Angles of Life
Malibu
We got up early today just as the sun was rising to get ready. We packed our backpacks with water, strudel, dried fruits, and a lot of beef jerky for the hike we had planned. Kayla had her blue jeans, hiking boots, and her “dikadelic” tank top on, with her hair tied up. I wore jeans, my sneakers, and this forest green-tee shirt. We stopped by before we jetted at McDonalds for a quiet coffee and breakfast. I love their cheesy croissant thingies. The drive up to Topanga State Beach up in Malibu was going to take a few hours with morning traffic. But we had all day so we took the scenic route up Pacific Coast Highway.
The coastal area around Malibu is gorgeous. To your left as you’re driving up PCH is the ocean which stretches way up into the horizon. To you’re right are all these beautiful big houses, trees, and green fields of shrubs. And that scene just goes on and on. She had a lot on her mind today. You can tell when Kayla doesn’t want to talk and wants to think when she leans back while driving, with the music on loud, grips the wheel with her right hand, and bites nails of her left had, with this pensive look, just staring out ahead, oblivious to the bumper to bumper traffic.
I’m used to it, so I know when to give her space. So as the traffic started making me feel anxious and restless and frustrated, I pulled out my phone to do a little reading. I have Adobe Reader on my phone [which I love!] and every ONA/Myatt related PDF in a folder all on my phone [talk about smartphone huh].
So there I was, on my way to Malibu, stuck in thick traffic, reading Hostia One. A couple days ago I was curious as to what the term “Nine Angles,” actually means. Why “nine?” Why not 7? Why “angles?” Why not spheres, or realms, or vectors? I have read Pointy’s “Ingrowing Angles,” several times and it left me more confused than when I started. I don’t think my girl brain [at my age] works good enough to decipher the way that manuscript was explaining what an “angle” was. Geometry and a girl’s brain doesn’t go together often. So I gave up and started looking in other places for other meanings and clues. But even the ideas and concepts I read in Hostia were confusing. I understood Hostia, but still, the information I got from it felt “foreign” or like I couldn’t “feel” it or relate to it emotionally. So I just gave it all up and listened to the music instead.
We weren’t moving. It was sprinkling and gloomy. Kayla was cussing and swearing because we were grid locked. Fortunately we drove past the cause of the traffic. It was a bad car accident. Maybe the road was slippery and they were going to fast? One of the two cars was upside down. The police and ambulance were obviously already there. We had just made it on time to see them push the gurney [“trolley” in British medical jargon] into the back of the ambulance which didn’t look like it was in a hurry to go any where. All we saw was sheet over a body, so we figured the poor guy must have died. “Fuuuuck,” goes Kayla. I just had my mouth open looking at her shocked. But the traffic was now moving, and I could feel the angst and frustration of traffic subside as the car was picking speed, which put a smile on my face.
I felt bad inside because I was glad we were moving. Here I was all selfish thinking about passing this stupid accident so we can get to the beach, and this guy suffered a horrible death and will never see his family again.
So Kayla spent the rest of the way talking her mind on death. Her grandfather had just recently passed away December of 2009. It was around the same time brother Frata 352 of Malta’s father had passed away too. So I guess we both had death and dying on our minds. “What happened when we die?” She asked me. I spent the rest of the day trying to explain different things to her as best as I can.
Hiking
It’s a long quiet strip of sandy beach with not many people around because it was a weekday. We had left our shoes in the car as we just wanted to talk a long quiet walk down the beach before we walked up to the hiking trail near by.
The beach feels different when you are in that reflective mood. It’s just an eye full. You can see the water go all the way back into the horizon merging with the sky. And you can’t help but wonder in awe how it all got here. Which only added to our talk about the Mystery of Life and Existence we were having.
In a way, it’s satisfying when you are reading, or in class, or on the internet, or think in your house to read about theories and explanations as to how Everything came to be. But when you put yourself out into big Nature where you feel so small and insignificant and overwhelmed by Existence, those theories seem to fade before that Mystery that surrounds us. And we are left still in awe and wonder.
Just off of Topanga Canyon Rd near by is a parking lot thingy where the hiking trail is. We decided to park our car there, and hike our way slowly up the hill to the top where there was this little bridge and a flowing brook. Last time I had been to the top we saw a cluster of orange and red salamanders mating in a big pile.
The hiking trail is beautiful. It starts off with a glen of sorts surrounded by big green trees, and there are these really small “midget building” here and there. As you make your way up there is a small dam to your right where a bee hive lives in somewhere. Then you hike up the side of the hill surrounded by the usual shrubbery and plant life native to that area.
