Descriptions:
Video Description
Why would a ritual ask you to move light around your body in such a careful pattern? This video grew out of questions from students, and Lyam Christopher starts by clearing away a common myth. The Middle Pillar is a self-initiation technique, a way of becoming a channel for light, and doing it before the inner work is ready can inflate parts of the self. So the movement is not an arbitrary exercise; it is a careful art of purification.
The circulation of the body of light follows the sun. In ceremonial magic, practitioners move with the sun’s course, and the first circulation rises one side and descends the other, a clockwise motion that our bodies recognize. The four worlds of Kabbalah sit behind the image: the material world, the world of dreams, the world of creation, and the pure potentiality at the top. The aura is visualized on one level, and the Tree of Life with its ten sephiroth on another, until the person becomes a living map rather than someone simply repeating a ritual.
Then the goal comes into focus. Most people touch a flash of enlightenment and watch it vanish, then spend their lives trying to get it back. The deeper purpose of the work in Kabbalah, Magic & the Great Work of Self Transformation is crystallization, letting that quiet seeing stop being an occasional epiphany and start being the steady ground of daily life. It sounds obscure, he admits, but underneath the technical language is a hopeful promise: the work is already familiar, and stabilizing it is closer than it seems.
Full Video Transcript
Okay, it looks like the microphone is working. This time around, we’re going to be talking about the circulation of the body of light.
And this video comes in response to a couple of questions.
As I’ve been working with you guys on one-on-one sessions, there have been numerous questions about the middle pillar ritual,
and particularly in regard to part of the middle pillar ritual
called the circulation of the light
or the circulation of the body of light.
And the questions have been very, very interesting.
So I want to maybe dispel some myths
and put some minds at ease about what the ritual does,
especially the circulation of the body of light portion of that ritual.
And this illustration comes from Don Craig’s Modern Magic.
this is how many people first envisioned the circulation of the body of light which is a
part of the middle pillar ritual so just to put some perspective into this the middle pillar ritual
is a self-initiation technique so people who do work in ceremonial magic the idea is that you
really can’t do magic yet you have to develop yourself and if you don’t do that then there
are problems that can result because you’re essentially you’re making yourself a vessel or
a channel of the light and the uh when you do that prematurely there are aspects of yourself that will
become uh problematic or inflated and uh so there’s there’s a lengthy time of intensive
mystical work in which you sort of purify the mind purify the soul purify the imagination
there are lots of let’s say unresolved dualities within the mind and these dualities pretty much
sabotage our thoughts and our behavior throughout the day and they cause suffering so the goal is
to be largely free of that suffering so that the aura let’s say or the imagination or the mind
becomes much more purified and becomes a better channel for the light of higher worlds if there
is such a thing and that’s what you find out like you engage in this work and you
start doing the practices just to see is this real is this really gonna is this gonna start
happening you know um and am i gonna become a channel for higher worlds to manifest in the
material world and so part of this middle pillar exercise um let’s talk about what the middle
Pillar does. It consists of several parts. Okay, so normally somebody who’s purifying themselves
so that they can become an adept, a magician, a magus of power, and supposedly have magical
powers or occult powers, every single day they do a couple of rituals at the very least.
They do a banishing ritual, sort of like casting a circle, the lesser banishing ritual of the
pentagram, which many, many people know. And then, uh, after that they do something called the middle
pillar. It’s very much like chakra work, working with the chakras, you know, cleaning them out or
whatever that is. Right. So the idea is that you have this central column of light, um, penetrating
from the crown of the head all the way down to the feet. Okay. Um, in the East it’s down to the
groin, basically, right? And in the West, we have it permeating the entire body. And the lowest
psychic center is actually at the feet. And this central column is supposedly very important as a
channel for divine light. In other words, to bring the influence of the higher divine worlds
into the material world, we need to be able to establish this sort of supposed middle pillar
channel. Does it really exist that way? Penetrating through the body like that?
Sort of. So I’ve talked about this in other videos. We take advantage of that schematic
when we do the visualization work because of the way that the human body has evolved over time.
And just to say it really quickly, we evolved from single-celled organisms into jellyfish and fish and reptiles and birds and whatever like that, and into primates and into human beings.
In the process of doing that, we started out only basically as entities that swam around feeding on each other or feeding on organic matter.
And so when we started out, we were basically like these feeding tubes with mouths and anuses.
And that was pretty much all there was to it, right?
But then we got more clever and we developed nervous systems which were capable of hunting food or running away from predators, getting more and more clever at this act of survival, swimming around and chasing after things or running away from things that are trying to eat us.
And as time went on, so we developed this more sophisticated anatomy.
so we so the first brain that we supposedly had was just regarding the feeding part the intestines
and we still have this brain today it’s the enteric brain the enteric nervous system is
there are like brain cells all throughout our gut through our intestines and it’s actually a very
important aspect of our consciousness and then of course we also have brain cells in the heart
that’s the cardiac brain okay um and then we have the brain cells in the head which are which is
of course highly developed especially in humans and um what happens in the process of evolving
this way uh we learn to identify um as this entity that moves up into the head and then now resides
up here and the sort of control tower mentality still able to hunt around for food and to run
away from predators and also look for mates and things like that and of course interestingly
enough as human beings we have developed this nervous system in the head to an astonishing
degree and suddenly more things other than just survival are now possible for us okay and so we
have this sort of you know at least uh in the daoist system is i think it’s maybe more accurate
i don’t know we we have the the enteric brain and the guts and we have the cardiac brain and the
heart and then we have the cephalic brain and the head okay and then there’s supposedly a psychic
center up here where it’s like the source of everything okay um the way that manifests i
think for us uh as beings who are relatively awakened let’s say if you’re awakening um when
the energy that’s evolving into you is allowed to flow freely from bottom to top let’s say
as and we become fully evolved human beings boom right um then when the brain is completely
awakened like that and relaxed and open um supposedly you can see it if you have psychic
vision or whatever like that there’s like a halo of light over the top of the head okay and this is
why we might posit there’s just some kind of psychic center up here and on the subtle planes
of existence okay can also be seen as horns of light or horns right but if you look at some of
the old art forms um even from as late as the renaissance the italian renaissance um uh people
who were who were supposedly very wise were are depicted with horns that’s because horns of light
the two hemispheres of the brain are supposedly lit up completely. And to, you know, second sight
or psychic vision, this can be seen as like little like horns of light sometimes, or just a halo
that’s around the head, like, you know, like Jesus and all that. Anyway, so we have this sort of
subtle anatomy. And it largely consists of the different areas of our spine or the center of
our body where we identify as that okay um as people get older let’s say as a child it’s all
about uh just needing things like looking for the mother’s breast and feeding so it’s very much
enteric at that point very much in regard to the um the the intestines right that’s that’s i think
freud called that the oral stage or something like that where everything’s about feeding
and then eating and pooping and peeing right and then eventually as uh as the kids develop into
adolescence they begin to form a sort of painful sense of identity and they’ll often point at their
heart about like how they feel and how who they are okay and eventually as you know westernized
adults we tend to identify then eventually with being up in the head where the brain is now fully
developed and now can run around and participate in this sort of um unenlightened um hyper
intellectualized uh society that is um that is somewhat delusional in regards to uh self-importance
and and um regards uh the brain as the most highly advanced uh piece of biology that exists
all this kind of stuff i guess they would call that psychosis in other words that that we when
we move up into our head like this we develop this sensation of being cut off from nature
because we’re able to think so objectively now that we can distance ourselves from anything
and then regard it as though it is not us as though we are not the world we can look at the
world as though the world is not us and we might even get so psychotic about it that we think that
oh we are heavenly beings who have descended into the flesh and that we are trapped here
we’re trapped inside the body right and not really looking at what’s happened here is to
have we come down into this world no it’s more accurate to say that we have come out of it we
have evolved upward into this sort of cephalic consciousness that is somewhat deluded and
dysfunctional, but very clever, very powerful, and possibly doomed to extinction by its own
cleverness. We’ll find out, I suppose. And so in tinkering with this system, when we’re trying to
wake up from this delusional head consciousness, we are reactivating this axis, this axis of light
that supposedly exists in the body, this axis where we identify being here or here or here or
whatever, anywhere along that line, right? And so that we can rediscover who and what we really are,
where we came from, from the slime, from the earth, oh no, and to be very sober about it,
okay? And of course, in the process of doing that, it becomes very interesting because we seem to
be able to see past the outer appearances of the world.
