Notes on Aim

 

To have a constant and unflagging instinctive need for self-perfection in the sense of being.

– The second Being-Obligolnian striving, Chapter 27 in Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson

In the defibrillation of the Nine Theses on the Path of the Heart, I have made claims about the central importance of Aim. But what exactly is Aim?

The above quote from the Gurdjieff classic is at the core of this question. Each of us has needs dictated to us by our bodies, needs that have to be answered if we desire to stay alive and in good health. The functionality of this meat-and-bone machine is vital in the very sense of the word. Its needs are also instinctive, though on a different level from what the Beelzebub’s Tales imply.

Besides the needs of the body, there are needs coming from the social matrix and our preconditioned thought/emotion -centers. What makes these similar to the needs of the body is that they, too, are mechanical in their nature. They relate to things that happen to us, things over which we have little real understanding, let alone control.

But beyond these mechanical needs, there are needs that have a different nature altogether. I would call them the needs of the Being. This means that at the very core of the experience of “who and what I am”, there is something that pulls us to directions that we truly feel most in resonance with. Sometimes this sensation is very confusing and even terrifying. It can be at odds with what you think you ought to be doing in your life, and almost certainly at odds with what others expect you to be doing. But once acted upon, you will find your life gaining new meaning.

Most people seem to experience this at least to some extent, but very few are actually able to cultivate a proper understanding of what these needs are, let alone begin to shape their lives according to them. The last lot are those who can be called Initiates.

What they follow is their Aim. The English language fails us here, for unlike something like the aim in the archery, one cannot have a clear vision of what it exactly is one is Aiming at. This is why the Beelzebub’s Tales refers to an “instinctive need”. It is a sensation present as much in the body as in the mind, a gut-feeling rather than a clear and precise thought.

Besides providing a sense of this need, the Aim ties also to the process by which the need reshapes itself as the Being unfolds and takes shape in the Initiate. The Aim itself transforms: it is in a dynamic relationship to the Work that brings it to life. The more one understands of her Aim, the further the boundaries of the Aim are actually pushed. In this the Aim manifests the Aeonic Word of Runa¹.

Sensitivity to one’s Aim is the key to fulfilling and long-lasting refinement of the Being, or as it goes in the terminology of the Temple of Set, to the process of Xeper and Remanifest.

[1] See Runarmal I by Stephen Flowers.

Ed Witten on Consciousness

I think consciousness will be a mystery. I tend to think that the workings of the conscious brain will be elucidated to a large extent. Biologists and perhaps physicists will understand much better how the brain works. But why something that we call consciousness goes with those workings, I think will remain mysterious. I have a much easier time imagining how we could understand the Big Bang, even though we cannot do it now, than I can imagine understanding consciousness.

Understanding the functioning of the brain is a very exciting problem in which probably there will be a lot of progress in the next few decades. That’s not out of reach. But I think there’s probably a level of mystery that’ll remain about why the brain is functioning as we can see, why it creates consciousness or whatever you want to call it. How it functions in the way a conscious being functions will become clearer. But what it is we are experiencing when we are experiencing consciousness, I see as remaining a mystery.

– Edward Witten

Notes on the ab

 

The Egyptians had rituals and recitations whose goal was to restore, in a new form, the corporeal unity that had disintegrated in death. The most important prerequisite was to restore the heart to its former place and to awaken it, so that it could again assume its centralizing and organizing functions. Without this personal center and source of direction, the new, divine constellations into which the self was now to be inserted for a new unfolding would not have been serviceable. From spells that deal with the restitution of the heart, we learn a great deal about the connective function of that organ:

“My heart, it creates my limbs,
my flesh obeys me and raises me up.”

In these texts, the heart stands not only for life-giving integration through the blood that it pumps through the “vessels” (mt.wt), but also and above all for will, consciousness, and memory as mental media of connectivity:

“Your heart is placed in your body for you,
that you might recall what you have forgotten.”

– Assmann, Jan. Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt. Cornell University Press, 2005, p. 29.

Three songs from the Heart

And you feel like you’ve been here
So many times before
It’s not the door you’re using
But the way you’re walking through it

The heart is a beating drum
The heart is a beating drum
It takes more than you wanted before
To keep it on

– The Kills: Heart Is a Beating Drum

Related: Remanifest

One eye goes laughing,
one eye goes crying
through the trials and trying of one life
one hand is tied,
one step gets behind
in one breath we’re dying

– King Crimson:  One Time

Related: Aletheia

Kaikki tahtoo elää säkenöivästä voimasta

– Sielun veljet: Säkenöivä voima

Related: Sowilo