Descriptions:
Video Description
Can a person walk the path alone and still arrive? Lyam Christopher answers this old question with careful hope, Yes, but the wording matters. It may be more true, he says, that a sincere process can be set in motion, and that process then carries its own initiation forward. The work is not a machine that dispenses enlightenment, but a garden with its own readiness to bloom.
He is wonderfully honest about the risks. Many who teach themselves drift, and in Kabbalah, Magic & the Great Work of Self Transformation he states plainly from the first pages that there is no guarantee. The Protestant work ethic, work hard and be rewarded, does not apply. Yet for the one truly drawn to the Great Work, that honesty need not discourage. It simply places the emphasis where the old traditions placed it: not on forcing the flower, but on preparing the ground.
The gentle end of the teaching is that a patch of floor and an hour of privacy may be enough, no lineage required to begin. What is needed is consistency with the practice as written, not a patchwork of borrowed bits, because the hidden value lives in the whole. When the student finally works in the world with that gardener’s patience, magic stops being about control and starts being a way of helping the mysterious come forth.
Full Video Transcript
This week we go into the topic of self-initiation. And the question is, can I initiate myself? Is self-initiation possible?
I know there used to be a lot of debate about this topic. Anyway, I don’t know if there still is.
And a lot of people would say, well, they get the most benefit from working with a teacher.
Others say that a teacher isn’t necessary and that you can teach yourself.
what I have found is that most people who try to teach themselves tend to I guess go astray
and there’s a reason for that now it’s possible to it certainly is possible to initiate yourself
okay or it might be more accurate to say it’s possible to experience a legitimate self-initiation
whether it’s possible for you to initiate yourself that’s that’s another issue actually
So maybe we can delve into that a little bit. So when people take up the work, the great work, let’s say they get the Kabbalah Magic Book and they go through the process of the Outer Order Grade Curriculum, the big question is, well, if I do this, will I be rewarded with becoming a magician with powers?
Or will I receive initiation, whatever that is? Will I become enlightened as a result of the work that I do? And what most people bring into this process is something akin to the Protestant work ethic, where if you work hard, you will be rewarded, right? Is that always true?
And in the Kabbalah Magic Book, I pretty much state right off the bat that there’s no guarantee.
And I even say that most people who begin this work will not succeed.
And that’s a harsh thing to say.
But of course, for those who are motivated, let’s say, to do the great work, it doesn’t come across as a discouragement.
because somehow we feel that uh there’s something special about us and that we can we’ve been called
to do this and now i have a curriculum to work with and i’m gonna that’s let’s do it now okay
um maybe so uh is is initiation even necessary ultimately the answer is no uh and there are
some people who apparently have been born enlightened basically with no um automatic
ego mechanism. Walt Whitman is apparently an example of that. If you look at examples of his
life, this is somebody who never really had to go through some kind of a self-transformation process
to become enlightened, like meditation or tantric ritual work or anything like that, or prayer,
devotional prayer, things like that. But most of us do have to do some kind of work. And the reason
for that is humans have evolved into a state where they thrive, more or less, by developing
an isolated sense of self that takes care of itself, that fusses over itself, and that
maintains itself in a sort of gridlock psyche. And even though this causes us suffering and
it cuts us off from the world in terms of really harmonizing with the world and just
experiencing a nice sense of flow and peace, it does help us
survive because it motivates us and pushes us and, and irritates
us to take action that compels us to have children and produce
offspring and then die so that they can take over and then the
whole thing continues on and on and on. Sounds very much like
karma, doesn’t it? And people in the East have noticed this for
longest time that there’s this great big biological machine has gotten up and running and
it’s it’s pretty much uh running the show and it’s pretty much doing its own thing
right over our dead bodies it pretty much just uses us to perpetuate the species and keep nature
going on and on and on and somehow the ability to enjoy this and the ability to break out of
this artificial ego persona that the nervous system creates somehow that is not a given for
us anymore because we have evolved into this state where we have this ego persona that is now believes
itself trapped inside the body and it lives out its life inside the body and when the body dies
it dies too and then oh well that’s i guess that’s all there is right so we’re kind of trapped in
that limited perception. The idea is that we can break out of this. That’s primarily what these
kinds of curriculums are offering, at least the ones that are restored systems of enlightenment
practices. This is something that the Golden Dawn attempted to do. At least most of its members knew
that they were onto something really big by creating a system of restored enlightenment
practices. The magical practices that proliferated across Europe were basically, they recognized
corrupted systems of enlightenment practices that existed from ancient, ancient times, who knows
when. Probably a system of enlightenment practices that were very much akin to Tantric Shaivism and
Tibetan Buddhism. And versions of those apparently survived through the Egyptian mystery traditions
and the Greek mystery traditions and that kind of went underground
in terms of maybe even some of the Christian mysteries at first anyway
and then disappeared underground because they were perceived as subversive
and anything that kind of sets the mind free from the perpetual machine
that sustains the world is going to be perceived as subversive.
