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Video Description
Can one obscure word actually help someone wake up faster? Lyam Christopher thinks it can, not as a magic formula but as a watchword to carry through the day. The word is affrontedness. It is not simply being offended. Picture a war front, a boundary where one side faces another, and you feel what the soldier at the line feels: something out there is in my face, and I must react. That tiny, tightening sense of me against it is what he wants us to learn to see.
The insight is both ancient and startlingly modern. Our bodies evolved with a stress response that treats every approaching thing as a possible lion, and that same alarm still fires when a bill arrives or a stranger cuts us off in traffic. Fear and desire share a root: both say there is something outside that must be fought or chased. Social media, he notes, plays on that switch constantly, keeping people dazed and easy to shepherd. But work with the magic circle, banishing and facing the images, can slowly turn that automatic alarm into something we observe instead of obey.
Then the word becomes a practical jewel. When the urge to punch the door after stubbing a toe or to chase an advertisement of a better self appears, that is affrontedness. Simply naming it, noticing the gap between observer and object, begins to melt its power. The adept may still feel fear and desire, but those feelings no longer run the show. That is why the old neophyte teaching says fear is failure: when fear takes over, the circle has been breached. To see the affront, thank it for trying to protect you, and let it pass, is the quiet art that turns a single word into a key.
Full Video Transcript
Recently I’ve had a couple of interactions with people and with groups of people where I have mentioned a single word which I thought was rather simple and then I realized that the word kind of doesn’t exist in the English language or if it does it’s really obscure and this is a single word that can help people I would think help people achieve enlightenment faster.
And the strange thing about it is when I talk about this concept mentioned by this word, it’s such a simple thing, and yet people have trouble really grasping it.
This might be something I’m losing sight of.
As I get more familiar with spiritual work, these concepts become easier and easier, and I begin to lose sight of how difficult some of these things might be for those who are just hearing about them for the first time.
and how helpful these things can be if we really um exert some effort to understand them now that
single word that i mentioned which i thought was so helpful which can be helpful to you if you
understand it that single word is affrontedness you might try to guess what affrontedness means
before i say what it is or before you look it up okay uh and in fact um i was in a session with
somebody and they were very tech tech savvy and they they looked it up in an online dictionary
and I wasn’t really happy with the online dictionary’s definition because it was so abstract
and so when I define this term I think it’s really important to when you when you work with words
like this it’s really important to get at the the concrete imagery that these words evoke okay
rather than just go with some kind of abstract definition like oh the you know the state of
being offended or something like that. Well, what does that mean to be offended? See, affrontedness
really has an image that’s associated with it. And so what you have is, let’s say there’s a war
going on. And when there’s a war, there’s usually a front and the soldiers, the infantry goes up to
the front. Well, that’s the way we used to fight wars anyway. The infantry goes up to the front
and they’re fighting on the front lines on one side. And then the bad guys or the other guys
are fighting on the other side, and that’s the front. And of course, one side might claim more
territory, and then the front moves. It’s kind of like American football, isn’t it? American football
is very violent, very warlike, right? So anyway, wherever the front moves, you know, that’s where
the front of the war is. And what the experience that we have at the front line, the feeling that
we get as we look at the enemy, that we can call affrontedness, okay? Now, the interesting thing
about affrontedness is that it’s kind of become the norm for so many many people and really it
isn’t really our normal mode of operation. Being affronted is really not something that our biology
has evolved to do necessarily but somehow we have evolved maybe culturally and habitually
into a state of mind that is continuously affronted.
You could say offended, whatever that means, right?
But affronted is a much stronger word
because it basically involves putting up a front or putting up a face.
And so when something is in your face,
you are now being affronted by this thing.