Once we begin to wake up to that sense of intense separation that exists up here,
when this channel begins to open,
we realize that the way we see things up here is not the way things are.
Yeah.
And primarily, I think in most traditions,
awakening in the heart is the most important thing going on there.
Okay.
We can’t take these things too literally.
it doesn’t mean that there’s this heart brain that you have to exist inside but the sensation
is that when when the axis is open again and you realize that this consciousness is not all there
is then their sensation is something like the heart is now awakened because uh there is this
light down below that is sort of cradling you supporting you and of course it’s the light from
which you evolve from down below and up into this consciousness that now sees the way it does okay
and so when we tinker around with this um the central channel uh awakening can occur all right
so the middle pillar exercise in the golden dawn tradition of ceremonial magic um so you would start
by casting a circle like doing the lesser banishing banishing ritual of the pentagram
to supposedly banish negative forces out to the sides right and then in the midst of that circle
then you call call into being this this channel light through the center of the body okay and in
order to do that there are like way stations that you imagine sort of like chakras and in the western
tradition they are the sphere of the tree of life they are the kabbalistic tree of life there’s one
at the top of the head, like hovering up here. There’s one envisioned in the throat. And there’s
one envisioned below the heart in the solar plexus, sort of like cradling the heart. And
there’s one envisioned in the groin that covers the genitals. And there’s one envisioned at the
feet. And it’s not like the Golden Dawn wasn’t aware of the idea of chakras. In fact, the
experience of the chakras can be very real. So they were also aware of them. But working with
chakra system is not essential you don’t have to um learn the chakra system uh to be clear the
chakras do sort of exist um but they exist as sort of these way stations of the energy of the central
central axis where the energy might be getting stuck so primarily the challenge can be to
dissolve those energy centers and so that when you when the sensation is that they’re gone
then the energy is flowing very cleanly and i know many people who disagree with that they say no you
need to strengthen the centers well the sensation seems to be that when you open a chakra it just
kind of disappears and there’s flow and there’s this big like maybe aura of buzzing sensation
and peace let’s say around the body uh and if and if the the fear and the desire begin to kick in
again, then the centers can reassert themselves. There’s like little choke points in the subtle
body, let’s say. How real these things are, it’s hard to say, but it might be best to say that
the imagination is its own place. And it’s very important to acknowledge the imagination as
a sort of soul that doesn’t really exist inside you. It exists inside the world, let’s say.
the world itself is a product of imagination and so are you and within the imagination all kinds of
psychic centers or schematics can appear and many of them appear just automatically because of the
way that the energy or the way that this the the psychic energy tends to circulate through the
imagination and in us the the nodes where we tend to identify as being in that space let’s say let’s
say oh i’m if somebody says who are you and you point to your head and then you’re identifying
with this spot inside your head then the energy is sort of getting stuck there and trying to regard
itself as an individual okay that’s not necessarily true okay and so when people have a full awakening
that goes away a sense of self dissolves okay and this is one of the reasons why
working with the central axis or with the chakras or with the middle pillar exercise
um scares the hell out of people and they’ll try to say that working with the central column
invites you to be possessed by demons and things like that that’s kind of true actually and we’re
going to talk about that uh the only thing i’d have to add to that is that the average person
is already walking around being possessed by all kinds of unresolved dualities that cause suffering
okay so whenever you do something and then you turn around and say why did i do that i don’t
know why i did that i keep doing that i did that yesterday too and it keeps screwing everything up
when i do it i don’t know why i do that so these unresolved dualities keep bubbling up trying to
do something right and they kind of end up ruining the show and um in the process of doing magic in
the outer order of the golden dawn these things get purified okay by purified i mean you become
more and more aware of them okay these and we would we could call them demons actually they
are unresolved conflicts unresolved dualities they’re like little stories in the mind that
have not finished and because they hurt we don’t want to finish them we stop them in their tracks
and we bury them and i don’t oh okay let’s leave let’s put put that aside right and so it’s almost
like the story that wanted to finish itself so it could just disappear is not being allowed to
finish and so it settles into the subconscious let’s say and it just sits there waiting to be
triggered back out again so it can try to finish itself okay and when when these things become
problematic we can refer to them as demons okay and these demons are everywhere they’re not just
in you they’re actually in nature okay they’re unresolved karmic unresolved dualities and they
are karmic forces becoming more aware of them makes you much more awake and then you can have
this sensation of this unblocked flow of energy up through the central channel let’s say and then
this um this sensation of having an aura or a or a just being suffused with perfect peace profound
all right so when we do the middle pillar work um we we vibrate or chant divine names at each of the
various centers, let’s say, in the body to sort of wake up that central axis.
