Look at your sheet from the other day outlining your Visions and Challenges. Re-read the past few days’ essays related to identity and cognitive biases. How can these ideas, and your further exploration of these topics, be used to rethink and develop your sense of your Challenges? Are specific modes of identification helping to create or contribute to your Challenges? Are some of your challenges the result of your biases?
In my work in this area, I have a potentially severe physical Challenge that my biases can complicate. In different ways, both sides of my family have significant health issues driven mainly by diet. On one side, it has led to early deaths, while on the other, Insulin Resistance issues are common. Logically, I know exactly what I need to do: follow a high-quality, low glycemic index diet and maintain a functional fitness level through fairly rigorous exercise. This, however, runs headlong into my bias toward avoiding issues arising from my biological heritage and against my bias toward the instant gratification of sugary, salty, fatty foods. With periods of back-sliding when under stress, I have learned how to plan ahead of my biases, but only because I took the time to become very aware of how they were influencing my behaviors and creating potentially more serious Challenges for myself in the future.
This same kind of thing can be applied to Challenges other than the personal physical. Often, our biases of wanting always to be right put us at odds with others in our emotional community, such as friends and partners. How would this be changed if you made yourself more aware of this bias and how it creates or adds to Challenges for you? Your challenge will likely not evaporate if you become aware of this bias. Still, you may find it is easier to manage than if you continue to act in the manner the bias dictates.
Try developing your Challenges in all six domains directly from the past few days’ essays or your reconsiderations. Do not worry about your Visions; we will use your Challenges for the subsequent few exercise sessions before returning to them. Think of this as a conscious use of the bias of avoiding in a positive sense, recruiting that 2/3 “away from” motivation before we get to the “towards” of your Visions.
Feel free to ask questions if you get stuck. This could be done on this post or via the contact information on this website.
Humanity’s default conditions can be considered sleepwalking, as the Fourth Way suggests. Another way of looking at it is that the Gift of Set acts as a complex series of systems designed to function on autopilot. Our problems, more often than not, come from this autopilot system having never been appropriately programmed despite its brilliant capacity to handle complexity. What we seek to do via a formula like “Awaken-See-Act” is to reprogram that autopilot so that it supports our Work rather than send us in the wrong direction or crash us entirely. To do this, we need some sense of the systems that underlie our Conscious Awareness to learn how they shape our actions.
While a simplification, the triune brain model can provide an excellent first-level look at the systems operating within us. In this model, the brain is divided into three sections. The fundamental level is the reptilian brain, which currently handles fight-or-flight survival issues. The next level is the mammalian brain, which handles issues of emotions such as love, fear, happiness, and sadness. Finally, we have the intellectual brain that is reason and symbol-oriented. Each of these systems works reasonably well to cover its domain. Still, they develop by happenstance, taking in impressions from the environment and forming imprints that, once taken on, are very difficult to change. Because this imprinting process comes from happenstance, the imprints of the reptilian, mammalian, and intellectual brains can work at odds with one another, creating deep personal conflicts.
The three brains can be seen as internal structures of the self-complex. Like plumbing, they shape all of what flows through them. The things flowing through the structures can be considered processes. Of the two processes, they are easier to change with minor impact. In contrast, changes to the structure are more challenging and have a far more significant impact in the long term. This distinction between structures and processes also applies to external factors, a topic to be addressed later.
Biologically and psychologically, biases develop within your perception as you develop in space-time. These biases work to minimize energy output in decision-making. As is often the case, this is useful at the moment but does not consider the long-term effects of the rapid decisions being made.
A simple “towards and away” bias is one of the first to develop. The things that your biology likes you will move more towards, and the things it does not, you will move away from. This often begins with survival topics but can extend to emotional states, moving towards “good” feelings and away from “bad,” and logical states, moving towards things that are congruent with your understanding and away from things that conflict with it. This bias tends to be “weighted” as well, with most people being motivated twice as much by “away” reactions than they are “towards” sometimes.
Our biology also has a bias towards instant gratification. Because resources were rare, our biology developed to take them in as soon as they are found and with as much quantity as possible. This quality scales through our other levels as well. We seek to feel good now without calculating the real impact of our actions.
