Responsibility and Guilt

The impetus for development, for overcoming internal dead-ends and destructors appears only when the mind clearly recognizes the very presence of those dead-ends and obstacles.

Only when a being becomes aware that it is artificially limiting its growth and is deprived of its opportunities and abilities rightfully belonging to it does an impulse to move, to free itself and to grow arise.

It is not surprising, however, that this awareness can easily become a destructive force if, instead of producing a sense of responsibility, it gives rise to guilt.

Indeed, the mind that has discovered its imperfection, disharmony and servile condition can move to several levels of being: it can asthenically acknowledge its “insignificance,” impotently imagine itself a martyr, “‘having deserved‘” such a state and “‘doomed'” to a miserable existence, in a self-defeating, defeatist way proclaim, “yes, that’s who I am, and I’m proud of it,” or it can perceive this fact as a challenge to overcome it, as an opportunity to break free and become more perfect.

On the one hand, of course, every mistake requires reckoning, and every defeat provides the resources to rise and go on.

If one does not accept responsibility, i.e., does not return the system to an equilibrium state, it is impossible to continue moving, since the absence of any element in the structure will lead to a continuous loss of power through that breach.

But on the other hand — no one is obliged to concentrate all attention on the fact of this necessity. Having acknowledged it unequivocally once, one can thereafter calmly ” settle the accounts,” without falling into exaltation over that necessity.

For a Magus it is very important to find and cultivate within themselves a state in which a fall does not lead to an ongoing loss of power.

And the Way begins when awareness of imperfection becomes a stimulus, not an obstacle. The discovery of a problem should not be a cause for regret or, still less, for masochistic admiration. It should be a reason for calm, but with the exertion of all strength and capabilities, for overcoming and for reaching a new level of awareness.

Of course, predators and parasites will try to drive the mind into one of the destructive states.

Of course, the problem will seem either non-existent or insurmountable.

However, the art of the Magus must help one walk between these two abysses, to overcome what appears insurmountable, and to have the courage to look darkness in the face without hypocritically turning away from it.

So, until there is a clear awareness of one’s limitations, there is no source of impetus to overcome them. But even when suspicions begin to arise that things are not as well and smooth as they seem, the impetus can be missed, slipping into one of the aforementioned destructors.

The Magus must take a step out of the darkness — decisive, headlong, irreversible — clearly understanding that he will refuse to remain in the darkness under any conditions, nor make compromises or reservations.

Then a light begins to glimmer ahead.