Spirit, Will and Purpose

It should be a self-evident truth that there is no life without purpose, function and design. Yet, in this degenerate age it is almost a cardinal sin to think such thoughts, or to observe such things with your own eyes. But simple truths, personal experience and common sense are often attacked as 'anecdotal evidence'. In other words, 'don't believe yourself, believe us'. For if a Priest of Science has not ordained it to be true, then you will certainly be ridiculed out of society for your blasphemy. But for those who see this expulsion from their systems of mind control and wage slavery and planned living as a wonderful relief, we welcome you back to a world of purpose and goodness, for they really go hand-in-hand. You simply cannot have one without the other. And as can easily be observed in the modern world, in a purposeless world, evil and degeneracy will always reign.

So let us begin with a simple statement of truth. Each person that is born here within the body of Gaia possesses a unique Spirit of their own. It is simply what makes you uniquely you. It provides the consciousness which allows you to be self-aware. It provides the life-force which powers your body, and is that thing which vacates the body upon death, leaving it lifeless. Your spirit contains the key to your understanding of why you exist, and what you exist for, which we also call your Purpose.

Yet we are also animals, with an animal body, and animal urges and appetites, and a highly logical and computational mind which is still, never-the-less, an animal mind. We call this collection of mundane animal things about yourself the Persona. In modern terms, it is like the operating system of your animal self, as well as your physical identity and sense of self. It is your Persona which is responsible for your survival as an animal in the physical realm. Because of this, your Persona is also the place of fears, worry, anxiety and other such things that help you navigate this sometimes-dangerous place. For death is a real possibility for the body, and quite inescapable sooner or later - no matter what science promises for the future.

Now, the place where the disembodied Spirit and the Persona meet is called your Soul. And it is here that the battle for the destiny of your incarnation plays out. For your Persona has its own goals of survival: resource accumulation so that it can stay alive, appetites for reproduction and happiness, and any number of other things. But the Spirit has a Will of its own, which can be seen and felt as a greater Purpose in one's life. And most often it will be at odds with what the Persona desires, and wants to live for.

And herein lies the age-old conflict between the animal appetites of man, and his spiritual destiny or Purpose while incarnate. Almost all religions, philosophies and spiritual traditions offer some framework and solution to this apparent conflict between the animal self and the Spirit which takes place in the soul of the incarnate being. Most religious solutions involve lots of dogma concerning existence which must be adopted as belief systems, and servitude to a greater unseen being. In order to be saved from this world of danger, one must accept the will of this greater being rather than live for one's own Will, and in exchange one is told that they will then be delivered into some better imagined world after death as a reward for their servitude. Conversely, most philosophical structures rely on the cognition of the animal mind to conjecture and contemplate ideas in an attempt to formulate theories concerning what may or may not be true. Of course, both types of systems fail miserably because each is opposed to Spirit, but in different ways. The former is opposed to Spirit in that one's own purpose is abandoned, and their Soul and life is then given in worship for some promised salvation after death. The latter is opposed to Spirit because philosophical structures start with the supposition that all is mind and knowable therein, even the farthest reaches of the universe is somehow 'mind'. The hubris of this position disallows for direct experience of the Spirit in one's life, as its presence and communications are such that they are not directly interpretable by the mind of the Persona in the form of rational logic.

So, if one is to understand the intertwining within oneself of the animal and the Spirit, one must first understand how to recognize the voice of each within us. It is here that humanity has a problem of perception. This difficulty is not only a problem of perceiving things in general, but in understanding which things are true, important or relevant, and which things are not. And, even assuming one is able to fashion a method of observation and perception which is helpful, there is the added problem of navigation. Once one has acquired reliable information, what do you do with it? How do you use it? Where do you want it to take you? Ironically, these are the questions which are most co-opted by both religion and science: what to look for, what it means. If you allow them to answer these questions for you, then your conclusion will naturally be to act in the way in which they desire you to.

Fortunately for us, the way in which to acquire the true answers to these questions are already provided to each individual for themselves by one's own Spirit, in the form of what is called the Fires and the Waters.

The Elements

In order to understand the Fires and the Waters, one must first know a bit about the Elements. It all sounds very primitive at first, and indeed the understanding of the Elements in modern times has become almost cartoonish amongst the people - a caricature of what it once was. This is because the people no longer live in a way in which the Fires and the Waters are utilized in their daily life, so the ideas of these things have devolved into superstition. Therefore, let us begin at the beginning, again. The Four Elements of traditional cultures always represent a way of understanding and interacting with one's environment in an experiential way, which results in spiritual meaning being gained from those experiences, in order to better navigate one's existence and life. To being with, in this tradition of the Elements the old people of Gaia saw that all life had bodies, the simplest of which were the plants which sprouted from the ground. In addition, they observed that all bodies consumed other bodies, from the greatest to the smallest. This was the same everywhere - in the air, under the water and upon land. Even Gaia, Herself, had a body, of which we were all a part, and upon which we all lived. They observed that the Sun had a body, and so too did the Moon. They concluded that bodies are physical. Bodies are made of systems of other bodies. Bodies may reproduce, grow, change and decay. Bodies are dense and substantial and are a house for life. Bodies are Earth.