And that sense of being assaulted by a threat, let’s say,
that’s the sense of affrontedness.
okay and for many of us this has become our default mode of operation where the moment we
wake up it’s like oh it’s another world another another day of one damn thing after another
first there’s this problem affronting me now there’s okay what’s next there’s another problem
okay what’s the next problem now i have to drive to work oh my god traffic jam another problem
what’s next you know this is not the way we need to operate and yet somehow many of us have fallen
into this affrontedness habit and it’s the way that we proceed throughout our day and the only
relief we get i would hope is when we go to sleep at night but lo and behold in our dreams the
affrontedness continues that’s kind of the nature of dreams anyway okay to to basically present you
with scenarios of affrontedness and then really the only release you have is during dreamless sleep
thank god if you can reach dreamless sleep whereas many of us are too stressed out to even do that or
or we don’t we haven’t taken proper control of our sleep cycles or or we haven’t restored our
sleep cycles to the way they were before electric lighting came in i did release a video about that
um anyway um but you don’t necessarily need to achieve deep sleep to avoid this habitual mode
of affrontedness okay and so but how do you do that it’s probably better to notice how
affrontedness arises to begin with because the sad thing about it is that affrontedness has an
on switch but it doesn’t really seem to have an off switch yeah the nice thing is that magic comes
along and deliberately confronts us with our affrontedness okay so as I’ve gone over before
when you do banishing ritual work what are you doing essentially you’re drawing a circle around
yourself it’s kind of like drawing a line in the sand a line in the sand against the enemy this is
the front of my war against reality and everything outside my circle is demons and darkness and
everything inside my circle is light and goodness and this is the side of um i’m on the side of
light and everything outside my circle is on the side of darkness something like that anyway so
it’s it’s asserting that sort of model that um already uh presents to us the the fundamental
model of the unenlightened mind okay this is the mind that is affronted by everything
constantly suffering because it’s one damn thing after another so why would i deliberately draw a
magic circle around myself to to intensify this sense of affrontedness okay so those of you who
have already seen previous videos you know how this works okay um but basically you are you’re
now drawing attention to this affrontedness scenario deliberately so you can see what it’s
doing to you you can see it more clearly and then presumably then you begin to notice this ain’t
working i don’t want to do this this affrontedness thing anymore what are my options how do i stop
this from continuing and so we have all these systems of magic supposedly that are based on the
magic circle drawing circles around yourself and whatever exists outside your circle is the evil
and the darkness hence the serpent you have to see that um snake wrapping around the circle there
this kind of lurking out there waiting to devour you with your own mortality okay now the serpent
as the ouroboros or the serpent as your magic circle represents more than just a monster that’s
a threat okay it represents um both mortality and immortality at the same time uh the sphere
of saturn it represents a lot of things okay uh but among among those it also represents um
the the animal that has killed more humans than any other animal that we know of and that is
the snake okay uh that that’s mostly true actually mosquitoes have probably killed more people than
than snakes have but when it comes to a more like violent and obvious death from an animal
snakes pretty much top the list they bite you poisonous you die okay um and so snakes are
really embedded deeply in our cell memory as dangerous frightening representing death okay
and so snakes are really good images uh for working with demons and fears of all kinds of
things fear fear of dying fear of uh fear of um mortality fear of extinction disappearing and
also here in the magic circle you see um outside the magic circle presumably the the magician
stands inside with the hexagrams and then outside the magic circle are the pentagrams okay uh and
also the triangle of manifestation which is up at the very top there presumably that’s to the
yeah that’s to the east okay and um it’s put in the east because that’s where the sun rises that’s
where things arise or appear in your perception okay so in in your theater of the imagination
new experiences can be said at least at least symbolically to appear in the east and they sort
of you know process themselves around you and then disappear behind you into the west and sink with
the sun, sort of, okay? At least conceptually, anyway, symbolically. Now, these images of the
pentagram and the triangle, these images, we can put all kinds of, I don’t know, mathematical
meanings and correspondences upon them. But if you’ve been working with these things a long time,
they’re much more visceral and simple than you might expect, okay? So if you are standing in
the middle of your magic circle and there’s a triangle out there to the east where something
can approach you, it comes up over the horizon and comes at you, right? That triangle sort of
represents that road that is coming at you, all right? So when a new and unknown phenomenon is
appearing in your life it’s going to be approaching you in some scary way it’s like i haven’t
experienced this before what is it it’s starting to appear right and you’ll notice that uh it tends
to come at you in this sort of um like it’s on a road or an avenue that approaches you and lo and
