The Order of Spiritual Alchemy: Preliminary Lesson 2

[ecosophia]

As mentioned in an earlier post, I've decided to make the teachings of the Octagon Society, the first of three levels of the Order of Spiritual Alchemy, freely available here. If you didn't read that post, please do so -- it explains what the OSA was and is, summarizes its history, and explains what the teachings are meant to accomplish. You can also find all the earlier OSA posts here.  Since the lessons are meant to be done in sequence, if you're just joining us now, please go back to the beginning and start there. 

Back when this course of training was available online, there were three preliminary lessons which were readily available to anyone and everyone. Prospective members of the OSA were expected to complete those lessons before going on to the first of the eight ranks of the Octagon Society. It was a good approach and we'll be retaining it here. 

The tools you'll need for this work, as explained earlier, are a notebook and a pen, along with patience and privacy. One piece of advice: read the whole lesson from start to finish at least twice before you begin the work. It was quite common for people back in the day to read only part of the lesson, misunderstand it, and either get the instructions scrambled or fly off the handle completely. We are dealing with emotionally difficult issues here, and it's worth taking the time to be sure you understand the instructions. 

***** 

Preliminary Lesson Two—The Law of Shame

 

To the extent that we blame ourselves for anything, we feel ashamed.  The truth is that no matter what we've done, the Divine accepts, forgives and loves us unconditionally. Mistakes are just that. We made an error. It may have been an error in judgment, but we made an error. That's all we did. We goofed. We made a mistake. We were wrong—then. 

 

Whatever we did and whenever we did, it is over. It belongs to the past, not to the present. We need to realize that everybody living now and everybody that ever lived made mistakes and a lot of those mistakes are far worse than anything we ever did. We need to get over it and get on with our lives.  Correct the error to the best of your ability, accept that's the best you can do, forgive yourself for making the mistake in the first place, love yourself in spite of this mistake and get on with your life.  This is the Law of Shame:  Carrying the weight of shame causes more harm than the things for which we feel ashamed ever did.

 

When you're ashamed, you’re not living your life and that's a much bigger mistake than anything you ever did that makes you feel ashamed now. Get over it. Confess the source of your shame to yourself and to the Divine, and possibly to another person you can trust. Confess your mistake. Confess your inability to make it right. Correct the error as best you can, accept this as being the best you can do, forgive yourself, love yourself in spite of this error, and get on with your life.

 

If you don't, you're going to wallow around in shame until you do. While you're wallowing around in shame like a pig in a mud hole, life goes on and passes you by. You remain in your dungeon of shame and people can't see the best in you. They see only the worst and you continue your downward journey into self-pity, self-judgment and self-condemnation.

 

What's wrong with this picture? Other people who have done much worse things than you have learned to accept their mistakes, forgive themselves, and get on with their lives. Why can't you?

 

You can. Here's one way.

 

Managing Shame:  Step One

 

Some of the things that make you feel ashamed are things you did in the past. This first step is intended to deal with those. 

 

Make a list of all the things you did in your life that make you feel ashamed now. Write down as many details about each source of shame in your life as you find relevant. Then one by one take up each item and ask yourself the following questions about that item.

 

1. Does the Divine, who accepts and forgives everything, accept you and forgive you in spite of this mistake?  Keep asking until you find the strength to say “yes.”

 

2. What can you do, in your present circumstances, to make amends for this mistake? Make it a priority to do what you can to make amends and avoid making this same mistake in the future.  Do what you can, accept this is the best you can do, and go on.

 

3. If there's nothing you can do, for whatever reason, about making amends, turn to the Divine and ask for forgiveness and peace and vow to do something to make somebody else's life easier. By easing the pain of another person, you release your own pain and shame.

 

4. Release your shame and let it go.

 

If you feel ashamed about something, you're holding yourself back in life and impeding your spiritual growth. If you seek acceptance, forgiveness and love from the Divine because of this situation, you will instantly receive it. If you accept, forgive and love yourself to the best of your ability over this situation, you empower yourself and you grow spiritually.  The choice is yours and yours alone.

