Yet again, I have not had enough faith in myself. I pick up Guénon or Crowley—opposed men—and I look for approval from them, or look to say “I’m not that”. This man is an initiate, he says that man is Satan—and the other man thinks he deals with a ridiculous prude who doesn’t understand at all. When Guénon attacked Crowley, the latter called the former “a guenon”—a female monkey, said he was engaged in a “wheeze”. Indeed, Guénon does look like that type of monkey—named for a particular French bloodline, perhaps (it’s all in the length of the face).
Yet whether either man is right or wrong doesn’t really matter—because so long as you look to them to say “it’s okay” or “it’s not okay” you’re clinging to something outside yourself.
Nobody will ever come down and say, “You have done the right thing”—no man, anyway. Yet I caught myself as I waited for another man to approve. The approval will never come, there will be no hand on the shoulder…
It is too easy to look for another man to authorise your life—there are many men who are desperate to do it, even as they barely authorise their own lives. “He says”, “they say”—in the end, it’s an excuse. You think, “If I endorse this man or that man I’ll be safe—there’ll be no risk”. Yet we all deal with the mystery.
Men have gone into the mystery—Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha—and they have returned with different messages. There are disputes, many disputes—between faiths and within faiths—as to what their messages mean. Why, then, cannot you look to the mystery too? The mystery is there for everyone—it was always there, and always will be.
I suppose that if you look to others you can always feel safe—they know, or it seems that they know. Their followers put up a good front—or not so good these days. Yet there is only one place to look for approval—from within. That is where authorisation comes from in the end—from the deepest self, from the formless one that speaks with an empty voice. To work from any position less than that shows that you lack courage.