A realization about occultism and social interactions

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

It's maybe only been a couple years since I broke away from either being a marginal believer at some times or a deep agnostic-angling-atheist at others.

Something that I'd heard and kind of intellectually gotten myself squared with but not emotionally was the understanding that many occultists would feel like they're uncomfortably trapped, should conversations about their beliefs come up, between fundamentalist believers on one side and equally dogged reductive materialists on the other. For whatever reason I just had a foolish idea in my head that made me think that, just because I had a way with words and explaining things, that it could be different - not even an intellectual idea so much as an emotional sense that didn't really care what my intellect told it (ie. those times where you have 'learn the hard way' to get your emotions to wash with reality).

Turns out that yeah - its pretty much that your core group of friends who saw you as an already highly reasonable/objective person and trust your awareness of self and your own internal logic are quite likely to trust that you know what you're talking about and much of what you experience in such an event that would lead you into being a budding esotericist/occultist/Hermeticist is stuff that will have an extra carry-over benefit to them because you'll be able to tell them about it, talk to them about things as you learn, and they'll be able to keep up with the salience of it as you learn. Past that short-range layer of close friends and open-minded acquaintences who knew you both before and after you quite quickly find youself at odds with the two groups I mentioned earlier. Fundamentalists with a point to prove will not entertain an overview conversation about the bible and the information it contains and will resort to 'name verses or shut up' and the dogged reductive materialists will see just another emotionally loopy or credulous idiot and it'll be the 'give me a peer reviewed paper or shut up' (caveat being - it needs to be peer reviewed in an already reductive-materialist leaning journal and if it's something that's forced its way through the door like double-slit/quantum erasor it's considered far too indirect; you're not allowed to give them homemade meta-analysis).

I knew that one of the inner-peace struggles with coming along this path would be acclimating to the social climate now from a different direction and having what many would be considered a very minority-belief that gets hunkered down with a lot of stereotypes. Aside from occultism taking a great deal of objectivity and really taking the 'all is one' knowledge to every waking level of consciousness and expanding it to all of your exchanges with people, all of the weird and bad habits of society, etc. etc., it's also clear that ridicule and trying to defend oneself from either opposite flank of being stuck between rocks and hard-places of equal density is tiring and demotivating to the process. I'm also realizing just how stupid I sound to both groups based on their lines of thinking so yes, I'm not superman and the same communication barrier that other people have had with this persists with me as well.

My own conclusion - I really think I'll have to teach myself to avoid philosophical conversations when people are having them. With some groups I may feel, after listening, that they're in the same zone enough that I can safely comment from my own perspective (and there is a circle or two in my life that may stay that way notwithstanding who we're hanging out with) but outside of that it's just not worth talking about. My point really being this - I know that I'm doing the right thing, that I've done the research, I've connected the dots, and that I've found a critical path in my evolution and walk with God. That much is so clear to me that I no longer need to prove it to myself and thus no longer need to crash it against opposing views in order to prove to myself that it holds water. That 'knowing' that I'm doing the right thing isn't portable and my evidence is such a broad-based collection of things including personal experiences and western mystic history that of course hardly anyone out there knows a thing about that there's really no way to ever condense it into something that has any effect on zealots of any variety. So I think I'm starting to understand the 'silence' bit better, I didn't quite get it before but essentially one needs to guard their thoughts well to keep influences healthy and part of this is enjoying your 'right to remain silent' and not bringing down the wrath of a know-it-all or a '90% of X professional field says Y' types whose of a contrasting persuasion.

Lol, I feel like I might have just written my master's thesis in the obvious but sometimes it's strange how certain things can be grasped intellectually but at the same time the emotional self has little esteem for the intellect and needs to at least touch some small part of its hand to the proverbial hot stove before its willing to agree with the intellect that yes - hot stoves will burn your hand.

What I am also hoping - also by way of talking about ontology and belief or 'what I do' far less - that I can keep myself from becoming the kind of bore that wants to drill one topic all day. I don't do absolutely terrible in this regard but I don't do great either - especially when I'm still wrapped in a lot of friends who don't do much in the way of strictly small talk and like to bring up tangents that quite often seem to tease this out of me.

[EternalReturn]

I might add that it isn't always the occultism which generates the problem. Any topic about spirituality and psychonautism can generate same effect. Well, anything that is connected somehow with religion, spirituality and drug-powered writers.

