Post by oblivionrelics on Aug 6, 2013 19:29:53 GMT
This has helped me with my spirituality and my spirits.
The esoteric work has the potential to change an ordinary life into a spiritual one, and to transform an ordinary human being into a self-realized being.
The knowledge that is acquired through esoteric study is more than a purely intellectual understanding, because that kind of understanding is very superficial. You can read all about states such as fear or aggression, or about psychiatry and psychology, but with these you are not going to profoundly understand the way that the human psyche works, because they study external things and other people’s knowledge and information, while the psyche is something internal.
As an example, if you feel anger, then you feel it inside yourself. No one can see that anger outside you – they can see the manifestations of it, but they can’t see the actual thing. Each individual however, can see anger within themselves. And it’s the observation of that emotion, which enables us to acquire knowledge about it and of ourselves.
For it to be relevant, inner knowledge must bring about change. If there is just intellectual information and no change, there’s no spiritual point in it.
With self-knowledge and the right kinds of esoteric techniques, one can potentially change from being the way that one is, to a more spiritual person and that is the start of a profound journey.
This is essentially the same knowledge which has been taught in all the different religions around the world in their esoteric part. The enlightenment that can be attained is the enlightenment contained in various religions; it’s liberation. In achieving it, we free ourselves from nature, from the animal drives and desires. We become truly free – not simply able to do what we want, but to be instruments of divinity and do the things that we need to do.
To change like this, to free oneself from nature is a huge task. There are three essential things that are needed in order to do it – death (of the egos), birth (of the spiritual within) and sacrifice (helping others).
The first is to remove the negativity from within, to get rid of the emotions of anger, hatred, pride, bad feeling, ill will and the multitude of subconscious animalistic states, to inwardly die to the egos, which really cripples humanity spiritually and the things which have made this world a place of suffering where it doesn’t need to be.
If humanity were more spiritual this world would change. The whole structure of society is based around the state of the individuals within it; it’s the creation of the individuals within it. If the individuals can change, society can change. So, by working to get rid of these elements of the subconscious, these desires, consciousness is freed. This consciousness gives awareness, and that gives the ability to perceive the present moment.
To perceive the present moment, to perceive the here and now, is to perceive reality. While locked within the subconscious, a distorted view of the world is seen. It is seen through emotions, opinions, beliefs, reactions, etc. Rarely are things seen as they are. With awareness, things are observed as they are in the present moment. As awareness or consciousness is developed its faculties increase and things beyond this three-dimensional world can be perceived. These are things which are real and which exist. What is needed to be able to perceive them has to be created within.
The second essential exercise to do is alchemy. It’s the transmutation of sexual energies. Every creative process requires sexual energy; this is the heart of change, of creation. If you tried to change fundamentally without it you wouldn’t be able to, because you wouldn’t have the means to do it.
The third essential exercise for change is sacrifice. To sacrifice lower states for higher ones, bestial desires for spiritual peace, happiness and love. But also to make sacrifices to bring this knowledge to people, to take it out into the world so that other people have the chance to practice it and to experience it.
Alchemy, which is sometimes called birth, gives the substance within which allows the spiritual to manifest within. When starting out on the esoteric work only a small part of the divine, a tiny fragment of consciousness exists within. But it’s possible to incarnate really spiritual parts. It’s alchemy that creates the substance and bodies for those spiritual parts to come in, and allows someone to really experience the world in a very, very different way.
If the Being, if the divine, the truly spiritual merges within, then there is real peace, real happiness, and a love that is completely unknown to the rest of the world, because very few people actually have ever had the spiritual incarnated within. This is the root meaning of religion, it means the union with the divine.
Because so few have achieved this union, there’s a lack of shared experience to really discuss it. Whoever doesn’t have the divine within is missing essential spiritual properties. In some ways it can be seen in a similar way to an emotion (for ordinary people), if you had never had an emotion, you would not know what an emotion was like. It’s the same thing with the spiritual within. It has its own quality, and if someone is unaware of what it is – if they’ve never experienced it – they wouldn’t know what it’s like and wouldn’t know how to speak about it or communicate it in any way.
This then gives a bit of a problem for those who are trying to start out on this path, who are trying to find true spirituality. And that is, that it’s easy to get misled, it’s easy to go down lots of different tracks, to listen to talks which sound very nice; but if those who are giving the talks have never incarnated the divine within them, have never changed themselves fundamentally through alchemy, have never removed the egos or the negativity inside themselves, or never sacrificed themselves, then they’re just ordinary people – no matter what wonderful sounding words they may utter.