 

Managing Shame:  Step Two

 

Not everything that makes people feel ashamed has to do with their own actions. Many people feel ashamed of things about which they had no choice.  They feel ashamed about their family, their job, their friends, their environment, and many other things

 

Make a list of all the things about your family, job, friends, environment, and other things  that make you feel ashamed Then one by one take up each item and ask yourself the following questions about that item.

 

1. What is it about the thing that makes you feel ashamed?  

 

2. When do you first remember feeling ashamed about it? 

 

3. What effect has feeling ashamed about that thing had on your life? 

 

4. What would you have to do to stop feeling ashamed about this?

 

Your spiritual growth and your ability to live life to its fullest depends upon your ability to resolve your issues of shame. As long as you insist upon hanging onto your shame, your shame will retard your spiritual growth.  As long as you insist upon hanging onto your shame, your shame will weigh you down and make life ever so much more difficult for you.  As long as you insist upon hanging onto your shame, you cannot reach your highest potential in this life. 

 

The process of resolving and releasing shame is necessary in order to be free to create a new and better life. Begin the work now. Don’t be ashamed if it turns out you can’t get rid of all your shame at once!  There may be things you are ashamed of that you can’t resolve yet; if so, accept that and move on. The important thing is to make a start, and begin the process of moving forward to the life you want to live. 

 

Take between one and two weeks on this lesson, devoting some time to it every day. When you feel you’ve processed as much of your shame as you can, go on to the next lesson. 

Comments

[adara9]

I'm lol about "providing yourself *a* notebook". I haven't even finished the 3rd step of Preliminary Lesson 1, and already I've used at least 1/3rd of my (admittedly 1-subject) notebook. How do people complete these lessons so quickly, in only 2 weeks?

[ecosophia]

If you have a lot of stuff to process, by all means provide yourself with several notebooks! ;-)

[lp9]

Oooo, this is going to be a tough one. Lesson one is going relatively well so far, as I've worked through a lot of the blame issues already at this point in my life and in the past several years have spent quite a bit of time trying to understand why my parents, siblings, coworkers, etc. do the things they do. I should finish early next week, hopefully.

But shame? This is the stuff I don't even write down!

[ecosophia]

Understod -- but going ahead and writing it down is part of the process of healing.

[planetpriya]

Very useful and workable. Shame can be a habit - sometimes

[ecosophia]

For some people, it's a constant habit. It's never a helpful one!

[jprussell]

Last week's lesson turned out to be surprisingly hard! I like to think of myself as a pretty self-aware, introspective person who has mostly dealt with these kinds of things, but the process really highlights the difference between intellectually understanding a situation, and handling it properly emotionally.

A question: other than the usual benefits of consistency and habit, how important is it to do at least some work every day? I've slipped on this a few times in the past week, and planning to do better, but I'm curious what negative effects that may have had besides not building the habit as effectively.

[ecosophia]

It's not an issue, so long as the intervals don't get longer and longer, until you stop doing the work altogether. If you need to take a break of a day or two, whether that's because the work has you feeling stressed out or because you have to do other things, by all means take the break.

[daniellethepermaculturist]

I have been participating in AA 12 step....so much of the literature and work correlates what I have been reading about alchemy. I have heard that Bill Wilson had occult leanings and I believe it

[ecosophia]

Hmm! That's interesting. There are certain alchemical processes, for what it's worth, that have twelve steps...

[open_space]

Okay, you were not joking this really is hard work. It feels like cleaning a basement that has been left there for ages. I love it, specially because what I need right now is things that make me work hard and consistently, I can do smart but hard sluggish work that is not enjoyable builds up the qualities I have not cultivated yet.

One thing, you said recently to a commenter about the mechanism in which this works:
"What you are doing is taking patterns of the imagery and emotion on the lower astral and bringing them up into the upper astral so that they can be dissolved into their component energies and released".

Why is it that patterns of the lower astral need to be taken up to be taken apart? Are they more muddy when in the lower astral and consciously writing them gives them a specific form?

