![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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. 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.
The papers below will give you plenty to work on. Next week, I'll post the work that will qualify you for the fifth rank of the Octagon Society, the 5/8.
The Octagon Society
3/8 Instructional Papers
Congratulations on persevering and achieving the rank of 3/8 in the Octagon Society. You've completed two of the three Water degrees in our Order. You've looked at two emotions, Sadness and Fear and learned how to transmute them into Happiness and Joy. Now you'll work with transmuting the third basic emotion of Anger into Peace. As a 3/8 you now have access to our lessons for the first four laws: the Law of Acceptance, the Law of Happiness, the Law of Joy, and the Law of Peace.
The Fourth Law, the Law of Peace, focuses on the achievement of that “peace which passeth all understanding,” the spiritual peace that enables us to endure all things. This is the peace experienced by the Masters who let nothing destroy their peace of mind and equanimity.
Most people in this world are angry much more often than not. They react to their world through their anger and they don't understand the peace that comes from releasing this anger. They don't understand that anger is an emotion which can move through us quickly and allow us the opportunity to become peaceful in spite of all circumstances. We can observe our anger, acknowledge it and move on. We can experience our anger in a few moments and restore our peaceful ways. This is the Law of Peace: it is not feeling angry but clinging to anger that deprives us of the peace we seek.
The Law of Peace has eight separate and distinct steps to be practiced in order to attain the rank of 4/8. As you work your way through these tasks, set aside the knowledge than nobody and no things can make you feel angry or peaceful. You have control of these emotions, not them—but for the time being, put that awareness aside and proceed as follows:
• List the things your father did to you that made you feel angry
• List the things your mother did to you that made you feel angry
• List the things your children, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, and cousins did to you that made you feel angry
• List the things your aunts, uncles, grandparents, great uncles, great aunts, and all your ancestors did to you that made you feel angry
• List the things your spouse, lovers, friends, fellow students and fellow employees did to you that made you feel angry
• List the things your enemies and antagonists did to you to make you feel angry
• List the things all other persons whatsoever did to you that made you feel angry
• List all the other things in your life that make you feel angry
1. Step One is to list the things your father did to you that made you feel angry. Make this list as complete as possible. This is the first task and it can be completed in the same manner as you approached the First Law, the Law of Acceptance.
The second task is to consciously decide how you'll handle these same situations in the future regardless of the people, places and things concerned. Your decision is not specific to your father but general to all other situations similar to the events you've listed in regard to your father. The decision is how to remain peaceful in many situations that previously caused you to feel angry. Once you've completed both tasks to your satisfaction, move on to the second and succeeding steps.
2. Step Two is to list the things your mother did to you that made you feel angry. Make this list as complete as possible. This is the first task. The second task is to consciously decide how you'll handle these same situations in the future regardless of the people, places and things concerned.
3. Step Three is to list the things your children, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, and cousins did to you that made you feel angry. Process these items and complete both tasks in the same manner you handled the first two steps. When you've completed both tasks to your satisfaction, proceed to the next step.
4. Step Four is to list the things your aunts, uncles, grandparents, great uncles, great aunts, and all your ancestors did to you that made you feel angry. Process these items and complete both tasks in the same manner you handled the first two steps. When you've completed both tasks to your satisfaction, proceed to the next step.
5. Step Five is to list the things your spouse, lovers, friends, fellow students and fellow employees did to you that made you feel angry. Process these items and complete both tasks in the same manner you handled the first two steps. When you've completed both tasks to your satisfaction, proceed to the next step.
6. Step Six is to list the things your enemies and antagonists did to you to make you feel angry. Process these items and complete both tasks in the same manner you handled the first two steps. When you've completed both tasks to your satisfaction, proceed to the next step.
7. Step Seven is to list the things all other persons whatsoever did to you that made you feel angry. Process these items and complete both tasks in the same manner you handled the first two steps. When you've completed both tasks to your satisfaction, proceed to the next step.
8. Step Eight is to list the things you do that make you feel angry. Process these items and complete both tasks in the same manner you handled the first two steps. When you've completed both tasks to your satisfaction, you have finished the work of this rank in the Octagon Society.