As our psychology develops, we start making a simple model of the world to make sense of it, which leads to another common bias in our thinking toward cause and effect. While forms of causation exist, much of our perception of cause and effect is flawed and under-informed. We simply take two events arising together as one causing the other. If you see a given person while you feel bad often enough, you will start to believe that the person causes you to feel bad. Similarly, if you touch the same object whenever it rains, you may come to believe that touching that object makes it rain. Unexamined, this bias underlies much of what made up the more superstitious schools of white magic. Additionally, this bias treats roughly similar things as being the same. If we encounter one dog, for example, we will treat all dogs roughly the same way.
Our emotional brain, too, produces its own biases. We are biased toward how we think a given event or occurrence will make us feel in the future and use that estimated emotional state to plan our actions. When we think about the future, we check our emotions and then use our emotions to decide what will arise. We find ourselves shocked to discover that reality did not consult our emotions regarding what actually arises.
Our intellectual brain has its own biases as well. The most glaring and confounding is a bias toward interpreting events to conform with and validate our assumptions. When we reflect upon things, we arrange our understanding to feel like we were right all along.
These biases can be overcome through practice. Learning to awaken to these biases as they occur forms the first step. This should be done gently, with the simple question to yourself, “What are you doing?” when you see the bias at play. Try to think of your highest possibilities in asking this question and start making changes to your behavior from this vantage point. As you practice doing this, it will first change your processes around these biases and may, in time, affect your structures related to them as well. This will allow you to become increasingly sophisticated in how you interact with a growing complex world.
When you are in territories without maps, it is only by your Desire that you can orient. The best orientation on the Left Hand Path comes from having a clear sense of what you want at the present moment and what it is you are facing. Doing so will allow you to integrate the material in this series as a meaningful guide to your overall Work. It will allow you to focus your mind in a manner that will allow you to change yourself internally and change your circumstances externally.
The first exercise is simple.
Step 1.
On a blank sheet of paper, write out nine goals you have for yourself and nine problems you are facing. Do not take too much time with this, going no longer than five minutes. Keep the descriptions in sentence form, preferably three to five words that someone else would understand if they read it.
Do not worry about getting them perfect or complete at the present moment. We will re-work and reiterate them throughout this series, allowing you to refine and find greater nuance.
Step 2.
Now, you will gradually evolve your language around these topics and give them some additional considerations.
On a new list, write on the topic “Visions.” Read over your goals and start thinking about them as Visions of who you want to be, how you want to interact with others, and what you want to have. Make these tangible outcomes as much as possible rather than for subjective states like “Happiness.” If “happiness” is a Vision you have for yourself, write out the things you think would make you happy rather than the emotional state. Then do the same on another sheet, writing “Challenges” and bringing over a more developed version of those things you previously labeled “problems.”
Step 3.
One of the more practical models for understanding humans is Dr. Paul MacLean’s Triune Brain Theory. MacLean identified three separate structures in the Human brain, with analogies to other life forms. The most primitive section, associated with the brain stem, deals with purely physical sensations and is termed the reptile brain. The middle section, which deals with emotions and is sometimes called the Limbic System, is termed the mammalian brain. Finally, the neo-cortex, which deals with logical thinking and human cognition, is termed the human brain in this model.
The Physical, Emotional, and Intellectual systems are running all the time for us internally. The Physical Brain is interested in survival, physical health, and well-being. The Emotional Brain has an interest in emotional happiness. The Intellectual Brain has an interest in mental satisfaction.
In addition to this division being useful internally, it can also be applied externally. The External Physical can include material success, personal ecology, tangible assets, and the like. The External Emotional takes the form of community and relationships. The External intellectual comes from collaboration and meaning-making in the realm of culture.
Take a look over your Visions and Challenges. How can these be developed if you consider them from the standpoint of the Triune Brain model? On a new sheet of paper, make three rows and two columns. Mark the rows as “Physical,” “Emotional,” and “Intellectual.” Mark the column on the left as “Internal” and the right as “External.” Then, take your Visions and Challenges and place them in the area that they were most resonant with. Again, do not worry about making perfect matches; just place things where they seem most appropriate at the moment.
