Friday, December 2, 2011

Student Question: Perfection and the Qlippoth

A student recently asked me to post this response to their questions concerning perfection and the Qlippoth.

Perfection is something we judge, it comes from our own point of view. We perceive things and say they are imperfect. Does the Life Force make mistakes or do we think they are mistakes because of our particular perspective? If you're standing in the middle of the chalk outline in Uffington, can you see the horse? If you're a dog or an ant, can you even see that there is an outline?

Alan Watts wrote that the "bad" things that seem to happen to people are not happening to someone else. God is not punishing an external individual but experiencing suffering for Itself. Rabbi Kaplan once told me that visiting the sick and offering charity are Mitzvot (commandments) but if there were no sick and there were no poor, then we could not perform these Mitzvot. Everything we think of as a mistake is, in essence, something we may not understand.

It is the reason there are so many beings in the world of Briah. Gods, Goddesses, Archangels... all expressions of God, but simplified that we may interact with them on a direct basis. The Limitless Light is too much for us, we cannot wrap our primitive minds around it, they would burn to even try. In a universe that complex, how can we know what is a mistake and what is "perfection?"

There is no such thing as perfection, for every person has their own requirements for perfection. What is a perfect world from your perspective? What is perfect from the Evangelical Christian's perspective? The Shiite Muslim? The Zen Buddhist? Which perfection shall we create in the world in order to have a "perfect world?"

Sometimes it's the journey, not the destination... We may never reach "perfection" in this life, but we can strive for it, we can travel the path a little further than we did the last time. Each step brings us closer to our return to the Light, to passing the Ring-Pass-Not, or Ain.

The still small voice is sometimes very clear, but the lessons are not always obvious. Remember that any message from the Higher Self must be filtered through our own subconscious mind before our conscious mind can become aware of it. During that journey it must pass through all of our baggage, our shadow, and everything else before we are aware of it consciously. Also, sometimes, when we meditate, the brain falls asleep and we begin to dream. This can also be mistaken for the voice. I'm not saying this is the case, but it's useful to know in case.

The Qlippoth are forms of the Sephiroth which represent imbalance. By having free choice we can choose certain things. We can choose to move forward (good) or we can fight evolution (evil). Imbalance is something we all face at times. Too much Severity is but Cruelty and Viciousness. Too much Mercy is but weakness which would allow evil to go unchecked. We symbolically represent these as the Qlippoth.

Think on this though...humans or sentient beings in Assiah, are hanging between the Celestial beings (Angels, Archangels, etc...) and the Infernal beings (Demons, Devils, etc...) yet of all beings, we are given the freedom of choice. Nothing exists that is not holy, nothing exists that is not of God. We alone were given free choice. The Infernals are just as much a manifestation of the Divine as the Celestials, only that they represent a more primal part of our evolution. We, who descended from the Divine and were given free choice, climb back towards the Divine.

Our animal natures, for example, are not to be hated and reviled, but accepted, acknowledged, loved, and put behind us. The spirit of competition which was vital for survival in our pre-civilised state now prevents us from coming together as a people and working as a whole. If we were not competing with one another as nations, as corporations as individuals... how long would it take to wipe out world hunger? How long would it take to find a cure for AIDS or Cancer? How long before we left this planet and began to live amongst the stars? Those demonic, selfish, egotistical beings are representations of parts of ourselves we no longer need as a race. If we repress them, we give them power, just as the Shadow of our own psyche. Neither is it good to explore them without training... for they are ancient and powerful and can overwhelm you. This is why they are not approached in the early work.

It is like facing the shadow in psychology. It is not recommended to go at it alone, even with significant training in metaprogramming, magic and meditation. It can overwhelm you. Breaking down the personality can be an important step in the evolution of the magician, but if you don't know how to rebuild it, or you have nothing to replace it with, it can drive you insane. It's like hooking a plain LED into a mains outlet... it bursts. Yet if you know how, it can be done quite safely (building a board with the appropriate resistance and power inversion).

We are what we think about. The personality is very plastic. Should we focus too much on the unbalanced and outworn parts of ourselves and our species, it will warp our personality vehicles, often resulting in Fundamentalist Christian style paranoia.

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