The way out of the Palace.

 It's easy to look at the work of the A.'.A.'. student and be a little overwhelmed by the sheer amount of material that needs to be covered. Memorisation tasks, a diary, magick, yoga, theory, and practice, lots of practice...people give up when it dawns on them just how much there is to do. It has been said that the A.'.A.'. is like graduate school, and that's true in the sense that, it is assumed that you are already familiar with most of the core ideas, don't need your hand held every step of the way, and are ready to move on from a theory based path to one rooted in practice, you can do it yourself and try things out, that's really what it's all about.

Actually, rather than a path of gaining more things, the A.'.A.'. path is actually a gradual stripping away of things. The syllabus, practices, and your experience as an initiate is actually like grit in one of those rock tumblers, polishing away the coarse material so that only the gemstone remains, polished, gleaming, essentially itself.

In the Outer College we have six grades, six crowns to wear, six palaces to dwell in: the Palace of the body, the palace of the sensations, the palace of the intellect, the palace of the passions, and the palace of the ego-self, six levels of polishing, refining, stripping away the detritus so that only the jewel of your real self remains, which is non-self. Each of us passes through these in a specific order, some are more comfortable in one than another, depending on the degree and type of polishing required. Some move swiftly on, some tarry in one or more for years at a time. The longer you stay the more you get stuck, so I advice anyone in the A.'.A.'. Outer College not to hang around to smell the flowers. But at the same time it can't be rushed. Many people stay in one palace their whole lives, identifying with one or other palace, and way if being. This is a waste of time, since we are never truly 'done with' any of the grades, we just get to a point of diminishing returns, so it's better I think, once we have gotten somewhere with the tasks, can pass the tests, and at least understand the grade (even if we don't fully embody it), to use that basis to prgress to the next grade..

I'm a scientist by profession, I know a lot of people who live in the palace of the intellect (Hod), intelligent people, fantastically good at what they do, yet overindulge in Hod and you can get a rigid cynicism, dryness, nihilism even if you are the 'negative' type, or else a stringent dogmatism with little flexibility, freedom is lost. Sportsmen and women who live in the palace of the body, but in time it wears out, athletes retire early for a reason, and then what? When I was younger many 'party people', mainly interested in drugs and loud music, lost in the palace of sensation (Yesod), some are still there now and often look much older than they are, too many late nights with huge amounts of mind altering chemicals, and they don't see it, stuck in one viewpoint, the path itself vanishes, as if it never was.

While it is true that there is no progress really, you're still essentially you, whatever grade you're at, it's critical to not get stuck, to let the polisher do his work, but to know when enough is enough for the time being, 51% is enough to tip the balance, 100% is a goal that recedes as you approach, so we move on when the path opens to the next grade, not when there is nothing else to be learned from where you are. 

Not to be fixated by the body, sensation, intellect, passion, the ego, don't get stuck. Walking is the point, we are pilgrims here, not just in the physical world but these inner palaces too, sojourners in marble halls, not dwellers therein, and if we identify with one or another too strongly we get stuck and the freedom we seek is lost.

So although I don't force, I encourage students to keep moving, not get fixated, and embrace the ever changing inner and outer landscapes. Life is change, and the way of freedom is the way out of the palaces, by going through them, recognising them, knowing them intimately, but ultimately remembering that we are pilgrims and not meant to live in palaces.