Applied Magic

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The following conversation began with the above post by Dakota Kaiser. 

​I asked, 'What makes magic black or white?' and Michael F. responded:

M. -
What makes anything good or bad? Answer; how we look at it. Often this is culturally conditioned into us.

What is "good fire" and "bad fire"? Good fire is a BBQ; Bad fire is one that burns down our house. Unless of course we wanted it to burn down, in which case its a good fire.

Black magic is any magic we feel uncomfortable with, White magic is magic we feel comfortable with.

Next question; when is a religion a cult? When is following a flag blind nationalism and when is it patriotism? Why is alcohol acceptable and cannabis not?

"Youre going to find that a great deal of truths depend greatly on our point of view" - Ben Kenobi.

G. -
Yes, but.

How does the magician's perspective apply to the person who is the subject of his or her intentions?

In a video about Aleister Crowley, the actor playing him and his friend were walking along on a sidewalk. Aleister was about to demonstrate his ability to influence a person against their will. He projected his thought to the man ahead of them, and the man stumbled.

Would the one who was influenced to stumble say it was good or bad? Let's assume bad.

Would Crowley say it was good or bad? Let's assume good.

Which perspective is true? If it is all perspective, does that mean anything is allowed? There is no need to consider others? No need to apply the brakes when I see I am crossing the line? It is okay to justify my actions by telling myself it is all a matter of perspective?

M. -
First, you are assuming that that sort of magic is possible - making someone stumble indirectly. But lets skip to a type of magic that we know is possible - manipulating the minds of others using signs, symbols and incantations to purchase something that they really don't need - a piece of exercise equipment perhaps that stows easily under a bed and is promptly stowed under a bed and never used again until its finally given away at 10% of the purchase price in a garage sale.

Was that manipulation white magic? black magic? 

If "spooky magic" (apparently counter-scientific magic) is possible, according to my theory of how it works, you affect ultimately only yourself.

That is, according to the multiple universe explanation of quantum theory, there are universes containing all possibilities. My theory is that an advanced magician can place his or her attention in any one of them. The magician, and the stumbler, are in all universes. In some of which the stumbler stumbles and in many of which he or she does not. What the magician does is choose to experience the universe in which the stumbler stumbles. The magician does not affect the multiple universes in any way - he or she simply chooses to view one or the other universe like choosing movie A over movie B.

So it is a very long conversation ranging from what magic is, to whether a tool can be considered good or evil, to whether the person using the tool can be considered good or evil, to whether any given action can be considered good or evil.

Good or evil, more often than not, are a matter of perspective - of how a thing is being framed. Is it good or evil to spit on a crucifix? To deny the resurrection? (If so, the archbishop of canterbury is in trouble) To smoke cannabis? To make love to a person of a different race or the same gender?

There are many people in even a modern culture like America who would consider killing a person convicted on death row (rightly or wrongly) to be a good and for someone expressing love to a person of the same gender to be a heinous evil.

It is all about framing. Who is doing the framing, and how it is being framed.

Here is my favorite question. Is terminating the life of an embryo evil? How about a chicken? An Egg? A turnip?

So when people start talking to me about black or white magic, my eyes roll in many different directions. To me, the question is on a level with "I feel so awful, I have these dreadful urges that I cant tell my husband" "If only people knew the evil thoughts I think"....

It boils down to this: Dont do stuff that you feel you shouldnt do. Do continually re-examine what is your standard of should/shouldnt do. You can take others advisement, but they have no edge over you in knowing what is right or wrong. There is no god handing out instructions. There are no golden standards. We are all making it up as we go along. No matter what you decide, in 200 years, people will look back at us and consider that 90% of the things that we take for granted today - as evil. 

So, develop your own standards, things you can live with, and apply them in your life. Thats the best that anyone can do.

If a doctor cured Adolf Hitler of a fatal wound in WWI, was that act evil because it resulted in WWII (actually, another Hitler would have been found, but lets go with the trope).?

M. -
"Which perspective is true? "

I'm not going to get the details correct, but the essence will be. So bear with me... Men on spaceships travelling in different directions. meet over a planet where they see a woman frying an egg. One sees the egg hit the pan before the spaceships meet, the other sees the egg hit the pan after the spaceships meet. (theory of relativity craziness)

Which is true? 

Ultimately, perspective is everything. You cannot say, taking all your assumptions for granted, that the "magic of making the man stumble" was good or evil. It was good from one persons perspective and bad from the others perspective. That is all that one can say.

