Templist Meditations

Techniques of meditation

Time to read: approximately 8 minutes

The “True” Meditations

Here are the possible forms of meditation:

With cognition, with observation, internal or external: this is not a meditation. It is your normal state. It is to be noted that meditation always involves isolation of the variables of experience.

With cognition, with observation, external: this is a meditation in which you ruminate on the qualities, implications, history, relationships, etc, of a thing or things that you observe. I name this “European meditation”. This is the form of meditation spoken of in Psychological Magic.

With cognition, with observation, internal: this is a meditation in which you ruminate on your own thoughts. To some Northern Europeans this is harmful, if improperly conceived, since any cognition is also a thought that brings itself into existence. The only thing to perceive, in such a case, is the fact that you can manipulate your mind with a high degree of freedom. I.e, one does not say “I feel upset with my wife. I think this is connected, in my mind, to the idea of my stubborn father” without actually conjuring that mental state of affairs. Such permutations of thoughts are more willed, as opposed to mere observations. This is a matter of self control, if you think about it: when one chooses to think the thought, “I feel upset with my wife. I think this is connected, in my mind, to the idea of my stubborn father”, one chooses it according to a certain reason. A person without self control chooses it invariably. A person with self control nonetheless chooses it, if it happens to pop into his mind rather than something else, but can also think, “should I choose this, or something else?” If someone is greatly self controlled, as some Northern Europeans are, then such thoughts cease to seem organic at all, and the mind is a canvas upon which they can paint any mental picture. In such a case it is seldom fruitful to paint mental pictures according to mental pictures. Rather, such a person should focus only on the external world. This mentality may seem similar to that of an NPC, but this is only because it differs from the norm in the opposite direction. I name this meditation “soul searching meditation”.

With observation, internal or external: this is a meditation in which you examine the thoughts that arise relative to external things. It can help you to have a clearer idea of your immediate responses to things. You may also realize, if you are of the type above, that your responses to things are not terribly impulsive, so that you end up simply observing them, or invariably thinking about how you might use them. In which case this type of meditation is not very useful. I name this “impulse meditation”.

With observation, external: this is a self explanatory meditation. I name it “phenomenological meditation”. “Phenomenological” can be misleading, since everything that is observed is a phenomenon, not only external things.

With observation, internal: this is a meditation in which you observe “stream of consciousness” thoughts, reveries, or etc. It is used to have spiritual experiences, as described in Guide to Practice. It produces thoughts that are “schizo”, and will lead to insanity if maintained for long enough. It can be useful for creative works, provided that you give some cogitative form to the stream of consciousness idea afterward. Likewise in Guide to Practice, it is said that the visions of a seer are only useful if they are subsequently interpreted. This process works because, normally, you cogitate upon one mental image at a time, such as to think “prison: my friend went to prison”, and this represents a utilization of the idea “prison” to you. But if you allow this idea to develop, you can then utilize a broader idea. For example: “prison, bars, caged animal, ferocity, ferocity caged, pacing animal hungering for battle”, etc, then you may cogitate upon that, such as “my friend went to prison according to a crime that indicates he is of a ferocious nature, to a degree that makes the state regard him as troublesome, and I may thus find outlets for him to utilize that nature in an appropriate way”. Of course it is also possible for a reasonable person to reason his way to that conclusion, so schizo-thoughts are particularly useful to provide impetuses to thought for people who are not very analytical by nature. Although, reasonable people may also gain things from more complex schizo-thoughts, such as stories. For example, the idea of a “man of twists and turns”, which has found its way into Templist Canon both overtly and via “Europeanism”, resulted in part from the cogitations of literary men upon the partially historical schizo-story of Odysseus. One could have discovered this using observation or reason, but lacking the concept for it generated by a schizo-thought, one may not have known what to look for. For the record: The Author discovered this concept not via the Odyssey, but via the quite different schizo-thought of direct divine revelation, which occurred during a sleepless and malnourished manic episode of four days leading up to the autumn equinox of 2024 (which equinox, by the way, he had no cognizance of the occurrence of, thus lending credence to the Templist view that the equinoxes and solstices are spiritual). He simply co-opted the term “man of twists and turns” to describe what we revealed to him. The concept was then inserted into older posts after a round of editing. I name this meditation “stream of consciousness meditation”.