The challenge of esoteric study is to understand oneself, to get knowledge and understand the fabric of life, to incarnate the spiritual within, to get free from nature and to reach liberation.
Q: Sometimes, I’m afraid that things are not going to turn out as I thought they would. Secondly, I’m afraid of losing things that I already have.
Belsebuub: You’ve got this idea of how things should turn out and how they should be. Even if you try to do what you think you should do in order to get those, they may turn out to be different anyway, because life has lots of twists and turns along its way. But if you’re taking up the esoteric work, then certainly you have to put that first to make it succeed. And if you’re doing that, then you can have a fear brought about by this idea of how your life would change. But you’re doing this for a reason; to get something better than you could get by taking up just an ordinary life where you grow, reproduce, bring up children, get old, and die.
It all leads to death, which inevitably has to be faced that at some point. It could be very soon, or it could be a long time away, but it will have to be faced some time, and how would you prepare yourself for that? If someone lives just an ordinary life, then they are in animal states, and no matter what job or lifestyle that person may have, by living in animal states, they have an unsatisfactory way of living. It’s much better to have spiritual peace than it is to have all the different emotions that everyone has in ordinary everyday life. Those who find happiness are those who would sacrifice all of that in order to get spiritual peace and freedom, and to get something much better after death, something that lasts.
It’s a matter of priorities – if your priorities are your car, an ideal house, the exact number of children you were hoping for, the ideal job, and all related things, if your heart is in them, then you’re going to be very fearful of losing them. But if your heart is in the spiritual, then you would be very concerned about losing the spiritual, and your conscience would agitate you if you took up the mundane life and neglected the spiritual.
You will choose that which you really want to have, whether it is a spiritual life or an ordinary life. But if you choose the spiritual life, then you take whatever comes along on the spiritual path. It’s a defined path, and the things happen to you on it that happen to every single person that takes it, in the same sorts of ways.
It’s a matter of decision and a matter of priorities and what you really want.
I do want to live a spiritual life, but the situation in my workplace sometimes really pushes me and involves egos. Sometimes I feel like I just want to change the job, or move to another work, or another place. And sometimes it makes me think it’s because of the ego itself playing in my mind, or am I trying to escape from the situation? Or should I just continue in the workplace and try to fight the emotions? So it’s always confusing for me, whether I should just stay on and try to learn from this situation, or whether I should try to change the situation so that I can spend more time doing the spiritual work?
The workplace is a great opportunity for learning. There you can meet all sorts of people and be in various kinds of situations, which bring up things in your subconscious, your egos, your emotions – this is where you can learn. Learning takes place in daily life, not in some imaginary ideal situation but in the things we go through in the life that we lead.
For those who take up this work, who may walk along the spiritual path, situations will occur, many of which may be difficult or complex. But if in daily life it’s a matter of having to deal with people’s emotions, or their negative thoughts or whatever is happening at work, then it’s best to use those situations to learn. Some may have ideas about what it is to learn, but the learning comes with the things that are done in life; it comes with the job and with the people that are met. This is where the path takes place too; it takes place in daily life, in all the different opportunities that come up with it, and that is life.
The workplace then is not something that usually stops you from doing what you need to do spiritually. If however, you were completely unable to study or practice, unable to read any books, or teach or help in the work because of your job, then yes, you would be faced with a choice: whether to take the job or do the spiritual work. But if it’s not that, and if it’s just that there are difficulties in there and things that feel uncomfortable and so on, then it can be part of spiritual learning, which may even be necessary for inner development.
Sometimes it’s hard to face difficulties; it’s sometimes easier to just get out of a situation to try to find something else that’s a bit easier, a bit more pleasant, and then feel more able to study this work. But it doesn’t always work like that. The esoteric work can be very, very difficult to do. There can be very hard situations that come up, difficult people that have to be dealt with. And yet, that is where the learning takes place; it takes place in those difficult situations and difficult times. When there are just easier times, the learning is a lot less. It’s from the difficult times that most is learnt.
That said, it’s up to everyone to make their own decisions on this, to make their own choices, and to work things out as best they can.
You spoke about a spiritual love that you can attain from doing the work, like a divine love that you can experience. As opposed to the love that we feel now for people, which I guess is often derived from egos, I guess you get to develop that kind of spiritual love at a certain progression with this work, but in order for us to see what it is that we’re trying to fight for and to help us through times when we feel low, is there a way that we can get an insight into what we’re going to gain, to give us the strength to keep going?