But ultimately, these are systems of enlightenment practices
that set the mind free from the ego construct that seems to be sort of usurped its position
in our lives and is kind of running our lives for us and kind of making everything miserable,
but it keeps everything going at the same time. Sort of like an inner tyrant that has taken over.
In the mythology of ancient Egypt, it’s Set who has taken over our lives and Osiris has been
dismembered and killed, right? And now it’s our responsibility to reassemble Osiris and somehow
resurrect him and then defeat the evil Set, the evil ego. Destroy him? Not necessarily,
because even in the ancient Egyptian mythology, Set was not necessarily destroyed. He was
vanquished and then given a special role to play on the solar bark, which is a very interesting
role, by the way, if you know what I’m talking about. So if I do the work, will I be rewarded?
I guess you could say there’s a sort of Christian dimension to the golden dawn because the inner
order has a lot of, the inner order of the golden dawn has a lot of Christian symbolism to it with
Christian Rosenkreuz and things like that. And that’s because there’s a perception that what
What happens to us as we go through the process of reaching for enlightenment is we realize
we can’t do it alone.
In other words, of ourselves, we can’t really do it.
And so this idea of self-transformation, a very profound concept, the very idea of self-transformation
implies that you can initiate yourself, that you can be your own teacher and you can reach
enlightenment through your own study and your own ritual enactments your own meditations
you can do it yourself and this also implies that you can do it to yourself somehow grab hold of
yourself and adjust things and then suddenly now now you’re all better and you you can now
be free of ego and experience a reconnection to the universe and universal harmony and everything’s
fine. And well, of course, what most of us find is that it’s not that easy. Now, this idea that you
can just grab hold of yourself and adjust yourself to be enlightened, that’s how we start out,
isn’t it? And what we discover though is that there’s something within us, if you call that
the Christ force or the Osiris current or the inner saving grace, or if you’re a Gnostic,
you’d call it Sophia, Cyrus, Risen, right? Something like that. There is a saving grace
that comes along that does the work for us in spite of our efforts to grab hold of ourselves
and fix ourselves, okay? So, one of the main messages in the mysteries is that you can’t
do it yourself. That idea of grabbing hold of yourself and adjusting yourself and then suddenly
you’re fixed and you’re repaired and you’re functioning properly. That’s how we tend to
start out. And we eventually realize that it isn’t possible. But in the process of doing that,
we thoroughly discover that it’s not possible. And we end up surrendering to this inner grace
that sort of just comes up and finishes the task for us. You might want to think of Lord of the
rings, where Frodo has to destroy the ring of power. And
as he carries the ring of power, it’s pretty obvious, if you
haven’t noticed it yet, that the ring of power is a, is a, not
only is it psychopathic, but it’s an ego, but basically, he’s
carrying the the weight of the ego, which is the source of all
evil on Earth, more or less, right. And, and he, the only
person strong enough, strong enough to destroy the ring is
somebody who isn’t that strong. So that which is very
interesting, somebody weak enough to surrender to destiny,
let’s say, right. And what you’ll notice, my point is that
in the end of Lord of the Rings, spoiler alert, in the end of
Lord of the Rings, Frodo is not strong enough to destroy the
ring, actually, it actually ends up corrupting him in the end.
