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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 seventh rank of the Octagon Society, the 78.
The Octagon Society
The Sixth Law: The Law of Strength
Congratulations on your advancement to the rank of 5/8 in the Octagon Society. You've now reached the Second Gateway in your spiritual journey using alchemy and you're entitled to complete access to the first six laws: the Law of Acceptance, the Law of Happiness, the Law of Joy, the Law of Peace, the Law of Forgiveness, and the Law of Strength.
The Second Gateway is reached by coming to grips with our three basic emotions of Sadness, Fear and Anger and then Forgiving ourselves and all others. We must first have the ability to transmute our sadness into happiness, fear into joy and anger into peace. This knowledge is preparation to enter the Second Gateway.
Our ancient alchemical brothers and sisters understood this basic tenet of alchemy. They intuitively understood what modern science has been able to prove. In our brains, in the middle of our brain, is a structure known as the thalamus which is our emotional processing center. Part of the thalamus is a small gland called the amygdala which controls our three basic emotions. These emotions are fear, anger and sadness.
The thalamus processes combinations of these three basic emotions to create resentment, envy, arrogance, bitterness and all of our other emotions. It is our emotional center. The thalamus is that part of our brain which houses our emotional body.
Don't miss the obvious. The amygdala controls our three basic emotions of fear, anger and sadness. These three emotions are perceived as being negative emotions. Where are the three positive emotions that balance these three negative emotions? What are these three positive emotions? Where are they? What controls them?
Fear is balanced by Joy, Anger is balanced by Peace, and Sadness is balanced by Happiness. Joy, Peace and Happiness are our natural state. The absence of Fear, Anger and Sadness is our natural state. Joy, Peace and Happiness are who and what we are in our non-physical, spiritual essence. Our Spiritual Self is Joyful, Peaceful and Happy.
Our physical self can experience these three states of peace, joy and happiness; and it can also experience sadness, fear and anger. Our Spiritual Self does not experience these three negative emotions of fear, anger and sadness. Nor does it experience any combination of these three negative emotions.
This is the Secret of the Second Gateway. Once we understand that in our spiritual state we're above and beyond the duality of creation which we experience here on Earth, we begin to understand the alchemical process. That process is one of bringing our Spiritual Self down into our physical self so we can experience Heaven on Earth, so we can create the Philosopher's Stone, so we can experience the spiritual life and our Spiritual Self while residing in the physical.
At the same time, the alchemical process is also one of raising our physical self up to our Spiritual Self. As a result of both bringing down our Spiritual Self and raising our physical self, we become
integrated as a spiritual and physical being. We're able to live in both the Spiritual World and the physical world simultaneously.
The Second Gateway is the Silver Gateway, the Gate of Forgiveness. The Silver Key to this Gate is the three-fold flame of Sadness, Fear and Anger transmuted into Happiness, Joy and Peace. Opening this Gate with the Silver Key requires a contrite heart filled with Forgiveness of self and others.
The Law of Strength says we have the strength to do anything we want to do. We can overcome all obstacles because we're spiritual beings. We can become anything we want to become because we're spiritual beings. We can live in this physical reality and experience all its wonders because we're spiritual beings. We have the strength to change ourselves and become who and what we want to be.
The Law of Strength is this: every person can become who and what they want to become. We all make use of this law that all the time. We just don't know that's what we're doing. As we pass through the Second Gateway we become responsible for who and what we are because we can become anything we want to become. We can become anything we want to be. We takecontrol of our own destiny.
A corollary to the Law of Strength is that we have no power to change any other person, place or thing except ourselves. We can try all we want but we can't change anyone except ourselves. We can't change anything except ourselves. We can assist the Universe in creating new and wonderful things and changing everything that exists. But in the end, we can't change anything except ourselves.
The Tree of Life teaches us that we can change these things:
• We can change our awareness
• We can change our intentions
• We can change our attitudes
• We can change our focus
• We can change our belief systems
• We can change our sadness to happiness
• We can change our fears to joy
• We can change our anger to peace
We have the strength to do these things. We can change our awareness of the people, places and things in our lives. We can change our intentions towards others and ourselves. We can change our attitudes toward others and ourselves. We can change our focus from ourselves to others, from without to within, and from self-centeredness to God-centeredness. We can change our belief systems and become more accepting and forgiving. We can change our sadness to happiness, fear to joy and anger to peace. We have the strength to do these things.
The Law of Strength has eight separate and distinct steps to be practiced in order to attain the rank of 6/8. Each step requires us to decide what we'll do to change these things. This is our first task, to decide what we'll do to make these changes. Our second task is to set some goals and create a timeline for each goal. Remember, as you work through these tasks for each step, you have the strength to do this!
1. Step One is to decide what you'll do to become more aware of your own thoughts, ideas and feelings about yourself and the people in your life. Your first task is to write these things down. Your second task is to decide how and when you'll do each of these things.
Awareness is the first step in changing anything. Until we become aware of something we can't and won't change it. As you progress through our ranks, you'll become more and more aware of your feelings toward yourself and others. Having already gone through the steps relating to Acceptance, Forgiveness, Sadness, Fear and Anger, you've already become aware of many feelings, thoughts and ideas you didn't know you had.
