Points for Bardonists to Keep in Mind
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(#1) Your goal is adepthood. Only step off the path to adepthood for the purpose of taking adepthood into your hands. If something is not adepthood, do not step off the path to take it, even if it is a good Netflix show or an enormous pile of chocolate. Do not settle for any reward less than adepthood.
(#2) If you fall down while walking the path, get up as soon as possible. If you stray from the path, return to the path as soon as possible. Do not wait for the next day.
(#3) The path to adepthood consists of the following.
- Practicing the exercises of IIH
- Let mindfulness, the second mental exercise of Step 1, be one strand of the golden thread running through your life. Use breath-awareness to remain mindful more easily. Study the second and third chapters of Ajahn Brahm’s book The Art of Disappearing for good advice on remaining mindful.
- Practicing helpful supplemental exercises
- Praying
- Let ceaseless prayer (see The Way of a Pilgrim) be the other strand of the golden thread running through your life.
- Living life in a manner that is conducive to successfully praying, practicing the exercises of IIH, and practicing helpful supplemental exercises
(#4) When praying, pray primarily for wisdom by repeating (with your komboskini) the prayer “Lord God Almighty, please give me wisdom and understanding, please help me become more compassionate, and please help me become a magician. Amen.” Eventually, you will reach the point where wisdom-power will carry you to adepthood. This is the point at which the rowboat you are rowing toward adepthood becomes a speedboat and you can sit back and relax. Of course you still have to practice, but practice at this point becomes relatively effortless. Although willpower is an important thing for aspiring magicians to have, wisdom-power is even more important.
- Wisdom, understanding, and compassion are closely intertwined with each other, which is why the prayer asks for understanding and compassion as well as wisdom. In Kabbalah, wisdom corresponds to Chockmah, understanding corresponds to Binah, and compassion corresponds to Tiphereth, which is the child of Chockmah and Binah.
(#5) Living a life that is conducive to successfully praying, practicing the exercises of IIH, and practicing helpful supplemental exercises consists of the following.
- Always doing the next right thing. It helps to write down what the next right thing is. The wiser you are, the easier it will be for you to determine what the next right thing is.
- This entails seizing every second and not letting any amount of time, no matter how small, go to waste. Whatever the next right thing is, it sure isn’t to waste time.
- Embracing the unavoidable pain and suffering you experience, whether physical, emotional, or mental. This will result in progress because it will purify you.
- Embracing and appreciating the discomfort produced by resisting temptation. This discomfort will help you with prayer, since, according to Saint Teresa of Avila, “Prayer and comfortable living are incompatible.”
- Taking a brief break from what you are doing and splashing some water on your face if you have to. This will reenergize you and allow you to be more productive when you return to whatever it is you were working on, whether it was studying a spiritual text, writing a book on the Bardon system, praying, analyzing the traits on your black soul mirror, etc.
(#6) Realize that the time you have been given to attain adepthood is limited. Every time you give in to temptation, you waste time and retreat further from adepthood. Giving into temptation generally means watching Netflix, barhopping, playing video games, or doing other waste-of-time activities instead of practicing the exercises of IIH, practicing helpful supplemental exercises, or praying. Giving in to temptation can also mean eating sweets or other unhealthy foods, since good health is conducive to magical training. It is harder to practice if you are ill, and it is impossible to practice if you are dead, which can happen if you live a really unhealthy lifestyle.
(#7) Keep in mind that when you attain adepthood, you will be able to work with the spirits listed in PME to fulfill your dreams, whatever those may be. When I wrote in the beginning not to settle for any reward less than adepthood, what I really meant was not to settle for any reward less than the fulfillment of your dreams.
- It may help to create a vision board or some similar device to remind you of your dreams and therefore the necessity of staying on the path.
I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with a few things here. First off, this sounds way too strict, more than what Bardon himself actually said. Yes, the end goal is adepthood, but not asceticism. There's also the balance of the elements. This summary reads like as if doing breaks or just relax for once in a while is somehow harmful or bad. Discipline is important, but only to the degree where it's not exaggerated. This summary sounds more like asceticism, which Bardon warned about doing to the extreme. Watching a Netflix show, enjoying a hobby once for a while isn't "wasting time". It's actually a good way to relax and have your physical body, astral and mental body refresh from the hard work you've been doing. You only "waste time" if you're doing more breaks than you should.