But the interesting thing is all the momentum that he gets going
because he keeps trying and pushing so hard
and putting one foot in front of the other, keeps going.
The momentum that he has established
carries out the process unto ultimate fulfillment for him.
So even though in the end,
he’s not strong enough to destroy the ring of power,
the momentum of the quest that he has already established
finishes it for him anyway.
And this is kind of what happens when we do this kind of work, this kind of tantric
self-transformation work. I use the word tantric very loosely in case you guys haven’t noticed
that yet. But what I mean by tantric is that you don’t necessarily have to have a path of
meditation where you just sit there quietly and wait for your demons to come to you. With tantra,
you actually beat the bushes and ferret them out and confront them and you really drive this
process of self-transformation much more actively. That’s Tantra. Tantra essentially means transformation.
You don’t wait for the transformation to happen, you drive the process of the transformation.
Yeah, this is very serious business guys, okay. So there’s this idea of lineage. Well, if you’re going
to reach enlightenment, you have to have a teacher. And they themselves had to have had a teacher
before them who had a teacher before them who had a teacher before them. And there’s this long
lineage of people who are passing along the torch of wisdom from teacher to disciple to who becomes
a teacher who passes the torch on to disciple and et cetera, et cetera. And when I first heard the
idea of lineage i thought it was ridiculous it’s like uh i have to base my initiation on the
prestige of previous adepts so i can say that oh my teacher was so-and-so and their teacher was
so-and-so and their teacher was the great super powerful so-and-so and look how wonderful my
lineage is so of course i thought that was silly um because first of all we already know that
people can be born enlightened at least well we know that now anyway from this video and uh that
teachings and lineages are not even necessary that the process of enlightenment is mysterious
unto itself and it happens where it happens all right um so eventually um i met some adepts of
the golden dawn who were legit who were the real deal and then i realized the importance of a
teacher could i have initiated myself i think i could have don’t we all right um but i have to say
that uh having met them it completely uh boosted my progress for many people it turns the whole
thing around completely upside down and backwards so they’re like oh now i know what we’re doing if
they meet a teacher for the first time okay for me it was a huge catalyst uh so it just kind of
rocketed me forward and i have to say it was not really uh the rituals that we did together
necessarily it’s almost as though the golden dawn teachings and the practices were more of an excuse
just to get me into the presence of an adept so that they could somehow magically rub off on me
and that i’d be up up and running on my own so this is how important lineage can actually be
just to meet somebody and interact with somebody who is, for the most part, free of the ego
construct. A completely transformational experience for many people. In alchemy, it’s
referred to as a catalyst. So, if you don’t know by now, the philosopher’s stone is actually,
in one way of looking at it, it’s actually a person. In other words, somebody who transmutes
himself into gold via the philosopher’s stone, he becomes a stone himself and he is a philosopher’s
stone then who in the presence of other students then serves as a catalyst for their transformation
into gold and into the philosopher’s stone. And the gold begets more gold which begets more gold.
So that’s the idea of lineage, where there’s this spark of integrity that is imparted from one person to another.
Can that spark be conveyed through a book? Yes, I think it can.
Can it be conveyed through art? Yes, it can.
But it is most powerfully conveyed from teacher to student or just from person to person.
