Punching above your weight
Posted: Thu Sep 15, 2016 5:57 am
There is a long running thread about handling stubborn and difficult targets. I'm thinking specifically here of the stubborn targets who are not practitioners themselves, it is a long thread but there are a number of examples given. So I'm putting this in a separate thread to focus on these difficult targets who are not practitioners. I find some of the difficulties expressed by people a little surprising for the following reason.
We as mammals with high cephalisation have a nervous system and genetic predisposition towards anxiety. Certainly in modern society anomie and alienation are identified as strong social forces which would contribute to anxiety.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... to-experi/
So with this strong biological and social tendency for anxiety why is this not specifically targeted? It seems to me that even a beginner could get a decent result with this approach because we as humans so readily tend towards anxiety. Over perhaps just a few months the buildup could lead to something much more serious. So again why with specifically not occultist targets do such difficulties arise? Are established practitioners so pants at magic and understand basic human nature so poorly? As a rhetorical question what does this say about the practitioners own self understanding?
Obviously the focus on an anxiety emphasising approach will be less fruitful with a proficient occultist because of the emphasis on tenet noscere (know thyself) at the beginning of most training. As a specific example to illustrate; the first step in Franz Bardon's Initiation into hermetics involves thought control so groundless anxious thoughts will be quickly recognised and controlled. The soul mirror work would further address spurious anxieties so even a beginner Bardon practitioner like most neophytes would not respond well to an anxiety focussed magical attack. Very effective though on non-practitioners, so why the difficulty?
We as mammals with high cephalisation have a nervous system and genetic predisposition towards anxiety. Certainly in modern society anomie and alienation are identified as strong social forces which would contribute to anxiety.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... to-experi/
So with this strong biological and social tendency for anxiety why is this not specifically targeted? It seems to me that even a beginner could get a decent result with this approach because we as humans so readily tend towards anxiety. Over perhaps just a few months the buildup could lead to something much more serious. So again why with specifically not occultist targets do such difficulties arise? Are established practitioners so pants at magic and understand basic human nature so poorly? As a rhetorical question what does this say about the practitioners own self understanding?
Obviously the focus on an anxiety emphasising approach will be less fruitful with a proficient occultist because of the emphasis on tenet noscere (know thyself) at the beginning of most training. As a specific example to illustrate; the first step in Franz Bardon's Initiation into hermetics involves thought control so groundless anxious thoughts will be quickly recognised and controlled. The soul mirror work would further address spurious anxieties so even a beginner Bardon practitioner like most neophytes would not respond well to an anxiety focussed magical attack. Very effective though on non-practitioners, so why the difficulty?