With observation, neither internal nor external: in this meditation, you aim to observe the immaterial soul itself, self-referentially. You cannot completely eliminate external and internal observations, but you can seek to reduce them by reducing stimuli. I.e, by closing the eyes, sitting in a quiet environment, quieting thoughts, etc. Modern means allow this to occur in sensory deprivation. Sleep is approximate to this state, but is inadequate to view the immaterial soul simply because it cannot be remembered. In this meditation, you are essentially trying to suppress all stimuli except your basic consciousness (in the biological sense) and memory-forming, so as to have a durable idea of the immaterial soul. Contrary to certain Eastern mysticisms, this meditation does not confer any spiritual power, and causes habitual lethargy if it is practiced too often. It is only useful as a method of obtaining certain empirical proof of the immaterial soul. I name this “immaterial soul meditation”.

A form of meditation “without observation” is impossible.

The meditations below are not really meditations of the same category as those above, but are superficially meditation-like, so I refer to them by the same name.

Practice Meditation

When you imagine the performance of a task, proficiency in that task increases, provided that proficiency comes from within. For example, when you imagine lifting weights, you become slightly stronger. Your body primes itself for what you mentally expect to do. This is why it is often impossible to ignore worries about pending performances. If you have practiced something insufficiently, then your worries about what “not to do” will become primed, since you have no corresponding bodily memory that tells you not to do it, and thus your wires become crossed. This is part of the natural process of practice, since it is often beneficial to fail during practice so as to consciously understand what failure feels like.

Brain: “don’t do X”

Body: “you mean this?”

Brain: “yes, don’t do that”

If you need to succeed at something impromptu, then you should suppress this learning aid by entertaining no possibility of failure. Of course this does not mean that you cannot entertain such a possibility before even embarking on it, so as to possibly abstain from attempting it.

Space Meditation

Space meditation involves the observance of space. Space is something best observed by feeling, rather than seeing. Create spaces between your body parts, such as between your hands or fingers, and observe the distance while closing your eyes. But understand that even within that distance, there are gaseous objects. Therefore you must also imagine the empty space that exists within that distance, connected between the gaseous atoms that exist there.

Then you may expand the awareness, by using the same type of imagination, outside of the space between your body parts, even imagining the space that exists within solid objects. Expand awareness as much as possible, without losing the feeling of connectedness between the space between your body parts and the external space. The meditation could be attempted with the eyes open to aid in this, but for beginners this might be distracting.

Attempting Magic

It is while you have awareness of space that space magic can be attempted, by using the will to reorient the space over which you have awareness, to affect change in the atoms around them. Since all space is connected, your aware-space can be used to affect space that is far away. Although this does dilute the effect of the spell, as compared to casting a spell within your aware-space. The more space you can be aware of in the space meditation, the more you can affect, the more power you have to affect things, and the more atoms you can displace and reorient according to your will.

Internal Space

You may or may not choose to become aware of the space inside of your own body, rather than or in addition to expanding the awareness of space outward. To do so can be harmful, because it causes you to disturb your internal constitution. The only circumstance in which it may be useful, is for space-spells that are casted internally. I.e, spells meant to change your internal constitution.

Powers of Space Magic

Initiated Templists have a far greater capacity to generate aware-space. Even more so for the chief priests of temples. Astoundingly more so for the gods. Virtuous people who are alike to gods, i.e who possess the virtues we mandate, and especially demigods, have a greater capacity as well. The second element is will. Strong willed people are better able to use the space of which they have become aware.

May 4, 2022