I found myself in conflicts about ideas with atheist generally. They seem to be dense and defensive about anything like that. A lot of them are holding their beliefs in positivistic manner - if it isn't quantified and statistically or otherwise proven it might as well be fiction. And to them it is fiction most of the time. I'm generalizing because is easier to describe as such. I'm merely describing one group o people in the population of atheists. But do I get in conflict with atheists generally? Yes but on different topics with variety of their nature.

Philosophers on the other hand have that "holier than thou" manner concerning reasoning. Some expect that everyone should get to the same conclusions as them, but some listen and give advice. It's much easier to talk to them about such things, and some of them even practice some form of magick.

And what I'm trying to do is only explain my ideas and thoughts. And a lot of people will react with defense. I've been thinking am I somehow intimidating to them? Are they percieving me as arrogant? I didn't howewer found any sample to prove that. Except that people think of me as arrogant when they first meet me, and it is "because of reasons". They can't explain.

So considering interaction I can see three things. Conflicting values, defensive mechanism, and negative emotional respose. They are interconnected as one invokes the other two even if it is just an illusion. It's hard to evade it's grasp somehow as I felt it on my skin and I'm trying to get rid of it. I did however notice one thing, activity of these three interaction "sins" correlates with frustration. And people just love interacting with the frustrated somehow. Almost as their ego screams in their heads "who the fuck he thinks he is, strutting all frustrated around. I'm the one who should be frustrated and angry". Or in another example it manifests in the direction of giving the advice or plain talk about the problems, if you stay cool and disconnect from these primal emotions interacting with the frustrated. As they see you that you somehow discovered the meaning of life and can give them answers to ease their suffering.

As for my experience, I've always wanted to describe another perspective to the people who are clearly suffering because of their delusions, obsessions, frustrations, fear, victimization of themselves etc. so to set them free somehow. Only effects I've observed from it are trance-like states which can backfire horribly or work like a charm and complete ignorance and defensivness leading almost to the physical conflict in some situations. And for this "work like a charm" situation? It happened like once.

So concerning "holding the water" I can say that it's terribly hard to explain to those who aren't willing to listen to it. Even if they are hurting themselves and feel the pain, they tend to neglect and conflict with different opinions. No matter how do you present them. Do you want to convince them, give them food for thought, a direction to catch that positive strand of thinking to arise from the emotional mud and poison they or the environment caused - it doesn't matter. When I see that it's almost impossible to give them advice even if they consiously know they are hurting themselves, it is almost impossible to explain to them anything else if they aren't willing to listen but to confront with you. It is a part of them and because of it, they see it as an attack.

I feel you man. [crymore]

[Cybernetic_Jazz]

An interesting thing; I've been pulling a tarot card every day, just asking the God within me to give me advice on either the day's events or the weekend's events (depending on how long I've been away from my deck) and what the dominant lesson was.

I asked about the weekend and I pulled a 10 of pentacles, I usually don't consider reversals but this was reversed and my first instinct to look at it as the old proverb of Christ wanting to nurture his sheep or God having so much It wants to give us and then being confused when we run away from what It's trying to give. Seems like I still have plenty of 'protective pessimism' that I need to investigate closer - this topic being another angle.

I suppose the reason I feel the need to explore it is that I know it's a vulnerability. If I'm dumb enough to do something I know I shouldn't be I'll likely get the result that I should have known I'd get. The thing I've wanted to be over for a long time is the emotional sensitivity to brow-beatings from people who 'know-that-they-know' whether fully gnostic atheists or fully gnostic fundamentalists. IMHO that kind of emotional current has a dangerous gravity in that it can bypass reason in the recipient of such attention and no matter how good your facts are if it comes at you hard enough or fast enough it seems as if truth can go out the window in favor of "2+2=5 cause someone more fierce than me says so". This place is great because we're largely on the same page but I'm thinking that internet forums and 'debate' areas, much like church, are to be avoided until I have enough experiences and ascension under my belt that there's no 'faith' left in me for the emotional currents of others to tamper with.