behold we have this sort of triangle of manifestation thing going on so that’s how the spirit is sort of
now coming coming at you it’s coming at you live right okay so triangle of manifestation um there’s
other meanings to it which are very profound okay but let’s just deal with this experientially
right now and and notice how inside your imaginary sphere of protection um let’s say you are um one
of your ancient ancient ancestors prehistoric ancestors you’re out on the savannah tall grass
all around you and there could be a lion lurking in the grass in any direction you’re by yourself
okay that’s usually not a good idea to wander around on the savannah alone because wandering
around alone is a good signal to a predator that you’re easy pickings okay so normally that’s what
predators go for they go for the young the helpless and the alone yeah so if you’re if you’re out
there with others you’re less likely to be attacked so if you’re out on the savannah by yourself and
there’s tall grass everywhere you don’t know if there are any lions there something could come
charging at you at any moment and these are this is that’s a scenario that has repeated itself you
know many times in our evolutionary past and so um we tend to have it burned into our cell memory
like oh some all kinds of trouble can come charging at us at any moment in the form of a lion
or a wolf or a cave bear who knows okay and so we kind of have all these vectors of attack pointing
in at us or these roadways converging in upon us where we can expect to see danger approaching at
any moment this is our stress response ready to go off so that we can either fight or run away
or freeze and play dead which good luck with that okay um and this is something that we still have
going on today and we will respond even to abstract threats like an approaching deadline
as though it is some kind of predator we have the same stress response versus a bill in the mail
as we have to a predator that’s stalking us it’s not really any different okay and the interesting
thing is that especially nowadays the way that we consume social media that stress response is
constantly being triggered constantly being triggered and in some respects we we go after
that because we are habitually relying upon the stress response to save us again and again and
again, okay? That’s not a good situation to be in because when the stress response takes over,
it shuts down higher brain function and it drastically simplifies everything around you
in the world to simply fight or flight mode of existence, okay? So the energy, the blood flow to
your higher brain functions is removed and just the the lower brain functions are now active
fighting running away maybe eating something sometimes but just the basic functions are now
operational so if there’s a predator chasing you let’s say you’re in a monster movie and the
monster is chasing you you have to remember like you you run to your car but you’re so stressed out
you can’t even figure out which key opens the door that’s how much the stress response dumbs
you down okay this is back when we used to have keys that open car doors yeah instead of keyless
entry oh well oh look at that now we have this sort of um roadway that’s approaching you the
triangle of manifestation not only that but we have this sort of pentagram oh this pentagram
inside there in the shape of a person so what you can even see that the pentagrams drawn outside
your circle essentially or around around your circle these are essentially like personifying
symbols so whatever’s out there can now take on some kind of human form okay you can look at the
pentagram that way of course there’s all kinds of elaborate ways of looking at pentagrams like
gematria and things like that but let’s just go back to the basics of what the pentagram
actually does you know like it’s an abstract representation of a human figure could be scary
could be also a hero come to save you like an angel okay like the archangels okay remember that
um good spirits and evil spirits both good and evil spirits are manifestations of evolutionary
trauma okay the evil spirits are simply manifestations of you know predators or
traumatic situations like a bottomless pit okay or a cave bear that’s going to eat you or a serpent
yeah but also angels are like rescuing influencers or consoling influences so oh I’m in trouble and
some now some somebody’s going to come to rescue me or give me some good news finally you know
that’s the angels that come and like the angel of the annunciation good news you’re pregnant
I’m not sure that’s good news but but the angels come with good news or they come and basically
save you so even in that sense an angel is also associated with evolutionary trauma in that sense
angels are not necessarily a good thing because so if you’re invoking angels on a regular basis
you’re essentially invoking the problem that they rescue you from they don’t come without the
problem they come with that problem so surrounding yourself with angels to protect you is going to
evoke that problem into existence whatever problem they’re associated with all right
there’s really not any kind of imagery that like that’s like that that’s going to be purely good
and if we invert the pentagram um there’s no escape there because uh here also this is this
could be a manifestation of trauma apparently many of the animals that caused us a lot of grief in
our evolutionary past had horns just ask anybody who’s had to deal with the water buffalo probably
the most dangerous herd animal on the earth and i think um horned animals have given us lots of
trouble um because we would try to domesticate them and they still get difficult to manage it
It might might gore you to death. Oops. Right. And also we would try to hunt these things.
