From: shava@hermes.oit.unc.edu (Shava Nerad Averett)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re: Letter from a sorcerer
Date: 30 Sep 92 20:26:09 GMT
Organization: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

In article <1992Sep29.220050.18006@samba.oit.unc.edu> eddie@hermes.oit.unc.edu (Edward M. Averett) writes:
>(Edward fumbles around, looking slightly bemused and slightly distracted)
>
>Uuhhh .. sure.  Ummmm.  I think we might need to actually sit down and 
>develop a bit more vocabulary on this before we leap right in and start 
>explaining why and how.  
>			A kinder, gentler vorpal bunny 

Shava storms in where bunnies hesitate to tread...

Well, I've been sick as a dog from the medication these damn allopaths
have me on for a minor infection (amazing how much easier it is for them
to intimidate a pregnant woman, she excuses herself) so I missed Peggy's
brother's original post, but Eddie was talking to me about this thread,
and I thought I might mention a few thoughts about this.

First off, there are a couple, I believe related, phenom in the literature:
the "Lurker on the Threshhold" and "the Guardian of the Abyss" which we 
have discussed some period long past.  It could be that I am making a 
false mapping, either on other author's experiences to my own (ergo 
mistaking the terms) or on folk's experiences her onto my own.  These
things are so *damnably* hard to describe, all metaphor, that it can 
be hard to tell...  But that hasn't stopped me yet, so I'll just beg
patience.

To build a little symbolic vocabulary, a lot of my vocabulary-of-the-
psyche (how many remember that psychology means "study of the soul?")
comes from Buddhism and/or Vedanta.  So you will often find me mapping
what Western traditions refer to as initiations as samadhis, and so on.
I find the Eastern vocabulary richer and better developed.  For more 
information and elaboration on this mapping, I'd recommend Ken Wilbur's
works, esp. A_Sociable_God, which may be out of print by now.  Wilbur's
work starts with Piaget's stages of developmental psych thru adolescence,
and extrapolates adult and mystical development using a framework 
mostly derived from Vedanta, with a sincere Zen influence.  Cool stuph.

An initiation, or reaching a particular samadhi, are small deaths of the
ego.  In this sense, the Ego is that which one seizes upon as self-
identification.  In childhood, one learns (I am convinced it is learned)
to identify the Self with the Ego, which is a layer of relationships
and verbalizations which become the cosmetic front for the Self or Soul.
For example, I am:

	A good daughter
	A computer nerd
	Fairly good natured
	Intelligent and sensitive
	Often bitchy
	Intellectually arrogant

...and so on.  None of these things are *me* but are qualities of my 
interface with other people, mostly.  These self- and imposed-image 
aspects become so tightly associated with the Self, that one forgets
that there is a base *person* underneath -- the ghost in the machine,
if you will -- that is previous to these, that is where you are when
you forget all these temporal and temporary aspects of your life.

Initiations occur to people by accident.  A man who is (he thinks) 
happily married and a good father with a solid career finds himself
nastily divorced.  Rammed off his bearings, suddenly neither husband
nor father, he might find himself questioning the meaning of the work
he does for his career, or the meaning of life.  The *conditions* of
his Ego have suffered a sufficient shock that he must re-organize the
outward meaning (he thinks) of his life.  This is also known as an
existential crisis, an experience of existential despair.  Kierkegaard
says that unless this man can go back to sheer *faith* -- the experience
of meaning, at base, for its own sake -- he may not recover from this
trauma at all.  Initiates see him tottering at the edge of an Abyss,
forced to remake himself.  In Vedanta or Buddhism, he is seen at being
on the edge of self-Realization, by setting aside the Ego and his 
previous material viewpoints.

This is as mundane and gross (and common) an example of a first initiation
as I can think of.  For many who come upon it when they have not had the
time and reinforcement in their Ego (or reality...) to be so entrenched,
it can be less outwardly wrenching, but it is never easy.

There is a feeling of terror when one approaches a transition of this 
sort -- the defensive contraction of the Ego in its own defense.  The
Ego has its own power that one gives it by lending it reality and 
validity.  Essentially, Vedanta and Buddhism regard the ego-structure as
a self-imposed demon, which needs to be dis-empowered over the Self or
Soul.

Approaching a time of reorganization/initiation/crisis can happen gradually
or all at once.  When it happens gradually, a feeling of creeping horror
and insecurity comes upon one, a more classical form of existential despair,
better recognized in wider European culture.

When it comes all at once -- often voluntarily induced by magickal means,
via a spirit journey or somesuch -- it can be so precipitous as to resemble
a complete dissolution of the Ego, all at once.  It is this experience of
dissolution to first causes and reorganization from ground zero, which is
the Abyss.  One doesn't really *lose* the ego, the way I think of it, but
rather puts the Ego, as a construct, into perspective as a subsidiary
aspect of ones interface.

It is the Ego's (and possibly the Self's) warning mechanism which 
gives a sense of extreme forboding -- even panic -- which I believe
is referred to as the Lurker on the Threshhold, or the Guardian of the
Abyss -- is also a construct.  For some people, it becomes demonized
such that it seems like a completely separate entity -- which I suppose,
for folks into archetypical manifestations, it might be.  To me, it is
much like the constriction in the belly when faced with a sheer height
(ergo the Abyss -- gee...;) -- something that exists as a warning because
of what could happen.  If you stay on your own side, you are probably
as safe as before.

The secret is, if you overcome your fear and jump, you might find you 
can fly...

Shava
-- 
Shava Nerad Averett				shava_averett@unc.edu
/*  all materials (c)1992, Shava Nerad Averett, and have nothing significant
    to do with the University of North Carolina, a mostly owned subsidiary 
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