What you have before you may be the first significant attempt at orienting yourself by your Desire. Congratulations, you are now better armed to face the challenges of life than most humans have ever been or will ever be. Hold onto this sheet, as we will be coming back to it.
Take a moment and focus on your breathing. You can direct your breath specifically, making it shallower or deeper. Most of the time, however, your breath is simply working independently without needing attention. While most people realize this reasonably early in life, another process is continually running outside of our awareness: the Mind.
This may seem like an unusual comment. After all, isn’t the Mind synonymous with consciousness? If my Mind is working, then aren’t I, by definition, aware? In general, this is how we like to think about the operations of the Mind. However, as Gurdjieff taught in multiple different ways, even in our waking lives, we are little more than asleep, ascribing to ourselves the conditions of wakefulness. In most cases, the Mind is working with as much awareness, attention, and direction as your breathing, only with more serious potential consequences.
The unique human consciousness that the Temple of Set terms Isolate Intelligence or “The Gift of Set” is, as far as we know, the most powerful leveraging tool in the Universe. Simple electrical charges and chemical reactions can reshape the world for good and for ill—the greatest works of art, science, religion, and magic spring forth from the Gift. So have our greatest tragedies, cruelties to Life, our destruction of our kind, and our despoliation of the environment.
In its default form, unrefined, our human Mind is adapted for a world that no longer exists for us. For the longest stretch of its existence, which runs at least 200,000 years into the past conservatively, it adapted itself primarily to survival issues. In tandem with our biology, its primary focus has been upon a particular mode of survival, namely survival at the moment. We are adapted to deal with immediate threats in ways that will allow us to survive that encounter with no consideration for the long-term consequences of that survival. Living, not living well, is the priority. As such, we often have difficulty seeing the long-term consequences of our actions or the broader context in which we exist.
However, this is not a doomed condition. As far as we know, the objective brain and the subjective Mind are the most adaptable things in the Universe. The Mind and brain can overcome their biases and default conditions through various methods, refining the Gift of Set into a powerful engine of transformation, success, and Initiation. The Gift of Set’s capacity to adapt to ever-increasing levels of complexity with sophistication has been its most powerful feature. You simply have to put in Work for this capacity to come into being in its fullness.
This series does not rely upon any particular cultural background or school of social or magical thought. Instead, it will focus on the “hardware” of being human that underlies and supports our biological, psychological, and social capacities. As such, its insights can be adapted to nearly any tradition, neo-tradition, or context you choose.
From the moment of its [re]creation in 1975, we have instinctively felt the Temple of Set to be something unprecedented on this world. It crystallized a premise at once more ambitious and more subtle than that of its Church of Satan prelude. And unlike the cynical pessimism of the Church, the Temple has always had about it a wondrous exuberance, an electrifying optimism, a promise of wonders and marvels to be enjoyed by all who ventured through its pylons. We may not have anticipated all of these discoveries accurately on our first exposure to them – and on occasion some Initiates have found the light too intense for their self-possession – but such growing pains as we have experienced have never eclipsed the magic and magnificence of the Æonic current. And no one who has experienced initiation as catalyzed by the Temple, whether temporarily or over an enduring period, has been unaffected by it.
Dr. Michael A. Aquino, June 1996 Scroll of Set upon stepping down as High Priest of Set
A few key observations:
The Temple of Set has always been philosophical and frankly contra-ideological in its orientation. Setian Philosophy orients to the Universe in a sense of exuberance, optimism, wonder, and enjoyment. If you find someone passing off reactionary pessimism as “Setian” there is a good chance that individual has missed a point or two along the way.
If you are looking to build your skills in the various levels of the Setian Hierarchy of Knowledge these resources may help. While some are commercial tools while others are informational pieces. I have no commercial benefit from these links, but have used any tools I recommend.
As a philosophically aligned Initiatory School the Temple of Set tends to be somewhat differently oriented than other organizations positioning themselves as “occult organizations” and the like. Rather than offering a reactionary approach or ideology to limit anxieties and provide easy answers, the Setian approach suggests exploring reality as it is and in all of its facets.