And if they were being difficult, they might they might try to stab you with their horns.
OK. But not only it’s not only the horns, it’s also the ears.
Pentagrams. The inversion of the pentagram was was I know that’s in the Golden Dawn system,
at least a little bit, where I know that McGregor Mathers did mention using inverted pentagrams.
I tend to view pentagrams as figures that cannot be inverted. I know that’s kind of silly because
I have an inverted pentagram right here on the page, on the slide, right? How do I mean that?
In the Golden Dawn, when you do divination via tarot cards, in the original Golden Dawn,
they tended to say, we don’t do inverted card definitions.
So whenever you do a tarot card spread, you lay down all the cards and you always lay them right side up.
In other words, if they come out upside down, you simply turn them right side up.
okay I tend to like that interpretation because to entertain the reverse definitions of tarot cards
tends to make you view the universe dualistically everything has a good face and an evil face
okay you can see how that sort of good against evil now is being encouraged by that system
and I much prefer magical symbols just to be magical symbols they’re not good or evil they
just are so when i turn over a tarot card it’s like this just is this is not good or evil so
i’m not saying to use the reverse like if you if you use upside down tarot
interpretations in your tarot spreads that’s fine but you must keep in mind that you are now
yeah essentially invoking a dualistic universe around you into appearance okay you’re basically
entering a dualistic type universe where oh right side up is good and upside down is evil
So I tend to view the pentagram the same way. It’s simply a figure that cannot be inverted.
It’s kind of like saying, the reason it can’t be inverted is because the topmost point of the pentagram represents spirit,
and the other points represent the four elements. Each of the four lower points represents one of the four elements.
and the idea is that spirit is the essence of them all sort of like the boss of them all okay
and if i have no problem with turning it upside down i just don’t see that as evil it’s basically
okay i could say that spirit is the higher principle sort of a patriarchal view of it or
spirit is the deeper principle so more of a more of a matriarchal way of looking at it
so if I invert the pentagram that spirit angle at the bottom that doesn’t mean that the elements
are now superior to it the elements don’t even exist actually the elements are simply the outer
facets of the spirit so yes spirit is not an element I know that in Wiccan circles they say
oh the secret fifth element is spirit okay yeah fine that’s that’s kind of a blind though
spirit is not an element it is the essence of the elements they are all made of spirit and we have
other creatures who notoriously who are notoriously dangerous to humans or who have been
dogs wolves essentially especially if your ancestry is europe you might have some fear of
dogs kind of embedded in your dna okay uh and so lo and behold in in our mythology of demons from
hell we have the dog-faced demons why are they dog-faced or why do why are they serpents why do
they have horns okay why do they have fangs because they represent they are representations
of the things that used to terrorize us when we were still being stalked and eaten as prey
okay and they they are emblematic they are our stress response has evolved to respond to these
images okay and so if you want to get at your stress response and reprogram yourself you can
work with these images not only that the the stress response when it kicks in will spew forth
these images at you and you’re like oh my god what is this stuff demons are real I guess I saw
something with horns just now and glowing eyes and what is all that stuff when we sat around the
campfire as hunter-gatherers looked out into the darkness with the fire behind us the glowing eyes
of predators shone right back at us yeah and when they were grabbing us and dragging us off to eat