There is nobody in the sky with an ethical measuring stick.

Fortunately we dont need one to make our own ethical standards and abide by them. But they are purely our own standards. Others have different standards.Should I worry about the perspectives of others? Suppose I wanted to make love to a person of my own gender, and I knew that someone else (a third party) thought that to be evil. Shoujld I abstain? Even if my perspective is that it is not evil? Should I consult the old testament for guidance?

Its not that there is no good and evil. There is good an evil in all of us. -literally, it exists in our minds. There is nothing that is good or evil but our minds make it so, to misquote ?Shakespeare?.

As a matter of practicality, we are free to extend our own perspective until it infringes upon the perspective of another. But even that is a very fuzzy concept. Can a parent block a child from playing with the fire or an electrical socket? So is restricting the freedom of others acceptable? How about a 60-yr-old senator deciding that a 25-yr-old can't smoke cannabis? A 16-yr-old smoking cannabis? A 15.5 year-old....?

The problem is that there are too many people out there who know what is right and wrong, what is allowable and what is not allowable, and what is good for other people.

G. -
I see. Well, perhaps you are right that I was assuming the type of influence depicted in the video is possible. Or, I was simply telling what the video depicted -- and not saying whether I believe it or not.

My point was about the level of self responsibility in so-called magicians. Would you agree that Neuro-Linguistic Programming can be used successfully to manipulate? It is in another realm than incantations and spells. The same principle applies, from my perspective.

I am not sure I would leave this type of self-responsibility up to the individual to decide their own standard of what should or shouldn't be done. At least there can be a majority voice known as to what standards are considered socially acceptable or attractive.

Yes, I agree, the person who is influenced or manipulated has some degree of responsibility. Accepting that reduces victim-hood. You make some sound points and I appreciate your level of thinking. Some of the questions you ask are unanswerable. I do not adhere to the doctrine of good and evil. But it feels worthwhile to sometimes express the voice that would like to see people take a stand more often for what the majority feel is 'right' - not in a moral sense but in a way of serving the whole of life.

M. -
I was assuming for the purpose of discussion that the influence was possible - I make no statement about your assumptions. If this came across, it was an error in my writing. Sorry.

"But it feels worthwhile to sometimes express the voice that would like to see people take a stand more often for what the majority feel is 'right' "

The majority until quite recently thought that gay marriage should be outlawed, and think currently that abortion is wrong. The majority 50 years ago thought that all sorts of racial discrimination were OK.

So forgive me if I dont pay much attention to majority ethical thinking.

M. - 
"the person who is influenced or manipulated has some degree of responsibility."

Actually, I was being somewhat tongue-in-cheek in raising the issue of marketing. But it does exemplify the issue at hand. I'll spell it out this time. Causing someone to stumble by suggestion you imply is bad for the stumbler. But most people accept the right of advertisers to manipulate their audience into buying products that waste their money. Its a form of theft in a way. While the person influenced has SOME responsibility, the fact that $1000 is being spent on advertising per person means that the advertisers know that it will get you to spend AT LEAST $1000 more than you otherwise would have. That's the scale of the problem. And these people use up-to-date cognitive psychological techniques that are very difficult for the ordinary person to resist. A fair fight?

But yet MOST people would see advertising as perfectly OK.

Questions like this show that the water is very muddy indeed, and discovering a perfect standard of good and evil is next to impossible.

Popularity is not the same as ethical, as any cursory glance at politics will show. Trump's supremacist message was popular enough to win him the election, but moral? hardly. Same with Adolf Hitler. Very popular.

So if popularity doesnt determine the gold standard for ethics, what does? A stone-age middle eastern scroll? A fairy in the sky?

My answer is that I decide for me what my ethics are.

G. -
You are giving me lots of food for feeling-thought.

A feast, actually. 

It may take a while to digest.

But I see it as a worthwhile endeavor, to process what you are saying.It feels to me to contain plenty of substance and I have not yet experienced heartburn from it.

In the end, we all decide what our own ethics are, whether a person gives it any thought or not, whether they allow 'others' to determine their ethics for them or make clear, conscious choices from within.

I totally agree, popularity is not the same as ethical, and after writing my earlier comment I realized it was short of being well expressed due to overall tiredness and just wanting to make a reply rather than think and feel it through before responding.

