Master Edge's Portal

The hero’s journey is the processes of human experience through existence and existence through experience, a literal birth and rebirth. However, the attempt of doing so is wrought with many pitfalls of misconception. Efficacy requires us then to stay our course, discard the bullshit, and to pass on to others only that which is most wholesome. I, therefore, must apologize in advance; for of the three legged stool, the following is, undoubtedly, the shortest limb.

A plethora of systems, religions, and how-to publications surround us; indeed, the internet has cast an informative web on most inhabitable parts of our planet. And while some more accurately address their purpose than others, most of them hint of, utilize, or refer to the whole as if in pieces. This benefits diversified initiates by providing options but creates confusion concerning exactly which among them is best suited for use by the individual aspirant and for that individual’s purpose. If only we had the sorting hat of Hogwarts, eh? But we do. Serendipitously, the universe provides the journey for which the hero is ready. This means that one can successfully vitalize whatever life they find themselves in, with little dependency of all systems. Close friends may share the ceremonial pipe (an orientating and celebratory deed); yet, even similarities of function ironically so often differ in form. Therefore, this communication serves to describe and illustrate the bare bones of a subtle craft, of which you are free to provide insight, personal experiences, question, and if we must, argue.

Given as one who requires purpose and having scant vices to describe the transcendent, it is only fitting to syntax form by function. Therefore, we first should ask “Why should I?” before committing to a task. The answer is that life signifies that one has already embarked on the journey. Finding oneself in this vitally corporal state, the options available are to proceed skillfully, clumsily, or aimlessly. Master Bane has likened this as being tossed into a mighty river. He said, “You can either go kicking and screaming, or swim.” And as Joseph Campbell once said, “The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We’ve only to follow the hero path.”

In so doing, literally, certain distinctions need to be made. Mere speculation must be distinguished from work. By speculation, I mean just thinking about doing instead of actually doing. The conundrum is that meditation is chief among methodologies. Moreover, meditation finds infinite form. It includes action, non-action, inward and outward searching. Doing is accomplished by as little as beingness, yet the mightiest deed done, while not in meditation, is vanity. Thus, mindfulness and bodily participation become paramount.

For clarity, my now 6 year old daughter and 4 year old son were discussing the dangers of cars vs. trucks while we traversed a busy parking lot. My daughter says, “Trucks are more dangerous because they have big tires and they (the drivers) are higher up.” To which my son replies, “Yeah, they’ll (the trucks) run over you easier than a car.” At this point I felt most compelled and interjected that, “The most dangerous vehicle is the one driven by a person who is not aware of what they are doing.”

Given that you have read this far, we can safely assume I’ve piqued your interest or that the above resonates with your personal convictions or interests in some way. With the question of “why?” being laid to rest, let us proceed.

What is the hero’s journey? The hero’s journey, also called a knights errand and a soul’s high adventure, is the quest of initiation into the mysteries of the world or reality by which one is transmuted into higher potential. While the manifest differs from person to person, a few generalities can be made and expanded upon.

1) Realization of one’s higher nature (transcendence of the abyss)
2) Realization of one’s lower nature (transcendence of humanity)
3) Reinstatement or Reintroduction as a changed being.
4) Application in life.

How does one embark in finding one’s higher nature? Logically it follows that if one has no disabilities of the senses or mental facilities, yet is lacking knowledge or abilities, the remedy is experience. However, how does one proceed to experience something that is said to have no beginning? Where does one start? The answer is that one doesn’t start, yet does. For this, we must firstly address the limitations of truth and control.

We live in a holographic, fractal, and quantum reality in which truths are seemingly separated only by their levels of illumination. Truths can fully exist while remaining contradictory to their own respective antithesis. Two examples of this are found in paradoxes and the two truths of Buddhism. Given the perception-dependant state of duality based judgments, it is helpful to demote all absolute certitudes to one’s working knowledge or model. For this, I personally use the yellow bellied imagery of an empty cup. Yes, I’m weird but humor me. The empty cup symbolizes the first step of transcendence. It serves as a reminder that full cups can receive no more. To the point, that to increase knowledge of the world or reality, let go or loosen the grip to dogmas, behaviors, habits, ideals, labels, and meanings to which are cleaved. In essence, strive to witness and interact with the environment differently so that insights or changes may be revealed as inherent. For the yahoo readers, the limitations of truth and control taken together provide the doorway to transcend duality via the yogic path of unity or oneness, which is also the gaping hole of bliss called nihilism. Nihilism will threaten to abolish even the most solidly built constitution, and will be discussed later.