Now the bodies of Earth contain three other Elements: the Airs, the Fires and the Waters. The Airs are first and foremost the animal mind, instincts and cognitive functions which have already been mentioned, above. These Airs are given volition by the consciousness of Spirit which they inherit, but are simultaneously not directly connected to Spirit on the conscious, waking level. Therefore, it is important to make clear that the Airs of the Persona are not in direct contact with the greater consciousness of Spirit. The Air is also seen as a void or an empty place in which these cognitions of mind take place. As will be seen, one's Airs are greatly influenced by, and have much interaction with, one's Fires and one's Waters.

The Waters are all of one's emotive responses, feelings, intuitions and rivers of emotion, without which not even a single memory can be imprinted in one's brain. The Waters are a medium, a connection between this thing and that, a highway of experience colored by feelings which qualify the type of experience being had. The Waters can be from your Persona and be concerned with things happening in your life, or they can be from your Spirit and reflect communications from that realm in similar ways. The Fires are all of your self-directed wills and desires. It is the place of imperatives, movement, action and commands. As before with Water, much of the Fire within you will be from your Persona, while some may also be from one's Spirit. And the place where all of this interaction happens between the Fires and the Waters with your Air, all contained within your body (the Earth), is called one's Soul. This Soul is often a mix of stimulus, experience, emotion and desire from any number of different sources, both physical and non-physical.

Now, with this brief overview of the Elements in hand, let us return to the question of humanity's problem with perception and navigation. How exactly does one manage all of the competing influences within one's being? How does one decide how to interpret what one thinks one knows, and what it means? How does one know where one should try to go in life, how one should live, and what one should do? The answer to all of these questions lies within one's Waters.

The Waters

It is easy for most people to remember the feeling as a young child of standing in the sun, feeling the warmth of its life-giving rays and the incredibly good feeling which coursed through your body at the Sun's touch. This simple, childish feeling of goodness and warmth was a truth, a truth which said 'this is goodness.' Remember that feeling well. Yes, it is just a childish feeling. Yes, there are physiological processes which are taking place in the body from the Sun's light and heat which is causing a physical sensation. But it is the feeling that is important. That feeling, for most of us, was a pure feeling, one which is unfettered by adult complications and thoughts and syllogistic contortions of the logic of the mind. That feeling is your Waters communicating something to you.

In an indigenous culture, that feeling would have accounted for much of your decision-making process. The Waters would have been listened to when you ate food, and you felt how it affected your body differently than other foods. The Waters would have given you a feeling of goodness and trust when your mother taught you about things in life, in a loving and caring way. The Waters would have given you a sense of goodness and pride when you became an adult in the tribe, and endured the Rite of Passage, taking your place amongst the rest of the tribe with their approving and supporting embrace.

Along the way there would have been lessons concerning danger, where a feeling of warning would come, and if you ignored it then something bad would probably have happened. This is the manner in which the Waters teach: warning, anxiety, encouragement, happiness, contentment. It is non-logical. It is experiential. These feelings are the language of the Waters, the languages of your experiences and lessons in life, and woe be to thee who ignores the warnings of the Waters in favor of logic alone!

These experiences and feelings mentioned above are all concerned with the Waters of the Earth. They are feelings about experiences in one's life. But there are also the higher Waters, too: the Waters of the Sky. As one begins spiritual practices, or as one begins to interact with the Genius Loci of a place, or the ancestors of one's people, the Waters work in the same way as before with the Earth. They give one information about the experience which is taking place. It is a subjective experience, with objective information. You may find that places will give you a familiar, good feeling. Or perhaps it will be a feeling of warning and anxiety. Or any number of other feelings which you have learned to trust without fail when you experience them in certain ways, over time.

Of course, much time must be spent in one's life practicing the ways of one's Waters. But one should be warned that these feelings simply cannot be confused with imagination, hopes, desires, wishful biases or any other type of self-deceit. In addition, many bad experiences in life may cause the Waters to act with negative feelings, even though nothing objectively negative is happening or being experienced. It is up to each individual to become a master of their Waters, so that they come to a place of trust concerning them, and the feelings which are related therein.

In this way, then, one can begin to discover one's Purpose in life by one's perceptions in one's Waters, under the directional navigation of one's Fires. Discoveries about one's self will be made by these perceptions, revelations will occur, and these Waters will in turn affect the direction one takes with one's Will, one's Fires. In turn, these new directions will cause new experiences to be evaluated within one's Waters. We Ophidians have a host of spiritual exercises and practices for those who seek out their Spirit's Purpose in life, to effect a series of self-transformations of the Persona towards the Spirit.

For it is the Will of the Spirit which the Persona must ultimately succumb to, in order to fulfill the Purpose of one's incarnation, which is the perfect happiness which so many seek, but fail to find.