Yes – you need to do exercises that strengthen the essence, consciousness, because this is where a state such as love comes from. Any of the exercises help. Being aware is good and mantras stimulate the senses of the astral body; they make you feel more spiritual sensations, which spark off more spiritual feelings in daily life. And obviously, a key exercise for this is alchemy, but that’s for whoever has that ability to do it.
As far as people’s capacity for love in everyday life – there is a spark of it, which we see here and there: a mother’s love for a child, love that spontaneously happens throughout the world. But that love, if we look at the world, is very, very small. If people had just a small percentage more love, this whole world would be different. There is so much exploitation, greed, destruction, famine, wars and fights throughout the planet, that it’s obvious that love is very, very small within humanity. So it’s a matter of trying to increase this capacity for love, but when it happens, it happens naturally, you don’t have to think about it. If you’re thinking about love, it’s not love. Love is just the way that we are, and the way that we are changes as we become more spiritual. And then you feel for people in a way that it’s as though they’re yourself – you can’t not feel love once you have it. And then you feel that for everybody that you see.
Love is something that can be developed, but it takes a lot of work to develop it; a lot of changes to negative states have to be made, which I was explaining a little bit about earlier. And also to carry out the correct exercises to awaken the senses of the essence, because that is where the root of spiritual change and development is.
By developing the essence and making it stronger, you can feel those spiritual feelings a bit more, and that gives a strength to help you to go forward. Sacrifices need to be made to be able to do that; to move forward, you have to sacrifice lots of pleasures, lots of things. And if you can do that, you’re doing it for a reason, for a superior state – so you’re sacrificing lower states for superior ones.
If you keep giving in to lower states, they will weaken you, they take away the capacity to feel those higher states. And then they drag you down – they drag you down into even lower states, and before you know it you’ve lost track and you have to try to fight your way back. So you need to know the essential exercises to do, and to realize that it’s about increasing the capacity and feelings of consciousness. And it’s upon consciousness that you need to focus and concentrate, so that you develop it. And then it merges with the divine and it becomes a strength, a power, which fights against all of those negative elements, which are inside.
The esoteric work has the potential to change an ordinary life into a spiritual one, and to transform an ordinary human being into a self-realized being.
The knowledge that is acquired through esoteric study is more than a purely intellectual understanding, because that kind of understanding is very superficial. You can read all about states such as fear or aggression, or about psychiatry and psychology, but with these you are not going to profoundly understand the way that the human psyche works, because they study external things and other people’s knowledge and information, while the psyche is something internal.
As an example, if you feel anger, then you feel it inside yourself. No one can see that anger outside you – they can see the manifestations of it, but they can’t see the actual thing. Each individual however, can see anger within themselves. And it’s the observation of that emotion, which enables us to acquire knowledge about it and of ourselves.
For it to be relevant, inner knowledge must bring about change. If there is just intellectual information and no change, there’s no spiritual point in it.
With self-knowledge and the right kinds of esoteric techniques, one can potentially change from being the way that one is, to a more spiritual person and that is the start of a profound journey.
This is essentially the same knowledge which has been taught in all the different religions around the world in their esoteric part. The enlightenment that can be attained is the enlightenment contained in various religions; it’s liberation. In achieving it, we free ourselves from nature, from the animal drives and desires. We become truly free – not simply able to do what we want, but to be instruments of divinity and do the things that we need to do.
To change like this, to free oneself from nature is a huge task. There are three essential things that are needed in order to do it – death (of the egos), birth (of the spiritual within) and sacrifice (helping others).
The first is to remove the negativity from within, to get rid of the emotions of anger, hatred, pride, bad feeling, ill will and the multitude of subconscious animalistic states, to inwardly die to the egos, which really cripples humanity spiritually and the things which have made this world a place of suffering where it doesn’t need to be.
If humanity were more spiritual this world would change. The whole structure of society is based around the state of the individuals within it; it’s the creation of the individuals within it. If the individuals can change, society can change. So, by working to get rid of these elements of the subconscious, these desires, consciousness is freed. This consciousness gives awareness, and that gives the ability to perceive the present moment.
