In the not-for-the-squeamish story Necromancer, an underlying theme has the protagonist progressively shedding all links to his previous life.

Now I don’t know much about the author, but what I do know is that he’s outlining an important process for anyone following a spiritual or “occultic” path: you’ve gotta let it go.

No Time for the Bluepilled

It’s a process for all of us, and even applies to exoterics if they want to succeed in their chosen field. For me, this thought really came home last night when meeting with a friend I hadn’t seen in a long time. I met with her thinking one thing (not that, get your mind out of the gutter!), yet as we talked I realized this has got to be the most bluepilled person I have ever known! I’m still willing to stay friendly with her, but the willfully deluded are not welcome in my inner circle.

In my life this is something I’ve seen time and again. Whether walking out on 50% of my DNA in 1997, leaving Dayton behind in 2001, dealing with my father’s death in 2004, leaving the Traditional Movement in 2008, leaving exoteric ministry in 2015, or even walking away from Mountaintop last summer, and various other things in between (I’ve described some of these to subscribers on my Patreon feed). Each of these was a link to my past that had outlived its time, and after each of these links was cut, my life ended up flowing more smoothly because there was less weight.

What About Charity or Empathy?

Now some may argue that what I say lacks charity or emphathy. I’ve gotten to the point where these are the kind of arguments I ignore completely, because more often than not, appeals to “empathy” amount either to dodging of actual facts (i.e. “feelz before realz”), or a dictum of “Shut up and accept the boot that’s being put on your neck.” This is why my morality and sense of justice are based on reciprocity, because it’s something that can be objectively measured via results-based analysis. However I’d concede that empathy and reciprocity are both important, and to focus on one to the exclusion of the other is just plain dumb.

This is just like my old Facebook post about the balance between Love and Power. One by itself becomes helpless and embittered, while the other by itself becomes sociopathic and tyrannical. Empathy and Reciprocity are the same: a common example is that it’s good to want to help someone in a bad spot, but if they don’t eventually reciprocate by doing for themselves and striving to get back on their own feet, it doesn’t take long before you’ll start to feel like you’re being taken advantage of and your empathy starts to wither.

Likewise, an insistence on empathy without reciprocity can also cause you to be taken advantage of by people who will assume your kindness is weakness and that you’re easy prey. That’s why it’s important to keep your values in balance, because it helps to have a gauge for when you’re doing the right thing and when it’s time to cut bait.

Cutting bait, though, is something that oftentimes is inevitable as it is painful. Relationships where both parties are being held back from any real kind of personal growth or advancement, for example, are relationships better dissolved provided there are no overriding factors such as the well-being of children or care of the elderly (which should always take precedence). There are jobs we may have that might bring in a reliable paycheck, but ultimately hold us back from attaining much more. There may be friends who hold us back be dragging us into their schemes or drama without even intending to. In such cases the only way to move forward is to cut the anchor that holds us back.

At the beginning of this post, I outlined a number of people and situations I walked away from, and each one was an anchor that held me down and away from proper attainment and growth. I should point out that in none of these am I hateful, as hatred is merely devoting some of your energy that’s better spent on your advancement. When you hate a thing or a person, you still make that a part of you because you’re giving it any part of your energy or time. Cutting it away means you want it no longer to be a part of you, so it’s better, instead of hatred, to train yourself into a sort of benign indifference toward who or whatever it is you’ve cut away. Indifference is power, while hatred is giving it away for free – so don’t let your ex or your former employer have any of yours!

You Still Need an Anchor

It may sound like I’m making “cutting bait” out to be a great thing, but there’s an action-reaction process we have to recognize here: for each link we cut, we become less anchored to reality. That’s why it’s important that when we lose one of the major anchors of our life, we have another, better one to keep us in touch with reality while we pursue our growth on a higher level.

When I walked away from each of those situations in my past, for example, I quickly found something else that anchored me better. Some of these anchors were returning to the Church and amping up my spiritual studies in the 90s, another anchor was the experimental ministry I founded after leaving the Traditional Movement in 2008, another was founding THAVMA after leaving exoteric ministry in 2015, and so on.

I’d like to use THAVMA as an example, because it’s the one with which most of my regular readers will be familiar. Leaving ministry was a scary thing for me; being in ministry wasn’t getting me anywhere and I was a borderline atheist by the time it was over, but it was the one thing for which I’d been trained and could actually do. That meant it was a fear of leaving security and jumping into a Great Unknown.

Yet I did jump into that Great Unknown, as you wouldn’t be reading this blog if I hadn’t. When I made that jump, I found that the skills I learned in exoteric ministry equally applied to THAVMA, that I could utilize these skills without dealing with the politicking and backstabbing that happens within church structures, and that without the stagnation of having to watch my every word or speak strictly in kindergarten-ish terms the average pew-sitter could understand, I could even expand on those skills and grow as an individual. Yet at the same time, THAVMA keeps me anchored into reality because it brings me into touch with so many people from so many different walks of life, that there’s simply no chance of walling myself off into an ivory tower or an echo chamber.

In essence, ministry prepared me for THAVMA by giving me the skill set, but also held me back by being fraught with artificial problems and drama. When it was no longer productive and that road had reached its end, I found freedom from it and THAVMA gave me the room to expand on that skill set, grow as a person, and be anchored in a more broad spectrum of reality.

So don’t lose all your anchors, but at the same time don’t let yourself become so moored down you can’t move under the dead weight. Your goal is to be a bridge between Heaven and Earth, not become so “light and airy” that you forget you’re dwelling in the physical and your life ends up in shambles.

The Inevitable Conclusion

So no matter what your practice – and I dedicate this post to “mundanes” as well as occultists – always hone your discernment into a sharp blade and those wits about you. Learn to recognize what parts of your life need to be let go, to what extent you’re able to let go, and be ready to do so gladly and without remorse. Yet in the process make sure to have something in your life to keep yourself anchored into reality – “in the world but not of it” – as we traverse through this mysterious thing called Life.

And as for the Necromancer, would I ever want to be that guy? Nope, not really. But I can agree that we have three choices in life: beg, die, or struggle. Recognizing and cutting the dead weight is an important part of choosing our paths wisely.