks your destiny and fate and permits the forgiveness of sins. Thus, you will be forgiven if your knowledge is complete and true, and a new bit of life will emerge out of your death.
You must ask for forgiveness while in prayer, in meditation.
The death of the ego is like giving birth to a child named ‘truth.’
The child lives, but the one giving birth always dies.
You become the child of your own works, and you constantly die to your old ways.
Glory be to our Divine Mother who never ever turns her back upon us. She immolates the ego with serene ferocity.