The central axis is already functioning, but it tends to be sort of choked off or tangled up or
diverted because we’re afraid of it. The consciousness up here in the head is afraid
of what it actually is. And that’s one of the difficulties of doing work like this,
because then we get besieged by feelings of dread and uh but eventually what happens in this kind
of work is that the artificial personality in the head dissolves which can be quite catastrophic
actually um for a moment unless you are you know properly purified if you have a lot of experience
already doing middle pillar work and banishing work keeping your journal when it finally happens
to you it can be um a pleasant experience even but for many people it’s quite startling and it
happens a few times before they actually are able to let go and just disappear completely okay and
this they don’t really disappear it’s it’s more like the false self which thinks it’s up here and
and thinks it thinks it really is the body it it really thinks it is this thing that runs around
and looks for food and run and keeps away from danger that dissolves and there’s a much larger
more open kind of consciousness that now takes over okay we can talk about that in a bit more
what that’s like so after the central column is established then there’s this part of the exercise
called the circulation of the body of light and the energy supposedly then is circulated through
the body in these routes these sort of clockwise routes okay and then it’s circulated in various
ways throughout the body. And then part number three is you simply float in the aura. There’s
this egg shape of light floating, and you’re floating in the midst of that for up to 20
minutes. And that floating in the light or floating in the aura like that is very important.
It’s a very important part of the exercise. So I think we’ll talk about that in a bit.
The key to all of this, what are we trying to do exactly here? If you’re trying to master the
golden dawn system of magic. The key to that is found in the Adeptus Minor ritual, and that is
for somebody who is ready to become an adept, somebody who’s ready to wield magical powers.
And in the Adeptus Minor ritual, there’s this diagram on the lid of the pastos, the lid of the
coffin of Christian Rosenkreuz. I don’t want to go into too much detail, but on the lid of that
coffin you have this figure this god-like figure this jehovah-like figure this is actually the ben
adam okay and key or supposedly is the key to what the golden dawn system is all about
and so the middle pillar is a means of establishing what’s happening in this diagram
whatever that is okay and i’ll talk about that in a bit uh i’ll talk about how this is the key
to what it means to work magic as a magician or as an adept, as a magus of light.
Somebody who’s capable of working magic as a, someone who’s capable of working high magic
as opposed to merely sorcery or Goetia or, you know, casting a spell to win the lottery
or something like that.
But first we will talk about the middle pillar ritual.
So, The Middle Pillar Ritual, we owe largely to Israel Rigardi, who published it, I guess, back in the 1920s or 1930s, something like that.
And he got it from the Golden Dawn papers of the order he was in at the time for the Golden Dawn, and he developed it further.
And in the process of developing it, he compared it to various practices in Eastern traditions.
This is a very common thing that people do.
Now, the reason we look to the Eastern traditions in order to validate what we do in the West
is because there are practices in the East that have kind of stood the test of time.
There are a few practices in the East that still serve as enlightenment practices.
All right, so, and good examples of those are Tibetan Buddhism, certain forms of Buddhism,
there’s Tantric Shaivism, there’s Advaita Vedanta.
Okay, so there are systems of spiritual practice that within them still have paths
that have not succumbed to corruption over time okay and in the west it apparently we had
enlightenment practices in the distant past but they became corrupted they became debased over
time they became mere street sorcery okay so and much of what you get from the various
grimoires the magical grimoires which are like spell books or books of spirits right
um are are sensationalized um remarketed repackaged um versions of what used to exist
in the ancient mystery cults okay back in the classical era and before that as well
and those were pretty much wiped out and then lost for the most part surviving only in fragments
and surviving only in corrupted forms like these grimoires and the golden dawn is an attempt to
to reestablish a system of enlightenment practices from the ancient mystery traditions.
And the guiding light maybe primarily is Agrippa in his three books of occult philosophy who
insisted that there was once a system of high magic, which was all about becoming a vehicle
for divine forces or becoming enlightened, essentially, right? And he was also attempting
to re-establish that and the golden dawn took a lot of what he did and then gathered a lot of
other stuff together in an attempt to re-establish a system of enlightenment practices okay and
apparently it’s working now but when we try to verify whether whether it’s some legit or not
we can compare it to these systems that have survived in the east okay why wouldn’t we
practice the ones in the east well those are designed uh for people of an eastern culture
eastern mindset so they don’t quite connect with us they don’t have the same symbol set that we do
but it is possible of course to practice tibetan buddhism or practice tantric shivism
okay or practice taoism for that matter and uh and use those as a system of enlightenment practices
with some difficulty because we have to then understand eastern cultural concepts
all right so rigardi compared the middle pillar exercise to exercises found in the secret of the
golden flower which is chinese book primarily primarily a taoist text but heavily influenced
also by buddhism and other traditions and in the secret of the golden flower there is a mention of
the circulation of the light okay and this is actually really interesting because apparently
the idea of circulating the light like channeling it through the aura and these arcs and these
formations right um one of the translators of the secret of the golden flower claims that um that
was a mistranslation so the person um let me go back to this here richard wilhelm that first
translation he translated a phrase called turning the light around as circulating the light okay
and apparently he did that because he already knew that within certain taoist practices like
energy work there was a practice of the inner water wheel or the the idea of um channeling
psychic heat through the body by the use of breath and imagination and apparently within
the secret of the golden flower, when the author says, turn the light around, the author did not
mean to circulate the light. And so when Rigardi attempts to make the middle pillar practice
legitimate, he compares it to the translation by Wilhelm. And here’s what it says in the
translation from Wilhelm. Therefore, when the light circulates, the powers of the whole body
arrange themselves before its throne. Just as when a holy king has taken possession of the capital
and has laid down the fundamental rules of order, all the states approach with tribute. Therefore,
you only have to make the light circulate. That is the deepest and most wonderful secret. The light
is easy to move, but difficult to fix. If it is allowed to go along in a circle, then it crystallizes
itself. That is the natural spirit body, okay? Now this is what Thomas Cleary said is a mistranslation,
and the mistranslation really centers around this idea of circulating the light versus turning the
light around. These are two different things, all right? So in the Cleary translation, which he
claims is more accurate, this is the same passage. It’s very different. The celestial mind is like a
house. The light is the master of the house. Therefore, once you turn the light around,
the energies throughout the body all rise. Just turn the light around. This is the unexcelled
sublime truth. The light is easily stirred and hard to stabilize. When you have turned it around
for a long time, the light crystallizes. This is the natural spirit body. This is what is referred
to as the mind seal scripture at oh in the mind seal scripture as silently paying court and soaring
upward it’s very different now granted the the challenge of translating classical chinese into
english is daunting so when we look at various translations of different languages into english
we can see that translation in itself is a sublime and difficult art form okay so we shouldn’t be
surprised that we get variations like this and so this idea of turning the light around is different
according to cleary than circulating the light and what he says turning the turning the light