[EternalReturn]

I want to divert your attention to this: "YOU ARE where your ATTENTION IS". I copied an pasted it from manofsands signature as it was the first thing that came to my mind concerning what you wrote. The emotional current as you name it. I get it how hard it is to fight against it. I had a tendency to debate for hours on the internet because of the insta-gratitude feeling you get because of your "superiority", compliments or provocations from others. I could fight that feeling only after what my girfriend told me - at one point all this debating seems to go to absurdity and it is after the point when you say your perspective, and another person theirs. This is where we should agree or agree to disagree. Nothing more, nothing less. Unless someone asks for explanation.

She got that right. I always strived for understanding others, and expected the same in the return, but only gave fertile land for eristics and ad infinitum debating.

I'm prone to another method lately. I just take a deep breath and say "fuck it". Change the subject. If it doesnt work, assert my decision of not talking about the theme and explain why. It works for me.

So I am not in the emotional current, I am here where I should be and that is in the balance dictated by me. Do not let behavior of others destroy your inner peace [crazy]

But I still get kinda pissed of by stupidity of others haha

[meta42]

Oh boy I know your feelings all too well.

I found myself at a dinner table with an athiest, a fundamentalist, and a professor who was prying trying to understand my passion for researching the correlation between religion and science. I wanted to throw occult out there so badly but I feared both the fundamentalist and the athiest.

The solitude that comes along with the occult is hard to bare. You want to tell everyone about it, but it is something you have to go through to understand, and you can't put it in a few words to explain it to other people. Trying to talk about the occult with a non-occultist is like trying to get a toddler with no math experience to do a calculus problem. (I'm not saying that non-occultists are lesser people, it is just the only metaphor I could think of).

You need to be really careful who you talk to about the occult with because unfortunately there are some really ignorant people out there and people fear and hate what they don't understand.

[Procel]

This is a great thread.

Evangelical Atheists are a modern phenomenon and they are all that they claim to reject about religious people. They are intensely intolerant of anybody who believes in any faith. They won't literally burn you at the stake, but you will be pilloried, mocked, ridiculed and in general shouted down by them. Believe as they do (which always takes a leap of faith) or be shunned.

I know some Baptists who put everything into "quote chapter and verse or shut up" terms. They believe (literally and vociferously) that Buddhism is a trick of Satan to keep people away from Christ. These ones call Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses Satanic cults. How does one even have a philosophical conversation with them? Fortunately, those people I refer to are people I can deal with as needed without having to engage them on matters spiritual. For these people, if it isn't The King James Bible (and only the King James version) it's not The Truth and is a lie. I actually know some of these, but they aren't exactly folks I hang out with.

I like what Meta42 said about the difficulty of wanting to talk but not being able to. It's very true. While we won't be executed or imprisoned for it (in most countries, but there are theocracies where you will be so be careful if you travel abroad) to tell people you are an occultist is still a risk. You may be seen as crazy. People may worry that you might steal and sacrifice their black cat or do some other heinous crime. You will at least be seen as weird and possibly as insane and dangerous. The trick seems to be to steer clear of "chapter and verse or shut up" or "peer reviewed paper or shut up" situations by preemptively shutting up.

[RoseRed]

To know,
To will,
To dare,
To be silent.

I've gone thru phases where I'll talk about it and other times when I kept my mouth shut. I lived in the Deep South, deep in the bible belt for a long time. Living among that many Fundamentalists - I didn't discuss it. I didn't want my house burned down while my family was sleeping in it. I didn't want to get in the car and find a rattlesnake under my seat. Yes, these things still happen way out in the 'country'.

Oh, and just a side note about those chapter and verse Fundies - I found it surprising how many fell back on church conditioning and played their role very well. Public scorn in a small town is a very real thing. There's a lot of them, especially amongst the younger ones, that are not spiritually fulfilled and quietly looking for something 'other'. They just won't discuss it publicly.

Anyways - the phase I am currently in is 'My business is my own.' What I do, think, believe, etc - is not up for public consumption. Period.

[Nemiel]

This is a concept that i came up with today, based on some ideas i have had over the past year, let me know what you think. I feel it would be relevant to your thread, as it addresses how we interact with groups and values, beliefs, acceptance etc

The Dodeca-Homo Cycle is a 12 stage process to describe the human condition.

It has many uses, contemplative, intellectual and practical. It uses an action and reaction polar opposite principles, each section"echoes" into the opposite section.

Six sections are the internal processes of human beings and six sections are the external processes.

It uses existential concepts regarding will and alienation, values, identity, psychology and I am introducing it to you for future purposes.

#philosophy #existentialism #process #ideas #repost