us they used fangs and claws which also demons have and this is why creatures of imagination
or demons appear in these strange chimeric forms you see on the upper right we have the
horned creature i guess that’s a goat uh and then we have the dragon which is sort of the crocodile
crocodile is probably the the most deeply embedded um frightening predator that we at least can um
that still that still exists a lot of predators i think um that hunted humans humans wiped them out
humans are very dangerous yeah anything that stalks and kills humans we tend to
destroy it there are no more there are no more saber-toothed tigers and there are no more
cave bears possibly because we killed them all and many and the many animals that remain are
they don’t attack humans not usually okay the only animals left that attack humans are those
that eat just about anything like polar bears will eat just about anything because they don’t
have much of a choice and sharks as well they will eat just about anything and sharks don’t
even like us by the way we’re not even on their menu for multiple reasons um but um still they’re
curious and they’ll bite us just to see what we are uh even the snake is in that chimera there
see that the snake is there and of course the lion the bat wings i find very curious i’m wondering
if there was some kind of predator that existed there is some evidence apparently that some some
pterodactyl like creatures may have actually survived into times when humans were that came
into existence so as we know not all dinosaurs died out all right an example is the alligator
alligator is actually a living dinosaur and they lived they they were already around back in
dinosaur days and they are still around and they they’re almost in the same form now as they were
back then they they have barely changed at all whereas dinosaurs have changed a lot most of them
turned into small birds yes birds yeah most of them were actually warm-blooded all right and so
back to the idea of affrontedness okay so somebody who is who a bitch who habitually
uh works with this banishing circle like you banishing and you’re basically somebody who
basically reinforces the duality between me inside my magic circle and the big bag the big bad
universe outside my magic circle if i continuously engage with that sort of default programming
that kind of exists like it kind of came pre-installed we and we evolved to have to live
inside this sort of bubble of protection this imaginary bubble of protection and we’re ready to
either attack things that are coming at us or to run away from them, anything that threatens that
bubble of safety that we have around us, right? So when we do this magic circle around us, we’re
simply plugging into the already existing programming that came installed when we were
born pretty much, right? Somebody who engages with that on a regular basis begins to get on
very friendly terms with all the things that frighten them, okay? So the adept, somebody who
has developed, you know, a good deal of magical power, can be a sort of a disturbing person to
be around because they don’t have the fears quite in the same way that the rest of us do.
There are many things they’re just not afraid of anymore, okay? Or the fear is still there,
but it doesn’t control them okay and so this can be kind of a disturbing person to be around
it can also be a be a very reassuring person to be around because whatever whatever crap you’ve
got going on whatever fears that you have going on that are making you into a difficult person
to be with you know because you’re constantly freaked out by every little thing or you’re
pissed off by this and that constantly annoyed right they can tolerate that they can see what’s
going on with you and it doesn’t really bother them very much. So that can be really reassuring.
But this kind of person can also be a bit upsetting to you because they don’t have the
same fears you do. So it’s almost as though, well, I can’t really count on them to join me in the
fights that I have in my life. They don’t seem reliable. There’s something wrong with them.