My favorite plant I always look out for is this really cool yellow spaghetti like plant called “Witch’s Hair.” It’s a parasitic plant with these gorgeous little blood red flowers. They somehow take root in a host plant, and then strangle the host plant gradually by spreading its spaghetti like branches all over the plant.
We were still talking about Life as we hiked, relaying insights back and forth. There was this point where we stopped to look at this huge beehive way up on the side of the rocky hill. We both turned around to look at the scenic view behind up which were trees, and Kayla says: “Life’s so weird, we could not even exist, and it would still go on without us; but we do exist, why?”
That statement made me feel funny inside. We have all these questions that have no real answers. It was a wanting to know beyond “Satanism,” beyond Buddhism or some religion. Just two strange creatures who don’t know where they came from, what they are doing here, and where they are going wanting to know what “this” all means and how it all got here. Just us and Nature, with none of that bullshit religion in between.
We spent most of our time up at the top by the brook talking about everything that was on our minds. About death and Life and everything in between and beyond [the Cosmos]. Which led us into talks about science and our mutual dislike of what passes as science today.
Contentions
I hate modern mainstream science. It’s unfortunate that such a noble art could degenerate from olden day Empirical Science into some dogmatic theory thumping lifeless institution. Math has taken the place of direct experimentation. Any new hypothesis which challenges an established theory is mocked by the High Priests of Modern Science.
And this is all they have to work with: just Theories, which are just guesses. And from those scientific biased guesses there is Belief. Biased as in that modern materialist science is biased in that anthropomorphism, supernaturalism, or any –ism beyond Materialism is rejected. But these theories sprout up; one after another; which becomes a forest of theories. And it’s in this forest of theories that the Mind tends to get lost in. When the Mind is lost in a forest of theories, it is as far removed from Life as a Mind lost in religious Beliefs. In effect, these Beliefs and Opinions gets in the way between You/Us and Life. Regardless of whether you are a materialist-atheist or a superstitious religionist: your Beliefs/Opinions is a wall between you and reality.
Direct Apprehension
Vibhajjavada is perhaps the single most important tool I have. The word means the “Doctrine of Analysis.” You expose yourself Directly to a subject matter or nature; observe, and analyze closely. And from that analysis comes insight which is born from within your own Self. And from those self born insights, there is Self Illumination, where you do not depend on any other person, priest, religion, or scientist to spoon feed you ideas, beliefs, and opinions.
Pathei-Mathos is now my second most important tool in my arsenal of Self Illumination. The phrase suggests a struggle or suffering; a trial or tests which Life and Experience brings. From an intimate and Mindful Direct experience of Life and the study of our intimate experiences in Life there is an inner growth in Understanding, a Becoming, a Wisdom that blossoms in our Mind, where Life and our own Experiences is our only Teacher. There is no religion in between you and Life. No theories. No Beliefs. No words even. Because when you have touched something directly there is a wordless knowing.
Mother Nature had it all planned out from the beginning. If Nature depended on priests, scientists, gurus, and professors to teach each generation of her living organisms, causal life would not have made it this far. Even though plants and animals don’t speak Greek, Pathei-Mathos is in essence, the Way Nature teaches, and the way all life learns: From their own life experiences, struggles, tests, trials, mistakes, and adaptability: or ability to change over time from such experiences. This Way requires no teacher or prophet or words. From the “pathei-mathos” of a simple culture of bacteria 3.5 billion years ago – with its suffering, struggle to adapt, etc – evolution happened, and we are a product of that evolution: 3.5 billion years of pathei-mathos.
It might be hard for current materialists to agree that the life experience of a proto-amoeba fueled evolution since it is Believed that genes are in control. But a New Biology and the new field of Epigenetics is confirming Empirically that the environment and Mind influences and affects genes. Evolution is a willed effort, not an accidental mutation. Nature doesn’t play with dice. For a Living organism like Nature to exist continuously for 4 billion years, She can’t afford to play chance.
This natural Way of Direct Apprehension has been lost in most members of our species. We go to everything but Life itself for answers: television, movie stars, rock stars [of all people], state controlled schools, holy books, priests, politicians [of all people], our friends, commonly accepted opinions of others: Everything and everyone but Life. All of these examples are lost in their own Beliefs and Opinions and are equally removed from Life.