[ecosophia]

Okay, explaining this requires a bit of knowledge about sub-planes. In the version of occult theory I use, every plane has seven sub-planes. The lower three are of the nature of substance, the middle one is of the nature of energy, and the upper three are of the nature of space. The material plane, for example, has three lower subplanes of substance -- the planes of solid, liquid, and gas -- a fourth subplane of energy -- the plane of the electromagnetic spectrum -- and three higher subplanes of space -- the planes of gravity, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force.

In the same way, the lower astral (the three lowest astral subplanes) are like substance; they're dense and tough to work with. The middle astral is like energy, and the upper astral is like space. If you bring patterns up from the lower astral into the middle astral, they can dissolve into energy, and if you can get them into one of the planes of astral space, they dissolve into emptiness. Consciousness, which ultimately comes from the planes above the astral, can work on them more easily the higher they go.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm half way done with the first lesson. I'm finding some of the sections exhausting, others easy. Seeing it all laid out feels nice, like spring cleaning. It seems manageable. When it wasn't written down, various memories were frequently circling around in my head, this seems to have already reduced that, I don't need to think about them as much, clearing up some headspace.

I was too casual about my notebook and left it sitting open on the page about my dad and then he ate dinner sitting right next to it! Luckily he might not have read it. I'm realizing I blame people for some really unfair things that I wouldn't want them to know.

Also I have had a breakthrough in grieving someone's death, I was finally able to miss her instead of feeling various negative emotions.

-Radha

[ecosophia]

I'm glad to hear that this has been helping you! It gave me the same sort of benefits, for whatever that's worth.

Not too late to start, I hope?

[(Anonymous)]

I’ve decided I’m going to do this. I was thinking about it before, but this exercise has decided me. I bailed on the course of the Essenes a year or two back for various reasons, but I feel I need to do something. Clearly this won’t be easy, and that’s one reason I suspect it will be worth doing.

As it happens I’ve been making my own paperback note books, and this seems like good use for some of them.

Re: Not too late to start, I hope?

[ecosophia]

It's never too late! I've put these into circulation in the hope that people will pick them up and keep using them.

[reid_pnw]

JMG,

The first couple steps of lesson one are incredibly front loaded for me (3 emotionally abusive parents to get through), so I'm not going to get to this one for awhile yet. But I'm so glad to see that shame is something we'll work through extensively. I'd actually been doing a lot of journaling about my problems with shame and embarrassment prior to starting this. ​

I took a conscious break day yesterday, but I wrapped up step one about my father after six sessions the day before last. Considering I haven’t spoken to him in about 10 years now, I’m honestly a bit shocked how just over three and a half hours of writing has given me such a radically different perspective on our relationship and his parenting.

Count me as very grateful that you’re making these teachings available to us.

Reid

[ecosophia]

By all means do the work at whatever pace works for you. I had a lot to get through in the early steps as well, and of course step 8 is always hard!

[hearthspirit]

Haaaaaaaaa.

"Does the Divine, who accepts and forgives everything, accept you and forgive you" - only if it's not real vengeance-y about being told with regularity that if I ever find its shins I'm going to kick them, because I know when I'm being made fun of ("usually" being the safest answer on the multiple choice test).

[ecosophia]

I'm reminded of a line from a Charles Williams novel: "You can no more insult God's honour than you can punch His nose."

Re-beginning OSA Work

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG,

I began the OSA work about a week ago and then stopped. I only got as far as the "Father" section of the first lesson. I'd like to re-begin as I'm still feeling a strong pull to do this work. Is this OK? If so, is it OK to start over from scratch?

Thank you for your help!

Re: Re-beginning OSA Work

[ecosophia]

Instead of starting over, why not pick up from where you were, and keep going?

The Divine

[cs2]

"The truth is that no matter what we've done, the Divine accepts, forgives and loves us unconditionally."

This sounds like a Jesus thing, which wouldn't apply in my case. What about gods who aren't Piscean unconditional gods of love? The Welsh gods, etc.

Re: The Divine

[ecosophia]

That's a good question which the teachings of the OSA don't address. It might be worth putting some prayer and meditation into it/.