With your last comment, it seems that individual clarity and strength are the key to a different type of world. Perhaps you are of the mind that the world just is what it is and doesn't need to change. I no longer have a 'save the world' complex, but feel urged to put energy into what I can to support a shift to 'higher consciousness.' And that starts with my own inner work.

I do not see manipulative advertising as okay. But it is what it is and I cannot change it. There may always be people who refuse to live cooperatively and for the betterment of all. Perhaps I can in some way contribute to my version of a more enlightened world by living in a more enlightened way. And that is it.

Thank you again for your writing.

M. -
" it seems that individual clarity and strength are the key to a different type of world."

Exactly.

" Perhaps you are of the mind that the world just is what it is and doesn't need to change."

The world just is what it is, but not only does it need to change, it can do no otherwise than to change. Change is its nature.

" I no longer have a 'save the world' complex, but feel urged to put energy into what I can to support a shift to 'higher consciousness.' And that starts with my own inner work."

I am compelled to try and "save the world", but my nature is to first analyze the situation so that I can work out how things are, what needs to change, how it can be changed, and so on and so on.

My comments that there are no objective "rights and wrongs" has nothing to do with my desire to see things change in a way in which I would like them to change. I get very passionate about the change I would like to see, even argue for it, but it boils down in some ways to the fact that I prefer flavor A to flavor B. Not that flavor A is preferred by a deity, a dispassionate, uninvolved mathematical law, to flavor B.

I think that many people's lives would be enriched if, for example, progressive values were embodied. We are likely to agree in a great many ways about the way in which we would like to see the world change. We might even be able to argue a case for this. The only thing I am denying is that there is a right and a wrong.

When you watch a David Attenborough nature film, you see animal A hunting animal B. Sometimes it is narrated from the perspective of animal B dying at the hands of animal A; other times it is narrated from the point of view of animal A being close to starvation, or feeding its young, and needing to find a kill soon. Ultimately, the chase is just the interplay of atoms through the process of life. As are all our struggles. All the intense love-struggles of our youth - all just so much wasted energy in some ways. It's all a game. A game we get so involved in we forget its just a game. From that perspective, there is no right, no wrong. It is simply life playing it out.

But then there is the continual unfolding, and, as far as we know, the present state of humanity is the most evolved, the most developed, the most complex and self-reflective point that the universe has reached thus far. And mostly, this has been achieved by the random processes of life.

We are finally at the point where we can decide where life, the universe, even our genome, goes from here. You, me, and the other 8-billion-odd other humans get to play our part in deciding where this great cosmic experiment ends up.

So play this game. It's fun, it has meaning (a meaning we supply, not a god), and its worth doing. But it is a game.

Some people dive in and change things right away, and more power to them; the world needs changers. But the more I find out about the world, the more I realize that I need another few lifetimes to analyze the changes in order to know how I want it to change.

There are some principles I have reached - for example, the more diversity that exists, the better. Because it gives the future more options to explore.

But then there are questions like "should we solve world hunger", and my thoughts there bear in mind the fact that all animals multiply to the limits of their food supply. Always. So we will not solve world hunger by producing more food.. we will simply breed more people to absorb it, and so on, until we live in one vast green plain of artificially engineered grain, and STILL we will be hungry. So we have first to learn how to (a) control our numbers or (b) leave the planet.

"I do not see manipulative advertising as okay. But it is what it is and I cannot change it. "

I don't like it either, my point was sardonically made. many people think that capitalism is a "good"; I simply drew attention to how one could view it in a different way. It is just a different kind of coercion. No matter how we twist and turn, there will always be coercion - all that changes is who is pulling the strings, and how much misery they cause. I dont see an escape from coercion - whether thats being a slave to the drive to breed and eat, or to a feudal lord, a cultural imperative, our parental conditioning, an oligarch, a governmental directive... People rail against the govt. controlling their lives without questioning the fact that corporations control almost every aspect of their lives, from what they eat to when they get up and what they do most of their days.

We do have some power though; we can wake up, we can see things as they are, and in that way, remove their power from us. And we can possibly share that clarity with others, so that they also can wake up from our collective brainwashing. 

The problem is that even when we wake up from one level of brainwashing, we are still subject to another. It is easy to think that OUR way of thinking is the RIGHT way - but how do we know that?

What is the objective standard? Is there one?

