|
Post by jfaroe47 on Aug 26, 2016 6:41:13 GMT
Hi everyone,
I'm not a member of a Masonic Lodge or any other order, nor do I know anyone who's into the Right Hand Path. Forgive me if this is a basic question, but how does someone even get started with this in the first place?
I am a former fundamentalist Christian, now a Christian Universalist with esoteric interests. I've studied the history of Kabbalah, Hermeticism, Neoplatonism, Buddhism, Rosicrucianism, Jungian therapy, some techniques like lucid dreaming and OBEs...and strangely I still feel like I have no clue where to start. I know a fair amount about the systems, but what does it look like to *practice* any of this? Do you think it's necessary to join an organization? Can one "self-initiate" (whatever that means)?
NOTE: I have more than a few hang-ups about some aspects of the occult. I'm very skeptical about many things that are taken for granted here: astrology, auras, chakras, binaural beats, etc (I identify more with Alan Moore's self-deprecating approach). I also deeply distrust goetia, Thelema, and anything Left Hand Path.
|
|
|
Post by peter2 on Aug 26, 2016 22:14:07 GMT
Hi
The Right Hand path is easy to start on. The first requirement is building Right Relationships. This includes relationships with humans and animals and one's own self.
As you can imagine there is a lot of work for most people in learning to love themselves.
Right relationship with oneself includes diet: physical, emotional and mental.
There is also a need to establish Right Livelihood - for example not selling products that degrade or exploit the users.
As these are developed, there is also a benefit in learning meditation. A simple and most valuable technique is to visualize light coming from the heart and filling the body. Take 15 minutes twice daily. As a technique this is sufficient for almost all humans for quite some years.
As you do these things your perspective on Life and its Meaning will change.
Your changing perspective will be one of the outer signs of the inner process called initiation. The genuine Initiate is always self-made. Ritual initiation only rarely triggers an inner initiation.
|
|
|
Post by boreades on Oct 29, 2016 22:44:43 GMT
jfaroe47Re "strangely I still feel like I have no clue " You are not alone; many people who have followed many of the mystery schools still find it a mystery. I would still encourage you to follow a righteous path. We each have to choose our own path. For what it's worth, in my case, I found my way via gardening. From which I gained a rich and fertile appreciation of the wholeness of the universe, and the cycles of life and death. And better vegetables. According to Alan G. Hefner, the great German theologian Karl Barth a few years ago described British Christianity as "incurably Pelagian" The rugged individualism of the Celtic monk (Pelagius), his conviction that each person is free to choose between good and evil. And his insistence that faith must be practical as well as spiritual remain hallmarks of Christians in Britain. And the British imagination has remained rooted in nature, witnessed by the pastoral poetry and landscape painting in which Britain excels, indeed that peculiar British obsession with gardening is Celtic in origin. Visitors to the British Isles are often shocked at how few people attend church each Sunday. Yet to the Britons, church-goers as well as absentees, the primary test of faith is not religious observance, but daily behaviour towards our neighbours, and towards one’s pets, livestock and plants." This resonates with the words of another great man. Gandhi. “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” Of course, I'm not saying you have to be British, or Christian, it's all an allegory, we are free to choose, and there are many paths.
|
|
|
Post by peter2 on Oct 30, 2016 0:28:22 GMT
> I found my way via gardening
An excellent example of the work of the Fellowcraft - seeking the hidden mysteries of nature and science. This is an entirely valid entry to the Mysteries and well suited to many types of human.
|
|
|
Post by ritualist on Feb 25, 2017 23:03:15 GMT
Try actually writing your own ritual. It really makes you examine structures and question why we do thinks in masonry and esoteric orders
|
|