The best way to illustrate the difference between wisdom gained from direct apprehension of Life versus going to others for their opinions is with Love and Sex. We can all remember a time during puberty when we were changing inside and out when we were thinking about love and sex. Our parents may have tried to shelter us from experiencing these things because we were too young. TV bombards us with images of sex and relationships. Our friends and other may have told us a few bizarre things about having boyfriends and sex. Sex Ed at school told you to stay away from it because your vagina will rot with grotesque diseases [they show pictures] and you’ll get fat and pregnant; and they make you push a bag of flour [pretend baby] around for good measure too. And your local pastor at church will tell you you’ll burn in hell forever if you have sex before marriage, so don’t even bother getting a boyfriend.
So you end up with all of these different Opinions and Beliefs and you get lost in that forest of opinions. Until you just Try it. When you do first fall in love and try sex for the first time, there is a wordless knowing. More of an inner feeling and realization of what it means to actually fall in love and be loved, and what sex is. And it is beyond the gibberish you once heard. Which is when you realize that all of those other people’s beliefs and opinions were just gibberish that had nothing to do with the wordless knowing of Love and Sex. And from years of love and heartbreak and mistakes, you grow into a wise young adult. Wise from your own personal touching of Life.
Or it is like magick. I have a boar tusk wrapped in gold. On the tusk is written magickal Pali versus by a monk, who also “woke up” the “spirit” inside of the tusk. In my culture [Thai/Khmer] these boar tusk amulets have been used for thousands of years. And those that use them – especially in battle during war – knows their value and their ‘faith’ in such amulets is beyond doubt. But those beliefs or faith in such amulets are born from a direct experience. Whereas those people who have never owned such an amulet or have never experienced anything concerning magick, often have many of their own theories and beliefs [disbelief] about the subject. But from where do their theories and beliefs arise? Lifeless opinions devoid of any intimate and direct experience.
Life & Death
Since I was raised in an Asian culture, I was never told that the stork brings babies. I did wonder where I came from when I was little, like around 5, so I asked my mom where I came from. She told me I came from a pet store in China Town because the Chinese people in China have so many people in their country, they have to sell their extra babies to people in America.
Of course I learned later where babies come from. As we all do at some point. We definitely know when one of your girl friends at our school gets knocked up by her stupid boyfriend. So for many of us it’s Direct Exposure to pregnancy that we intimately realize how human life starts. When one of your friend or mother is pregnant, and you feel the baby kicking with your own hands, and a few months later you’re holding the baby in your arms, there is a wordless knowing that goes beyond sex ed and text book pictures and the many opinions and beliefs about having babies. Direct exposure to the beginning of human life also gives you something no text book or belief or theory can ever give to you: Awe and Wonder. It’s fascinating in a mysterious way to hold a new born baby in your arms, because it’s born fully biologically and physiologically functioning on its own, it’s alive, and it came literally from nowhere.
But death is different isn’t it? We have all these beliefs and opinions about death. Some of us believe that when we die we stop existing. Some of us have this theory that when we die we are judged and based on how good or bad we were we go to heaven or hell. How many of these opinions and theories came from somebody who held death in their arms? How many of us have held a dying person? How many of us have heard with our own ears a dying person’s last mortal words? How many of us have intimately experienced directly somebody we know wither away and die?
Death in the Occident is sterile and clinical. We don’t ever hear the last words of the dying. The last words we ever hear is some doctor telling us our elderly loved one has passed on. Death in the West is shut off from direct experience.
The Elderly – our own grand mothers and grand fathers – are shut off in nursing homes: out of sight, out of Mind. We go on our daily lives, perhaps feeling a bit guilty, but we try not to think about it. Maybe we’ll go visit these old people once in a while. Then they die far from our Mindful direct awareness. And we wonder what happens to the dead. And we make up theories to explain something we were never intimately connected with away. Everybody seems to have an opinion; yet nobody seems to have directly experienced deaths in the West.
What do I Believe happens to us when we die I was asked. I don’t Believe. I believed many things about love and sex before I Experienced it. But when I did Experience it, there is nothing to Believe: there is just a Wordless Knowing. I Believed many things as a small girls about where babies come from. But when I experienced it directly, there is nothing to Believe: there is just a silent and simple – yet awe inspiring – understanding. You don’t believe in something you have touched, or tasted, or seen, or heard, or smelled, or experienced. You don’t believe in the color blue. You don’t believe in a song you like. You don’t believe anything about the taste of a watermelon. You don’t believe anything about snowboarding, like you don’t believe in driving cars. You don’t believe in things you directly have experienced and Realized inside. You believe in things you have NOT yet experienced. You make theories up for things you have no idea of or intimate association with.