By getting in touch with these unknown and unremembered thoughts, ideas and feelings, you were able to process them and let many of them go. That's the alchemical process.
At this stage in your spiritual-alchemical development your task is to become aware of and record any remaining thoughts, ideas and feelings you have about yourself and others. Your second task is to decide what changes you want to make, if any, and set a time for accomplishing each change desired.
Time is critical. The sooner you accomplish these changes the quicker you'll advance to 6/8 and the sooner you'll achieve the Philosopher's Stone. We recommend you work daily on your goals and try to get them all accomplished within ninety days at the very most.
2. Step Two is to decide what your intentions are and will be regarding all the major facets of your life. Your first task is to write these down. Your second task is to decide which intentions you plan to change and when you plan to implement these changes.
Once we become aware of something we develop intentions toward and about that something. Once we become aware of these intentions and write them down, we often don't need to do anything more about them. Sometimes, we'll decide one or more of our intentions about something needing to be changed. The act of making this decision is usually all we need to do. Time becomes irrelevant. We decide to change an intention and we change it. Implementation is immediate. Occasionally we'll need some time to make this change.
3. Step Three is to write down an inventory of your attitudes toward people, places and things. That's the first task. The second is to decide which of these attitudes you plan to change and how and when.
At this point in your spiritual-alchemical development many of your previous attitudes concerning people and yourself have already changed. Just writing down a list of these attitudes is recognition of changes you've already accomplished.
But you may find a few attitudes you'd still like to change. Give yourself a week or two to work on these attitudes using techniques already learned in the lower ranks of our Order. One to two weeks is all you should really need most of the time. If you need to review the work you accomplished in Law Five - Forgiveness, please do so.
4. Step Four is to write down an inventory of the things you focus on now. Then create a list of things you want to focus on and assign a date for completion of that goal.
Focus is what we do after we have an intention. We focus on the intention. We focus on our intentions. We focus on the things in life according to our intentions. It's when we focus on things we don't intend to focus upon that we need to take a look at our real intentions and then decide if we really want to continue focusing on that particular thing or not.
Once the decision is made, you'll need to give yourself a week or two to change your focus. Changing focus is easy once you really change your underlying intentions.
5. Step Five is to take an inventory of your major belief systems and determine what you believe about the people, places and things in your life. Then decide which of these belief systems need to change and assign a date for that change to occur.
Belief systems are sometimes elusive because they're so much a part of who and what we are. Our belief systems limit what we can and cannot do because we can only do what we believe we can do. This gives us a hint. If we concentrate on the things we believe we cannot do, we learn much about what we really do believe. One of the secrets of life is that our belief systems limit us and that by changing our belief systems we remove our self-imposed limitations.
Our beliefs don't really limit other people but they do limit what we think other people can and cannot do. Since we act on what we think about other people, we don't consider they can do more than we believe they can do. We empower others to the extent we're able to change our beliefs about what they can and cannot do or achieve.
6. Step Six is to take an inventory of the causes of any remaining sadness in your life. Then decide if, how and when you'll change anything to create more happiness in your life.
If you completed a thorough inventory for Law Two this will be an easy step to complete quickly. If not, you may find yourself setting several goals to attain happiness and process sadness more quickly in your life.
7. Step Seven is to take an inventory of the causes of any remaining fears in your life. Then decide if, how and when you'll change anything to create more joy in your life.
If you completed a thorough inventory for Law Three you'll find this to be an easy step to complete quickly. If not, please take the time to process your fears before moving on.
8. Step Eight is to take an inventory of the causes of any remaining anger in your life. Then decide if, how and when you'll change anything to create more peace in your life.If you completed a thorough inventory for Law Four this step will be easy and quickly finished. If not, please take the time to process your anger before moving on.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-09-30 11:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-10-01 02:25 am (UTC)(update) I have now fixed it.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-10-01 01:29 am (UTC)Our physical self can experience these three states of peace, joy and happiness; and it can also experience sadness, fear and anger. Our Spiritual Self does not experience these three negative emotions of fear, anger and sadness. Nor does it experience any combination of these three negative emotions.
A little background/discussion might be appreciated.
(no subject)
Date: 2021-10-01 02:30 am (UTC)Does that help clarify things at all?
(no subject)
Date: 2021-10-01 02:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-10-01 05:13 pm (UTC)HMM
Date: 2021-10-01 01:15 pm (UTC)I can agree that there both "higher selves" and "lower selves", that makes sense.
I guess that I am leery of anything that says we deserve/require only the positive and the negative is an artifact. It kinda seems like Angra Mainyu
in a different set of clothes.
I will ponder this for a while. Maybe it will start being understandable if I spend more time on it.
Re: HMM
Date: 2021-10-01 05:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-10-01 05:55 am (UTC)Now I might be stretching it a little bit but if niter is best extracted by fire and salt best extracted by water, then to purify ourselves we have to remove the obstacles that obstruct our emotions and to reveal our spiritual self we have to proceed with determined action. Once these two are purified then we might be able to rejoin them together to create something more interesting than our tangled mess!
