LESSON 3
The Brightest Flame
ATTENTION: Do not proceed if you suffer from any addictions. Please seek help to overcome your addictions before continuing with your occult training.
TASK
START AN AFFINITY LEDGER
Reflect on this: much of your decision-making processes are not rational at all. To put it in a rather simple way, you are attracted to certain experiences that you want to repeat as often as possible. You listen to your favorite songs perhaps on a daily basis. Maybe you make it a point to go to the movies at least once a month. Maybe you have that special cup of coffee from that particular café that you just keep going back to. This is because those pleasurable experiences have been marked in your personal reality as inner checkpoints. You use these experiences to navigate through life. When you reach these checkpoints with any degree of regularity, you find reasons to feel safe and happy. If you miss too many of them, you end up feeling disappointed and depressed.
All of this is to say that PLEASURE is the natural source of happiness. Furthermore, much of what people consider to be "good" or "evil" has to do with pleasure. Having a roof over your head is good; evicting people from their homes is evil. Being safe and comfortable is good; torture is evil. Being alive is good; killing is evil. In summary, the most basic notions of good and evil come from whether a certain experience is pleasurable or unpleasurable/painful.
You will start, then, to be aware of your own inner landmarks. In your magical journal, make a short list of the experiences you usually seek to repeat. Rate them with values that go from 1 to 5 to indicate how motivated you are to seek out those experiences. Then make a similar list for your undesirable experiences--the ones you are motivated to avoid. Along the next week, try to add one or two new items to your lists each day. You can revise the rankings you gave each item in your ledger as often as you like to reflect the strength of your affinities and aversions.
Keep this ledger going for as long as you find it useful. It will help you map your motivations: always remember that your affinities and aversions are the things the world will use to bribe you or blackmail you, thus limiting your freedom.
DO NOT judge your affinities and aversions in moral terms. They are neither good nor bad. Understand that you can always change them when necessary. To exercise your free will to its greater degree, you need to learn to accept that you will not always be able to acquire the things you like, want or even need, as well as avoid the things you do not want. For now, simply observe yourself without judgment and carefully add information about your own personal reality to your ledger.