It's more complex than that. I've argued on this forum that symbols are the building blocks of reality, a kind of fundamental lexicon. But I don't limit the symbolic to glyphs and ciphers people are arguing here, I'm suggesting the whole of what we call the real is a referent to an underlying truth.
I'd absolutely agree to that.
You can't accidentally conjure a demon with a squiggle, unless someone would like to give an example.
Grant Morrison probably could. (if it doesn't automatically, advance to 11m 41s)
You'd probably need a hell of a lot of emotional energy directed at that squiggle tho...and a daily regimen of a pound of hash.
-- Also: -- I was going to talk about this in the psychedelics thread (as a 'safe' alternative), but I'll drop this here
I think one of the answers to taking this realm of symbols back is in lucid dreaming. Just talking about it might help us induce one. I'd love to have Stephen LaBerge on skeptiko, you guys would get along like pants on fire...
but if you can't get him there's this guy:
Hell get em both. Have a lucid dreaming month.
He starts off really boring, but if you want to jump around he talks about a woman that heals herself by imagining her boils dropping off or something and then they do. He talks about a guy that tries to control his dream (note: you can't. he makes very clear that you gain awareness but you don't gain full control -- I had a fully lucid dream once where I could jump really high like the hulk and see overtop the roofs in our cul-de-sac, but I could NOT fly), but these demonic evils would approach him and he'd keep getting away from him -- and it didn't work. When he realized they were aspects of himself he learned to integrate and thus heal them. He says once you've had enough lucid dreams you no longer 'fall for' the convincing detail of reality -- you become totally aware that your mind can generate just as much complexity in the dream state and more.
I really feel like this is somewhere we can start. Oh man, you know what got me started on all this which is kind of embarrassing? I still check in with David Wilcock sometimes and Dark Journalist + Bill Ryan (ex project camelot, project avalon) did this hit piece on Wilcock's buddy Corey Goode who talks about the secret space program. Well I found a girl who was defending Goode and even talked to his wife and as skeptical as I was about the whole thing I had to be kind of like... hmm... anyway, they're out to teach people how to enter these states (
remote viewing + remote projecting -- projecting? yes, making stuff happen!)... it's really like hypnosis though if this sample is representative:
I have a 'buddy' Jeremy who does 'the experience' podcast on unknown country and he a) does believe in beings but disagrees that they are nuts and bolts aliens from another planet/dimension b) does NOT believe in hypnosis as a memory retrieval tool and broadcasts constantly that people should not break their own memory barriers (which makes me insane. i mean, you're going to dismiss the use of hypnosis as memory retrieval all because of that one time the
AMA did a study about it and talked shit about in 1985 or whatever? and c) he thinks that the whole "we can manifest stuff" is nonsense and he likes to broadcast that too. ('The Secret' did a brilliant job in simultaneously hooking people AND turning off a huge amount of people... plus it was all focused on what your lower self wants (money) not what you NEED.) As dour as he is on skeptics, he's right in line with them there. You are a leaf in the wind, you have no control in this meaningless universe. He started a website called your undoing, i have no idea what he's preaching there, but his book urgency i never got through cause it started to make me feel sort of ill.
I think it's dangerous and irresponsible to encourage people to believe that they have no interconnection and control over the world around them. (Even if we didn't
I'd be inclined to tell people we do!) If you want to raise your hand, you imagine your hand raising (in contrast, you don't imagine specific muscle groups firing! the symbolic takes precedence! the physical is a representation.) If you want to slow your heart, you imagine your heart slowing. If you want to travel somewhere in a lucid dream you imagine where you want to go. There are direct correlates to thought and matter. Not to mention the
Dean Radin meta-study that I've tried to throw in Jeremy's face multiple times and he won't bite... on dice rolls we have, what is it, a 3% or .03% or 33% influence? I can't remember. Still, it's something. Do we have more influence when we do this in groups? Most likely.
I really think we need to start influencing the symbolic realms and transmuting this shit going on. Gravity is considered a weak force, lift a brick and you can defeat it easily, but hold that brick for a while and it will win in the end. Let's take back the world of symbols.