but he is not yet an originating source of value; he is still projecting.

Could you elaborate?

What you write here makes sense of the opposition between the Catholic Church and the Freemasons. The church has a really hard time (spends no time?) with anything that smacks of vital energy, that seems like it is designed to make you live instead of letting Christ live in you. But it seems like “unifying shakti and shiva” is another way of saying “self-transcending.”

The difference might lay in the role the conscience plays. The knight finds power, but he is guided by his lord rather than his conscience. He has given up this voice, the voice that questions, that can get one locked up in the mind, so he can develop as an agent in the world. Getting the kundalini to rise, unifying opposites can be a bit like cutting the Gordian knot; you can unify yourself at the pre-rational levels and leave a lot of questions unanswered.

In a letter John Henry Newman soon after the Church rolled out papal infallibility he finished with a toast: “I shall drink to the Pope, if you please, but still to the Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.”

I might have made this too much into a dichotomy. You cannot just listen to your own heart, you have to let it be affected by what you know other people hold in their hearts. Newman definitely thought this was true,

“The sense of right and wrong, which is the first element in religion, is so delicate, so fitful, so easily puzzled, obscured, perverted, so subtle in its argumentative methods, so impressible by education, so biased by pride and passion, so unsteady in its course, that, in the struggle for existence amid the various exercises and triumphs of the human intellect, this sense is at once the highest of all teachers, yet the least luminous; and the Church, the Pope, the hierarchy are, in the divine purpose, the supply of an urgent demand.”

I would guess that in this quest you are writing about, somewhere beyond knighthood is the development of wisdom.

PS I’ve been hanging out on your site for a couple of months now. It has been great. The Saturday morning I spent listening and reading Grid Density Explosion surpasses the golden Saturdays I would spend sitting in the family room, watching Alf the cartoon and drinking root beer.

Pack structure and dynamics. They don’t teach alpha males how to be alpha males unless you’re wealthy (ie, have pure bloodlines). The best you can do is sports, academics, media, or business: those become the achievable-but-not-really goals held out for the under-classes.

Yeah, that’s my conclusion too. And I think a lot of people come to accept being underclass, the alpha males that ae the most unhappy with that situation, though, become criminals or conquerers and theie descendants get to be the new aristocrats.

Civilization gives people something to all fix their hearts towards: a unified goal (ie, Holy Grail)

Gotta run, but this is worthwhile

http://www.canismajor.com/dog/packdyn.html

Feudalism is just codified pack dynamics.

I think civilization is designed to tame the beast, knock the life out of it a little, to control it. But being a Knight is about self mastery.

I think most people, just regular “law abiding” people are tame beasts.

criminals are people whose inner beast hasn’t been tamed and thus runs amok.

Rulers are people who have a tamed their inner beast and achieved self mastery. But I think there is a little bit of the criminal in them. More like a crininal than a member of the herd, but more refined and engaged in activities on a larger scale, like Alexander the Great for example.

So this makes me think. I don’t want to be a criminal, I don’t want to be a cow. I guess I have to continue to work towards self mastery. Become a Gentleman.

You do good work Tim. This should be in print some day, these writings of yours.

I really like that about the Chevalier vs. the Berserker. The anima balancing the animal nature.

So that is what it is to be a night,eh? So what is the modern day equivelent of being a Knight, today?

Being a CEO or even an Army General or somthing just seems like such a shabby equivalent. But maybe I am too much of a Romantic.

But anyway, I really like looking at these Knights in this light you are presenting. They weren’t just the strongest berserkers, they had self mastery and a very spiritual dimension as well.