Every man has this organ, and whoever is guided by it automatically lives according to God’s commandments. If our consciences were clear, and not buried, there would be no need to speak about morality, for consciously or unconsciously everyone would behave according to God’s commandments. Unfortunately conscience is covered up with a kind of crust which can be pierced only by intense suffering; then conscience speaks. But after a while a man calms down and once more the organ becomes covered over and buried.

You should forget about morality. Conversations about morality are simply empty talk. Your aim is inner morality.

External morality is different everywhere.

You should understand, and establish it as a firm rule, not to pay attention to other people’s opinions. You must be free of people surrounding you, and when you are free inside you will be free of them.

To be just at the moment of action is a hundred times more valuable than to be just afterwards.

New episode. Jaime Paul Lamb — author, practitioner, one of the most serious minds working in Western esotericism today — joins me to discuss his book The Astrological Goetia: The 72 Keys to Angelic and Demonic Astrology (Inner Traditions, 2025).

What this conversation revealed: the grimoire tradition and astrological magic are not parallel systems. They are the same system, and separating them has cost practitioners something real. Jaime makes this case with precision and from genuine practice — not armchair theory.

This is Episode 237. Audio, video, or both — live now.

🎙 Audio/Video: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3C5rlLOPZggYLoVt5ZoCDT

📺 YouTube: https://youtu.be/HpIQPVtZlME

From the Sitting Now podcast:

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0f2x0D-3HI&t=413s - New Episode Live on all platforms. Ken sits down with Greg Kaminsky — host of the Occult of Personality podcast, author, and long-time explorer of Western esotericism turned Vajrayana practitioner — for a deep and uncompromising conversation on the limits of occultism, the demands of genuine spiritual practice, and the often misunderstood path toward enlightenment.

Beginning with Greg’s early immersion in Western magical traditions and podcasting, the discussion traces his journey through alchemy, Kabbalah, and ceremonial magic, before confronting their limitations and turning toward the disciplined, teacher-led path of Vajrayana Buddhism.

What emerges is a stark contrast between Western “talking schools” and Eastern traditions rooted in rigorous practice, direct transmission, and the transformation of the practitioner themselves. Along the way, the conversation explores tantra, the left-hand path, taboo as method, the role of the guru, and the uncomfortable reality that the greatest obstacle on the path may be the practitioner themselves.

This week:
Greg Kaminsky’s background in Western esotericism
The transition from occult practice to Vajrayana Buddhism
Western “talking schools” vs disciplined spiritual traditions
The role of the guru and transmission
Tantra and the left-hand path re-examined
Taboo, ritual, and transformation
The Great Work across East and West
The Grail quest and getting lost on the path
Ego, identity, and the idea that “you are the problem”
Meditation as submission rather than control
Nothingness, reality, and the limits of experience
#occultpodcast #tantra #magick

“Neither money nor worldly possessions, neither science nor authority, will bring to you the sweet rest of paradise, at which you can arrive only by the noble knowledge of the self. In that you may clothe your soul; it is the pearl which is not eaten by moths, and which no thief takes away. Seek it, and you will find a noble treasure.”

~ Jakob Böhme

“Mind itself is a vast expanse, the realm of unchanging space. Its indeterminate display is the expanse of the magical expression of its responsiveness. Everything is the adornment of basic space and nothing else. Outwardly and inwardly, things proliferating and resolving are the dynamic energy of awakened mind. Because this is nothing whatsoever yet arises as anything at all, it is a marvelous and magical expression, amazing and superb.”

~ Longchenpa

This life passes as swiftly as autumn clouds;
Family and friends are like chance encounters at the market;
The demon of death approaches like shadows at sunset;
What the future holds is as uncertain as a translucent fish in murky water;
Life’s experience is like yesterday’s dream;
Sensual pleasures are like an imaginary feast.
Meaningless pursuits are like waves crashing against the water’s surface.

Padmasambhava

“To Pray Without Ceasing” by RM French

On the twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost I went to church to say my prayers there during the liturgy. The first Epistle of St. Paul to the Thessalonians was being read, and among other words I heard these— “Pray without ceasing.” It was this text, more than any other, which forced itself upon my mind, and I began to think how it was possible to pray without ceasing, since a man has to concern himself with other things also in order to make a living. I looked at my Bible and with my own eyes read the words which I had heard, that is, that we ought always, at all times and in all places, to pray with uplifted hands. I thought and thought, but knew not what to make of this ceaseless interior prayer.

A burning desire and thirst for knowledge awoke in me. Day and night the matter was never out of my mind. [I asked an old man], "Please explain to me the meaning of the Apostle’s words, ‘Pray without ceasing.’ How is it possible to pray without ceasing? I want to know so much, but I cannot understand it at all."

“Thank God, my dear brother, for having revealed to you this unappeasable desire for unceasing interior prayer. Recognize in it the call of God, and calm yourself. Rest assured that what has hitherto been accomplished in you is the testing of the harmony of your own will with the voice of God. It has been granted to you to understand that the heavenly light of unceasing interior prayer is attained neither by the wisdom of this world, nor by the mere outward desire for knowledge, but that on the contrary it is found in poverty of spirit and in active experience in simplicity of heart.