around is turning the light around essentially amounts to turning your attention inward so
basically the consciousness no longer looks at the objects out in the world necessarily
it looks at itself consciousness looks at itself if that’s even possible okay i think in the um
the more advanced buddhist traditions like zogchen um they refer to as they refer to it as
the consciousness simply settles within itself it’s still looking outward let’s say but it learns
that it’s actually it kind of settles inside of itself okay this idea of turning the light around
is very important and the main thing here is that what regard what regard he developed from the
golden dawn papers on the middle pillar is quite profound because it actually is a symbolic way
of doing both it turns the light around so that consciousness turned can focus inward
at least in potential anyway and it also circulates the light it does both in a symbolic
way but you have to know the key to it which i’m going to give you we’ll also talk about what’s the
big deal why does consciousness need to look at itself what’s the big deal about that we’ll talk
about that okay but let’s first let’s talk about um this um one of the questions about one of the
questions i get is oh well why do we circulate the light clockwise around the body okay one of
the circulations of the light is clockwise around the body okay this is basically an idea from
theurgy uh theurgy is the practice of high magic okay and the principles of theurgy were laid out
by iamblichus back in the i don’t know third fourth century something like that uh and as
you could you could pretty much tell as the adepts of the original golden dawn developed
their system it’s almost like you could see them checking off all of the things that iambicus
talked about in regard to to theurgy in other words theurgy consists of these various aspects
and so um the golden dawn was pretty much duplicating everything that theurgy does okay
i don’t know if that’s clear or not but we’ll get to that and one of the most important aspects of
theurgy and this is this goes for all traditions by the way this is very important um most of these
traditions evolved in the northern hemisphere and so the this there was this very important idea
of being able to flow with nature or with the world or with the with the way which being able
to flow with the flow of nature. And one of the most powerful things in nature, or the most
powerful thing in nature, we could easily argue, is the sun. And one of the first things that people
do in the golden dawn system of magic is that they do the four adorations to establish their
connection with various aspects of the sun. The sun at noon, the sun at sunset, the sun at midnight,
and the sun at sunrise. That’s really important, being able to re-establish your connection to the
sun. It’s very important to human consciousness because humans are diurnal. There’s no such thing
as a night person. If you think you’re a night person, no. It’s been demonstrated that people
who work night shifts are far less healthy than people who work during the day. To re-establish
your health it’s a very good it’s a very good idea to make sure you’re not exposed to blue light at
night like the blue light of the sky because our bodies have developed as this sort of sort of
bipolar system where we respond to the light of the sun in one particular way and when the sun
disappears from the sky another consciousness takes over and we pretty much go into sleep and
we go into the sort of mystical realm. And then when the sun comes up again, then we’re back into
the world of action, okay? And if we don’t do that, then we’re not really functioning as we
evolved to function, and we suffer. And it really plays havoc with our health. But I’m digressing
here. In other words, it’s very important to reestablish our connection to the cyclical
nature of the sun. And one way we do that symbolically in theurgic magic or high magic
is to move with the sun. So primarily in ceremonial magic, we almost always walk around
the circle clockwise. And so that’s why the circulation of the light happens the way it does.
It goes up this side of the body, it goes down that side of the body. So we have this
circulation of the light. The first circulation of the light goes up the right side, down the left.
and so as somebody is looking at you it’s a clockwise presentation okay and you’ll notice
the sun is behind this person and what i recommend is that when you do the middle pillar exercise
that you do sit at the eastern edge of your magic circle sort of like in the position of
osiris and the temple of the neophytes and then when you do the circulation of the light you are
presenting to your um the the floor of your temple space that clockwise circulation and so you you
are symbolically embodying the proper motion of the light in in mimicking of the powers of nature
you’re going with the forces of nature okay this is a very important point and and we don’t have a
lot of time to talk about all these things obviously but one of the characteristics of
the unenlightened mind is that we end up in a world and there’s a lot of against things going
on. We blame the universe for putting us here in this difficult state. We shake our fist at the
heavens and say, why did you put me here? So there’s a tendency to go against. So one of the
most important things we do in theologic magic is to make sure we’re going with the forces of nature.
and ultimately that means going with the cycle of the sun and so this person who is sitting here
with the sun rising behind her there’s another circulation where the light goes up the back and
down the front and as you can see that would also be mimicking the sun just to be clear okay so when
it’s circulating like this front like up the right side down the left so remember that in the magic
circle, the sun passes over your magic circle, but it dips to the south. If you’re in the northern
hemisphere, it dips to the south. And then when the sun goes down in the west, it swings under
the earth to the north, and then it comes up in the east, and then it swings to the south as it
goes overhead again. And that’s a clockwise circle. It goes around your circle clockwise
at a sort of angle okay and so we’re mimicking that when we circumambulate clockwise and that’s
why we almost never circumambulate counterclockwise and so when the when these when you circulate that
stream of energy up behind the back and over over the front and then down or then down the front
again you can see that’s also mimicking the path of the sun because it comes up behind her goes
overhead more or less right and then it goes down in front of her and just disappears under the earth
again okay so we’re mimicking that path symbolically that’s the main reason for doing that
okay there’s another reason for that too because um as the golden dawn magician develops uh he or
she um sort of installs the various spheros of the tree of life in the aura and so these paths of of
circulating light also tend to activate these various uh imaginary psychic centers in the aura
okay so visualizing them going this way is very helpful for that too and then so just to be clear
there are like three different three different circulations one is the first one is up the right
side down the left the second one is up the back down the front and then the third one goes up
through the center which is that central column and then explodes like a fountain at the top and
then comes down on all sides. Goes up the center, explodes back around on all sides. And this is the
most important one, really, because this shows the direction in which we evolved. The direction in
which we evolved to become what we are. And notice we’re not really resisting that process of becoming
what we’ve become. Even though we’ve become something unenlightened, we’ve become these
entities that subsist on suffering in order to continue ourselves, unfortunately. And now we’re
trying to wake up from that suffering. And rather than going against that process, which would kind
of shut down our whole lifestream, we are coming to recognize how it works. Very important. We go
with nature, not against it. And this is a very important cycle here. Now, the reason that
working with the chakras or working with these middle pillar energies the reason that um you
know orthodox uh christians let’s say or or um sort of these exoteric religions the reason that
they’re so much against this stuff um is because they’ll say well you’re inviting you’re playing
you’re playing with fire okay and there are demons that are going to possess you things like that
right? And actually, that’s true. Okay, so when one of these, okay, you’re walking around
unenlightened, okay? And so, if you’re walking around unenlightened, you are constantly being
taken over by these little unresolved dualities that control your thoughts and behavior,
who have compulsive thoughts, compulsive behaviors that tend to ruin things, right?