Fools have an affinity toward falsifiable truth and control alike. Naivety informs those who are the slaves of themselves that “enough” control yields freedom. The belief of absolute freedom via absolute discipline is best left as a suspended potential pending a proper and methodical investigation of the facts alleged. Consider now a ravenous shark. So skilled in hunting, the shark has a 99% success rate in catching and devouring its prey. A veritable eating machine, every inch is perfectly designed for optimum performance. Yet, disembowel one. As noted in Moby Dick, the shark will, if given the chance, turn and eat its own intestines. Such is the blindness found in those void, instinctive and hollow eyes. What freedom exists within the confines of a program? Line for line and nut for bolt, any machine which has been constructed can also be, so says the fearful Johnny Five, disassembled.

At some point in the process of suspending beliefs, perhaps considering others, meditating or in some other way, a very real, powerful and life vivifying experience happens. It is the paradigm shift which occurs when one realizes one’s connection with everything else. With it enters a pervading silence which ends desires, thoughts, and ambitions. Buddha called it nirvana, and it has many names. With the peacefulness of a dove, comfort lulls even the best intentioned people into relinquishment of purpose. The world seems perfect, everything is as it should be, and that nothingness is perhaps the worst state mortal death could hope to achieve. This bliss is a necessary step for sure, but also premature. For now, I must, as Khaos framed it, cast a bug in Buddhas’ eye.

There is a zen story about a young monk who attained enlightenment. He told an older monk that he finally understood that he was everyone and everything. The older monk simply picked up a piece of wood, hit the younger on the head with it, and asked, “Who is it that is hurting?”

For those who have found oneness, Buddha or Christ-nature, nonduality, or the Jungian idea that one who sees muck is muck, wouldn’t it be a reunification with divinity, or at least of the whole self (in this case the macrocosmic muckness) if we disemboweled them too? Logically, the theoretically relative union is connotative of a likewise previously unacknowledged separation. As the Oracle in Matrix III says, “It’s a pickle, no doubt about it.” However, as surely as the center of nowhere is everywhere, the abyss does have an end. The abyss terminates at finding the transcendent, which is one’s highest nature. The truth of connection to infinity AND separation thereof through finite temporality vivifies the preciousness of vitality and mortality, yet retains the sacredness of all that is eternal.

As established, first must be known why one’s lower nature is also important. The same lack of knowledge or abilities that prompts a quest for one’s higher nature likewise mandates a quest for one’s lower nature. Considering the cliché, “as above so below” our search for illumination must not therefore neglect experience with the diabolical. More to the point, the identity established through pain or some odd contortion of nihilism and belief is that of the lower self. It too is the point of reference of the conceptualized “me”, expressed in the form of ego and body. Since the lower nature is our self (bodily inside the field of time) we should certainly understand it also. Most will agree that it is easier or more pleasant to find ones higher nature, yet few, and even they are scoffed at, retain that the quest of lower nature is the yardstick which defines and measures work. I can certainly see their inverted point, because as one becomes inverted, it becomes upright.

As wicked as portrayed, the quest for lower self is initially very familiar. How fast can you run a mile? What would you do if? What do you think about [insert subject]? What is your job title? How much is your house worth? Regardless of the questions asked, the answers are important to you personally because they define a relative position or value which can be improved upon, or provide a material through which weaknesses may be identified and eliminated. This is the process of equalizing limitations and raising both abilities and knowledge in pursuit of an overall improved person. What do you want in life, death? If not, let us consider the abilities of truth and control.

Recalling the wastelands of nihilism, it is then with doubt that any idea is first formed. However, against better judgment some ideas do function and seem verified by reality. It is with this special understanding on the nature of ideas and truths that one can start at any one known thing and conclude at all things that are at least knowable. The right or wrongness of ideas is not inherent, but merely a subjective tag which connotes how accurately they function in their intended applications. More to the point, the relevance or importance of any notion is found strictly in its ability to empower.

For example, let us reconsider the aforementioned cup. The empty cup reminds me of the dark, feminine, receptive, and chaotic energy of the universe from which all light, matter, and life emanate as radiance. The empty cup induces charitableness from the mixture of three primary principles:

1) One can have only one cup; everything that you are, have, and do is you or yours. While the contents may change in quality and quantity, it cannot double as it is your everything.
2) Its total capacity is finite. Unused resources are waste. While having money and wealth are not the same, both are betrothed to progeny at death. Thus, one can never truly have anything except experience.
3) Fullness and emptiness are temporary states, as all things are.