The Roots of Your Anger
Being more peaceful is the natural state of spirituality we attain when we accept life as it is, decrease our anger and increase our happiness and joy. Those are the goals of your current work and the goals of your previous work on the first Three Laws. If you need additional assistance working through some of your anger, we invite you to investigate the roots of your anger.
Anger is what we call a complex emotion because there is usually some other emotion hiding under the surface of anger. That emotion hiding under the surface of your anger is called the Root of your Anger.
Finding the root of your anger is necessary in order to attain complete peace of mind. If you're looking for this spiritual peace that calms down the emotional world around you, look for the roots of your anger.
Anger is usually rooted in feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, and unworthiness. But below these three "upper roots," lower roots lurk. These roots are usually feelings of being used, abused and neglected. These "deeper roots" can also be based upon fear, betrayal and painful hurts from our childhood.Ask yourself: "Why am I angry? What makes me feel this way?" The answer will usually be found in one of these deeper roots. Find the root. Identify the source of your current anger. Then apply the first Four Laws to this Root of Your Anger. Release the anger and find peace.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-16 07:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-16 08:33 pm (UTC)1. I did something I feel guilty about (name it).
2. I recognize that what I did in that situation was the best I could do at the time.
3. I recognize that despite this, my actions in that situation had consequences I feel bad about (name them).
4. I forgive myself for those actions and consequences (name them).
5. I forgive other people (name them) for the comparable actions they made that harmed me (name them).
6. I love myself in spite of what happened (name it).
7. I know the Divine (use any name you choose) accepts me in spite of what happened (name it)
8. I know the Divine (use any name you choose) forgives me for what happened (name it).
9. I know the Divine (use any name you choose) loves me in spite of what happened (name it).
Does something like that seem workable?
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-18 02:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-18 02:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-21 04:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-21 04:41 pm (UTC)Quick Update
Date: 2021-09-16 09:14 pm (UTC)1. I'd mentioned last week that I would get in touch with the cognitive behavioral therapist I really clicked with some years ago for CBT resources. She might have finished her PhD and now isn't checking her university email. I'll look around and hopefully have an answer next week.
2. I was able to find one of the workbooks by recognizing the cover art, and unfortunately it has Mindfulness in the title! (The Mindfulness & Acceptance Workbook series) The techniques I used with this therapist were about *not* emptying your brain, but rather questioning the story you are telling yourself (when you start to panic) and telling a better story. What I don't remember is whether those techniques are from the workbook or whether my therapist added them.
3. There might be some other CBT workbooks that are worth paging through to see if they could supplement OSA. I'd be willing to do that for ones available in ebook.
4. If you want to use my formatter for ebook/pdf, I'm still willing to facilitate that. Her price is normally around $45 and I could cover that.
5. On the website, unfortunately my tech capability is bad enough that attempts at even just a basic Wordpress are clunky and hideous. Hopefully someone else can step up on this. I had to pay someone to do my author website, and her price is high enough that I couldn't offer to cover it for OSA.
Re: Quick Update
Date: 2021-09-16 11:57 pm (UTC)5) I'm already working on the website side of things :-). It is still in prototype mode though, just the scaffolding, I've sketched a basic template based on the old website that JMG provided. My focus for it is to be as simple as possible using technologies that have been proven to work and minimal frameworks (those stop being useful about every 5 years.) I expect to finish it by and around the time I finish the Octagon Society work --I am just starting 1/8 so probably end of year.
On a related note, I checked out Bookfunnel and was wondering what are the features that we are interested in about it? For the basic version it only seems to provide downloading, which a website could provide without much hassle and save some buck, since I don't expect for the site to require a lot of storage for the material (a few gigabytes tops?) and to provide downloading it is as simple as adding a button. Any of the hosting services that would host the website would have enough disk space for a few pdfs.