ReplyDeleteAn easy analogy for this can be taken with any kind of job one does in their daily life and takes the "career path". Let's say an employee wants a raise, wants to get to the very top. He forces himself to the most extreme his mind, soul and body could offer. He's motivated at first, keeps working 24/7, no breaks, no enjoying hobbys, etc. and pretty much lives the "hustle culture". I hope you'll agree with me that this person will sooner or later experience a terrible Burn-Out, which is just the consequence of exaggerating it. Yes, his mind and soul might still be unbreakable at this point, but the physical body is what limits us to go further, thus affecting mind and soul in consequence.
The same will happen to any IIH student who is working with the same dangerous mindset. Breaks are important. Relaxation is important. There's no need to completely focus your entire life on adepthood alone. This might work if we were free of our physical bodies. But we are not. Thus, giving the physical body the relaxation it needs is one, if not the most, important aspects of training. The same also applies to body building as well. Muscle growth doesn't happen during working out (although it is a condition for it to happen), it happens during the recovery phase.
As Bardon stated himself in the IIH. There's no need to hurry. Surely, nobody should waste their time too much with enjoying themselves. But it's a bit too far-fetched to say that one shouldn't take a break once for a while. In fact, I've actually even had much better success when I took a week off and then started practicing again.
Bardonists definitely should take in mind to take breaks when necessary and not start some kind of toxic hustle culture in their practice. It will do no good, only cause fatigue in the long-term and other symptoms of burn out.
Thanks for sharing your disagreements.
DeleteKeep in mind that this is my own personal philosophy. It works for me, and it works for other people I've shared it with after seeing they have a temperament similar to mine, but it is not something I would try to impose on every Bardonist.
When it comes to magical training philosophies, the best rule of thumb is "To each their own." One of the most important things for me personally is moderation, but that word doesn't mean for me what it does for most people. For most people, moderation means going halfway to your limit. In my tradition, moderation means going all the way to your limit but no further. What I describe here didn't push me past my limit, but of course everyone has different limits, so different philosophies will be more or less useful to different people. When it comes to relaxation, I agree that this is a necessary thing at times, but I don't find repose in things like Netflix. I find my repose in prayer. For me, there is nothing more enjoyable or refreshing than retreating to my room and praying for an extended period of time. So the philosophy I outline in this post does not preclude relaxation, at least not for me. I am almost always praying, so I am almost always on break. From my perspective, I am the opposite of Bardonists who never take breaks. As for the balance of the four elements, fire pushes itself to its limit, so from my perspective someone who does not push themselves to the limit is weak on the fire element. Just be careful not to confuse pushing yourself to the limit with pushing yourself past your limit.
As for your comment that "There's no need to hurry," everyone is different. According to William Mistele, there are three qualities that a student of Bardon's system would ideally have.
1. The student should be called to the magical path.
2. The student should have a problem that can only be solved through magic.
3. The student should have superhuman patience.
Most students don't have a problem that can only be solved through magic, so for most students there is no need to hurry. But in my case I did have a problem that could only be solved through magic. It had to do with family karma, which is a complex issue and can take generations to unravel without magic. In addition, there were things I wanted to accomplish in life that I new I wouldn't be able to without the help of certain Earth-zone spirits, and I needed to accomplish them before I reached a certain age.
Everyone wants different things in life, and everyone has the right to pursue what they want. Generally, I don't encourage lifestyles that encourage fatigue and burn-out, but some people might be willing to make sacrifices for what they want. For example, Jesus didn't just suffer fatigue and burn out. He gave his life to do what he needed to do. I'm definitely not saying everyone should do that. But let people decide for themselves what they want and what they are willing to suffer or give up in order to obtain it. Different people struggle with different karmic issues, they have different limits, they have different dreams, they have different goals, and they have different capacities for sacrifice.