That make us suffer. And the way these things come over us, they kind of arise up in the body
like that. And they’re going to rise behind the eyes. And it’s like, before you know it,
they’ve taken you over. You don’t even realize what’s happened. And then what they kind of do
is they come out around the body and they create this narrative of what the world is like. This is
like your sphere of sensation. And as they envelop you like this, they now paint the world in a
particular way. For example, if you fall in love, they paint the world as a lonely place and a place
where you’re never going to be complete unless you find your soulmate or somebody of the opposite
sex who’s going to complete you. And if you don’t get that person and they walk away from you,
it’s like they took a piece of you away, right? It’s like, oh, right. That’s not real. But this
sort of Venus spirit, this Venusian spirit takes us over when we fall in love and then paints that
picture of the world boomed come this this is almost like this veil comes down around us and
now everything’s painted in terms of this love dynamic and now we are incomplete and we need a
soulmate and we have to hunt around it becomes this epic adventure when in fact we’re just
walking around in this bubble and our friends can see it they’re oh god he’s totally flipped
out over this girl or something like that right um they can see it and after the relationship is
over, years later, you look back and say, I don’t know what I was thinking. What came over me? I
don’t know. Well, it’s that spirit that comes over you and says, oh, you’re in love now. You must do
this. All these things you need to do now. Otherwise, you will not feel complete. Now,
these spirits who take you over, okay, they’re actually quite interesting to work with,
especially when you do them in a hardcore way in terms of magic. So long story short,
this sort of abyss that the demons rise up out of is right down the center of your body okay
as you develop and do this middle pillar work combined with keeping a magical journal combined
with doing banishing work um eventually the false unawakened self will dissolve and the way that can
feel. It might feel like you’re being assaulted by energy rising from below. And the way that
might erupt or come over you is like frightening images of being eaten or disappearing into
nothing or being crushed to death, being snuffed out of existence. That’s because when the ego dies,
that that death is confused with literal death, that through countless eons, we have been
witnessed to the threat of death and the death of our friends or fellow species members, whatever.
And so when the control tower entity in the head feels that its demise is imminent,
it panics and thinks that the whole organism is going to die now. And that’s simply not true.
And when that entity is gone, then a new type of life emerges.
It’s best characterized by once the control tower entity in the head sort of disappears,
once the ego dies, then you become intensely aware of the central axis, let’s say.
First of all, you become aware that the central axis isn’t really there.
It’s more of a, it tends to formulate there, but it’s not inherently there, okay?
and what you notice then also is that whenever one of your unresolved dualities wants to come
and do something you’re immediately aware of it and you won’t it won’t it cannot take you over
it’s like it’s almost like you have this entity coming up that says oh let’s go do this now
and you’re like oh really and then you look at it and say oh i see what you’re trying to do you’re
trying to get me to fall in love and have babies and like and all this stuff right to perpetuate
the species and i can see how you have evolved to function that way okay and actually that’s quite
beautiful you know there’s nothing nothing wrong with that and you might even choose to play along
with it and you know fall in love or do something like that right or you know other things will take
you over too like you know trying to become wealthy trying to um trying to run away from
predators things like that um these are all things that are perfectly fine but as an awakened being
they can no longer um control you anymore as they arise you become aware of them and you can stop
them and you can work with them and transform them into other things so pretty much the way that um
these spirits rise or these unresolved dualities rise is through the central axis where they can
now come down around you and paint this picture of the world that compels you to act in a particular
their way, that defines you as this entity that must go do these things. And as you know, these
various dramas that we find ourselves ensnared in are not inherently real. Now, what this means is
that, well, what I should point out maybe is that you might notice that in various traditions,
the completely awakened being is perceived as somebody who’s sitting in the midst of a flower.
that’s because the way this is experienced is as these various entities rise okay then they’re
inviting you to to participate in this kind of reality or this kind of reality or this kind of
reality okay none of these realities are inherently real sorry to say like being in love with somebody
it’s not really inherently real but it’s perfectly fine um an enlightened being can still fall in
love, but they would not be duped by it. They would see the drama that the nervous system is
creating and appreciate it and know that it’s not inherently real. And this produces a tremendous
freedom. And there’s all kinds of little dramas that the nervous system invents to try to get
you to do things. And the enlightened being supposedly can see through all of those
and appreciate them. There’s nothing inherently wrong with them. They’re just now free of them,
free of all of them hopefully and that doesn’t mean you don’t play along with them you still
might play along with them and that’s perfectly fine as these entities rise they’re like the
petals of a flower that’s why you know it’s symbolic to see the enlightened being sitting
in the midst of a flower okay and uh so the idea of being being immersed in the middle pillar it’s
almost like you got the flower underneath you and the energy constantly arising and the flower
petals pretty much falling away, and you not really responding to any of them necessarily.
They don’t have to take you off into this reality or that reality as they continuously unfurl.
And looking in the midst of all of these entities as they arise, like flower petals,
you’re wondering, where am I? Am I one of these flower petals? Because as they arise,
each one of these is trying to be you. And so when you’re in love, you end up identifying with
this flower petal that says, oh, this is the way it is. This is the way they’re going to run after
that, right? And so when somebody is completely awake, they don’t do that anymore. They might
play along with what’s going on, but they know it’s not who they are. And who they actually are
is none of those petals at all. Just like that, they’re pretty much the empty space
in the midst of that flower. So all of these various dramas that arise and invite us to
participate in them as we go through our consciousness, all these dramas that have
been programmed into our nervous system, right? None of them is inherently real. And each one of
them will keep rising and inviting us to play along. And we can simply look at them and see
the unreality of them, which means then that we can look at the world as it actually is,
instead of the way the nervous system paints it. And the last part of the middle pillar exercise
is the floating in the light portion. So after you have conjured up that middle pillar with the
various spheroth activated by the names of God, then you circulate the light around the body
and up the center and out to the sides several times. And then you just simply float in the
light. Okay, when people do the middle pillar exercise, they can do it lying down, they can do
it sitting in the east facing west in a chair or they can do it standing up preferably facing west
it doesn’t really matter which way you face so you could face east okay and um for the floating
in the light portion uh if you do it sitting in a chair let’s say you would still imagine your feet
kind of sticking down through the chair straight down into the floor so that all of the various
So you have Kether up here, you have Doth here, you have Tifareth here, and then all the way down
to the feet, you have Malkuth. Okay. And if you do the middle pillar exercise sitting in a half
lotus position, yeah, you can still picture your feet sticking down through the floor.
