So why can't I be like Gandalf (Darkworking / lightworking)

[Cado]

Originally Posted by Andrew Gubb

+1, tried to rep you but couldn't.

I also went through this whole thought process. For me there is a limit to what you can do by minimalising harm. It's maximising GOOD which has no limit. It's even worth not going all the way in minimising harm if that saved effort will help you go further in maximising good. Actually, nowadays when I think of processes I can go through to minimise harm (I'm thinking of being more green nowadays for instance), I think of it in terms of, "how can I minimise harm so I can inspire others through my example and communicate a sense of love and caring to others?"

That's exactly why I pose that challenge to lightworkers.

I said in another thread that if you exist, you're a murderer. Something has to die in order for you to live, and if you're in a first world country there's no way you can claim without contradiction that you're not part of the problem. You're using the same resources secured by a %^&$ed up system just like everyone else.

That doesn't mean you're evil. The good you do can more than outweigh the bad that's done by remaining within society and using what it provides. However, you can only empower yourself if you open your eyes to what's going on and accept every aspect of it.

The people who pretend they're not hurting anything are putting their fingers in their ears and going, "Lalalalalalala." That's a step away from the truth and among its side effects is weakness in conflict, inability to cope, and false conceptions of human nature (or nature in general).

One of the major problems we face is that most lightworkers or would-be lightworkers have been completely neutered. They talk a big game but they don't do anything because the blocks they put on themselves prevent them from taking effective action. It's the equivalent of thinking you can change the world by cuddling up with a skyscraper and saying, "I wub you Mr. Corporation."

This is where the two paths benefit from teamwork. There's no way a lightworker would adopt a darkworker's modality (that would defeat the whole purpose) but we can help them understand the dynamics of power so that they can find their own way to utilize those principles. It's like how we go off the deep end when lightworkers don't provide perspective and balance. (See: Wallstreet) Restraint is important on this path but the full extent to which that's true is something that's easy to miss when we lack outside input.

[Weaver]

Cado,

My idea of Lightworker and Darkworker was way way different, but after reading what you said, I think I have a good idea of what's what now...

Lightworkers will do anything that the will of god asks of them, which is always of the highest good for all.

Darkworkers will do anything that their own individual will demands of them, which is always of the highest good for themselves and themselves alone.

Is this about right??

[Cado]

Originally Posted by Weaver

Cado,

My idea of Lightworker and Darkworker was way way different, but after reading what you said, I think I have a good idea of what's what now...

Lightworkers will do anything that the will of god asks of them, which is always of the highest good for all.

Darkworkers will do anything that their own individual will demands of them, which is always of the highest good for themselves and themselves alone.

Is this about right??

It's not exactly right but you're a lot closer than you were. The errors in your statements aren't mistakes, they're omissions via lack of elaboration-which I can't fault you for because these concepts are remarkably simple and at the same time hard to comprehend on an intellectual level. That's because without experience it's too easy to split them into oversimplified caricatures of heroes and villains, fictions that don't exist in real life.

In terms of their motives, it's 100% correct to say that lightworkers act in collusion with the greater good while darkworkers maintain an individual focus. Going beyond the examples I gave earlier, though, you have to remember that you can't separate them in terms of the effects of their actions. People tend to assume that if something is "good" that person is a lightworker and if it's "bad" they're darkworkers, thus splitting it into the God/Devil paradigm of Christianity and other religions. That's not true-"the road to hell is paved on good intentions," so they say. Lightworkers are fully capable of being evil bastards, they're just doing it for "the right reasons" whereas darkworkers only have their own benefit in mind when they go off the deep end.

If you want to know who's who, look at their motives, the way they carry themselves, and their philosophy. Sometimes their methods will set them apart but we often can't see everything at play so it's difficult to ascertain what someone did to get a particular result.

In terms of personal transformation, the whole vs. self is more than enough to get started. And of course, for would-be darkworkers, I can't recommend The Crimson Curtain highly enough, and a cursory reading of that site will probably give you a much better understanding of both paths.

[Andrew Gubb]

This is an interesting conversation.