To take an extreme example, some cultures would view the extermination of all life in the universe to be the ultimate good. I'm thinking the Cathars and Buddhists, very nice people, who view existence as a cycle of suffering, the creation of an evil God to prevent us from being re-absorbed into the true Godhead. Thankfully, they didnt convert that concept into an imperative to change the universe in conformity with their conclusions.

M. -
Where I'm coming from - I believe that humans form larger groups that act as larger organisms, just as neurons form brains and ants form semi-intelligent colonies. Ultimately, the human race resembles a giant brain, with multiple personalities (just as we all have). These are warring among each other in the same way that bees for collective decisions by battling each other or the way our neurons suppress and activate various thought patterns to reach a decision.

We are currently, as a species, undergoing a massive shift in external inputs - scientific knowledge, globalization, increased communication, resource overuse, and all the rest of it - and this is forcing a change in our collective consciousness. We are all playing our part in shaping the future collective consciousness, but we are at a tipping point before a massive change - or in the middle of such a change. Like the change as we developed self-consciousness, or as we developed tools, or as we developed language. Its that big.

Our old language will not work anymore. The monotheist paradigm, the capitalist paradigm; the tribal paradigm, the growth is good paradigm - none of these suit us anymore.

The emergent new collective consciousness will develop its own new memes sooner or later - every culture does. But I believe it would be better if we can consciously create the underpinnings of the new society, the new collective consciousness to come.

"to create a new religion" is one way of looking at it, but its really far beyond that; its developing a new way of looking at the universe, a new way of responding to it, a new philosophy.

So to that end, I'm analyzing the way the current system works, and trying to figure out what we need to keep and what we need to throw away.

From an deep analysis of the underlying memes to the details of for example ritualism.

I don't know if I can complete this project - likely not - I'm quite lazy, and it is a huge undertaking. And to some extent, you have to be lazy - unfocused - to see the big picture.

The thing that disturbs me the most is that the people who are most aligned to my cause are the first to swallow any new-age garbage they are given more gullibly than the monotheists take their water-walking deities in the sky. And it frustrates me probably because I cant reconcile my attraction to it with my knowledge that it is "fake news"

How can one extract the nugget of wonder at the heart of Crystal therapy (to take an example) without falling into the pit of snake-oil salesmen who sell falsehoods? There is SOMETHING there. But to take the face value at face value is to fall back a few steps, not progress.

One needs to extract what can be extracted (and there IS something to be extracted) without checking in one's brain at the door.

And here is one key to the occult that is useful (one of many). The use of ritual to bracket off necessary nonsense from our daily rational lives.

"necessary nonsense". Sometimes my unconscious throws me such great concepts!

M. - But if it is some sort of self-reflective self-creating intelligence in a universe where it is possible that the matrix underlying the universe is itself conscious in some ill-defined way - then I'm not opposed to that idea as such. The universe as presently constituted is unfolding according to some pretty basic principles, and there is ample evidence for that. If the process is defined as "intelligent", then it is intelligent. Designed? Not really. Not in any meaning of the word "design" that I know. It follows laws.

G. - The Wikipedia article on Design begins with, 'Design is the creation of a plan or convention for the construction of an object, system or measurable human interaction (as in architectural blueprints, engineering drawings, business processes, circuit diagrams, and sewing patterns)...'

A plan or convention - laws?

Here is one scenario. When the Unmoved Mover moved, it created both motion and stillness as those exist only relative to each other, and what followed was the creation or evolution of natural laws to provide for the efficient expansion, diversification, and homeostasis of energy/matter to interact with sentient observers. That is my crude version. It is more elegantly expressed here, with the addition of an underlying Idea:

'Practical Psychology: The Use of Li to Change Qi

'The practical Chinese Taoist method of attaining enlightenment is to aid the mind to evolve deeper and more powerful li. Li is the underlying aspect of Qi, energy/matter. Without li, there is no Qi. The nature of li defines the nature of Qi. The way the idea is, is the way the world is.

'.... Li is the intermediary, that which lies between nothingness and the material universe. Li is the conception of the material universe. The primary li manifests on a level of reality far removed from the phenomenal world. 

Wu Chi is the ultimate Real, Qi is the phenomenal real — that which is made to appear by the interaction of waves of probability with sentient observers. Li is that which forms the 'laws' that underlie the possible manifestation of the phenomenal world. 

