OEITH #208 Personal Reflections on Awakening

Revisiting my experiences of awakening and reflecting on how things seem now, we ponder along the way: the culture of silence on awakening within Buddhism; the notion that enlightened people never claim enlightenment; my first ever experience of meditation; my failure at regular practice and a farewell to Buddhism; development of an interest in magick; returning to meditation as part of magical training; meeting Alan Chapman; effects of Alan's influence; embarking on the Knowledge and Communication of the Holy Guardian Angel; the 2012 prophecies and the Viking Youth Power Hour; encountering the teachings of Daniel Ingram; how to identify an authentic teacher; the advantages of “spiritual shopping”; using magick in order to experience awakening; replica hand grenades and black monoliths; my lack of faith in magick and my own experience; practical magick for mystical results; the danger of expectations; ego inflation versus lack of confidence; chaos magick as the tradition of not having a tradition; parallels between Crowley's Liber Samekh and Ingram's stages of insight; the realisation that the Dark Night of the Soul is progress; the basic and seemingly universal structure of awakening; discovering this structure all over the place; how the tradition and the practice do not seem to matter; intention and any suitable practice is all that is needed; my brash claims of attainment, and the reasons for this; how I used Ingram's teachings on the Buddhist four path model as my roadmap; descriptions and possible definitions of the four paths; a preliminary shift concerning distraction; my experience of first path: meeting Ultimate Truth; second path as the repetition of this; the major shift of a third path: a permanent awareness of something impossible and divine; God and death; the advice of Christopher Titmuss on dealing with a persistent duality; my experience of a seeming fourth path: nowhere from which to look; why I no longer regard myself as fully awakened; how the awareness has changed over time; a shift of interest towards trauma and karma; wondering about Christina Feldman's definition of enlightenment a “the implosion of all sankharas”.

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Duncan Barford (2021). The Magick of A Dark Song: The Abramelin Ritual in Fiction and Reality. Hurstpierpoint: Heptarchia.

Alan Chapman & Duncan Barford (2009). The Blood of the Saints. Brighton: Heptarchia.

Alan Chapman & Duncan Barford (2009). The Urn. Brighton: Heptarchia.

Alan Chapman & Duncan Barford (2010). A Desert of Roses. Brighton: Heptarchia.

Aleister Crowley (1930). Liber Samekh, https://tinyurl.com/2p8a2ned (sacred-texts.com). Accessed January 2022.

Daniel M. Ingram (2018). Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, revised and expanded edition. London: Aeon.