Just some of my own thoughts on the subject, and wanting to hear from others and ask questions and get a diversity of views and opinions.
Could you as part of your Left Hand practice ever commit what you see as really taboo? Even if finding no or little joy in it?
Could you for example, have sex with someone that you find repulsive or taboo due to a physical aspect of them? Either due to your own orientation or something else? Could overcoming these taboos be beneficial to your spiritual practice? And no, I don't mean anything illegal.
I recently, through invoking the power of Lilith in a ritual, I overcame a very personal sexual taboo of mine with another person. I think I understand myself better for it now, and I feel it's helped me along my path... but it wasn't too long ago. So time will tell how it affects me.
I kind of think that when those in the Left Hand talk about breaking taboos they tend to (in more occult circles) define it in a reveling, hedonistic kind of way. But that is more like something you enjoy that isn't really taboo for you, just for others. At least in my view.
What I'm talking about is breaking your own taboos. To truly be unfettered. I don't think that one has to participate in what they find uninteresting, but at least participating at least once in what they find to be repulsive, I feel, is essential to the Left Hand. Maybe there is a good reason to not do certain things (like things that are illegal), but that doesn't mean that other avenues of taboo breaking, sexual or not can't be accomplished.
For example, could you, assuming you have qualms about it, at least once, sacrifice an animal in ritual? Or eat something you wouldn't ever dream of eating? Could you eat your own feces or human flesh (given in the way it was done was legal?)
I should make clear I am not conflating "disgusting" with "taboo" here. My own sexual taboo I mentioned earlier was only taboo to me, not disgusting (well maybe it is to some people). To those who don't feel a taboo, but simply grossed out by the idea, it wouldn't really apply in the same way. Although... overcoming the disgust of certain things is part of the Left Hand traditionally... nothing is impure... there is no good or evil (back on this later)... everything is part of the same cosmic essence/truth.
Also just because a knife is sharp doesn't mean you should realize that by striking it against you when striking it against something unliving will do just as good without harming you or others, for the sake of metaphor. In that metaphor, striking it against yourself or others would generate the most shock and might even help you overcome the the disgust at harming yourself or others.. but it's also very self-destructive and will only give short-term benefits at much greater cost to yourself and others. Then again some, from times past, might argue that avoiding in harming others creates "karma"... meaning attachment to the outcome of one's actions. I'd disagree though with that, and argue that intention and will are the guiding forces here, not attachment.
Perhaps though, the balance of the LHP is on the fine edge of a knife. The closer you ride to that kind of behavior but don't cross certain lines, the closer you come to "evil" but don't cross the line into the truly heinous, the faster you are driven towards liberation. It's all about self-mastery... not slavery to another master (in the trap, it's slavery to doing heinous things, the flip side of dualistic morality). Ultimately one should not be good or evil, but ultimately transcend both, and ultimately do for themselves and for others what people call "good" (as this will align with their will absolutely and not relatively). Or at least that is what I think. This is from what I understand, a Dharmic view on the matter, from a Left Hand, Tantric perspective; Ruling purely by one's own cosmic will without regard for taboo.
I don't know if that creates another duality (it almost feels like just moving things around), but I would think at the very least as a working model it's a step above the good-bad dichotomy and from what I've seen it works better than any other system or lack of I've seen yet in my life for someone like me, although I admit it's very dangerous to believe that way (since some of this logic can be used in a way to try to justify truly heinous things). For most believing in good and evil, and choosing the good and never trying to even get near the evil is safer, and what would be closer to a historical definition of Right Hand Path and that is in the sense I use it.
I know others from time periods past would say that some involvement with at least some of the heinous is an important part of the Left Hand. Even the Right Hand did similar heinous things but the context was in a more acceptable, orthodox light. I think we are in different times now, and I don't know what value can really be gained in doing something so irreversible to others. At the very least it's selfish, which unintuitively is actually determinantal to walking the Left Hand Path. I suppose this could be extended to my earlier question about animal sacrifice, but then too it would have to apply to what one eats... in my view the two are little if any different. And yet as most of us in the LHP DIR living in the west, we tend to have this taboo against animal sacrifice. I find that kind of weird.