Qi is not real because it passes in and out of existence. Li, which is all ideas that ever can be manifest, in itself is real. It is the principle of ideal consciousness that exists inherent in Wu Chi. This li is expressed in the teachings of the Fourth Way as the Eternal Unchanging, the being state that lies between the un-manifest Absolute and the World of Three, the T'ai Chi. - pages  20 - 22

Excerpts from 'Tao and T'ai Chi Kung' by Robert C. Sohn, used by permission.

G. -
{I am compelled to try and "save the world", but my nature is to first analyze the situation so that I can work out how things are, what needs to change, how it can be changed, and so on and so on.

Some people dive in and change things right away, and more power to them; the world needs changers. But the more I find out about the world, the more I realize that I need another few lifetimes to analyze the changes in order to know how I want it to change.}

Most of my life was lived in my head, analyzing.

Then, in 2000, I made a major life change and began the journey of living not in the head but from the heart. No analyzing there. I am loving every Moment of it and this is truly a 'new paradigm' way of living. As I wrote to Adam, 

'When it comes to Intelligent Design and how to live in this world (including personal ethics), I am in a stage of letting go of personal wantings and living for the connection. It is not getting what I want, but the quality of attention I give into every moment that matters.'

M. - Ultimately, the chase is just the interplay of atoms through the process of life. As are all our struggles. All the intense love-struggles of our youth - all just so much wasted energy in some ways. It's all a game. A game we get so involved in we forget its just a game. From that perspective, there is no right, no wrong. It is simply life playing it out.

G. - Yes, I can see the game aspect of 'life.' And agree that struggles are a waste of energy. It is a game, but in some significant ways I determine whether I play a competitive game with 'high stakes' and a winner and loser, like poker or chess, or a cooperative game such as Herbal Wildcrafting with the grandkids. I get your point, though, about the game-like quality of the human experience.

M. - (But then there is the continual unfolding, and, as far as we know, the present state of humanity is the most evolved, the most developed, the most complex and self-reflective point that the universe has reached thus far. And mostly, this has been achieved by the random processes of life.}

G. - Yes, hmmm. Random process set in motion by consciousness (intelligent design)? With some clear idea or blueprint for the ultimate qualities of the human being?

M. - What is the objective standard? Is there one?

G. - Only from the perspective of the One Being.

I understand your "just because its in your head, why would that make it any less real"?' -- and see that there are countless realities. In my reality, there is also one actuality, which I accept as unknowable. I sense it intuitively with the awareness it my sense is a reality, not the fullness of actuality. We all wear the sunglasses of our filtered perceptions. I like the model I have chosen, it is always subject to enhancements or modifications, and I always remember that I am seeing through sunglasses.

Adam Apollo Amorastreya 
Wow, what a smorgasbord of comments! LOL ...and some pretty rough debates in there. Whew.

For the record, I am a scientist first and foremost. I published my first papers on the intersections of Loop Quantum Gravity, String Theory, Quantum Mechanics, Special and General Relativity when I was in High School. Now I am regularly published for my work in Unified Physics.

A few of my related opinions:

1. Scientology - While I respect that scientology has been able to surface a significant amount of valuable philosophy (some quite ancient), I also think it may have been applied in a manipulative way, or even as a full blown scam, and may contain a great deal of false information. I cannot say more without having had significant personal study of this field.

2. Intelligent Design - Tough subject without lots of contextual discussion, primarily because even if you agree with every primary cosmological theory and evolutionary theory, nothing in those theories truly refutes ID. More importantly, whether or not ID exists is entirely dependent on your definition of Intelligence. If the Universe has innate feedback mechanisms, which many mathematical and physics studies support, then does this suggest an underlying "Intelligence" to spacetime itself? You could look at self-similarity, fractals, and holographic patterns as proof of ID, or you can suggest that they are mathematical "coincidences" or inevitable outcomes due to the laws of our Universe. You can't remove perception or intelligence from our study of the Universe, so you can't remove the observer from the observation. It is more a matter of self-recognition, self-definition, and self-determination. We choose how we interpret the data, which for all intensive purposes, changes the data.

3. Big Bang - I love the theory, and even with holes, there is a lot that makes sense here. But where did the little node that expanded into a Universe come from? I find the idea that it's a Proton that has left the surface of another Universe fascinating, and there are some stunning "coincidences" between this theory and recent quantum gravity theories regarding the structure of the Proton.

