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“Beware the man who would kill a god, the choir whispers, for he will never know peace, and he will drag the whole universe into war to keep him merry company along the way. He will stand before the throne, look the void in the eye, and laugh.” ~Okayophelia
The strait-laced world is laid out before us like an unsustainable machine running on dead patterns. It’s a juggernaut of discontent. It presses in on us like a can of sardines. It corrals us like an annoying sheepdog. But we are not bait. We are not sheep. We are not fish waiting for a hook. We are not lambs waiting to be fleeced. We are not made to be netted or skinned. We are not built for being rounded up and caged. Strait-laces be damned!
This life is your life. This life is my life. This life is our life. We have from this moment until the day we die to live our best life. But what happens when living your best life clashes with the culture you were raised in? What happens when your values clash with the values of others? In that case, what needs to happen is a revaluation of values. And since you can’t control the values of others, all you can do is focus on your own values and then revaluate accordingly and, hopefully, in accordance with universal laws.
It all comes down to if your values are in sacred alignment with universal laws or not. If they are not—and most laws/rules/values of our profoundly sick society are NOT—then you must have the capacity for revaluation. Otherwise, you fall behind the curve. Otherwise, you fall victim to the whims of power. Otherwise, you become a symptom of the sickness that surrounds you.
In order to stay ahead of the curve, to not fall victim, to not become a symptom, you must discover the wherewithal to reevaluate your own value system. It is monumentally critical to our evolution as a species that we all do this at some point during our maturation.
But how do you do that when the blinding light of culture is in your eyes like a klieg light of mass destruction? How do you revaluate when the unhealthy values of the system have you wrapped up in a strait-laced Gordian Knot? You must dig deep. Find that inner darkness. Tap the bloodroot. Harness the shadow aspect. Channel the primal black. Spark the dark.
The power of this process is so monumental, so vital, so primal, that it cannot be overstated. When you adopt your shadow, your adeptness to shadow-work makes you adaptable to all lightwork. You discover that the only way to go next-level with your lightwork is to first go deep-level with your shadow-work.
With your roots in the primal dark, feeding on the primordial neuma, harnessing the cosmic bloodwork, tapping the sacred lodestone, you become intimate with the numinous. Universal law comes alive inside you, and you have no choice but to fall into line with it. Because now it is you and you are it. Vital-you unites with primal-you in glorious transcendence. The result is a revalued-you: flexible, detached, robust, antifragile, and numinous.
The numinous experience is different for everyone. Just consider it a kind of cosmic archetype that can be tapped by anyone from as many angles as there are perspectives. But essentially the numinous is a spiritual feeling of interconnectedness. It describes the power or presence or realization of a divinity, wholeness, or sacredness laced through all things. It is the lodestone from which all religious, ideological, and spiritual relics have been chipped off.
Problems arise because of a six-way crunch between time, comfort, placation, intellectual laziness, self-seriousness, and the fear of sacrilege. As James Russel Lowell said, “Time makes ancient good uncouth.” But this can even happen within a lifetime. Most people become deceived by what they refuse to disbelieve.
With enough time, these religions/ideologies/spiritualities can become hard rocks of light. Bright light. Blinding light. They blind the eyes of the faithful. They comfort the soft hearts of the meek and the lazy. They trick the believer into a self-deceiver.
Now enter the dark spark…
The dark spark (adaptable shadow work) on the light rock (hardened religion/ideology/spirituality) creates the ninja (or shinobi) archetype. The function of a ninja includes reconnaissance, espionage, infiltration, deception, ambush, and a mastery of détournement. All of which will be necessary to penetrate the hardened invulnerability of blind faith.
Essentially, when we tap the bloodroot of the primordial, we manifest the bloodwork of the numinous night. The darkness comes alive inside us. The inner ninja shines its blackhole sun. We cast the blacklight down onto the too bright world, revealing the petty goings-on, the self-serious Ego’s agenda of blind conviction, that placating power of power grown corrupt through self-righteous irresponsibility.
The dark spark ignites the vulnerable curiosity hidden within the invulnerable certainty. It plants an updated question mark in a field of outdated “answers.” It upsets the zeitgeist with anti-zealot zeal.
It shines hardest down on the numinous ninja. And rightly so. For the power of the ninja is non-deception, a counterintuitive, counterculture, outside-looking-in, bird’s-eyes view on high that teaching detachment through interconnectedness. The inner ninja deceives the believer into a perceiver. The inner ninja teaches the convinced how to be circumspect and vigilant against his/her own beliefs.
The numinous ninjaneer is a stick of dynamite in the fragile bedrock of blind faith. This especially applies to any blind faith gathered along the way by the numinous ninjaneer. For they realize that blind faith is the bane of the numinous. They realize that their dark spark detachment must be prominent against the hard light attachment lest certainty destroy curiosity and magical thinking destroy reasoning.
And so the ninjaneer’s blackhole sun shines fierce, eclipsing the self-righteous sun, blanketing the all-too-certain world with the fire of curiosity, the ruthlessness of the Question Mark Sword, and the power of high humor. Such counterintuitive light outshines cultural conditioning and stays ahead of the curve of the human condition through heightened states of cultural reconnaissance, espionage, infiltration, deception, ambush, and détournement.
It's time to slit the dogmatic throat. It’s time to cut the balls off the golden calf. It’s time to slice open the Achille’s heel of indoctrinated “Truth.” It’s time to murder all Buddha’s on the path. The numinous ninjaneer’s question mark blade is just the thing to slice through the smoke and mirrors of our culturally reinforced delusions. It’s just the thing to toss a monkey wrench into the song and dance orchestra of our profoundly sick society. It’s just the thing to upset the repeating reel-to-reel cartoon in the brain that has plagued us as a species for a millennium.
The dark spark is the resultant illuminating flash of clarity that flints off the hardened certainty of our blind convictions when the numinous ninjaneer’s question mark sword hits the mark. It lights up the night. It darkens the day. It melts summit into abyss. It sears Yang to Yin. It joins ego-death with soul-rebirth. It ripples out like a tsunami wavefunction, toppling all thrones, collapsing all sacred cows, burning all unsacred laws, kneecapping the Powers That Be.
All worlds are put on blast from between worlds, where the numinous ninjaneer sits, perched precariously but vigilantly, detached on the highest branch of the World Tree, his question mark sword slung over his shoulder like a scythe, the dark spark aftershock smoldering below him like a fallen star: a warning to all gods—past, present, and future.
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About the Author:
Gary Z McGee, a former Navy Intelligence Specialist turned philosopher, is the author of Birthday Suit of God and The Looking Glass Man. His works are inspired by the great philosophers of the ages and his wide-awake view of the modern world.
This article (Dark Spark: The Power of Numinous Ninjaneering) was originally created and published by Self-inflicted Philosophy and is printed here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Gary Z McGee and self-inflictedphilosophy.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this statement of copyright.