It might sound weird to describe that, but just try it. It’s actually quite natural to visualize
it that way. And then eventually, as you are walking around in the world as a newly realized
adept, you can feel the middle pillar and you can feel the entire tree of life formulated in your
aura sometimes. It doesn’t mean it’s really there, not intrinsically, but it has been installed
there. It’s kind of like this symbolic overlay that the soul of the world is happy to put on
as clothes and present itself it presents its energies to you in a particular way in a manner
that you have provided for it so these various systems of magic or philosophy are kind of like
overlays which allow the soul or the soul of the world the magical forces in the world to present
themselves to you in terms of that symbolism it’s very important and one of the worst things about
the time uh we find ourselves in this age of modernity is that modernity tends to regard
all of these systems as completely hocus pocus um you know um as uh superstition or whatnot like
that right when in fact modernity is itself a form of superstition that is kind of anti-magic
you know and anti-anti-spirituality because it’s very reductionistic it only focuses on
the surface level of things as though that’s the only thing that matters all right so this i had
this floating in the light portion is when you just float in the aura this is a very important
aspect of the the ritual okay as students develop in the golden dawn curriculum the way i present
it in the kabbalah magic book which is the way that my teachers gave it to me uh the um the
when you visualize the aura around the body this is one particular level of the universe
so there are four different levels four different worlds of kabbalah let’s say right
there’s the material world which is the lowest supposedly right then we have the world of dreams
which is yatsira the world of the world of imagination yatsira and then we have um the
world of bria the world of creation which is like dreamless sleep it’s like nothing it’s darkness
And then we have the world of emanation, which is atzaluth, highest world.
So the lowest world is the world of the physical body.
So in other words, you’re already here in the lowest world, which is asiya, which is the physical body.
And then, of course, then there’s the subtle body, which is you could just visualize that as a body of light contained within your skin, let’s say, right?
That has your shape.
and then we have the aura around the body which is the word of bria which is like the womb of
creation and then we have the absolutic world which is the world of pure potentiality which
cannot be visualized but in the golden dawn work in the kabbalah magic book we visualize that as
the tree of life itself the schematic of the tree of life with the 10 spheros so the the highest
world is the world of pure potentiality okay um and then there’s the word of bria which is the
world of dreamless sleep which is just just the substance of the mind itself but no form what
happens with the creation of the world let’s say or the creation of the universe is that um if you’ll
notice in genesis um the first thing that happens is that there’s light separated from darkness
let there be light right and then what god separates the heaven from the earth or something
like that separating the light from the dark this is when that happens that’s the world of atzaluth
and baria formulating and in golden dawn these are represented also by fire and water so the
first elements fire and water appear so the world of absolute pure potentiality is now wedded to
the world of creation the world of pure mind substance the way that we experience these
worlds is in as pure darkness so when we sleep at night when we experience dreamless sleep
supposedly we are now completely snuffed out we don’t there’s no consciousness there’s no
eye consciousness going on and we remember nothing from that that time supposedly most of us and so
if you but eventually what you realize is that realm of darkness or oblivion that you enter each
night which is very nice by the way we always we can refresh right um that world of darkness is
actually completely suffused with light but we can’t see the light because there’s no there are
no forms in that world to bounce off of this is very important concept okay so um and the way that
we envision that we envision this in magical work is that the world of pure darkness is penetrated
by a beam of light let’s say and you can’t see that beam of light because there’s nothing for
it to bounce off of there are no forms it just goes right through it right and that beam of
light is sort of like a phallic power which which impregnates that world of pure mind stuff pure
darkness and that world of pure darkness is the world of creation and from it forms begin to arise
the forms appear in the world of imagination and dreams the dream the dream world or the world of
visualization the world of thoughts that’s the yetzeratic world okay within that world of forms
all these powers begin to appear all these characters begin to appear and the important
thing about these various forms is that they are aspects of the divine which are now sort of being
paraded in front of the divine for what purpose it’s hard to say it’s like god is trying to get
to know himself so he’s kind of spewing his guts into this world of formation to look at them it’s
kind of like parading himself in front of himself right so um and as that’s happening all this is
now erupting into existence right now in the world of in the world of the mind it’s mainly
forms erupting as images and scenarios of the dream world all these fantastic worlds of dream
and uh the astral plane things like that and eventually those um those forces that are in
the astral world get very much tangled up and lost inside of each other and they develop they
develop a sort of amnesia and uh eventually end up in in this sort of gridlock sort of temporary
stuck way which is now the um the world of asia where we have lots of objects bumping into each
other now or they seem to be anyway it’s none of this is actually real but it now seems this seems
to be happening and this is the world we find ourselves in in the physical body i’m saying all
this because it’s really important because when you sort of visualize yourself floating in the
aura the aura represents the um briatic world the world of creation and that world of creation
is penetrated by that beam of light which is absolute which is that um the highest world now
penetrating into it which then creates all these forms in the imagination yeah i think you can see
where this is going now right and of course um within the briatic world all of these various
powers are already there but only as potential they are just about to emerge okay so when we
work with the aura in particular ways we’re able to call upon these various entities and their
potentiality okay and then of course um possibly then body something forth so the forms begin to
erupt out of them in the imagination which can now produce various dramas and things like that
okay i would say one of the most important aspects of ceremonial magic is that floating in the aura
portion of it because that is essentially your ability to tune in to the world of atzaluth and
to the world of bria and then generate the forms and yet sira that you want to generate or that
you want to call forth as opposed to um having those forms erupt sort of willy-nilly according
to karmic forces okay because if you don’t take control of that process then you pretty much all
that’s happening is just karma and then your life is um sort of contaminated by suffering as all
these forces are trying to work out their unresolved dualities um just all over each other
trying to me me me now me no me me like in other words they keep trying to um finish their
storylines without you there to really direct how they take shape how they come out of the world of
creation okay you can see this is very profound because the adept is somebody who now has some
measure of control over how these karmic forces come out into the world of yatsira and the way
that they come out and and and present themselves selves in Yetzirah determines how those forces
also will come out and eventually trickle down into the world of Asiya which means that your
ability to create forces in the dream world or entities whatever structures in the in the dream
world has an effect more or less on your physical life this is real magic okay it’s not like casting
a spell and winning the lot over here, winning the lottery over there. It’s more like changing
the architecture of the inner world through the highest contact of the highest worlds and
reformulating how Yetzirah is configured so that life now flows in a more harmonious
way than before. Right. There’s also this idea of doing this spiral formation around the body.
I’m not sure where that came from
and I know Rigardi
presented that in his book
The Middle Pillar
and when my teachers taught The Middle Pillar to me
they left this one out
I don’t think there’s anything really wrong with it
I find it to be
possibly a more advanced form
of circulation
because the way that he presented it
it goes counterclockwise around the body
so it starts at the feet
and it goes up the front of the body
and it goes around like this
like it so it goes counterclockwise around the body now when we circulate when we circumambulate
counterclockwise in ritual it is not to go against the sun it’s very important we don’t go
counterclockwise to to go against nature we simply go counterclockwise once we realize what’s actually
happening we’ve already created a force clockwise and there’s a whole drama that we have now
orchestrated to come into being from absolute to bria to yatsira um and by doing that clockwise for
circumambulation okay now so the only thing that we’re accomplishing whenever we go
counterclockwise is to simply dissolve that force okay poof gone it’s done right and so that’s the
really the only reason to ever move counterclockwise is to unmake something that has been made
not to go against nature and destroy nature or anything like that or anything evil nonsense.