It’s no wonder to me that the people who are the most far removed from life: religionists, have the most Theories about it. It doesn’t surprise that people who have no real intimate personal experience of the Universe – Cosmologists – have the most Theories about it. People who have never intimately personally experienced death, often have the most opinions and ideas about death to believe in. Thankfully, there are other cultures and peoples besides the Western Human.
In most cultures and living traditions around the world a Family stays together through life and death. In such Families both the birth of a new relative and the death of a relative are directly experienced first hand by everyone. The birth is a joyous occasion. The deaths brings both sadness and relief. In such cultures the elderly are never thrown away in a nursing home. You nurse your grandmothers and grandfathers to death. You watch them wither away in a room next to you. You care for them, spend all your time you have left with them, before they go away. You watch them die in silence with your aunts and uncles. You hear their last words, and you see them take their last breath. And you see when they have died that “something” behind their eyes has left.
In cultures like the one I was born and raised in, this is a Living Tradition. It is an old one that is thousands and thousands of years old. Older than religion, because when they do die, we practice an ancient tradition wrongly called “ancestor worship” by the Occident.
One generation cares for their elders to death, and that tradition is repeated down the ages. During which time, things are learned about death from direct exposure. And that knowledge and wisdom is pasted down by the living. I’ve helped take care of many of my elders and I have seen all of them die naturally. But, I’m not going to go into the details of what I have experienced and wordlessly know and what has been past down to me by thousands of years of being so close to death. What I have experienced in my own life, has only meaning to me. And death really isn’t the central topic here. It is Mystery.
Angles to Mysteries
Everything about Life and the Cosmos is a mystery. The closer we look, the less we know and the more mysterious things get. We are a creature that doesn’t know how we got here, what we are doing here, or where we are going. It’s almost as if we are blind, or like we exist in the dark.
This reminded me of bats flying around at night. They can’t see anything so they squeak these ultrasonic echoes. And these echoes bounces off their dark environment and from that bouncing, they get an image of their surrounding in an indirect way, so that they begin to “see” in that darkness. Our talk on that hike ended up in this darkness we exist blindly in, so we were briefly talking about bats.
I went home that day feeling at peace inside. Then the word “Angle” came back on my Mind as the silence of the evening caused me to think about the ONA again. I can’t stand it when I don’t understand something even if it is explained to me. Usually I just give up and make up my own explanation. This “Nine Angles” thing was bugging me.
I went online to try and find as many archaic meanings to the word “angles” to try and create for myself a meaning of “nine angles” that is personally my own understanding that is relevant to me. Coincidentally there is an old definition of the word “angle” that is not a geometric thing or a fish hook. The word “Angle” also means: “To get at something indirectly or by artful means.”
That definition of the word Angle got me thinking about the bats again: how they piece together their dark environment by using an indirect method. Nine of course to me would be the 4 causal dimensions plus the 5 Acausal dimensions and/or the 7 spheres of the Tree of Wyrd, plus the Abyss and the Acausal: which either way is the Whole Living Cosmos.
Our total immersion into Life, and our direct apprehension of Life seems to be angles of indirectly unraveling or unlocking the mysteries of the Cosmos that surrounds us; that we exist in: that we are a living expression of. If only we each put ourselves into every aspect of Life: Birth and Death, and every human experience in between. But also being intimate, empathetic, and close to Nature, and directly analyzing it our own selves for our own answers.
In this way – with something like Pathei-Mathos – there is a Going Beyond of opinions, established theories, mundane beliefs, and the silliness of religion. Where nothing and no-one comes in between us and the great Dark Mystery of the Cosmos. Where our own Life experience, intimate apprehension, and struggles are our only teacher and doctrine which guides us Numinously to our Self Enlightenment and evolution.
In a way, Life is both the teacher doing the teaching, and the subject being taught. No book, or belief, or theory thought up by another human, can teach what Life can teach. Life and Nature have been teaching its Mysteries since before mankind. It is arrogant to believe that we know more and can do better because we have microscopes and telescopes, and can tell stories about what little we see: what little we understand.
After a long reflective day, after having gained a new understanding of the word “angle,” and after re-reading some of ONA and David Myatt’s writings, I see the ONA and what it has to offer in a new light. If only we could mature ourselves from our old aeonic reliance on religion and priests. If only we could liberate our Minds from the forest of theories and beliefs, and just plunge into Life naked. To just experience Life directly and intimately, up against our bare skin. Beyond theories and beliefs. Where there is only Experience, the Wordless Knowing, and Evolution born from such experience and knowing: Which has been the Way of Nature for aeons.
Chloe 352
Order of Nine Angles
121 yf