[(Anonymous)]

This is going to be the issue I'll be needing all the help the OSA can provide. I feel a deep well of mostly category two shame, and until relatively recently I didn't even know it was there. I spent more time focusing on blame, as though understanding the wrong people did to me, and why it was done, could keep me from being affected by it. Anger always made for a great cover, too. Right now, I wouldn't even know how to answer that fourth question.

A long running spiritual block extended the shame to religion as well. Might be a while before I can honestly answer yes to that first step.

[ecosophia]

These are tough -- John Gilbert felt it was important to give people the chance to find out what they're facing before they actually started the core Octagon Society lessons. If you can't answer any of the questions, by the way, that's fine -- write about your perplexities. That'll help you come to grips with them, and can lead to insights further down the road.

[ganeshling]

Thank you for sharing these lessons publicly - this work feels very timely for me. I've been digging through my personal underworld for a while but never in such a systematic way. I am amazed at how quickly the results started showing up! I'm at the step 1 of the first lesson and it is both quite hard and rather productive.

The second lesson does seem harder at the first glance but we'll see. One thing I am somewhat confused about is the Divine that it mentions. How would it map into a polytheistic worldview? The lesson mentions that it's the kind of the Divine 'who accepts and forgives everything' and it, understandably, maps easily onto the Christian idea of the Divine. Would a polytheist turn their prayer to a god or goddess in their pantheon that has similar traits to the Christian god? Would it be a Tiphareth kind of Divinity? I'm looking for any pointers here really...

[ecosophia]

As I noted back in the first post, I'm pretty sure that where John Gilbert's versions of the lessons say "The Divine," the older version simply said "God." How best to adapt the work for polytheist use is an issue John never addressed, as far as I know, and it's one that needs serious prayer and meditation.

[(Anonymous)]

I attended a weekend training years ago, affiliated with The Mankind Project, I think the man who led it was named Jim Mitchell. He described three interior lakes, one of joy, another of anger and the third, shame. He said the lake of joy, dive right in, bask in it, swim deep. The same for the lake of anger. The lake of shame? NEVER dive in. Walk to the edge, sit by the lake and ponder it, dip a toe in if you must but do not cover yourself with it because it is not like a lake of water, it is a cesspool, it sticks to you and won't come off, and you will get bogged down and likely drown. That has been a useful metaphor over the years.

One slight quibble about step 5 in the Law of Blame: lumping in spouse/lovers with fellow students and employees seems a stretch. I think I could have filled several pages with what I blame my significant other(s) for. Fellow students and employees seems a whole other. Just a quibble.

WHD

[ecosophia]

I know people who get stuck in anger; I also know people who get stuck in joy, and force themselves to be happy. (It makes them very plastic.) As for the quibble, by all means separate them if you wish; such things vary from person to person, you know.

[kylec]

Thank you for this work! I am on part 8 of the first lesson, which I thought would be the hardest part. I'm one who blames myself for everything, and as I was writing laundry lists for the first seven sections, I had the sense that many of these things were additional things I really blamed myself for. It looked like number 8 would be a tremendous effort.

But I also started to notice patterns, and it turns out a lot of the items were just different heads on the same hydra. Now, after a perfectly reasonable list for number 8 that didn't have the massive emotion I would have thought, I realize my blames were far simpler. I think they are also rooted in shame, because just reading this post stirred me up terribly. Almost as if the blame has lost power now that I see its root in shame. Lesson 2 will be the doozie, unless that ends up revealing a different source as well.

Count me among those who feels a growing sense of lightness with each section, so that each is easier, not harder, than the last. I have also learned to head off blame for little silly things as they happen, by quickly listing what I blame in the moment for something that happens, then trying to understand it before it ever sinks into my unconscious.

[(Anonymous)]

What's the difference between blaming yourself for something and feeling shame about it?

[ecosophia]

That's an excellent theme for journaling! A glance at the dictionary might help too.. ;-)

journals

[(Anonymous)]

What to do with the journals when finished? Can they be shredded or do you need to hold on to them if you go on to the other work?

Re: journals

[ecosophia]

Save them for now. You'll want to review them later on in the process.

[(Anonymous)]

By doing these exercises, are you eventually able to release behavioral patterns locked in by old emotions? For example, social anxiety or blushing?