Okay, so the only reason to do that is to dissolve. And so that’s why I think this spiral
formation that goes counterclockwise around the body up to the head, I think that’s a more advanced
form of the middle pillar when you’re basically dissolving the self. In other words, you’re
disappearing into samadhi or you’re basically dissolving the outward perceptions and really,
really, really meditating to disappear into the timeless realm. Okay. And so that’s not something
you would do in the outer order, I would think. Okay. So it’s perfectly legitimate, but it’s not
something that I teach or that my teachers ever taught to me in the outer order grades, in case
anybody’s wondering about that. Now, there’s also this idea of, let’s go back. So another question
I’ve gotten is like, well, isn’t it true that you’re supposed to circulate the energy through
the body in other words not up the right side of the body and down the left but up through the
right side of the body inside and then down through the left side of the body okay and they
get this from those taoist water wheel practices where that’s primarily what’s done so um that’s
perfectly fine but you have to remember that uh in the golden dawn um everything’s backwards the um
your imagination doesn’t exist. In other words, there’s not an imagination inside you.
You yourself are being imagined. You are inside the imagination. And so one of the ways to
acknowledge that is when things are flowing around you and being imagined, you don’t just see them
as stuck inside you. I hope that makes sense. Okay. So in that sense, it’s perfectly fine to
have them flowing up through the body and then down the other side of the body like that, right?
um so what i might recommend is that you do both in other words when the energy comes up the side
of the body you feel the sort of electrical heat signature rising up along the skin or through that
through that side of the body along with the arc of light that goes up the side and then as the
light descends down the other side then you feel the sort of prickling sort of tingling electric
sensation on the skin let’s say all the way down that side of the body until it disappears into
the psychic center at the feet okay um that way you’re doing both pretty much okay so now the key
to golden dawn magic is that the various powers that exist within the dream world have been sort
of um traumatized or corrupted by life in the physical world and so now we are left um we kind
of emerge in the physical realm, like we have amnesia, we don’t know what’s happened, who are
we, what are we, what’s going on, and all of these forces are erupting in our consciousness, trying to
get us to live out this drama, that drama, chase after this, run away from that, go get her, not her,
that one, this one, right? So the mind keeps jerking us around, getting us to do all these different
things, many of them which are even contradictory, and this is how we find ourselves. And so these
forces that we are sort of immersed in are are envisioned as governed by the Elohim the gods
okay and to make it simple they are governed by the seven planetary gods the sun the moon
mercury venus etc right and um so any of the problematic entities that erupt into your life
and kind of mess because you’re large unconscious right um any of these entities could be seen as
governed by one of these elohim powers and so this idea of circulating the energy is um it’s kind of
like um uh what they were saying in the secret of the golden flower is that um in other words
the executive power or that spirit power is now roaming around the kingdom letting all these
powers know that it’s there and it’s supervising it’s in it then it settles into that center
spot and then becomes the aura and and and suffuses everything with harmony so supposedly
all of these um various elohim powers within within the aura let’s say right are now um
bowing down to the one um supreme uh entity or that supreme entity which is pure awareness or
pure consciousness okay and in the golden dawn schema it would be um yaheshua or even osiris
or something like that right um it would be the lord of the universe which all these powers now
settle down in the midst of and and on on the scale of an individual person that’s the microcosm
um all of the powers of the soul bow down to the higher self the holy guardian angel whatever that
right so um and so when we circulate the light the idea is that this sort of executive power
is going on tour it’s almost like campaigning right it’s to let letting all the powers of the
psyche that are sort of you know constellated all crooked to get in line and harmonize and then we
have this idea of the perfect sphere oath of the tree of life now forming themselves and all working
in harmony does this actually work yes it can okay but you have to know that that’s kind of
what’s happening. Is it literally what’s happening? No, but the interesting thing is that the psyche
really can’t accomplish this unless you do play some kind of dramatic game with it that’s like
this, okay? And so this is a very powerful schematic for accomplishing this kind of inner
harmony, okay? And then, of course, we’re going to get around to that thing of turning the light
around okay so um basically what’s happening now is we’ve um this is not literally true but you can
visualize a human being as somebody who’s come into this world and they kind of have all these
elohim forces which are kind of just all over the place like fighting with each other sort of like
the ancient greek gods who didn’t get along sometimes they got along sometimes they didn’t
get along they were jealous all these problems were you know resulting from um and uh so in
other words when you do this type of work it is an attempt to understand these various powers and
how they work so that you can eventually start to have them harmonize they actually begin to
harmonize on their own because they they borrow your faculty of awareness and through your faculty
of awareness they can see how they fit into the larger scheme of things you don’t need to command
them to do anything necessarily you just need to examine them and speculate about them empathize
with them and eventually all these various powers will settle down okay i know that sounds really
sounds weird but if you don’t have a system to work with like this then the psyche doesn’t know
what to do and of course the you know the system of the seer oath of the tree of life or the chakra
systems these are these are not the only systems that that can accomplish that kind of work but i
do have to say that the system of the sphere of oath is very profound very rich it’s a full fully
lived life with all these dynamic powers of the soul being awakened it’s not just about being a
mystic and disappearing into white light it’s about being a full-bodied multicolored being
that experiences the divine amidst everything in the world so turning the light around so what
you’ll notice is that um there’s an opportunity not only to circulate the light but also to have
consciousness then turn around and look at itself in other words a consciousness that turns around
and settles into that middle pillar okay and what this really means to us in the outer order of the
work when we’re doing the purification process is that as these various as these various unresolved
dualities arise that we are aware of them coming up to try to take us over up the center enveloping
us in this bubble which is now telling us what to do we are aware of these things as they arise
and so in other words turning the light around means becoming aware of whatever is trying to
become you so when we are unenlightened and we’re walking around the world clueless and in a dream
state just responding to every passion that happens to come our way it is because there
are various entities that are making a sock puppet out of us moment to moment. So they arise in the
body and they take us over and they say, go do this. And we’re like, okay, all right, I’ll do
that. And so turning the light around is simply looking at those entities as they arise to try to
become you and take you over. They are living out their dramas, using you to do it. They are
unresolved karmic forces that are much older than you are, most of them, and they are trying to work
themselves out using you and so this process of waking up is to become aware of these forces as
they try to use you to work out their inner conflicts you can help them do that even better
it’s not like you’re trying to resist them you’re trying to understand them okay so turning the
light around is it’s not just like consciousness looking at itself what does that even mean
it’s more like you symbolically you’re turning around and watching the middle pillar and you’re
watching these entities as they arise and create these unreal dramas that try to present themselves
as real, okay? And these entities that arise usually present themselves as you. And so maybe
I shouldn’t say any more in regard to that, but turning the light around is not just consciousness
looking at itself. It’s more like consciousness looking at all of the entities that are trying
to co-opt it or trying to impersonate it. And consciousness basically looks at them and says,
no, I’m the boss here. I don’t do what you say. You simply follow my lead and I’m going to help
you. And this is why in the magical traditions, they would say, who’s the servant and who’s the
master? And there’s that famous song by the police, when you find your servant is your master.