I've never been quite satisfied with Cado's (and Asmoday etc's) concept of polarity. Part of it has to be an inconvenient conflict of definitions. With my friends I casually talk about "darkworkers" as the antithesis of "lightworkers". If a lightworker is a guy who wants to heal the world (out of consciousness) a darkworker is a guy who causes hurt to the world (out of unconsciousness). I'm not alone in using the term in this way; actually Steve used it in this way, though he also dipped his toes into defining it more in the direction of Cado's usage.

The thing is this is a useful word to have. While it's not all heroes and villains, there definitely is a sort of path you can take where you numb yourself to the callings of your conscience to give you a sociopathic upper hand in your dealings. It's pretty clear that heeding your conscience in a radical way is one sort of path, and killing it totally for personal gain is another sort of path, and both have powerful effects. Neither of these effects could be gained from being in between, which is where most people are.

So the negative path could use a name, and as we're used to calling people who work for the common good "lightworkers" it just makes sense to call these others "darkworkers".

But then there are people who take up the new term "darkworkers" and use it for some other meaning. It causes a heck of a lot of confusion, because it's just so intuitive - and common - to use the word to mean something like "driven, intentional sociopath". I've sometimes wondered if some guys use that word just because they WANT people to think they're evil for whatever reason. Or maybe they want to challenge the whole idea of good vs. evil.

I don't rule out, though, that there's something behind the term Cado etc use. Well, there must be, if he swears so much by it. (I respect Cado a lot even if I find it so hard to see eye to eye with him sometimes).

I think I would challenge some of the core beliefs behind it, like that there are two fundamental energy flows in the Universe e.g. dark and light. Simply from direct perception, that doesn't make sense to me. I can percieve black, dense energy, a.k.a. low vibrations, but Cado isn't made up of that. People who are, may be intensely depressed, ashamed, hateful, angry, fearful, etc etc. That would be closer to the sociopathic definition of a darkworker, but that's not fully accurate either.

There are low vibrational people who are vampires. They will either suck energy from people directly or cause conflict intentionally so that people will give up energy. Or they will attempt to enslave others in order to take money, labour, or simply energy from them without giving anything back. That's one way people use the word "darkworker". Cado isn't a vampire.

Astral demons also exist that are of low vibration. They actually have an investment in keeping people as unhappy as possible because they feed off those vibrations. They're attracted to low vibrational people (such as the vampires above) and can influence those people. If you get mixed with them, then, well, you could really say you're working for the darkness. But Cado isn't one of those.

So I still don't really get what Cado's version of darkworking is, but I know what it isn't. I also really think that a change of vocabulary is needed, because there are some very different things that share the use of that word. If Cado's darkworking is about getting really inspired about serving one's own self, then I think we should leave behind the last vestiges of this old cultural myth that serving the self is dark (e.g. bad) and find a word for it that better reflects our understanding.

I don't think it makes sense to deny that vampires or demons exist. It's not a charicaturisation of good and evil to say that vampires exist. They just do. Not all driven self-serving achievers are vampires, but did we ever imply that?

I'm going to leave that there for now, the ball is in Cado's court for now (and anyone else who wants to join in of course). I hope this has been stimulating reading for y'all.

PS having set down more clearly my ideas of what Cado's darkworking is not, I'm starting to get a clearer idea of what it actually is. But I'll let that stew a little before committing it to writing.

[Cado]

Originally Posted by Andrew Gubb

So I still don't really get what Cado's version of darkworking is, but I know what it isn't. I also really think that a change of vocabulary is needed, because there are some very different things that share the use of that word. If Cado's darkworking is about getting really inspired about serving one's own self, then I think we should leave behind the last vestiges of this old cultural myth that serving the self is dark (e.g. bad) and find a word for it that better reflects our understanding.

There's plenty to elaborate on here and I won't get into all of it right now but I will clarify why I use the word dark and why I've taken to the term darkworker.

