Nostalgia

   The first initiative of a man seeking the way must be to reject the habitual image that he has of himself. He will be able to begin to say "I" only when the magical word corresponds to the inner imagination of self-awareness unconstrained by limitations of space, time, or power.    Human beings must retrieve the sense of the reality of themselves. At present, they only limit and diminish themselves, feeling different and smaller than they really are; every thought they conceive and every deed they perform adds one more bar to their prison cell, one more veil to their vision, one more denial of their power. They lock themselves inside the limits of their bodies and attach themselves to the earth that carries them: it is as if an eagle fancied to be a snake and crawled on the ground, ignoring its wings.    It is not only that man ignores, deforms, and denies himself, but that he also reenacts the myth of Medusa, turning everything around him into stone...

   As soon as Gallus was invested with the honours of the purple, Julian was permitted to breathe the air of freedom, of literature, and of Paganism... In the age of Julian every circumstance contributed to prolong and fortify [his faith] - the magnificent temples of Greece and Asia; the works of those artists who had expressed, in painting or in sculpture, the divine conceptions of the poet; the pomp of festivals and sacrifices, the successful arts of divination; the popular traditions of oracles and prodigies; and the ancient practice of two thousand years... But the devout philosopher, who sincerely embraced, and warmly encouraged, the superstition of the people, reserved for himself the privilege of a liberal interpretation, and silently withdrew from the foot of the altars into the sanctuary of the temple. The extravagance of the Grecian mythology proclaimed, with a clear and audible voice, that the pious inquirer, instead of being scandalised or satisfied with the lit...

   This is intuitive work; modern peoples' difficulty in learning how to do this is a direct consequence of the loss of Pagan Mysteries; a direct consequence of the demonizing of the divine feminine, Dame Wisdom herself, a programmed mistrust of the feeling, intuitive aspect of our natures. Dominant religions are oriented around a basic mistrust of the human heart and feelings - the heart is corrupt with sin, even according to the Bible. At this point, we must make a stand, and part ways with the human-hating religions that turn people against themselves, all to better force them into reliance on dogma, and into reliance on religious leaders and institutions.   A person, at some point, has to stop fighting to make every aspect of their experience "conform" with some notion of how things "have to be," and let the great web of Fate be what it is, because nothing can change how Fate is, or how things "are" on the deepest levels. Luckily, it's no...

"No disease is so full of variations, so changeable in symptoms, so made up out of ideas opposed to, nay, rather, at war with one another, as is the disease called Superstition. We must therefore fly from it, but in a safe way and to our own good - not like those who, running away from the attack of highwaymen, or wild beasts, or a fire, have entangled themselves in mazes leading to pitfalls and precipices. For thus some people, when running away from Superstition, fall headlong into atheism, both rugged and obstinate, and leap over that which lies between the two, namely, true Religion." - Plutarch     The so-called Pagans of the ancient world believed in a highest God above all creation, with the gods and lesser spiritual powers being manifestations of various aspects of His/Its Being, and the various cults as paths of spiritual power, moral development, and methods of both raising and grounding the true human being with the ultimate reality.

Yea, there is That which is the End-of-understanding, the "That" which thou must understand with the flower of the mind. For should’st thou turn thy mind inwards on It, and understand It as understanding “something,” thou shalt not understand It. For that there is a power of the mind’s prime that shineth forth in all directions, flashing with intellectual rays. Yet, in good sooth, thou should’st not strive with vehemence to understand that End-of-understanding, nor even with the wide-extended flame of wide-extended-mind that measures all things—except that End-of-under-standing only. Indeed, there is no need of strain in understanding this; but thou should’st have the vision of thy soul in purity, turned from aught else, so as to make thy mind empty of all things else, attentive to that End, in order that thou mayest learn that End-of-understanding; for It subsists beyond the mind.  - Chaldean Oracles The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao The name ...

"Know the Self as lord of the chariot, The body as the chariot itself, The discriminating intellect as The charioteer, and the mind as reins. The senses, say the wise, are the horses; Selfish desires are the roads they travel. When the Self is confused with the body, Mind, and senses, they point out, he seems To enjoy pleasure and suffer sorrow. When a person lacks discrimination And his mind is undisciplined, the senses Run hither and thither like wild horses. But they obey the rein like trained horses When one has discrimination and Has made his mind one-pointed. Those who lack Discrimination, with little control Over their thoughts and far from pure, Reach not the pure state of immortality But wander from death to death; but those Who have discrimination, with a still mind And a pure heart, reach journey's end, Never again to fall into the jaws of death. With a discriminating intellect As charioteer and a trained mind as reins, They attain to the...

"Then a recent king of Texcoco, the long-reigning poet Nezahualcoyotl, with a group of cultivated courtiers, had apparently been drawn to the potentially explosive idea of a single 'Unknown God', Ipalnemoani, a deity who was never seen and who was never represented by portraits: 'My house is hung with pictures. So is yours, one and only God,' Nezahualcoyotl had written, in one of his many moving poems. This poet-king's eloquent devotion to the god Tezcatlipoca, 'smoking mirror,' might seem to foreshadow the coming of a single inspiration: 'O lord, lord of the night, lord of the near, the night and the wind,' Mexicans would often pray, as if, in moments of perplexity, they required a unique recipient of supplication. Even if Nezahualcoyotl's poems are dismissed (as they sometimes are) as the skillful embroideries of his descendants, the Mexica plainly accepted that there was a grand supernatural force, of which all other gods were the expre...

"This original state of being can be likened to a primordial, or cosmic, mirror. By primordial we mean unconditioned, not caused by any circumstances. Something primordial is not a reaction for or against any situation. All conditionality comes from unconditionality. Anything that is made has to come from what was unmade, to begin with. If something is conditioned, it has been created or formed. In the English language, we speak of formulating ideas or plans, or we may say, "How should we form our organization?" or we may talk about the formation of a cloud. In contrast to that, the unconditioned is free from being formed, free from creation. This unconditioned state is likened to a primordial mirror because, like a mirror, it is willing to reflect anything, from the gross level up to the refined level, and it still remains as it is. The basic frame of reference of the cosmic mirror is quite vast, and it is free from any bias: kill or cure, hope or fear. The way to loo...