Could you as part of your Left Hand practice ever commit what you see as really taboo? Even if finding no or little joy in it?
Could you for example, have sex with someone that you find repulsive or taboo due to a physical aspect of them? Either due to your own orientation or something else? Could overcoming these taboos be beneficial to your spiritual practice? And no, I don't mean anything illegal.
I recently, through invoking the power of Lilith in a ritual, I overcame a very personal sexual taboo of mine with another person. I think I understand myself better for it now, and I feel it's helped me along my path... but it wasn't too long ago. So time will tell how it affects me.
I kind of think that when those in the Left Hand talk about breaking taboos they tend to (in more occult circles) define it in a reveling, hedonistic kind of way. But that is more like something you enjoy that isn't really taboo for you, just for others. At least in my view.
What I'm talking about is breaking your own taboos. To truly be unfettered. I don't think that one has to participate in what they find uninteresting, but at least participating at least once in what they find to be repulsive, I feel, is essential to the Left Hand. Maybe there is a good reason to not do certain things (like things that are illegal), but that doesn't mean that other avenues of taboo breaking, sexual or not can't be accomplished.
For example, could you, assuming you have qualms about it, at least once, sacrifice an animal in ritual? Or eat something you wouldn't ever dream of eating? Could you eat your own feces or human flesh (given in the way it was done was legal?)
I should make clear I am not conflating "disgusting" with "taboo" here. My own sexual taboo I mentioned earlier was only taboo to me, not disgusting (well maybe it is to some people). To those who don't feel a taboo, but simply grossed out by the idea, it wouldn't really apply in the same way. Although... overcoming the disgust of certain things is part of the Left Hand traditionally... nothing is impure... there is no good or evil (back on this later)... everything is part of the same cosmic essence/truth.
Also just because a knife is sharp doesn't mean you should realize that by striking it against you when striking it against something unliving will do just as good without harming you or others, for the sake of metaphor. In that metaphor, striking it against yourself or others would generate the most shock and might even help you overcome the the disgust at harming yourself or others.. but it's also very self-destructive and will only give short-term benefits at much greater cost to yourself and others. Then again some, from times past, might argue that avoiding in harming others creates "karma"... meaning attachment to the outcome of one's actions. I'd disagree though with that, and argue that intention and will are the guiding forces here, not attachment.
Perhaps though, the balance of the LHP is on the fine edge of a knife. The closer you ride to that kind of behavior but don't cross certain lines, the closer you come to "evil" but don't cross the line into the truly heinous, the faster you are driven towards liberation. It's all about self-mastery... not slavery to another master (in the trap, it's slavery to doing heinous things, the flip side of dualistic morality). Ultimately one should not be good or evil, but ultimately transcend both, and ultimately do for themselves and for others what people call "good" (as this will align with their will absolutely and not relatively). Or at least that is what I think. This is from what I understand, a Dharmic view on the matter, from a Left Hand, Tantric perspective; Ruling purely by one's own cosmic will without regard for taboo.
I don't know if that creates another duality (it almost feels like just moving things around), but I would think at the very least as a working model it's a step above the good-bad dichotomy and from what I've seen it works better than any other system or lack of I've seen yet in my life for someone like me, although I admit it's very dangerous to believe that way (since some of this logic can be used in a way to try to justify truly heinous things). For most believing in good and evil, and choosing the good and never trying to even get near the evil is safer, and what would be closer to a historical definition of Right Hand Path and that is in the sense I use it.
I know others from time periods past would say that some involvement with at least some of the heinous is an important part of the Left Hand. Even the Right Hand did similar heinous things but the context was in a more acceptable, orthodox light. I think we are in different times now, and I don't know what value can really be gained in doing something so irreversible to others. At the very least it's selfish, which unintuitively is actually determinantal to walking the Left Hand Path. I suppose this could be extended to my earlier question about animal sacrifice, but then too it would have to apply to what one eats... in my view the two are little if any different. And yet as most of us in the LHP DIR living in the west, we tend to have this taboo against animal sacrifice. I find that kind of weird.
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