Now, what that can refer to is that all my life, I have been the servant of all of these demonic
entities that are trying to get me to do this and do that. Find a mate. Get wealthy. Move into this
type of house. Get this type of car. Gain status. And when you learn to understand how these things
function and how they have evolved to function that way, they no longer boss you around. You
are no longer their bitch. They are your servants, and they like it. Actually, when you begin to
recognize them and help them harmonize they settle in they’re ready they’re ready for being to be led
like in a in a loving compassionate way they’re ready for it if you fight them no no that’s there
they will not respond very well to that obviously so all this nonsense about you know threatening
demons and um threatening to cast them into hell unless they do as you say this is really bad news
basically, okay? Any results you get from that would be temporary and the long-term consequences
would be far worse, of course. What you resist persists. I want to say something, a little bit
something about the energetic body, okay? What you’ll notice is that the middle pillar work with
the circulation of light, it works with both this idea of the energy body and the circulation of
of powers and things like that or static electricity throughout the body but it also
works with the process of becoming completely awakened it does both provided you understand
what’s happening with that middle pillar and you see it non-literally okay so this idea of turning
the light around is still embodied in that middle pillar practice but also we have this idea of
circulating the light this is very real and you develop the ability to con to call up energy in
the body. One of the best ways to do this is to live in a very cold environment, like the Tibetans
did. People made such a big deal out of the Tibetan Buddhists in the very cold, high mountains
of the Himalayas, walking around virtually naked in freezing cold weather, as though that is an
amazing spiritual feat, right? No. Humans are able to adapt to cold very quickly within a matter of
days. And we do that when we’re exposed to cold, we develop brown fat. Our fat cells develop brown
fat cells, which are full of mitochondria capable of generating body heat. So if you go to the
Himalayas and as you are now, let’s say, let’s say if you’re from Florida like me, you go to the
Himalayas and you fall into a river, you’re probably going to die. Even you come out of the river and
the water freezes on you right away, it’s too cold for you, you’re going to go into hypothermia and
die. However, if you’ve already spent some time acclimating for just a few days, your body will
develop enough brown fat that you will actually survive. It’s pretty amazing. Okay, so what
happened with these Buddhist adepts is that they simply lived in these very harsh, cold conditions,
developed a lot of brown fat, and were able to walk around with virtually no clothes on and
it was really cold. And they were fine. And it just seemed amazing to people who had never seen
that before. And so what comes along with this is the ability to control these brown fat cells
and generate body heat at will. It’s essentially a form of static electricity, which you’re able
to generate with the body. So if you want to develop these somatic powers and the ability
to do Reiki healing and things like that, then yes, one of the best things you can do is expose
yourself to cold every day. Take a cold shower every day. Even if you live in Florida, that
relative cold is enough for you to develop brown fat and eventually as you do middle pillar work
you will begin to notice it’s i think i can turn on i think i can heat up my hands at will
amazing you know in other words you you start to develop this sense of being able to do that
uh it’s kind of like um some people have the ability to wiggle their ears okay and other
people can’t do it and but then of course they keep trying and keep trying and suddenly they
can do it it’s like oh i somehow my brain is connected to the nerves there and now they know
how to wiggle the ears right so um what what this is it’s like um it’s an old um it’s a vestigial
trait when we used to be um a different type of life form like when a dog raises his ears like
this like to listen we apparently we used to live in a form like that but we’ve evolved into this
now and we can’t wiggle our ears anymore but there’s still a vestigial um ability to sort of
wiggle the ears a little bit that’s still there and once you find it you find the you find the
nerve endings whatever like that you’re able to do it okay the reason i’m saying this is because
the ability to activate the brown fat in your body kind of works the same way it’s like you
have no idea how to do it right now but eventually you stumble across it you you discover it and
the oh it’s like oh there it is and i can oh that’s what it feels like i can do it now okay
so the ability to act to work with this mitochondrial energy is something that you can
develop relatively quickly provided you expose yourself to cold temperatures this does not mean
doing icy cold plunges simply um going like swimming in a lake once a day would be plenty
okay and of course if you do these things if you do cold plunges if you expose yourself to
cold temperatures, your safety is your responsibility, okay? Cold plunges can be very
dangerous if you have hardening of the arteries and things like that, okay? So don’t, in other
words, whenever you try things like this, obviously it’s your responsibility. You have to do your
research and be aware of your health conditions. Now, what’s this idea of crystallization? In other
words, if I turn the light around and I’m looking, the consciousness is looking at itself, right?
or consciousness becomes aware of all these entities that are now trying to arise in it
and is aware of that whole process what’s this idea with crystallization okay um the idea the
secret of the golden flower is not a very it’s not really a very good mystical text it’s so
incredibly obscure and symbolic it’s almost like written in code not as bad as medieval alchemy
let’s say, but pretty bad in that regard. So the idea of crystallization, what it simply means,
as far as I can tell, it simply means stabilization. And so when they say it’s
relatively easy to experience the inner light, let’s say, but it’s very hard to crystallize it,
that simply means stabilization. In other words, it’s possible to have epiphanies of enlightenment
through spiritual practice, which is not that hard. Many of you have already experienced that
doing the Kabbalah magic work, and yet what we lament about is that it’s here, and then it’s
gone, and then we’re back in suffering mode again. It’s like, oh man, and then of course we spend the
rest of our lives trying to get back there, and the effort to get back there makes it even worse,
right? So the idea of crystallization means simply that these brief flashes of enlightenment,
they’re no they’re no longer flashes they basically become permanent in other words we we
what the goal is to stabilize in the enlightened state not just to you know have an occasional
epiphany here and there okay so crystallization means what that enlightenment experience now
becomes our everything which basically is now everything and this whole idea of the philosopher
stone but pretty much plays into that um that metaphor of of the um the the realization of
enlightenment crystallizing and becoming permanent for us okay that’s what that’s what that really
means um as far as i can tell i don’t know this might have been the most obscure video i’ve ever
ever made and so i always worry about whether this is clear or not so hopefully this was clear
all right so until next time
Source: Lyam Christopher