the ugly spirit.

[magickmumu]

I am have been a fan of William Burroughs for years. In his books he writes about the ugly spirit.
When Burroughs killed his wife Joan, he became aware of the Ugly Spirit.
The ugly spirit is a returning theme in his work. He was trying to write out the ugly spirit.
At the end of he's life he got to look the Ugly spirit in the eye. He underwent a sweat lodge cleansing ritual, under the guidance of a Navajo Indian.
Burroughs got to know the darkness within he called the Ugly spirit and freed himself of it influence.

The theme of the Ugly Spirit got stuck in my head. It's true there is darkness in everyone.
I have encountered it in myself in many psychonautic session.
Burroughs had his own personal mythology. The Ugly spirit was a big part of that mythology.
Everyone has his own ugly spirit, negativity or darkness. Some people more then others.

In the new age world there is so much talking about light, the darkness is forgotten and repressed.
But it's the darkness that must be experienced before you can toss it out.

 

[Nomada]

Indeed, how can you overcome something you haven't come to know?
And, as you overcome darkness, you should by the same reason, overcome lightness. It may sound that I'm being imperative, like demanding something from you, but I'm just playing the game.

The following is wrong but I don't care:
the essence of humans is that, they don't have any. They can become anything. We are all in potential, everything, in infinite degree.

We all have void darkness and boundless light, and all the colors in between, dancing about the thin membrane between the inside and the outside. I believe its just a matter of finding how deep it goes. And everything goes infinitely. The world is fractal.

One and infinity are different degrees of the same value.

 

[Forkbender]

Overcoming darkness and overcoming enlightenment is the same thing. Darkness is where you don't want to look. Enlightenment is when you have seen. Soon as you look, there is no need to look back.

 

[BrainEater]

maybe it's endarkment that is to be overcome in order to be enlightened :?: :idea: if yes, i guess it would work the other way round, too...
darkness is not only the absence of light, or maybe not always ... consider a black hole .... it even absorbs the light and still is black!!!


peace :weedman:

 

[Forkbender]

darkness is not only the absence of light, or maybe not always ... consider a black hole .... it even absorbs the light and still is black!!!

that's not the point. you take things too literally.

excuse me if I missed the irony.

 

[BrainEater]

i wasn't up to being ironic... i was just trying to bring another perspective into discussion or bring the discussion to another level as the topic is supposed to :idea: be dealing with things that cannot always be seen on the "surface" ... however i couldn't foresee you wouldn't like it.

well... i guess the point is more in the experiencing it right ??? because the emphasis was being put on experiencing darkness or the "ugly spirit" in order to free oneself from it. did i get that right? i suppose this is not easy as already stated out, because it seems to be a side of oneself that cannot be easily experienced directly.. the reason for that maybe lies in the fact that the dark part of oneself is acting sort of like "out-of-itself" or something like that, not really separately from you, but yet in a way independently from the innate consciousness one inhabits.

peace.

 

[Forkbender]

My point is that we are not talking about physical categories. Darkness of spirit or enlightenment cannot be compared to a black hole absorbing light in my opinion. So yes, it is based on experience and the words dark and light are put on it to conceptualize an inner transformation. It is a metaphor and one shouldn't take this too literally.

I agree with most of your last post.

 

[Caduceus Mercurius]

I don't like the term 'ugly spirit'. I don't mind talking about 'ugly ways' for example. A person may have ugly ways, but they are not part of who they are, not part of their true spirit. Ugly ways abound in the modern world. People are really behaving in ugly ways (at least in ways I find ugly). You can unlearn ugly habits, especially if one can somehow step out of the (brutal) culture one was brought up in. If you want to find your shadow, you can either look at yourself or at the friends and family you had when you grew up. You learned many 'ugly' ways in that period, whether you was a girl or a boy. I think it's very important that young adults go through a period in which they fully detach themselves from their family and peer group, so they can reflect upon that period and understand which ways of acting should be abandoned. Psychedelics can be an aid in this process, but a significant relationship or moving to another country and culture may also serve that purpose.

Last week two persons independently remarked how much different my brother (35) and I (33) are: He's always teasing people, making pranks, and he loves to play video games. He says he doesn't need drugs, including cannabis and shrooms, and has never done any. His behavior and sense of humor have not changed significantly over the years. He doesn't talk much about his feelings. He's very much like a teenager, with a good salary and a girlfriend.

I exposed myself to a couple of influences, including drugs, an Indian lifestyle, an oriental religion, the companionship of lots of foreigners, a foreign wife, parenthood etc. It was while interacting with all these influences that certain past behaviours seemed ugly to me. For example, constantly teasing your friends or making derogatory comments about them is behaviour that is acceptable and serves you well when you're a kid in high school, but in a relationship you have to get rid of such programs. When my father died a couple of months ago I found an old videotape from when I was 15. I was constantly teasing the people around me, making nasty pranks etc. Very much like my brother now, very much unlike me today. And it's not that I'm surpressing anything (though I may have done that initially, especially in my "religious" period from which I also have video material): that just isn't me anymore.

Anyone had similar experiences, i.e. ending up in a different place and circle of friends, and finding out many obsolete ugly ways?

 

[Nomada]

Anyone had similar experiences, i.e. ending up in a different place and circle of friends, and finding out many obsolete ugly ways?

I lost almost all of my friends from before this electric search into mindscape. I talk to them though but something changed, I get dead-doll syndrome whenever I hear their ugly ways. I have new friends though.
Culture has a really curious way to produce outsiders.