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Vicarious Spirituality
As humans, we seem to have limitless ability to screw ourselves over - which may be the best definition of “magick” that I have yet come across. I’ve spent the better part of this week dealing with some personal emotional blows and my body has been kind enough to follow suit. It only does what it thinks I want, after all. Me getting so sick for the past few days seems to be largely the fault of me feeding it bad signals through my emotional circuitry. But I seem to be on the mend finally, after having spent the better part of last night trying to artificially increase my body temperature while simultaneously trying to entrain the hemispheres of my brain via some good old fashioned verbal commands. Not an instant solution, but it seems to be having a positive effect, and I have a whole new outlook, even if my ears are still a bit blocked.
It has been nothing less than a tumultuous month for me personally, but one which I know will make all the difference in the long run. I think we have a tendency in our lives to want to avoid the hard parts because, well, they’re hard. It’s pretty simple actually. It’s actually a lot easier just to maintain a sort of stasis within a state of suffering than it is to reengineer your whole being and your behavioral patterns into a more intentionally positive and useful direction.
I’ve been finding lately, when I’m at my worst, that I can’t meditate (let alone sit still), read the Bible, effectively fast or detox, or any of the other fairly useful practices which I have been undertaking for the better part of this month. Instead I found myself just sort of whirling around in an indeterminate daze where sleep wasn’t possible and I took no pleasure from anything. It was, needless to say, a bit of an ordeal. I like to think I am through the worst of it now, but who knows really. It depends on how strong my resolve stays and how effectively I can integrate new behavior patterns and attitudes into my life.
One of the major things I have realized through all this is simply: you have to do it yourself. You have to go through the hard parts. I think a lot of us also have a tendency to not only avoid the hard parts to but to live vicariously through other people who seem to be going through them. We have this unconscious belief that if we hear the words and experiences of other people going through these types of ordeals, then we benefit from their knowledge and from the boons which they bring back from the netherworlds. I increasingly am finding that this is not true. You can spend all your time reading and compiling information from books, website and the rest, but not one word of it will ever make a bit of difference until you discover it for yourself through your own turmoils and struggles. I don’t know if that sounds disheartening or what - but it should. It really should. Because this shit isn’t easy. They don’t call it the “Great Work” for nothing. If your only engagement in it is through watching other people engage in it, then you’re not doing anything. You’re not even spinning your wheels.
In any case, I write this as much for myself as for anyone else out there. The more I write, the more I realize I actually mean “me” when I say “you.” It’s a matter of being able to give myself indirect commands which I then internalize. It has surprising effectiveness. Try it out. Think of something about yourself you want change, a modification to your mental programming that you want to internalize. Start small with something like: I want to be more social. Say whatever it is out loud a few times. See how it feels internally. Now stop and say it again, and this time take out the “want” part. Make it into an actual descriptive statement about how you are: “I am more social.” Now say that out loud a few times. Slow down and close your eyes as you try it. See how it feels when you just say. Now say it slowly and with force and actually believe it. Seriously. Muster up that feeling of you believing it. Now, try switching it around to a command form. “You are more social” or whatever your statement is. Say it out loud a few times as a very serious and stern command, as though you were saying it to someone else (cause you are, in a sense). See how it feels different when you put strength and belief behind it. Then, change it back to the “I” form until you are on the one hand giving a command, starting with a “You” and then obeying that same command with an “I” at the beginning. When I was experimenting with this technique last night, I literally felt like each of these voices was situated in a different part of my mind. And that by alternating back and forth, I could balance them out, and bring the into some kind of agreement with each other. Once you have tried that a number of times, try changing it to “We” and see what happens. Start adding in visualizations and accessing physical sensations associated with them, drawn from other points in your life when you were more in touch with those parts of yourself.
- Religion Vs. Spirituality
- Vicarious Identification
- The Pop Spirituality Dichotomy
- Money & Spirituality: Back In Black
- Male & Female Approaches to Spirituality
- Prev: The Devil Is A Liar
- Next: He That Hath Not
November 30th, 2006 at 3:06 pm
It’s true none of that stuff you get from other people makes a difference unless you take charge of yourself, but once you do, even if you didn’ t make much use of it in the past, some clear intent and a sense of responsibility can bring it to life for you.
November 30th, 2006 at 3:34 pm
Yeah, for me personally. I find that I’m only able to make use of things I get from other people’s experience way down the road: weeks, months, years later.