They’re much too relaxed. They’re just going to let the world go to hell, aren’t they? This person
much too relaxed okay so on the one hand um a person like this can be nice to have around because
you know no matter what you show them they can handle it okay so you get that impression that
they’ve kind of they’ve already seen some of the ugly things within themselves their own fears right
and so when you freak out in front of them they’re like oh yeah yeah i’ve seen that fear is quite
normal uh to me and i just totally understandable where that fear comes from i can handle that and
they can help you with it okay but then you can also notice i really don’t trust this person
because they’re not afraid of the same things i am in fact that’s that seems dangerous to me
because they might go collude with all the monsters out there maybe they’re in league with
all the monsters out there yeah maybe they’re a communist or something like that right uh so um
it’s kind of a double-edged sword right because the the adept can be can be seen as somebody who
can be very helpful and very accommodating and very very wise very accepting um and not really
troubled by anything but because of that they can also be seen as like an enemy an enemy sympathizer
somebody who is surrounded by a horde of demons and and consorts with demons it’s kind of true
they do they have a horde of demons around them which they’re um they’re okay with yeah these
these demons they have pretty much stared them down and they have seen how these fears arise in
them and how these desires arise and they accept them and understand them and in return those
demons basically serve them they no longer jump in to the magic circle and possess them and make
them automatically fight or run away so that can be quite interesting because so a magical adept
still has the same demons that you have but those demons are incapable of controlling that person
anymore for the most part okay whereas you might see something dangerous freak out and run away
and cringe and hide under a barrel they have a choice they might hide under the same barrel with
you okay but they won’t really be that freaked out or they will they will not they will not run
a way they will turn and face whatever it is that’s going on and be able to handle that fear
because that fear won’t take them over they they really an adept is not really capable of panicking
anymore the interesting thing about that is scenarios of fear are only one type of demon
there are also scenarios of desire fear and desire are what keep people unenlightened okay so demons
take frightening forms with fangs and horns and claws, glowing eyes, or frightening natural
phenomena like lightning and fire, hurricane winds, things like that, also tornado winds.
But they also take tempting forms, seductive forms, okay, so also forms of desire. And
And an adept, a magical adept, has also faced down those demons, which means not only are they impervious to being taken over by a fear reaction, they’re also impervious to being taken over by a desire reaction, if they want to be.
they can go along with it that’s fine okay uh and what that means is that um an adept cannot really
be um scared out of his wits can still be scared of course but not to the point of being taken over
by the fear response and panicking and losing control okay supposedly and uh they not only can
they not be taken over by fear but they cannot be taken over by desire either which means that
they cannot fall head over heels in love, cannot be taken over by that desire response. Can they
fall in love? Of course. Yeah. But it’s more like they jump into love. They have a choice and
they’re not going to be just some, just they cannot be unwittingly infatuated. Okay. The
infatuation still arises, but it’s like a demon that’s out here. It says, Oh my God, you want this
so bad, don’t you? Oh my God. It’s just utterly irresistible. And they’re like, I see what you’re
after there and i see how you evolved to make me go after that but i’m not really in in my essence
i’m not really moved by that phenomenon anymore okay um but you know what let’s go play anyway
so we’ll go do that so um this is the the scenario where the adept shows the demon who’s boss
and basically decides whether or not to play along with the drama that’s going on once again
that can be very disturbing because somebody who doesn’t have somebody who’s not automatically
taken over by desires the same way you are can be a bit disturbing it’s like i can’t figure this
person out what do they want because they don’t seem to be controlled by anything okay is it even
desirable to be a person who cannot fall head over heels in love just imagine what it’s like to be
free of all of these impulses and yet still capable of playing along with them what would
that be like can’t be taken over by these impulses anymore and i can see right through them if i want
i can go and enjoy and play but i don’t have to do it imagine that kind of freedom affrontedness
why is this word so helpful then affrontedness is the one thing that you as a student of magic
need to be on the lookout for it is the only demon that actually exists okay so let’s clarify what
that means so if i am confronted with a scenario of desire let’s say let’s say i’m a heroin addict
and my dealer is on the corner back when dealers used to hang out on corners um and i get that
strong urge it’s like oh that is also a scenario of a frontedness however you want to see that
okay so I have the situation that is now in my face and it is now drawing me to it okay so it’s
in my face it’s now affronting me and how am I going to respond to that now my awareness of the
duality of that situation that thing over there is pulling me in somehow okay or it’s motivating
me to go over there or that thing over there is telling me that i that i am not good enough being
over here without it okay the same thing um if a woman is in the checkout line and she sees these
gorgeous models on the cover of i don’t know vogue magazine and uh and there’s something about the um
i don’t know the bacon diet or something like that on there okay she’s like oh if only i had
a figure like that if only i were so beautiful like that and uh and maybe i should eat bacon
like she does so i can get that figure um that’s that’s also a scenario of affrontedness okay
where that the image of the beautiful woman is being thrust in front of your face it’s in your
face right it’s affronting you telling you somehow that you don’t have this body and you need to
do something now to get it okay so that’s the scenario of this over here facing you
face to face vis-a-vis right this fate this face-to-face scenario is what you constantly
need to be on the lookout for there’s just the discomfort induced by a face-to-face encounter
okay face to face with you know a creature or a scenario just any kind of thing you got this thing
out there that’s now facing you which is making you feel uncomfortable or seems to be making you
you feel uncomfortable, there’s your affrontedness. That’s what you’re looking for. All right. And of
course, if there is a threatening situation, like a dog is growling at you and it doesn’t have a
leash, that is also affrontedness. That’s the more obvious kind of affrontedness where the dog is in
your face and you’re looking at the dog. Okay. And now you have the fear reaction. The fear demon is
going to come into your circle, take you over and make you do something, fight or run away. Okay.