In terms of the Setian Hierarchy of Knowledge, the project begins with two complementary areas of practice unified by a third. Awareness training, meaning developing your capacities at attention, orientation, intention, and mediation forms the first of these areas. Mathematics, beginning with formal logic, forms the second of these areas. The third area which brings the two together are what I term “representational skills” and includes things like drawing, sculpting, moving, and explaining such that you can capture your insights and communicate them with others.
When these skills are in place explorations of material and social sciences, the arts and the humanities, become the next major areas. Each has their own means of fact determination or “truth testing” which will help you to understand yourself, others, and the world around you. It will enrich your appreciation for reality and for the subjective experiences of other humans.
When these areas are understood, the next layer of the Hierarchy is that of Lesser Black Magic. One of the most misunderstood disciplines, Lesser Black Magic comes from the conscious use of meta-communicative or material factors either unknown or overlooked by most in order to impel towards intentional outcomes in a non-coercive manner. As you can see I made a distinction between intra-subjective acts of Lesser Black Magic, or the use of meta-communication and material factors to adjust your own behaviors, and intersubjective acts of Lesser Black Magic aimed at impelling the behaviors of others.
The top of this Hierarchy is the practice of Greater Black Magic. This is the intentional transformation of the subjective, perceptual universe in a manner which can impact circumstances in the objective universe based on the passion and precision of the magician. This is done through the unification of the individual psyche to encode and communicate its intentions, desires, and will.
Most people will look at something like this, and decide “Screw it, only Greater Black Magic matters” since it is placed at the top. But this sort of approach typically leads to delusion as you lack the necessary skills and grounding to evaluate your experiences. As Dr. Aquino notes in his Reading List entry for 16L. _World Civilizations_ by Edward McNall Burns et al. (reprinted in his Temple of Set):
“I am often concerned to see how little knowledge many aspiring Initiates have of exoteric human history. Unless you have a reasonably solid grounding in this subject, anything you derive from this reading list [and most other sensory-inputs] is going to be distorted in your mind.”
What he says of “exoteric” history applies to all layers of the Hierarchy of Knowledge as well.
“Initiation” is the term used to describe the experience of an affiliate of the Temple of Set. Since the term is very easily misunderstood and misused, its usage within and by the Temple deserves careful explanation.
In its traditional sense, initiation is induction into the membership of a secret society, hence being entitled to successively more exclusive secrets as the level of initiation rises. There is usually a good deal of occult hot air mixed in with this, in that the candidate is exhorted concerning the excellence he has had to display to be worthy of the honor, the sublime dignity of the initiation itself, and the fearful consequences should he betray its secrets.
Many initiatory societies are little more than financial rackets, while others are more or less sincere in what they are trying to do. Most esoteric knowledge imparted under the guise of initiation is not particularly practical. Rather it is vague, theatrical, mystical, and inconclusive: obscurum per obscurius (“explaining the obscure by means of the more obscure”). The new “initiate” is left with a pleasing feeling of heightened importance, yet is somehow unable to explain why.
Authentic initiation is not simply the acquisition of specific knowledge or skills; it involves a certain approach to the challenges of existence in general. An initiate, like a cat, must learn to land on his feet in any situation in which he may find himself. He does this by the acquired and applied technique of “stepping back to view the situation from outside himself”. He assigns relative importance to it, estimates his options as an actor within it, and activates the most appropriate such option. He may make mistakes due to lack of information, but he rarely errs on the basis of what he does know. His developing sense of intuition, moreover, will warn him whenever a situation is not whatever it immediately seems to be. He can then avoid premature conclusions and impulsive actions.
The Temple of Set conceives the process of initiation as a Socratic refutation of confused, imprecise, and unsubstantiated information and thinking. It is the imparting of truth as much as we know it to be, but even more importantly it is the imparting of the ability to pursue truth and to recognize it when it is found.
Wisdom – knowledge of truth – cannot be taught to stupid intellects. A love of and insistence upon the truth cannot be taught to unethical individuals. Hence initiation is not something that can be “done to” someone merely by subjecting him to a series of classes, examinations, and ceremonies. All that the Temple can do – and all that it tries to do – is to spread out its banquet of truths, probabilities, hypotheses, and speculations before aspirants whom we evaluate as reasonably sincere. They must then utilize it, together with such other resources as they may develop, to achieve wisdom. Thus do they initiate themselves.
Setemheb 