Paul Tisdell – Welcome! to my Tao, the Way
The name I was given is Paul Tisdell. However, it is of little to no significance who or what I am, nor the trials and revelations that brought me to this point or present moment. It might be better to think of me as no-one.
In the hermetic tradition, every true initiate is Hermes, by this the ego cannot attach easily to any grandeur and glamour, it can remain humble to the influx of the light of the soul that inhabits it.
So I am a Hermes, thrice great, holding in my hand the staff known as the caduceus, the three alchemic principles in action and completed as a stone.
The work I present to you is the reflection of my stone.
The Work
The Work, let us call it ‘the alchemy of being’, the great work of self-transformation.
Alchemy has the Philosopher’s Stone that transforms things, a philosophy that is so solid it is referred to as a stone. It is said, simply by putting this stone in water, the water becomes so charged that it will heal man’s suffering.
The water is mind and if you apply this stone to mind it transforms one metal, state of consciousness, into another until it becomes gold. Gold is incorruptible, it is the metal of the Sun, the Sun shines constantly; the movement of the earth creates duality, night and day, life and death. Consider a sun-like consciousness that has no day and night, no life and death, it is one consciousness – your soul, solar the sun, the son/sun of God.
The work is to transform consciousness, so the darkness of the ego’s night transforms into the light of the soul, solar/sun.
The Nature of the work is designed to give some degree of mastery over the mind. A simple description of this has been experienced by all of us – imagine you are in a room and the worries of the day are taking your attention, taking you away from being present, now. If you look around the room, can you see any of the objects from the stories of your mind? Can you see depression? Is there anxiety in the room? If they are not there, the question is, where are they? They are in ‘your’ mind. Your mind is not just your thoughts, mind is also feeling, it is where you sense things. All of this happens within. Someone touches you and you feel it in your body. Someone touches you with beautiful words and you feel it in your heart.
A wheel spins and anything attached to the wheel spins with it until it spins off. There is only one still place, that is in the center of the wheel. There are many wheels of thought, of reaction, of desire, all rolling along creating all manner of stories in the mind. Most are addicted to mental media – the way to stop the addiction is to stop the mind, the center of the wheel – this is what meditation can give you if you achieve the meditative state, the center of the wheel. Without this stillness of mind, entering the great work can be all but impossible – the mind can get one flash of light, one tiny insight and this supercharged energy will have it thinking, spinning around yet actually going nowhere. Consider your mental process, the mundane thoughts that you entertain have a 2 volt energy charge whereas one realization from the unfoldment of the great work is 240 volts, it is highly charged. Your mundane mind is wired in a 2 volt circuit – up the voltage and the wheels of entertainment you think are real accelerate with great velocity; this is not healthy, it creates unbalanced behavior, hence very poor decisions. Meditation! A classic example of this is ‘stress’, when we get stressed, we are holding a lot of energy – it is all running around, tightening muscles, clenching jaws and powering attachments in the mind. One thing leads to another until the burden becomes too great – Meditation stops this for the time you actually achieve the meditative state. Let us say you achieve it for 5 minutes; if you hold your breath until you cannot hold it any longer, the first thing you do is breathe out, to do this you have to let go, then you can breathe in, problem solved, let go first! Meditation!
Imagine if you had 5% of an enlightened mind, all of that light and energy all of a sudden energizing all of the worldly media you entertain – besides insomnia, it can make you unbalanced. Meditation resolves this! Once you have achieved meditation sitting, then the work is to attain that state in a waking, mundane function. This is called, “being present”, not off in thoughts and stories somewhere in mind but actually being present with your environment – try it! See if you can actually stay out of the mind for a minute.
May I suggest meditation and relaxation to be the forefront of any of your practices.
I am told that at this stage of the website what is said has to be simple and in terms that the reader can be drawn into the work that is offered. The deeper aspects of my work are in archetypal language and in reality, all works of this nature is written in this manner, consciously or not.
There are advantages to this, when one connects with the archetypal theme there can be an energetic response. There are different levels of consciousness entered in the practice of meditation. These states are scientifically identified by 4 basic brainwave frequencies; Beta, Alpha, Theta and Delta.
Beta, waking consciousness, Alpha softening of outer awareness, relaxing, so that inner visualization can take place – this does not necessarily mean seeing images, the imagination is broader than that, but it is play, “one must be as a child to enter the kingdom”. There you go, enter your inner world, your kingdom. Theta is the meditative state wherein archetypes can enter the awareness, the ego and its desires have fallen away.
It is a tradition in kabbalah that one must be 40 years of age to enter kabbalah, this is an archetypal concept and to those that do not understand, it becomes literal and they think one must wait until they are 40 years of age, this is not so. 40 is a number and a number is a pure archetype, 40 days and nights. 40 is the Hebrew letter Mem. Say MMMM… your mouth is closed, get any ideas? Silence? Meditative mind? What this is saying is one must have attained and be practicing meditation, 40 years old – a degree of maturity, there is a degree of stillness of mind with maturity, that type of mature mental processing helps bring theta state into awareness consciously, a waking meditative state.
Delta, let us consider it as a still pond,
Theta reflects light upon the waters,
Alpha – one uses the light and movement of the waters to create.
Beta is swimming in the water and there is nothing to see here, just busy swimming, for example; consider your daily life, you may be a Mother, a Carpenter, a Policeman, some sort of ‘thing’ you identify with and assume you are – you are busy being ‘that’ in the outer world, to enter the inner kingdom you have to let go of the outer world – detachment! Beta is busy in the world, doing and being whatever the world demands. Be in the world but not of it.
A parable or story asks you to enter imagination, alpha, and if you get it, theta the moral of the story comes before your awareness and you understand. Understanding is a light that comes within your consciousness, unless you understand (YOU understand), you are in the dark. When you are stressed (beta) try to understand; beta is strong, and the waters are so active you cannot see anything in the mind – no understanding here, just stress. Understanding is to ‘see’, I do not mean seeing an object in mind, without understanding you are in the dark, get the idea? Here the obvious vehicle of explanation is within a story, the story of water enabled the imagination to be involved and the basic idea I hope was understandable. The use of words that represent archetypal ideas, things that can appear in dreams etc can take the awakening/understanding deeper. When one achieves a deep state in meditation the effect of such takes a while to become conscious, for its effect to come to the surface. True understanding is the same.
Now you have somewhat of an understanding of mind and the basis of what is called the Tetragrammic key. The image below is the Hebrew letters that create the word Tetragrammaton, the image you were created in, it is an archetype which you now have a relationship with, it is a map.
Beta is the instinctual level of consciousness,
Alpha is reason,
Theta, insight and
Delta, I am.
The H below is instinct,
the V reason
the H (life above) above insight and
the Y I am.
There is a relationship to these 4 principles, Nature and the Cosmos – as you develop an understanding of this you begin to realize you and it are one thing, the ego has cracked and the light comes in, you are not separate, you just think you are, stop thinking (meditation) be present and you are no longer separate.
The sphinx has 4 creatures, the pyramid has 4 sides – there is a reason for this. The pyramid produces an energy, life-force, it is the most significant architecture on Earth. It is solid stone, a philosophy set in stone, the philosopher’s stone, the nature of mind, how to transmute one level of consciousness into another, lead to gold.