and then you have if you’re if you’re a magical adept you have some say over that you can say
yeah i think you let’s let’s go along with this fear response let’s see how much strength it can
give me so i can run it run and jump over that fence or you can do something clever you know
and pretty much whistle at the dog or something to try to see if you can trigger some of its
training i don’t know but then you have to have your wits about you to do that and if the but if
the stress response take you take you over you won’t have your wits about you and so what you
see here is a scenario i presented before where the person sits the magician sits inside his magic
circle or he’s meditating right and the uh the affront the affronting scenario uh is imagined
outside of his magic circle in its own circle and this illusion of the gap between you and it
is the primary thing that your nervous system is using to create that discomfort you feel.
So why would you be on the lookout for affrontedness?
Basically so that when the fear response arises, you can investigate that fear response.
You can make meaning out of it.
It’s some kind of an impulse, and it has imagery associated with it,
like a snake or you know fangs and horns or um curvy voluptuousness um or something like that
the imagery that’s associated with it um is now uh that’s what that’s causing the discomfort
the intense hunger for something or the intense fear response that you’re getting and your ability
to see how that image is programmed into your into the human collective unconscious let’s say
how that’s gotten in there you can explore where it comes from so each time it comes up you’re like
oh there it is again and the more aware of these impulses you become the less likely they are able
to take you over because your awareness can freeze them in their tracks there is um there is an
example from eastern traditions i think it’s probably from tibetan buddhism i’m not really
or um possibly tantric chivism uh it’s just vajrayogini i think is the there’s a famous
woman adept who gave a method for staying alert while meditating watching for thoughts as they
pop up okay a thought is really nothing other than a subject object relationship okay and a subject
object relationship consists of you the subject looking at something out there the object that is
either enticing you or threatening you notice how whenever you whenever you open your eyes and look
out into the world that stress response is slightly kicked on already waiting for something to make
you feel inadequate like you need it and need to go get it or making you feel threatened as though
that’s a threat. I need to do something about this. Okay. So you’re, anytime you’re observing
anything out there in the world, that stress response is ready to kick in. It’s already
slightly kicking in by just you looking out there. Okay. This is why we close our eyes to relax.
So that, that sort of external, the external stimuli begin to diminish and, and then the
stress response can sort of diminish and go down. Okay. And of course the, the, one of the cool
goals of meditation is to basically be able to walk around not triggered into a stress response
by anything anything at all okay all these kinds of instincts are still operative and they do flare
up and say uh-oh should we react with the stress response and you’re like no i think we’re okay
you have control right um yeah the affrontedness now remember when you’re scanning for the
affrontedness would as you go through your throughout your daily work or whatever you’re
doing um you’re constantly presented with affrontedness okay but anytime that affrontedness
intensifies as oh this is a me versus it scenario that’s really strong your attention should
automatically be drawn to that and see the illusory nature of it see that is that thing really out to
get me like no but my stress response is interpreting the situation as though that thing
out there is out to get me. Okay, so if I walk around the house and I stub my toe on a door,
stress response kicks in because of the pain. It doesn’t have to, by the way, but habitually,
I stress out because of pain, right? I might turn around and punch the door because of the door.