November 30th, 2006 at 5:53 pm
Thank you for this Tim.
It resonates with me now because I have been closely examining my own negativity and trying to realize the sinfulness of it, in more precise terms “something not necessary.” I have found that by making a deliberate decision not to be negative I can sometimes actually do it and the rewards are self-evident.
Until the next inevitable big tsunami of lead comes to swallow me, I remain a curious “experiment”!
November 30th, 2006 at 6:32 pm
Slightly off topic, but after reading about your recent physical woes and after listening to your last podcast where you talked about doing yoga, I wanted to ask you, have you ever looked into Pilates? I’ve never taken a yoga class and my half-assed attempts at yoga on my own weren’t too fruitful (due to me, not the yoga), but I was given a book on Pilates stretching (I guess that’s the kind without the actual Pilates machines) and there’s a core concept called “the girdle of strength” and sometimes “the power girdle”….either way, I’ve been doing just that combined with a moderate stretching regimen and I’ve never felt better in my life. I never knew how compacted and needlessly knotted our “cores” can be.
The great thing with this Pilates breathing technique is that you can do it anywhere. I had to sit through a TV show taping a few months ago and I had slept in a weird position the night before…after an hour of just sitting there and breathing and working that internal core network, I was fine. It’s one of the few things I’ve found out about like this that’s actually worked for me…and worked very quickly, to boot.
November 30th, 2006 at 7:08 pm
Yeah, I’ve been noticing that as well a whole lot lately too. It can be very difficult to maintain, but when you start not being negative and put a real effort into it, you really do start feeling better. I always thought of that as being one of those way too obvious self-help type things that was bullshit, but its not.
Magic Grubb:
No, I have never tried Pilates. I’m not actually sure I even like yoga yet, either. I haven’t done it enough to know for certain. I did Tai Chi briefly in highschool and am thinking about taking that up again though, as I remember really enjoying that.
November 30th, 2006 at 7:10 pm
About negativity though–I should clarify.
It is one thing to be not negative in regard to other people. Actually, these days I sometimes find that much easier, and those rewards are superficial.
The real work is to not be negative INSIDE.
Know what I mean?
November 30th, 2006 at 7:12 pm
OH YEAH TOTALLY
Like I can be totally not negative outwardly towards others. And I can even with not a lot of effort get over being negative inwardly about them. But it’s MUCH more difficult to simply not be negative towards myself. Like I can cut all these other people all kinds of crazy breaks - a compassion which I can’t always seem to give towards myself.
November 30th, 2006 at 7:30 pm
Funny, reading this only a few minutes later:
http://www.soul.org/Great%20Work.html
November 30th, 2006 at 10:44 pm
Well said, Tim. Maybe that’s what real individuality is about, as opposed to the Madison-Avenue search for supposed self-expression that you have criticized in past columns (I can’t remember off the top of my head which columns). Those criticisms of self-expression have given me a lot to think about, because I figured that individuality was sort of at least one of the driving forces behind the whole spiritual-investigation thing you have going on here. But maybe what we ought to be looking for when we look for individual self-expression is not the endless thirst for buying crap that somehow tells other people just which niche we fit into, but rather an attempt to seek answers to life’s questions for ourselves, each of us, mindful of others doing the same thing (God do I sound like a hippie or what!). I read a book once years ago called The Quantum Society, which if I remember correctly talked about how the human personality is much like and wave/particle things in quantum physics; just as something can be both a wave and a particle, a person is simultaneously an individual interdependent part-of-the-fabric.
December 1st, 2006 at 7:02 am
It can be very easy to tie oneself in mental knots… occasionally I find myself thinking too hard, and then I find myself thinking about thinking, and then I find myself thinking about thinking about thinking and a kind of cascade of craziness starts… one can easily bury the important kernel of truth beneath a mountain of analysis. Sometimes the more one analyses stuff the more obscure it gets.
December 1st, 2006 at 3:01 pm
Yes! I think you’re absolutely right. That really ties something together for me. Thank you! The pieces you are referencing in particular:
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2006/11/17/beneath-the-burqa-ban/
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2006/11/20/podcast-11-express-yourself/
Yes, but sometimes less as well. I think the thing about tying yourself into knots mentally is that it forces you to a crisis point: either untie them or die trying. Certainly not the easiest way through the mess, but it works if you have the intestinal fortitude and patience to continue