Let us talk of responsibility

As it has come to pass, I have become the newest head of the Dark aspect. Whether or not you support this is irrelevant to its reality, and I personally couldn't care less whether you like it or not. I am, and in doing so have become responsible for it. This responsibility is manifest by making sure the aspect is a place for growth, conflict, and change. An environment that embodies the attitude, energy, and mindset of the Dark aspect. To offer a Training ground, and discussion forum with which to forge yourself. Let me repeat that if it was unclear or you are slow... I said Forge Yourself with.

This is where we talk of your responsibility. Your responsibility is to get off your ass and use the aspect for its purpose. Utilizing the tools and atmosphere given to you by myself and the council members.

I have been at the F.A. for a bit of time now. While I have noticed a baseline level of complacency and laziness throughout the site, I am most disgusted by members of the aspect I now lead. I hear a lot of talk and fancy words. Passion, conflict, Darksiders, Dark aspect, blah, blah, blah, bullshit. I've seen nothing of the sort, in fact, I've seen a predisposition to quite the opposite. Older members who have little to no interest in training or helping, and who would rather rest on their laurels of things they have accomplished before, as if that somehow pertains to now. As if that somehow makes a difference to the present moment and its energy.

I have also seen a frightening mindset from newer members that they might perhaps need some training and indeed are novices. Or worse, having joined are unable to commit due to the fact that they do need to commit. That it is actually a serious undertaking in which one must train and apply. That this is not a path that you can play at or accomplish half-assed. That it might actually take some real work and thought and you can't just fake your way through it with big words and a clever screen name. So they run to other aspects because less is required from them, they are made to feel comfortable so as to make the process growth and transformation a lukewarm process, rather than the fiery crucible it should be. Even the thought makes bile rise in my throat.

Just so we're clear, this goes for all members. For people that have been here since the F.A.'s inception, or if this your first day here. I have no time for relics or place holders. I want real passion, interest, ambition, and conflict. In short, I want contribution.

When you post in these halls, or anywhere in the F.A. for that matter, it should be as a questing, questioning, dissecting force, with a voracious appetite for knowledge and growth. Be it through conflict, discussion, or careful observation. There should be a burning need to test and apply, to put what you've learned here into practice. Those of the Dark aspect should have a prove-it-to-me attitude, rather than a show-me attitude. We are not your mother, we're not here to force you to eat your vegetables before getting your dessert. You're big boys and girls and it's time to learn to eat bitter before you can get to the sweet.

Know this also, if you're not already aware. In the Dark aspect, and from its members, I expect everyone to understand that everyone in the F.A. is now fully responsible (regardless of aspect) for what they say. To post is now at one's own peril. We have a saying at another site of which I am a part of: "The chance you take by posting, is that someone might answer you." This is no longer an aspect, or site where you can post idly. You better be aware of what you're typing, and fools will not be suffered. You should be ruthless and relentless in your path of transformation. It is an active process, those who are passive have no place here. I once read that the Dark Aspect should be like a confrontation of hell itself. Like walking into a room and getting hit by a wall of heat and noise... You must become that heat, that noise. No one can make you do it, you must find that place within yourself.

I am reminded of two quotes by Ken Wilber. In his prose, you can perhaps glimpse my vision for the Dark aspect, from its older members and its newer ones. Your responsibilities as it were, should you choose to walk this path...

When it comes to spiritual teachers, there are those who are safe, gentle, consoling, soothing, caring; and there are the outlaws, the living terrors, the Rude boys and Nasty girls of God-realization, the men and women who are in your face, disturbing you, terrifying you, until you radically awaken to who you really are.

And may I suggest?: Choose your teachers carefully.

If you want encouragement, soft smiles, ego stroking, gentle caresses of your self contracting ways, pats on the back, and sweet words of solace, find yourself a Nice guy or a Good girl, and hold their hand on the sweet path of stress reduction and egotistic comfort. But if you want Enlightenment, if you want to wake up, if you want to get fried in the fire of passionate infinity, then I promise you, find a Rude boy or Nasty girl, the ones who make you uncomfortable in their presence, who scare you witless, who will turn on you in a second and hold you up for ridicule, who will make you wish you were never born, who will not offer you sweet comfort but abject terror, not saccharine solace but scorching angst, for then, just then, you might very well be on the path to your own original face...

Nobody will save you but you. You alone have to engage your own contemplative development. There are all sorts of good agencies to quicken this development, but nobody can do it for you. And if you do not engage this development, and on your deathbed you confess and scream out for help to God, nothing is going to happen. Spiritual development is not a matter of mere belief. It is a matter of actual, prolonged difficult growth, and simply professing belief is meaningless and without impact. It's like smoking for 20 years, then saying, "Sorry, I quit." That will not impress cancer. Reality, in other words, is not interested in your beliefs; It's interested in your actions, what you actually do, your actual Karma. And this is why childish and infantile views of God, once appropriate, are detrimental to mature spirituality - Ken Wilber - Living enlightenment and Paradigm wars respectively.

So having said all that, you now know my vision, or at least have some idea. You are now aware of our respective responsibilities and where they lie. So now you have no room to complain about your lot at the D.A. You have an active leader and a council that is willing to do that which is in their power to give you the proper atmosphere in which to grow. If there is something lacking, then speak up! We are not mind readers. So truly there is only one possible source to point the finger at now if you are unsatisfied with your progress. Take a look in the mirror, you now decide your own level of involvement, and if you're not involved then get out. This isn't Myspace, it's the Dark Aspect.