One, as I've explained here and elsewhere, I consider darkworking a natural extension of the left-hand path. Historically it has always been associated with darkness and darkness was synonymous with the taboo, the mysteries of the universe and human consciousness, and mastering the primal aspects of the self. In eastern parlance, it was a system of destroying the ego by embodying it so fully that it's completely exhausted by the time you die.

In other words, the two paths were ego transcendence vs completely embracing it. It was theorized that both could bring someone to enlightenment but the only way for it to be effective was to choose one or the other and stick with it.

Lightworking and darkworking as it's been presented by Steve and most other sources is a combination of eastern beliefs and methods with Christian thought. That last part will probably seem baffling to most and considering I intend to keep this short I'm not going to be able to explain it properly, but Christian thought forms have been so completely ingrained in western culture and language that it infects everything that surfaces within it unless you make a conscious effort to guard your ideas from its influence. Even then, there are some things you end up living with because 2,000 years of dominance isn't undone overnight.

The crux is that it has a lot to do with the persistence of the God/Devil archetypes, and I differ from Andrew in that I'm agnostic when it comes to whether or not that's a valid perception of reality on other levels. A lot of that is no doubt semantics as well, because I've known people that were utterly vampiric so the idea that there are incorporeal entities that share similar qualities (and intensify them beyond a point any mortal could) is not completely off the wall but as I've noted in my other writings I haven't had any experiences which can't be adequately explained as extensions and expressions of my own consciousness so I'm hesitant to declare that any such thing exists. I'd be more inclined to think that when we come across something like that it's an energetic imprint left by the psyche of a person or group of people, not an entity in itself.

Another place where semantics are murky is when it comes to demons. Most people on this forum use the word demon in reference to negative beings whereas it's just as valid to use it in reference to the old gods, ie the entities people petitioned and worshiped before Christianity destroyed everything that didn't conform to its dogma. When a lot of darkworkers or left hand pathers refer to demons that's what they mean and it's not really the same thing at all.

The way Asmoday presents the concept these aren't really two different energies, they're two different approaches to harnessing the same energy. I'm not like Gubb. My take on this is so drastically different that if I suddenly tried to do what he does it would completely disrupt my equilibrium, and the same is true when it comes to my lovey. I tap into the primal aspects of the self, I use my anger, I focus on my ambitions, and while I'm not without compassion for those around me (or even the world at large) that is not my primary concern.

I've taken on the identity of the contrarian, rebel, and adversary for a reason. I use the word "dark" because it lets me embody the things which are inherently part of us that most people do not want to acknowledge, and it's why I persist in these discussions and arguments despite the fact that I'm working off of a very different perception and definition of darkworking than a lot of people here. It's because, quite simply, that way of framing it is wrong. It presents a narrative where there's something in us that needs to be fixed when there isn't, and that's an incredibly disempowering way to live our lives. I know that wasn't Steve's intention but that's what I got out of it and it's one of the reasons it left such a sour taste in my mouth. It was Christianity 2.0.

That could be entirely subjective and heavily rooted in my experience with conservative religion, but there are a number of parallels there-particularly in the way a lot of people understand the concepts-that I don't think I can say "it's just me." "You want change, you speak up. You want balance, make it happen. Nobody's gonna do it for you, Cado."

Yes, despite how long this post got, this is my definition of short. I'm actually organizing a lot of research that I've done recently so I have a lot to draw from and keeping things briefer would, in my mind, do an injustice to the subject. There will be more to add later, though it might not be here.

Thank you, Gubb, for the invitation to delve this deep.

[irfan]

Originally Posted by Cado

Christian thought forms have been so completely ingrained in western culture and language that it infects everything that surfaces within it unless you make a conscious effort to guard your ideas from its influence. Even then, there are some things you end up living with because 2,000 years of dominance isn't undone overnight.

Absolutely. I'm still trying to decide whether I think this darkworker / lightworker dichotomy is meaningful or interesting, but a vast amount of New Age "spirituality" is just repackaged Christianity (or, as some people say, "Christist") thought. Crowley addressed that issue in a big way, successfully or not, but much of the New Age spirituality we see picks out little bits of Crowley and puts in a bit of neo-paganism to a big pot of post-Christianity.