Is it right? Is it wrong? Let the master of mind and matter decide. But until then, I say it worked for me. By that same virtue, I am reminded to hold my tongue from passing judgment (a form of charity given to me that I now repay to others) on my brother’s and sister’s models of reality. We do so in play, but that is for exploration. We are all stars; our false perceptions are true because they work. Often in communities much like ours, individuality supersedes fraternal bonds; the unsaid purpose of doing so is to cultivate an environment or relationship which encourages the endeavors of their craft, to indeed turn refreshment into the labor of refining truths.

Like truths, one can do any singular known act and build upon it until all things doable and undoable are known. Precautions should be taken not to label the unknowable and undoable as impossibilities; for as alluded to, the systematic mapping of abilities and limitations function to give one’s location or value in the grander scheme in life. It is from this initial value one continuously pushes to know and do more. Or as the hierophant informs me, the locked gate of impossibility, to the novice, guards the childhood romping ground of the adept who knows impossibilities are but unrealized possibility.

If ideas supply the bricks of human constitution, control is the labor by which they are assembled or disassembled. Control, in its many initial forms, is the ability to maintain, build, or destroy. The superficial control within individuals is that of will as implied by its common usage. Will power is the ego based energy where Chi is a bodily form. The Living Force is the amalgamation of all spiritual, mental, and physical energies. Like all muscles, will can be exercised and thusly cultivated. There is a residual effect over time which increases the capacity to contain more at any given point in time, but this is merely akin to having a bigger vessel of which the contents ebb and flow. Much like truth, the relevancy or importance of control is based strictly on its ability to empower. This goes to say that as truth manifests in various forms of illumination, so too does control. To not realize this is to forever remain another link in someone else’s chain, a tool, and a slave to one’s own system of control. Yet for freedom, one must conquer the lord of the abyss.

Every self proclaimed Buddha or Sat-chit-Ananada should, when ready, have the benefit of a friend who asks, “Where does your oneness go when confronted with a murder-death-kill, oppressor, pimp, pedophile, slave owner, rapist, or thieving crack head? And, every Christian should likewise have a friend who asks, “What kind of God gives free-will, yet the other option apart from servitude is eternal damnation?” Ah, the monster within has reared its ugly head.

Earnestly asking these or like questions to oneself is like provoking the only creature within a billion billometers that is guaranteed certain to be the absolute undoing of all that one holds most dear. In conceptualized form, it is the anti-self. Quite literally what we have done is to isolate the center of being from all forms of control, even those of self infliction. What materialist would willingly navigate their finances into bankruptcy? So where exactly does the drive to be that materialist originate? Only the bankrupt materialists can say for themselves; for if they continue, it is only by their controlled folly.

In conclusion, seeking the rapture of vitality must involve the perceived threat of harm just as seeking the eternal must reveal the impossibility of death. In this way, life becomes the evil which is gladly blasphemed by its own function and the final glory is something neither dreaded nor anticipated. Thusly, the pains and excitements of living are not shunned or avoided, but embraced and participated in, fully. Furthermore, the hero’s journey identifies the center of one’s being. Through no small feat do we find the gods and devils are inside us as constructs of the mind, yet that mind exists only as a product of that very real Force. This, my friends, is the liberation from which we choose to make love, war, and everything in-between or without.

Having been thusly initiated, the next logical question must inquire by what pretenses one leans toward light or dark if not at the expense of illumination. Of those who know, they were the first to forge religions and archetypal aspects (good-truth-light, bad-control-dark, both/nothing-gray, etc) to facilitate the journey of illumination for others and to further explore the mystery of life from within the modality which informed them of and from the center of their beings. It should go without saying that of those who do not know, they therefore gravitate toward an aspect for which, the properties and vices of, they have the most affinity. Even still, others hide the secret focus, the illumination described in this communication, of their otherwise broken philosophy. A coddling, they fancy, of the less fortunate, worthy, or trusted. That goes with sound reason too, as the premature knowledge of fate would have prevented even the mightiest heroes from becoming so.

It is for the last methodology of leaning do I make things a little more personal. How David? How do I reconcile my behavior and claims of transcending good and evil yet have the audacity to despise the latter? The answer is that in infinity, I do not. However while inside the field of time and duality, I do and will participate.

Master Edge 7/14/2010