— jdemeta

Anti-Pleroma: Progressivism Bows to the Yoke

What is the pleroma? In Gnostic spirituality it is fullness, wholeness and a completion of the self.

First and foremost is that there is a ‘more-than-personal’ Gnostic element within reality, a pneumatic element that is organic to the human psyche. Forthwith called the pneuma. This element the pneuma carries a dialogue with the personal element of our selfhood – ego, human-security-system etc. – through the use of symbols. The pneuma is not silent. It is a not a silent partner in one’s life and demands active participation in the growth, metamorphosis and transformation of the individual. The symbols utilized by the pneuma are dreams, visions and altered states of consciousness. These symbols reveal a path of development which can be traced both backwards and forwards in time. Prior to understanding and acceptance of the pneuma comes multiple painful and seemingly cynical and pessimistic phases.

The Gnostic Process: agone or drama/contest; pathos or defeat; threnos or lamentation; and theophania, divinely accomplished redemption. That which halts this process, stifles it, are unconscious forces, blind and foolish powers – projections. Demiurgoi and archons: Fashioner/architect and ruler respectively. Those who bow to the powers of the aforementioned blind and foolish make the grave mistake of bowing to the yoke –

“One cannot free oneself by bowing to the yoke, but only by breaking it.”

This piece could stretch ideologically to the far reaches of space in time in relation to man’s adherence to symbolic projections of egoist desires, yet my focus is on the contemporary myth of progress and those who bow to its yoke. Acting unconsciously to a nature created artificially.

Cometh the drama, come forth the symbols of virtue, that which the progressive rolls around in like a pig in shit. Placards, protests, t-shirts, revolutionary attitudes, transgression, debauchery, reveling, egotistical pontificating, the dramas of the self-centered forever focused inward, towards the human, human, human. Drama is human. All that is to dramatic effect has at its heart a human beat and rhythm. For there cannot be drama of the cosmos, not in the gossipy way we think of drama. The calm and illusive apathy of the universe is far from dramatic, at least from its own ‘perspective’. Progress needs drama. Stability needs little except understanding as to the ‘why’ of the stable itself. To disturb the waters one must usher in an age of uncertain, dramatic protest that orbits the habitats of the strange and ostracized. Drama is needed for those who can’t take the clear path, for they are simply inept. To progress is to assume a position in which there is something that must be progressed, and for this we have found little reason, and yet we still ‘progress’. The dramatic layer atop of the myth of progress is the alluring excitement of virtue, ‘community’ and belonging. But tell me, how can one ‘belong’ to that which is ever moving?

Then there’s that pause of the protest isn’t there? The bell ring of silence as you contemplate your meaningless, your lack of awareness, your assimilation into a system of symbols so confusingly simple that you just melt into confusion and nausea. The silence of one’s pneuma acts as a constant reminder of the more that is simplicity and nothingness. Now as for you Mr Progress(ive), you, I know, will go back to screaming louder. Man the placards and release the symbols of war!

Then the defeat. Yet the defeat never comes, not now and not ever. For the defeat of progress is merely more drama. It is not as defeat should often be, a moment for reflection unto the general aims of the group or community as to whether they are true, no. For the progressive defeat and failure are systematic attacks on truth, they are glitches in their irrefutable mode of being. Failure for the progressive is always conspiracy, idiocy, fault of the other. Think Brexit or Trump for two contemporary examples. The progressive does not accept for a minute their own deified religion of democracies’ actuality, no. They cannot accept that the many may see things differently from them. The Brexiteers and Trump voters are simply, a priori wrong, at fault and incorrect. This is not a ‘defeat’ it is simply not correct. There is never defeat, only confusion, nonacceptance and ignorance. Like a parasite eating its own arse. For progressives every failure is a victory, for their failures are proof and vindication that the system they protest against is in fact against them.

“Why wont they speak about being lizards?! SEE! I told you they were lizards!”

They whine and whine about their non-defeat to the point wherein those who are critical to progress begin cramming all manner of things into their ears. “Stop this incessant noise! Why wont this failure simply accept and be quiet!” But no, those are not in-with-the-myth become quiet, silent almost, a community of hermits who know not of themselves. And when the curtains of many booths close over the backs of many silent hermits, the votes begin to be counted, and alas, once again, it is we who are wrong…again. I simply cannot believe the majority has been wrong this many times. The great idiocy of democracy, the beauty of its craft within the hands of a thrifty politician is as such:

X wasn’t really wanted ‘apparently’: “Oh my, I cannot believe the people did this. We shall repair your mistakes!”

X was really wanted ‘apparently’: “I had faith in the people from the off! Our party shall bring our decision to greatness!”

If one cannot be defeated then lamentation never comes, the divine reward of the pleroma never comes. Progression without clear limits is a loop of desire and narcissism. A snake cycling into its own arsehole forever.

“Jung has repeatedly pointed out that whenever prolonged onesidedness occurs within the conscious attitude of the individual, a countering compensatory action takes place within the unconscious.” [1]

You know that you know. And we know that you know. And what is it that you know? Well it is the truth, the mind-numbing static of the unconscious. Like a battering ram against virtue, every waking our you have to find a strange soapbox for your attitude, your vices, your virtues. You crave numbers as a means for justification. Well, the truth doesn’t need a soapbox. That which is fed to me through the tightest gauze by a grovelling fat mass over and over again is that which I doubt. I cannot explain this in a more articulate manner or in a clearer way. And why not? Because at the back, down there, within and with-outside is that which you wont attempt to near, some gut level urge, defiance or tradition you cannot look in the eye. Oh, to never be still. To never even contemplate the possibility of the pleroma, of stillness. The privilege of silence, intelligence and competency, you say. Systematic this ‘n that. That which doesn’t fit becomes a ‘studies’. Your proofs are your own, birthed from your own systems, they are conscious and sprung from conscious, they shan’t ever be. And you know it.

Progress melts at the sight/site of the unconscious.

[1] The Gnostic Jung