That is why it is not surprising that you have been unable to hear anything about the essential work of prayer, and to acquire the knowledge by which ceaseless activity in it is attained. Doubtless a great deal has been preached about prayer, and there is much about it in the teaching of various writers. But since for the most part all their reasonings are based upon speculation and the working of natural wisdom, and not upon active experience, they sermonize about the qualities of prayer rather than about the nature of the thing itself. One argues beautifully about the necessity of prayer, another about its power and the blessings which attend it, a third again about the things which lead to perfection in prayer, that is, about the absolute necessity of zeal, an attentive mind, warmth of heart, purity of thought, reconciliation with one’s enemies, humility, contrition, and so on.

But what is prayer? And how does one learn to pray?

Upon these questions, primary and essential as they are, one very rarely gets any precise enlightenment from present-day preachers. For these questions are more difficult to understand than all their arguments that I have just spoken of, and they require mystical knowledge, not simply the learning of the schools. And the most deplorable thing of all is that the vain wisdom of the world compels them to apply the human standard to the divine. Many people reason quite the wrong way round about prayer, thinking that good actions and all sorts of preliminary measures render us capable of prayer. But quite the reverse is the case; it is prayer which bears fruit in good works and all the virtues. Those who reason so take, incorrectly, the fruits and the results of prayer for the means of attaining it, and this is to depreciate the power of prayer.

And it is quite contrary to Holy Scripture, for the Apostle Paul says,

‘I exhort therefore that first of all supplications be made’ (1 Tim. 2:1). The first thing laid down in the Apostle’s words about prayer is that the work of prayer comes before everything else: ‘I exhort therefore that first of all. ‘The Christian is bound to perform many good works, but before all else what he ought to do is to pray, for without prayer no other good work whatever can be accomplished.

Without prayer he can not find the way to the Lord, he cannot understand the truth, he cannot crucify the flesh with its passions and lusts, his heart cannot be enlightened with the light of Christ, he cannot be savingly united to God.

None of those things can be effected unless they are preceded by constant prayer. I say ‘constant,’ for the perfection of prayer does not lie within our power; as the Apostle Paul says, ‘For we know not what we should pray for as we ought’ (Rom. 8:26). Consequently it is just to pray often, to pray always, which falls within our power as the means of attaining purity of prayer, which is the mother of all spiritual blessings. ‘Capture the mother, and she will bring you the children,’ said St. Isaac the Syrian.

Learn first to acquire the power of prayer and you will easily practice all the other virtues. But those who know little of this from practical experience and the profoundest teaching of the holy Fathers have no clear knowledge of it and speak of it but little.

New podcast!!! 🎙️👁️‍🗨️😎🔥

"Obsession with individual freedom at the expense of others is the death of compassion. Obsession with neurotic parental-style control at the expense of the personal liberty of others is the death of wisdom."

~ Rig’dzin Dorje, Dangerous Friend

"The distinction matters because the esoteric world, in its current degenerate form, has largely become another expression of the same horizontal drift it claims to be offering an alternative to. The seeker’s spirituality is, in most cases, a refined version of the same appetitive self-project that governs the rest of modern life: self-improvement, self-discovery, self-actualization, the individual as the sovereign subject of his own developmental narrative. He is still following his bliss. The bliss has merely been rebranded as awakening.

"And this is not simply a matter of a neutral figure failing to provide anything useful. The “spiritual but not religious” seeker, the Boomer meditator dissolving judgment in warm undifferentiated awareness, the consumer of commodified Eastern wisdom at the Chopra Center or its ten thousand franchises, is not standing aside from the Hasnamus regime. He is an integral support of it. This requires explanation, because it is not immediately obvious and it is deeply uncomfortable."

https://scottmallett.substack.com/p/the-soil-and-the-seed-obyvatel-ashiata

“In the beginning, we do need to have the observer and observed. But as we become more and more accustomed, we can transcend the observer and observed. There has to be the idea to recognize our nature. Otherwise, we will never notice.”

~ Tulku Urgyen

"Some people think that because the ultimate nature of the world is 'emptiness,' they can ignore the laws of the relative world. This is a great mistake. While the ultimate is like the sky, the relative is like the ground. If you try to walk only in the sky, you will fall and break your bones.

“In the relative world, everything is a dance of causes and conditions. Our words have power. Our intentions have consequences. We must treat the relative world with great delicacy and artfulness. If we are sloppy with our relative lives—if we are dishonest, if we are lazy, or if we treat others with contempt—we are creating a thick fog of negative karma that will hide the sun of the ultimate truth from us.

“Practice is not about escaping the relative world; it is about learning how to move within it with grace, kindness, and awareness. We must use the 'relative' to refine ourselves. Like a sculptor using a hammer and chisel—the tools are relative, the stone is relative, but the beauty that emerges is a sign of the ultimate. Never disregard the small details of your life, for the path to the infinite is built stone by stone in the finite world.”

~ Thinley Nobu Rinpoche

Saint George and the Dragon, by Peter Paul Rubens c.1606

"If a man could understand all the horror of the lives of ordinary people who are turning round in a circle of insignificant interests and insignificant aims, if he could understand what they are losing, he would understand that there can be only one thing that is serious for him — to escape from the general law, to be free. What can be serious for a man in prison who is condemned to death? Only one thing: How to save himself, how to escape: nothing else is serious."

~ G.I. Gurdjieff