4. Magic - "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke. There have been approaches to methods and processes of "communicating" with spacetime (previously known as Aether or Ether) for thousands of years. Some clearly didn't work, and were invalidated. Others persisted, often kept as tightly held secrets to avoid religious persecution. Many more were almost lost due to nearly holocaust level cultural slaughter. There is a reason why we see the same patterns repeated across cultures, across continents, going back into pre-history. Yet beyond magical geometries and their applications, real Magic is about understanding our Self. When we grasp that everything we create emerges from having a clear mental idea of what we want to create, strong feelings for what we want to create, and the physical capacity to take actions that implement the creation, then it is really about mastering that process and getting out of our own way. 

Of course, knowing full well the risk of rolling eyes and instigating harsh responses, I will share that I have had many many personal experiences that I would not be able to explain without significant development of my metaphysical philosophy. I have had to develop my own frameworks and research those of ages past to explain what appears to be a form of advanced technology which many simply call "magic."

Are they all coincidences? Apparently random events where somehow a pattern of cause and effect was set in motion that resulted in an event directly, and stunningly coinciding with another event, seemingly beyond impossible odds?

If you've never had an experience like that, my heart goes out to you. And I'm sure the sentiment is shared by the countless others who have "won the lottery" in these types of coincidences many many many times. 

Examples, you ask? Sure, here's a few:

1. I needed serious help paying off a bank loan and didn't know how I was going to do it. I drew a star on a page in my notebook and wrote the amount I needed in the middle. I didn't want to tell anyone or ask anyone for help with the situation, as I was embarrassed. The next day I received an envelope in the mail saying my debt had been paid off entirely.

2. I drew a picture of a house I wanted from the outside, all the details I wanted on the inside, and wrote down how much rent I wanted to pay. 

I got a house at that rent, with all those details within weeks. After I moved in I climbed down the hill and realized I had drawn it almost exactly.

3. My girlfriend at the time did the exact same thing, and the architectural details she drew for her house were so stunningly accurate to the one her friend found and partnered with her to get, that we kept the drawing for years as an example to friends.

4. Hundreds of times: looking for parking place, pulling up in front of destination, and right then someone's blinker turns on to pull out of the perfect spot.

5. Many times: spending a day or evening meditating on some part of my life I would love to experience more of...a part of myself (skills), or specific type of connection that I want. 
Within a day or two, someone calls me or emails me out of the blue inviting me to do something that involves those exact skills, or that allows me to experience that exact connection. 

Those are just a few examples of countless experiences, the odds of which happening at random are so ridiculous I eventually used logic to determine alternative explanations. Some of that logic, and the many ways I have used it to improve my own life situation and the lives of many others comprises a portion of my workshop. Other portions cover ancient wisdom traditions, transformational practices, self-awareness practices, and much more.

G. -
{Yet beyond magical geometries and their applications, real Magic is about understanding our Self. When we grasp that everything we create emerges from having a clear mental idea of what we want to create, strong feelings for what we want to create, and the physical capacity to take actions that implement the creation, then it is really about mastering that process and getting out of our own way.}

Adam,

After reading carefully the full length of your comment and appreciating you for it, I asked myself what is the one aspect which stands out most clearly for me to respond to. It is the above quote from you, especially as it fits with Intelligent Design.

There are many mysteries which at this stage are still unknowable, and I am okay with that. Intelligent Design can go either way. I choose to perceive it in a specific way, while being aware that my chosen perception is not an absolute. If some of the veils are lifted after death, in case there is a continuation of individuated consciousness in some way, I can imagine that the actual will appear both similar to and unlike anything perceived while in the body.

Synchronicity and coincidences are very cool, and to be enjoyed, but I haven't seen any consistent pattern in or reliable interpretation of them. Like others, I have had predictive and 'other dimensional' dreams which were fulfilled in a stunning way or left me with a lingering feeling that they had some significance. Looking back, I still don't know how to fully interpret those instances.

When it comes to Intelligent Design and how to live in this world (including personal ethics), I am in a stage of letting go of personal wantings and living for the connection. It is not getting what I want, but the quality of attention I give into every moment  that matters. That would seem at odds with your 'having a clear mental idea of what we want to create, strong feelings for what we want to create, and the physical capacity to take actions that implement the creation,' which is ruled by the persona -- but then you add, 'and getting out of our own way'.

The difference is that, because the deepest longing of my heart requires it,  I get out of my own way before the 'wanting for things' beyond my current means begins.

---

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