>>647Not quite.
All that is for the "initiate", in a sense, but what makes an initiate? Most institutions do not take just anyone into their ranks without at least some preliminary shaping. I'm being metaphorical, since I'm not looking to join any institution. I want to be my own institution.
What do you do when you are leading yourself? The blind leading the blind. Worse than that, you have to deal with your shadow, your ego, all that garbage which sometimes is working against your best interests.
... Ah, that's what I interpreted the 5 as in my picture: the senses. 5 senses, the trivium, and the quadrivium. But that still implies a belief in the body as the basis, and I don't know enough to commit to that way. I mean the trivium and quadrivium are psychological, but I would think the senses come first. Perhaps there's no implied superiority or supremacy. Perhaps there is no way to simultaneously work in a balance from the start (again, assuming that were a belief you committed to).
Also, it's interesting how that Jan Irvin guy who promotes the system, who stresses the importance of placing grammar, logic, and rhetoric in the proper order, else it is vulnerable to exploitation from others, fails to place the 5 senses before the trivium, and uses his system to attack others in conflicts that seem misguided.
Still... Even remembering my interpretation, "5 senses" doesn't help much. What is the process for proper education of the 5 senses? I would guess it would include body awareness, starting with the breath, eventually covering all bodily processes. Perhaps it's covered in some Hindu stuff, since that's where a lot of the Oriental practices came from. I wonder if there are practices which are somehow inherently tied to one belief system or another.
A side note: it's interesting that the Seele members clearly have cut off some of the senses. Their monoliths show a message on the front: "sound only", and I think at one point it's implied that they have given up their mortal bodies to have their brains encased in the monoliths.
I've also been wondering about the implication of the squaring of these basic elements. Perhaps it's the combining of disciplines. though why would it only be in pairs, or is that just a basis for total integration?
>Read everything in a critical manner, not passive accepting the authors authority, trust your perceptions over someone’s interpretation of them. I think that's glossing over the reality of a human with their own hang-ups in the way of the learning process. Most people have learned to repress the urge to question and to express that question, and must spend time and energy unraveling that tangled twine. Who's going to consistently question rather than just when they don't understand something? Who's going to ask more than one question of "is it true?" and ask things like what the author's intent is, who they portray themselves as, who they frame the reader as, what implications are in their statements and questions, on and on.
I say these things only because I have heard others talk of it. In practice I don't question enough.