and yes the adept is somebody who can change things and turn things around simply by showing
up simply by being in the room somehow and interacting i guess with other people but what
they do is not necessarily you know words of power and magic sigils and things like that that doesn’t
mean that words of power and magic sigils are not important because they are something that you use
in your own personal life to facilitate your own transformation but one of the most important
things about your own transformation process is exposure to others who have been through that
process and who are largely free of the ego construct. So in the absence of a teacher,
what do we do? And this is where it gets difficult because many people criticize the curriculum in
the Kabbalah magic book as being very strict. In other words, you can’t do any practical magic
until you’re done with the whole thing, which can actually take several years to complete. In fact,
it does take several years to complete. Okay, well, that’s probably unavoidable. Even working
with a teacher, you’re probably going to be working for several years or longer or even
till the end of your life, who knows, going about your self transformation process. So in the
absence of a teacher, the best you can do is to do the curriculum as it’s laid out. And do
not change anything in it the main reason for that is the best way to describe it is that we
when we are lost in the ego construct which is a life of unsatisfactoriness or suffering that
you’re trying to you know break out of um you want to be happy right and uh the problem is the way
that you imagine yourself getting out of that is the very manner in which you maintain that
that state of suffering. Okay. And this is why when you go to therapy, the therapist listens
very closely to how you imagine yourself getting better because then they know, oh, well, the thing
that’s got them stuck is their belief in this thing that’s going to make them better, which
they keep going after and going after and going after, which is only serving or mainly serving
to perpetuate the problem to begin with. So if you take up a magical curriculum, like the Kabbalah
magic book, then if you take bits and pieces of it and just
use what you want to and then combine it with other stuff you
learned over here and some stuff you learned over there, and
you’re kind of mixing and matching, you are proceeding
under your own guidance and then very likely you are sabotaging
your own progress because the manner in which you’re
proceeding is the very manner in which you have been
perpetuating your suffering and the way that your forefathers have been perpetuating their
suffering. It’s not your fault. It’s simply the belief mechanisms that we have going on.
We keep relying on those things to make it work for us. And so we take a curriculum like the
Kabbalah magic curriculum and we just use it in a certain way which perpetuates what we already
have going on and nothing ever changes and the karma continues okay i hope i’ve explained that
uh now if you do the uh the curriculum as told there’s still a risk because on very subtle
levels you’re still subverting it into your own system of magic with and you’re you’re trying to
push it in directions where you think it’s going to make you all better one of the one of the main
points of doing this kind of work is that the main goal is not to cure yourself or not to try
to get better or not to try to even transform yourself. Kind of the ultimate realization is
that there’s nothing actually wrong with you. Yeah. So the only thing that’s wrong with this
is that we think there’s something wrong. Okay. Too much to go into there, but I think you can
kind of catch a drift that you’re just kind of dropping the whole concept of that there’s
something wrong with the world. There’s something wrong with me.
There’s something wrong with this. There’s something wrong
with that. No, no, these things as we do the work get picked
apart and they fall and they drop away. Okay, but in the
meantime, to try to make that happen, you’re going to be
proceeding in ways that very likely are going to sabotage
your own progress towards freedom from all that suffering
or whatever you call that that world weariness or jadedness.
And so, it’s very helpful then to have a teacher, okay?
But of course, it’s not necessarily going to look like this where the Doctor Strange-like
figure is teaching you how to raise spirits right off the pages of a book.
Don’t you love AI?
It’s more like just spending time with a teacher and interacting with them, having conversations
with them, okay?
And of course, yeah, you can do ritual work with them and or have them do Reiki therapy
on you or massage or something like that, sure.
All these are really very much more excuses just to interact with them to get you exposed
to a manner of seeing that is free of the ego construct.
Yeah, and that manner of seeing becomes, you know, it’s contagious that the person in your
life acts as a catalyst to your own transformation by showing you even only briefly what’s possible
for you.