(no subject)
Date: 2021-10-01 05:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-10-01 10:31 am (UTC)Cetiosaurus
(no subject)
Date: 2021-10-01 01:02 pm (UTC)OSA is interesting to me as it seems beneficial regardless of beliefs one may hold, and mirrors things I know via others (Tolle comes to mind wrt ego, as do many biblical scriptures).
Just a thought, It is timely for you to put this out into the aether now - it is a very useful exercise in preparing for coming change.
Oilman2
(no subject)
Date: 2021-10-01 03:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-10-01 05:15 pm (UTC)Slow but steady progress
Date: 2021-10-01 03:17 pm (UTC)There seems a redundancy in the Laws and the process of, but then I am thinking, of course there is, this is no easy task and requires repeating. Delving into sadness/happiness seems quite timely too, not intentional, more like a synchronicity. I really do mean to be happy and joyous, and frankly I have found it easier to be so since she left. There is no animosity, no bitterness, only an increasing sense of my self, what I want and how to get it. I have been thinking a lot about your Johnny Appleseed post. Indeed, this society has been expecting ever greater Progress, ever more tech solutions to the mess; what everyone else is expecting, I find myself heading in the opposite direction, low tech, a slower pace, closer attention to simplicity and old ways that can sustain.
WHD
Re: Slow but steady progress
Date: 2021-10-01 05:16 pm (UTC)Re: Slow but steady progress
Date: 2021-10-01 07:18 pm (UTC)Time to get thee move on...
WHD
Reincarnation & the Vulnerability of Childhood
Date: 2021-10-01 05:58 pm (UTC)I'm finishing 2/8. There's a clear pattern of burning through numbers 1 & 3-8 of each lesson super fast, then spending the rest of the two weeks on 2, my mother, and eventually having to call it quits and move on just so I don't get further behind.
I find myself really wishing I'd been able to process my mother with that good cognitive behavioral therapist I had a few years ago, but my anxiety had been so bad back then, we'd focused on that, though she'd told me she suspected my mother might have been abusive.
It wasn't till I was 30 that my mother tried to beat me up physically, and then I finally understood that all the emotional and mental manipulation qualified as abuse too. On the one hand, if I work through this now at 35, then maybe I have 35 more years where I'm over it and can improve spiritually. On the other hand, I spent 30 years with this woman's voice in my head, and that's bringing up a lot of anger and frustration.
How do you handle the fact that you might reincarnate in your next life and be once more born to such a mother? If I work really hard in this life to connect to my Higher Self, do you think my HS could save me sooner in my next life? It just doesn't make sense for a five-year-old to have the fortitude to think "I don't need to listen to this person, even if she is my mother. She is flawed, and I know myself better than she does" or what have you. Thank you.
Re: Reincarnation & the Vulnerability of Childhood
Date: 2021-10-02 02:58 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-10-02 02:26 am (UTC)Duality
Date: 2021-10-04 03:09 pm (UTC)Re: Duality
Date: 2021-10-07 02:40 am (UTC)Re: Duality
Date: 2021-10-07 03:08 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-10-07 01:11 am (UTC)For instance, in #1 we are asked "to decide what you'll do to become more aware of your own thoughts, ideas and feelings about yourself and the people in your life. Your first task is to write these things down. Your second task is to decide how and when you'll do each of these things."
However, later in the same description it says our task is instead: "to become aware of and record any remaining thoughts, ideas and feelings you have about yourself and others. Your second task is to decide what changes you want to make, if any, and set a time for accomplishing each change desired."
So are we writing down the thoughts, or what we decide to do to be more aware of them, in the first portion, and in the second are we deciding what changes we want to make to our thoughts or how and when we'll do the things to become more aware of our thoughts?
In either case, wow.... what does it exactly mean here? "Remaining thoughts, ideas, and feelings" about myself and others... I have an infinite supply of these, constantly, about everything, all the time! The first five ranks only dealt with five specific feelings, but as for remaining thoughts and ideas, and for all the feelings not covered by the first five, there's an innumerable quantity. Do I consider thoughts I have or had once about how nice of a person someone is? Wishes for relationships that never came true? Ideas that might make sense in only some circumstances, or ideas that might not but I had them anyway? What about the huge tangle of hopes and thoughts for the future that are immensely contingent on things very far outside my control - my various plans A, B, C... (well they aren't even enumerable either, they're all a web of contingencies), and my awareness that these plans are all subject to change as I grow and learn? What about thoughts that aren't fears but are just the growing awareness of the huge... everything... that we're all caught up in right now and which you write books and articles on? Those are definitely thoughts and ideas about myself, and my role in all that.
This is just a tiny fraction of what goes through my mind reading the phrase "remaining thoughts, ideas, and feelings".
So... what exactly does the OSA have in mind for this set of instructions, because "spaghetti brain" is probably not it, and "sort through your entire existential mental tangle in two weeks" is probably not it, either! :)
(no subject)
Date: 2021-10-07 02:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-11-18 10:50 pm (UTC)