To perceive the present moment, to perceive the here and now, is to perceive reality. While locked within the subconscious, a distorted view of the world is seen. It is seen through emotions, opinions, beliefs, reactions, etc. Rarely are things seen as they are. With awareness, things are observed as they are in the present moment. As awareness or consciousness is developed its faculties increase and things beyond this three-dimensional world can be perceived. These are things which are real and which exist. What is needed to be able to perceive them has to be created within.
The second essential exercise to do is alchemy. It’s the transmutation of sexual energies. Every creative process requires sexual energy; this is the heart of change, of creation. If you tried to change fundamentally without it you wouldn’t be able to, because you wouldn’t have the means to do it.
The third essential exercise for change is sacrifice. To sacrifice lower states for higher ones, bestial desires for spiritual peace, happiness and love. But also to make sacrifices to bring this knowledge to people, to take it out into the world so that other people have the chance to practice it and to experience it.
Alchemy, which is sometimes called birth, gives the substance within which allows the spiritual to manifest within. When starting out on the esoteric work only a small part of the divine, a tiny fragment of consciousness exists within. But it’s possible to incarnate really spiritual parts. It’s alchemy that creates the substance and bodies for those spiritual parts to come in, and allows someone to really experience the world in a very, very different way.
If the Being, if the divine, the truly spiritual merges within, then there is real peace, real happiness, and a love that is completely unknown to the rest of the world, because very few people actually have ever had the spiritual incarnated within. This is the root meaning of religion, it means the union with the divine.
Because so few have achieved this union, there’s a lack of shared experience to really discuss it. Whoever doesn’t have the divine within is missing essential spiritual properties. In some ways it can be seen in a similar way to an emotion (for ordinary people), if you had never had an emotion, you would not know what an emotion was like. It’s the same thing with the spiritual within. It has its own quality, and if someone is unaware of what it is – if they’ve never experienced it – they wouldn’t know what it’s like and wouldn’t know how to speak about it or communicate it in any way.
This then gives a bit of a problem for those who are trying to start out on this path, who are trying to find true spirituality. And that is, that it’s easy to get misled, it’s easy to go down lots of different tracks, to listen to talks which sound very nice; but if those who are giving the talks have never incarnated the divine within them, have never changed themselves fundamentally through alchemy, have never removed the egos or the negativity inside themselves, or never sacrificed themselves, then they’re just ordinary people – no matter what wonderful sounding words they may utter.
The challenge of esoteric study is to understand oneself, to get knowledge and understand the fabric of life, to incarnate the spiritual within, to get free from nature and to reach liberation.
Q: Sometimes, I’m afraid that things are not going to turn out as I thought they would. Secondly, I’m afraid of losing things that I already have.
Belsebuub: You’ve got this idea of how things should turn out and how they should be. Even if you try to do what you think you should do in order to get those, they may turn out to be different anyway, because life has lots of twists and turns along its way. But if you’re taking up the esoteric work, then certainly you have to put that first to make it succeed. And if you’re doing that, then you can have a fear brought about by this idea of how your life would change. But you’re doing this for a reason; to get something better than you could get by taking up just an ordinary life where you grow, reproduce, bring up children, get old, and die.
It all leads to death, which inevitably has to be faced that at some point. It could be very soon, or it could be a long time away, but it will have to be faced some time, and how would you prepare yourself for that? If someone lives just an ordinary life, then they are in animal states, and no matter what job or lifestyle that person may have, by living in animal states, they have an unsatisfactory way of living. It’s much better to have spiritual peace than it is to have all the different emotions that everyone has in ordinary everyday life. Those who find happiness are those who would sacrifice all of that in order to get spiritual peace and freedom, and to get something much better after death, something that lasts.
It’s a matter of priorities – if your priorities are your car, an ideal house, the exact number of children you were hoping for, the ideal job, and all related things, if your heart is in them, then you’re going to be very fearful of losing them. But if your heart is in the spiritual, then you would be very concerned about losing the spiritual, and your conscience would agitate you if you took up the mundane life and neglected the spiritual.
You will choose that which you really want to have, whether it is a spiritual life or an ordinary life. But if you choose the spiritual life, then you take whatever comes along on the spiritual path. It’s a defined path, and the things happen to you on it that happen to every single person that takes it, in the same sorts of ways.
It’s a matter of decision and a matter of priorities and what you really want.