My stress response has programmed me to assume that the door is out to get me. The door did it,
so I’m going to hit the door back, right? Which is really absurd, but hey, that’s what we do.
That’s why when we get mad, we take our frustrations out on physical objects because the stress response reinterprets physical objects around us as threats when they are not threats.
This is how dumb the stress response makes you.
And the nice thing is the more you work with that subject-object relationship to see how the stress response is triggered, the less it controls you.
okay all the triggers are still there but now you have control over whether they take you over or
not this is a very real thing and it is a means of basically achieving a state where you’re not
i don’t want to say you’re not afraid of anything but it’s more like you cannot be taken over by
the fear of anything and that’s why in the golden dawn neophyte ceremony they say fear is failure
and the forerunner of failure okay fear is in other words if the fear response takes you over
you have failed you have allowed the demon into your magic circle and let it take you over and
whereas the appropriate response as the adept is to the is your awareness will turn toward the
demon and freeze it in its tracks okay and then notice it for what it is a primordial fear that’s
being triggered by some kind of prehistoric scenario possibly um and you know how that
thing has arisen not only that but you have compassion for it it’s like oh i i understand
why you want to want me to do this because you’re trying to protect me i really appreciate you
flaring to life like that and trying to take me over to protect me that’s and i see why you have
evolved to do that but this is not a situation that requires that response some people might
say this doesn’t seem rational or even feasible okay but you have to remember that in martial
arts the reason a kung fu master is so deadly is because he doesn’t get angry and so he can
evenly calculatedly defeat you even spontaneously do it because his his brain stays completely
awake and he can outmaneuver you and he can predict your next move easily you can’t do that
because you’re mad you’re angry or you’re hurt right and of course um if if a fighter um is
really good with martial arts but then he takes a hit and then he hasn’t mastered um the pain
response the stress response kicks in in regard to the pain and then dumbs him down and then
if he gets angry or upset because of the pain his brain gets dumbed down and he cannot um fight in
the same way anymore and he’s much more easily defeated them okay so one of the quickest ways to
take somebody out is to make sure they’re angry or or hurt so that the stress response kicks in
and they cannot fight intelligently anymore intelligently is not right quite the right word
they don’t have full access to their all of their senses the full bandwidth of of experience yeah
the stress response makes you really dumb in many regards it also dumbs down what you’re able to
see around you you can’t there’s many things that are automatically tuned out because the stress
response is so simplifying so obviously the reason why the word affrontedness is difficult for people
to understand is because it covers so many different kinds of scenarios okay so many
people the easiest one to think of is anything that is a threat can trigger the stress response
okay and then trigger the demon to rise let’s say right um but also things that are desire impulses
they they appear they make you feel inadequate like you need something that’s also a stress
response okay and so that is also a sense of affrontedness that you need to be on the lookout
for okay oh i see that that guy has uh has just trimmed his beard to using this new product and
the girl is jumping into his arms oh i guess i need to do that to my beard too that is a stress
response they’re trying to make you feel like it’s deliberately prodding you but you you can’t get
the girl unless you trim your beard just like you know just like this all right all right so um and
notice how a single word like affrontedness once you master that word you can walk around and use
it like a word of power it’s like what am i looking for again there’s the affrontedness again
this is what should be alerting me to be on the lookout for some kind of impulse that’s going to
try and take over my behavior any scenario of affrontedness is going to do that okay
so hopefully this word once you master it it’s like a word of power it’s a secret word of power
for you right um you can then work through your demons much faster and achieve achieve
enlightenment faster because the more you get through these fears and desire scenarios that
make you unconscious the more conscious you become the more awake you become and the more free of
unconscious impulses you become imagine what it’s like to be free of all those nagging impulses that
that are trying to get you to do something.
Wouldn’t that be nice?
All right, well, until next time.
Source: Lyam Christopher