The most fundamental question we face, from the earliest moments of our lives is how to live. It is from this that we create the personality and come to identify ourselves to both, ourselves, and to the world around us. Building an inner life, along with the outer life we need to create in order to get along in the world, is an essential issue that yet, few people really confront. This only comes to those who have an inner dialogue that is more than just the stream of thoughts pouring through our minds; every moment of every day. And it has to be built wholly of the self in its own regard, before it is then worked into the outer and creative expression that makes the whole personality.
Please see the sermon video below, and the notes used to deliver the sermon below that.
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Sermon Notes
Vice, Virtue & Self
1. How to live & create our lives?
1A. Thinking for oneself vs. group think.
1A1. Group think is important–common sense & social norms are necessary to get along.
1A1a. These can be followed unconsciously, as they are conditioned into us.
1A2. But if all one has is group think, one is living in an unconscious state.
1A3. To become conscious, one has to discover one’s own perspective on the issues of roup think & hen discover what’s outside the group think box.
2. ‘Show me a wise ma, and I’ll show you someone who made a lot of mistakes & often did the wrong thing.
2A. In order o discover what’s ouside the box, one has to challenge the norms inside the box.
2A1. If you just do what you’re told, you’re practicing blind complacency.
2A1a. You won’t truly understand the ‘why’ of the good things in the box.
2A1b. You won’t be able to discover the bad things in the box.
3. The search for one’s voice.
3A. To distinguish oneself from the herd.
3A1. Being the contrarian & the maverick.
3A2. Learn how to think differently.
3A2a. Study other cultures & dissident people.
3A3. Imbibition of drugs & the breaking of limitations imposed by taboo is one way people have gone about this.
3A3a. It’s part of the bad reputation of mystics.
AL:I.41 “The word of Sin is Restriction. O man! Refuse not thy wife, if she will! O lover, if thou wilt, depart! There is no bond that can unite the divided but love: all else is a curse. Accursed! Accursed be it to the aeons! Hell.”
3B. The search for those elements that go into one’s unique voice; one’s personality must be unimpeded.
3B1. But there is danger here, with the law & one’s reputation.
AL:II.22 “I am the Snake that giveth Knowledge & Delight and bright glory, and stir the hearts of men with drunkenness. To worship me take wine and strange drugs whereof I will tell my prophet, & be drunk thereof! They shall not harm ye at all. It is a lie, this folly against self. The exposure of innocence is a lie. Be strong, o man! lust, enjoy all things of sense and rapture: fear not that any God shall deny thee for this.”
AL:II.70 “There is help & hope in other spells. Wisdom says: be strong! Then canst thou bear more joy. Be not animal; refine thy rapture! If thou drink, drink by the eight and ninety rules of art: if thou love, exceed by delicacy; and if thou do aught joyous, let there be subtlety therein!”
4. Vices then, are a celebration of the self w/o any necessary consideration of others.
4A. Self indulgence is a celebration of the Self.
4A1. cf. Whitman’s Song of Myself.
4B. For the consideration of others, we have the Adoration of Nuit & another sermon; upcoming.
4B1. But we cannot be of service to others until we are whole in ourselves.
4B1a. Indeed, this must be our first virtue, as potent as our service to our community.
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