[ecosophia]

Yes. The theory is that the reason you have those patterns is that you still have a lot of unresolved emotions locked up with past memories, and by bringing the memories back into consciousness and processing the emotions, you can release them.

OSA

[frittermywig]

Dear JMG, I set aside my DA practice last winter after only a few weeks' work, but still crave a method of spiritual healing. I began the OSA work this week. As a recovering materialist, the absence of "strange incantations or exotic practices" increases its appeal!
I wonder if there are any other adult children of divorce doing this work. Itemizing my feelings of blame, I see the majority of them are sins of omission: Things that might have been for me, but weren't.
Thank you again for your public ministry, if I may I so call it.

Re: OSA

[ecosophia]

Well, I qualify. My mother divorced my father when I was ten. It was a very ugly situation, and yes, I had a lot of memories from that to process each time I did this work.

shameful qualities

[(Anonymous)]

Dear JMG

Would “being incompetent at work, despite trying one’s best” fit into step two? I struggle a lot with shame over qualities that I feel I don’t have control over, for example that I’ve underperformed at pretty much all jobs and schooling despite “trying really hard”, I suppose because of being too controlling and try hard.

Currently I’m working as a hostess at a restaurant, out of the thought that if I can’t perform and contribute at a humble job, it’s silly to keep talking about retraining in interesting fields and or starting a business… perhaps again being a try hard?

Re: shameful qualities

[ecosophia]

Yes, very much so. It's very common for people to feel shame for things they can't help -- I had to deal with a lot of this as a result of my Aspergers syndrome and the inevitable difficulties that brings in dealing with people. Explore the shame, trace it down to its roots in your childhood memories, and process it, and you'll find unexpected doors opening up for you.

Ugh. Shame.

[(Anonymous)]

Ugh. Shame. This might be harder than the first lesson. Blame was something I had gone over and analyzed before, especially concerning my parents, but I never looked closely at shame. I know it dwells within.

Double ugh. I just thought of something after replying to cs2 above. We looked at our parents, relatives, friends, neighbors, self, etc. in the first lesson, but...what about God or The Divine itself? Do I blame The All-Being (or however I understood it in the past) for anything? Am I hanging on to past complaints from former religious beliefs? I might have to add a ninth step to that first lesson!

Joy Marie

Re: Ugh. Shame.

[ecosophia]

It's quite common for people to blame God! He, or she, or it, is one of the things you can tuck into step #7.

"God forgives!"

[(Anonymous)]

A funny story... about a year ago, I met a "funny character", a happy-go-lucky Mexican roofer who was a serial philanderer and kept saying "God will forgive!"

It took a year and this exercise to realize the truth - this isn't some funny character I'm so much better and more normal than, actually in my own less boisterous way I have my own history of compulsive sexuality that's a battle I've mostly lost, due now I realize to an abusive childhood. Except that I guess I assumed always that God didn't forgive so it would be a better idea to construct a mental maze of deception and delusion, pretending the last 1,000 obsessive crushes didn't happen and this time was different, and then sink myself deep into isolation and self-hatred, feeding off other people's reactions to build a picture of myself as "not a good woman".

In short, this exercise is ridiculously humbling, but also ridiculously healing.

[guillem66]

Today i finished preliminary excercise nº1.

Despite having mulled about my past a lot these past months, the task arranged it all in a way that makes things look a lot different. There are definetely shapes and roots in my anotated "hall of guilt".I guess you will be asking us about this in the future, so i will say no more.

I'm starting to see the point of this...

As always, many thanks.

Guillem.

[open_space]

JMG, are this instructions safe to give to someone that is not aware of Magic?

I ask because it seems that my family is reacting to my practices given some common themes between my process and what I see in them. So my father asked me if I could help him to overcome some of his limitations so I gave him instructions for the seated Natural Breathing and meditation. Would this work, though hard, be safe to share with someone that doesn't want to work with Magic and the sensibilities it provides?

[ecosophia]

Yes. The work of the Order of Spiritual Alchemy doesn't deal with magic at all, or indeed with any other branch of occultism. It's a good helpful self-contained system.