Occult Initation: The Mind/Bowl Test

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There's a quick way to determine if studying the occult with be worth your time.

Simply answer this question:

How can a mind be like a bowl?

If you are thinking that a mind is a mind and a bowl is a bowl, that a mind can't be like bowl or that a bowl can't be like a mind, and that it's ridiculous to even consider it could be otherwise, then congratulations!. You will be wasting your time. Every single second of it. There's nothing left for you to see here, move along.

If, on the other hand, you've already thought of one or more reasons, completely on your own, in which mind can be like a bowl, then congratulations! You have one of the fundamental skills you will need as an occultist: the ability to understand and use metaphors, allegories, similes, etc -- in other words, the ability to think about one thing in the terms of another.

Since I've already introduced you to the mind as a bowl metaphor, I'm going to go ahead and use it to show you are more detailed way in which metaphors are used as well as introduce you to some of the some of the work that's involved in your initial occult initiation.

If we take the mind to be a bowl, then the standard occult knowledge is like water that can fill it. Those who can't think in metaphors are completely incapable of grasping occult knowledge in the same way water can't be poured into a bowl that's upside-down. Imagine, if you will, pouring water into an upside-down bowl. See what I mean?

People like you are capable of grasping the standard occult knowledge as if your bowl is turned right-side-up. All you have to do is pour the water from it's container right into the bowl. But alas! As soon as the water fills the bowl it becomes so murky you can't see into the water at all, you can only see the black surface of the water. This is because as an initiate, you start with a lot of dirt and muck stuck to the inside of your bowl. The muck represents the useless and/or mental junk we've accumulated over our lives up until the time of initiation [2] -- beliefs, attitudes, broken or inaccurate mental models and habitual ways of thinking, it's all stuff like that.. One of the first things you're going to have to do as a part of your initiation is to start cleaning the shit out of your bowl. As you do so, over time, the water in the bowl becomes progressively clearer over time so that you will be able to see further past the surface. This is, of course, what studying the occult is all about: being able to peer past the surface appearance of things and revealing what was previously hidden by deepening your understanding of yourself and the world you live in. [3]

Back to metaphors:

In this example, I've used a metaphor to give you the "big picture" of one aspect of occult initation as well as a sort of roadmap. Even though, it's not a literal roadmap, it's useful enough to get your bearings: remember what you're doing, and why you're doing it. Even though it's no where near complete -- for example, I haven't said anything about exactly how the junk gets cleaned out -- it's complete in a general sense to give you a framework in which you can easily determine where any given information relating to this process belongs.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Fourth Way Fans will most likely already be familiar with the "mind as bowl" metaphor.

[2] I'm not saying that this kind of useless mental junk stops accumulating, only that initiation marks the first time a person really begins to take out the garbage.

[3] It's a trip. :)