It doesn’t take much to give you a little glimpse and that glimpse into enlightenment
can be devastating sometimes because everything that you’ve thought was important up until that
point is no longer important anymore. And then everything falls away and you don’t know what
to do because you’ve met this person who has shown you that most of what you’ve been doing
is futile. And then what do you do? Then you turn to some kind of, oh no, help me, like some
teacher. Hopefully the teacher is legit and can actually help you with the self-transformation
process, or you turn to a curriculum like Zen Buddhism or something like that, or a teacher
program or Tantric Shaivism or Tibetan Buddhism or Golden Dawn Magic. Yeah. So, what is really
required? Okay. Surprisingly, not much interaction with a teacher is really necessary. One encounter
might be enough just to sort of just rattle the cage enough so you are now oh now i know what’s
going on here right um and when i was in a golden dawn temple most of the work was i was doing by
myself it really was a self-transformation type thing right uh and uh but the work that i was
doing involved a phone call with the actual landline and everything because the internet
didn’t exist at the time. And a phone call once a month. And I think it was, yeah, it was a letter
through snail mail once per week. It’s like a back and forth mail. And of course, eventually,
the internet came along and emailed. But that was towards the end of my curriculum work,
by the way, when the internet really took off. And so, it really was only contact with them by phone
once a month and then a letter once a week but there were several retreats as
well when I went out to the temple and had the zero equals zero ritual performed
and of course other things like lectures and other group ritual and things like
that and lectures but the biggest benefit I got from hanging out with my
teachers especially one of them was simply hanging out with them it’s just
being with them talking to them even watching TV with them that’s back when
used to watch tv do we still do that anymore and so conditions necessary for for beginning if
you’re considering taking up the curriculum in the kabbalah magic book uh all that’s required really
is um a patch of floor and privacy where you can do ritual for about an hour a day or less
undisturbed and i really mean that undisturbed nobody comes knocking they know that there’s a
certain time of day or like when this signs on your door you don’t they don’t bother you okay
and of course uh the ability to chant or vibrate in that space relatively loudly needs to be
possible none of this i use the great voice i can just vibrate on the inner planes no use your voice
loud and clear and and resonant um so yeah having a ritual space like that is all that’s really
required to begin. If you don’t have that, I wouldn’t recommend starting the Kabbalah
magic curriculum. If you don’t have a space where you can do that, you might want to make
a goal to establish getting a space where that’s possible. And in the absence of that,
you could start out with things like Zen philosophy, maybe go to a, what is it? If you have a Dharma
center nearby tibetan buddhism also they can offer modes of practice where you can do that
you can use to explore spirituality whatever like that until maybe eventually you can get a
private space where you can be undisturbed for about an hour every day okay now naturally in
the kabbalah magic book there’s all kinds of projects which are optional you can make
elemental weapons and and of course there’s study practices involved there’s a lot of reading
involved there’s some drawing involved okay cataloging of egyptian god names and greek
god names and things like that there’s study involved too yes but the only thing you really
need is that that ritual space where once a day for about an hour you can do some dramatic ritual
practice all right so that being said can you initiate yourself uh sort of right you can you
can begin the self-initiation process but what eventually will happen is that process will
hopefully call something forth which finishes the job for you so the answer is yes and no right
you can can you really initiate yourself ultimately not but you can start a process
that comes forth it’s kind of like a gardener can’t really grow his garden right he but he
can set up the conditions in which a garden can grow and then he can just wait to see what happens
as he continuously maintains it. And what he gets is not necessarily what he thought what he was
going to get, but something apparently comes from it, right? And of course, all kinds of things can
happen along the way to sabotage those efforts and he messes up and does things wrong and then
he has to self-correct. And of course, it’s very much like that, the self-initiation process.
And one of the benefits of this YouTube channel is that I’m providing a jumping off point to
patreon where you can actually join me on patreon and have some intensive one-on-one
chat interactions with me like direct messages back and forth if you join me on patreon
and of course i am available for consultation so you can get that kind of exposure that can
act as a catalyst hopefully to kind of to to spur you on in the process of self-transformation
so that that mysterious garden will eventually come forth
and come into full bloom for you, whatever that is.
What do I mean by that?
By becoming somebody who is enlightened or has enlightenment experiences
and somebody who is able to operate in the world in a magical way.
Not somebody who can cast spells and get what you want.
It’s not really like that.
It’s more like it certainly appears that’s what you’re doing
and you’re able to do spiritual practices that sort of tweak the flow of manifestation around
you but it’s very much still very much the same very very much like what a gardener does he does
this and then a result comes out of it of course the result he’s getting is like that’s not what
quite what i expected but wow okay that’s more what magical practice is really like
anyway uh so i think that um if i set this up correctly there’s going to be a link to the
patreon like right about here appearing uh hopefully it’s going to appear in there right
now so um all right so until next time and i hope to see you guys on patreon
Source: Lyam Christopher