Re: Quick Update
Date: 2021-09-17 08:42 am (UTC)5)This is wonderful to hear, thank you. And on Bookfunnel: absolutely. If there is an easier solution, let's use it. <3
Re: Quick Update
Date: 2021-09-17 05:08 pm (UTC)About BookFunnel, it seems very complete, was just wondering what are the features that we are interested about the subscription see if those are easily programmable into a webpage or is it better to get it and integrate it into it.
Re: Quick Update
Date: 2021-09-17 07:35 pm (UTC)Re: Quick Update
Date: 2021-09-17 09:29 pm (UTC)JMG was there anything in particular your wanted from BookFunnel besides downloading?
Re: Quick Update
Date: 2021-09-18 08:58 am (UTC)I think you're saying that arranging the download directly on the website would be cheaper and simpler than BookFunnel. If that's correct, why don't we do that?
Re: Quick Update
Date: 2021-09-19 08:06 pm (UTC)Regarding the downloading of the lessons. Yes, for the $100 dollars subscription of BookFunnel we can host the site for a year more or less, including the downloading of the lessons functionality among others. Adding that feature is quite easy even for thousands of downloads a month, so long as we don't have thousands of downloads a minute (or to be exact 5-6 orders of magnitude of concurrent connections to the website) and enough disk space. Hosting sites on their simplest plan always give you a 1-2GB with it which should be probably enough and extending that to hundreds of GB is cheap. A hosting site usually charges for three things: things you run on the servers, things you store on their disks and bandwidth of how those things flow within and to the users. What BookFunnel provides is ease of development which can cost thousands of dollars, but since I am a volunteer and an engineer I can do that for free, given these lessons have been given for free to me ;-). So it's something to consider unless we want something else from them.
Prelim 2 and Divine Forgiveness
Date: 2021-09-17 01:03 am (UTC)I'm probably a little behind the rest of the group, but I started late and spent three weeks on Preliminary Lesson 1 as there was a lot to unpack there, so I apologize for asking a questing from Lesson 2.
I am really struggling with the idea of Divine forgiveness. I was (technically still am) an ordained Southern Baptist pastor and have a very thorough understanding of forgiveness from an evangelical Christian perspective. I left the faith several years ago for a variety of reasons and have been following a more philosophical Druidic path for about five years now. Since starting the Sphere of Protection practice a year ago, I have been slowly developing a practice around the Irish pantheon, but it is very elementary at this point.
My theology of forgiveness has been transforming from one of receiving forgiveness from a single god who is in control of everything to forgiveness is a human idea and the gods don't really play a role unless it was a god that I directly offended and needed to ask forgiveness of.
Is it acceptable to work on forgiving myself without involving with the gods? I know prayer is part of the answer, but I'm not really sure who to pray to for this. I have an altar to Brighid in my home and have asked for guidance, but have received no answer. Really, I don't think the gods have taken much interest in me personally yet.
I appreciate any help in this as I am feeling very stuck on the first step of managing shame.
Re: Prelim 2 and Divine Forgiveness
Date: 2021-09-17 03:03 am (UTC)Re: Prelim 2 and Divine Forgiveness
Date: 2021-09-17 12:32 pm (UTC)I think my plan is to work on forgiving myself and continuing asking the gods about it. Is there a Irish, or perhaps other Celtic deity, that would be more appropriate? I think going back to speak to Jesus may be involved as well since there are some unresolved issues in that relationship, at least on my end.
Re: Prelim 2 and Divine Forgiveness
Date: 2021-09-17 05:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-17 02:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-17 05:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-22 11:32 pm (UTC)What's the recommended way to handle this with respect to these lessons?
Thank you!
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-22 11:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-23 12:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-23 03:35 pm (UTC)Relatedly, if one's memory of someone is hung up on one (shame/guilt inducing) thing and all the other (positive) memories are occluded by that (as in, they've essentially faded "away"), will working through the stuck spots help recall to mind the memories that can't currently be remembered clearly?
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-23 06:26 pm (UTC)2) Yes, very much. You can also make positive memories more vivid by remembering as much of them as you can, and making a repeated mental effort to set aside the negative memory when it tries to intrude itself.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-26 12:33 am (UTC)