I do want to live a spiritual life, but the situation in my workplace sometimes really pushes me and involves egos. Sometimes I feel like I just want to change the job, or move to another work, or another place. And sometimes it makes me think it’s because of the ego itself playing in my mind, or am I trying to escape from the situation? Or should I just continue in the workplace and try to fight the emotions? So it’s always confusing for me, whether I should just stay on and try to learn from this situation, or whether I should try to change the situation so that I can spend more time doing the spiritual work?
The workplace is a great opportunity for learning. There you can meet all sorts of people and be in various kinds of situations, which bring up things in your subconscious, your egos, your emotions – this is where you can learn. Learning takes place in daily life, not in some imaginary ideal situation but in the things we go through in the life that we lead.
For those who take up this work, who may walk along the spiritual path, situations will occur, many of which may be difficult or complex. But if in daily life it’s a matter of having to deal with people’s emotions, or their negative thoughts or whatever is happening at work, then it’s best to use those situations to learn. Some may have ideas about what it is to learn, but the learning comes with the things that are done in life; it comes with the job and with the people that are met. This is where the path takes place too; it takes place in daily life, in all the different opportunities that come up with it, and that is life.
The workplace then is not something that usually stops you from doing what you need to do spiritually. If however, you were completely unable to study or practice, unable to read any books, or teach or help in the work because of your job, then yes, you would be faced with a choice: whether to take the job or do the spiritual work. But if it’s not that, and if it’s just that there are difficulties in there and things that feel uncomfortable and so on, then it can be part of spiritual learning, which may even be necessary for inner development.
Sometimes it’s hard to face difficulties; it’s sometimes easier to just get out of a situation to try to find something else that’s a bit easier, a bit more pleasant, and then feel more able to study this work. But it doesn’t always work like that. The esoteric work can be very, very difficult to do. There can be very hard situations that come up, difficult people that have to be dealt with. And yet, that is where the learning takes place; it takes place in those difficult situations and difficult times. When there are just easier times, the learning is a lot less. It’s from the difficult times that most is learnt.
That said, it’s up to everyone to make their own decisions on this, to make their own choices, and to work things out as best they can.
You spoke about a spiritual love that you can attain from doing the work, like a divine love that you can experience. As opposed to the love that we feel now for people, which I guess is often derived from egos, I guess you get to develop that kind of spiritual love at a certain progression with this work, but in order for us to see what it is that we’re trying to fight for and to help us through times when we feel low, is there a way that we can get an insight into what we’re going to gain, to give us the strength to keep going?
Yes – you need to do exercises that strengthen the essence, consciousness, because this is where a state such as love comes from. Any of the exercises help. Being aware is good and mantras stimulate the senses of the astral body; they make you feel more spiritual sensations, which spark off more spiritual feelings in daily life. And obviously, a key exercise for this is alchemy, but that’s for whoever has that ability to do it.
As far as people’s capacity for love in everyday life – there is a spark of it, which we see here and there: a mother’s love for a child, love that spontaneously happens throughout the world. But that love, if we look at the world, is very, very small. If people had just a small percentage more love, this whole world would be different. There is so much exploitation, greed, destruction, famine, wars and fights throughout the planet, that it’s obvious that love is very, very small within humanity. So it’s a matter of trying to increase this capacity for love, but when it happens, it happens naturally, you don’t have to think about it. If you’re thinking about love, it’s not love. Love is just the way that we are, and the way that we are changes as we become more spiritual. And then you feel for people in a way that it’s as though they’re yourself – you can’t not feel love once you have it. And then you feel that for everybody that you see.
Love is something that can be developed, but it takes a lot of work to develop it; a lot of changes to negative states have to be made, which I was explaining a little bit about earlier. And also to carry out the correct exercises to awaken the senses of the essence, because that is where the root of spiritual change and development is.
By developing the essence and making it stronger, you can feel those spiritual feelings a bit more, and that gives a strength to help you to go forward. Sacrifices need to be made to be able to do that; to move forward, you have to sacrifice lots of pleasures, lots of things. And if you can do that, you’re doing it for a reason, for a superior state – so you’re sacrificing lower states for superior ones.
If you keep giving in to lower states, they will weaken you, they take away the capacity to feel those higher states. And then they drag you down – they drag you down into even lower states, and before you know it you’ve lost track and you have to try to fight your way back. So you need to know the essential exercises to do, and to realize that it’s about increasing the capacity and feelings of consciousness. And it’s upon consciousness that you need to focus and concentrate, so that you develop it. And then it merges with the divine and it becomes a strength, a power, which fights against all of those negative elements, which are inside.