“You will never have a greater or lesser dominion than that over yourself…the height of a man’s success is gauged by his self-mastery; the depth of his failure by his self-abandonment. …And this law is the expression of eternal justice. He who cannot establish dominion over himself will have no dominion over others” Leonardo Da Vinci

To really want to take the first steps towards aspiring for self mastery is really a great acknowledgement to not being completely satisfied with the person we currently are experiencing. To want to change or better ourselves for our fellow man is truly something beautiful and it is something that should be cultivated. Not by raising and pointing fingers at other people who might not be as into it as us, but by working on ourselves tirelessly with the goal of changing ourselves internally. In this discipline, we do not seek to change external circumstances, on the contrary, we take advantage of them to discover our subconscious nature that creates conflicts within us. In doing so, we bring light where there is darkness and comprehension where there is ignorance. This comprehension is needed in order to eliminate the defects we carry inside causing us and others pain. We must cultivate the habit of viewing ourselves internally as a beautiful temple with plants, waters, perfumes and music. The aim of self mastery should be to elevate this temple and to clean it from the elements that pollutes it. By really observing how our emotions, desires, fears and thoughts affects our consciousness, we can really discover our own hidden enemies and subsequently eliminate them. We all do mistakes, get identified with fear, anger, aggression etc, but the person who at least attempts to use his adversities for self discovery, separates himself miles apart from the person who rejects and protests against the realities of his life and seeks to change them, rather than himself. The person using his life situation as a school for growing and liberating his consciousness will eventually get successful at it and will subsequently liberate himself more and more from suffering. To allow oneself to be ruled and governed by external circumstances and the sentiments of other people is similar to a person who is just freely giving away his energy to everything and everyone who wants to take it. The road to self mastery also implies a journey towards the realization that our energy and attention is not something we should give away unconsciously. This is because energy spent towards harmful vibrations of the external world can lead us into identification with it, and our inner life can suffer greatly as a result. Our consciousness is always where our focus is and what we pay attention towards is our choice, and something we should arguably strive to be in charge of. Every moment of our lives is preceded by another moment, and in each moment we have the option to become conscious about where our focus is and where our energy is going. When this spark of consciousness is ignited for a moment, we can then choose to redirect our focus, energy and attention on something else of our choice. That is an act of willpower. This is a highly important aspect of this topic.

It is very advisable to have a solid meditation routine. Meditation can be done at anytime, but arguably the best hours are when the physical body is naturally relaxed, such as evenings or mornings. As most people have chores, work etc during the day, we should try to use this as a means to self remember during the day and observe our three brains from situation to situation. This will give us clues as to where in our daily lives we loose our center of gravity and subsequently become identified with certain negative influences of egos whether its pride, anger, fear etc. Then, in the evening or when we have time we submerge ourselves in internal meditation. The meditation practice itself should not serve as an escape from reality, but it should at the same time enable us to recharge and to make us enter higher states of awareness.

Upon observing the kabbalistic tree of life, we need to familiarize ourselves with all of its sephiroth. We will briefly explain from the triangle we can call the Monad, or the spiritual triangle down to Malkuth, the physical world or third dimension. The Monad has three aspects; Chesed is the spirit, the innermost, the flame, our internal Being. The Being never falls, he is always pure and comes into creation to realize himself. He is the son of the Solar Logos and he is our real Father who is in secret. Chesed is the Being and the reason for the Being to come into creation is to be the Being itself. Sometimes when the term “Being” is used it is meant as a collective term for the Monad or spiritual triangle. Geburah is the divine soul and is related to divine consciousness. If Chesed is the flame then Geburah is the alabaster lamb which contains the flame. This is the Divine feminine aspect of our Being, our Divine mother of which everyone has their individual one. They are the eternal bride and groom and relate to our divine Father and Mother and their son is our human soul. Tiphereth is the human soul which generally a human only has a fraction of incarnated. This then relates to the soul essence which constitutes our level of free consciousness. It is generally said that human beings have about three percent free consciousness as the rest lies bottled up within the inhuman elements constituting the “I” the “Myself”. Tiphereth is related with willpower and as we stated, human beings only have a fraction of their human soul incarnated, that is our divine essence which relates to our free consciousness that is not asleep. The other two spheres contained in the Monad (Chesed and Geburah) are not incarnated, but will (should) eventually become incarnated if one takes up and walks the path of self realization. All the sephiroth on the tree of life are within each and every person at any given time, but some exists only in potentiality due to our current state of consciousness. As the Monad descends into what we call creation, it still carries with it its divine attributes and consciousness. However, the consciousness or divine essence of the being gets trapped by the psychic aggregates that we collectively call the ego structure causing human beings to have their consciousness asleep. Thus, we conclude that human beings have and originates from a divine nature, but it is asleep. There exists ways in which the divinity in man can be awakened, but it requires sacrifices from our ego. From the creation of the spiritual triangle, the ray of creation descends further creating the lower 5 sephiroth of the tree of life in the following manner, namely:

Tiphereth, the Causual body related with willpower

Netzach, the Mental body related with though

Hod, the Astral or emotional body related with emotion

Yesod, the Vital or ethereal body related with vitality/sexuality

Malkuth, the Physical body, the container of all the forces, the laboratory of the Alchemist

These four bodies below Tiphereth are called the four bodies of sin. This is because they are the bodies where our unclean elements are found. These bodies contain certain psychological aggregates what we can call egoes. These psychological aggregates have a will of their own, a will of their own in contrast with the will of the Being. As we are identified with one of these aggregates or egoes, we do the will of the ego instead of the will of the Being or the Father. Therefore, the psychological aggregate which in reality is only a dark shadow of a given value of the Being, steals and misuses the energy for its egotistical purpose. The big shift and really the start of self mastery relies on putting the power back towards the will of the Being. Our will is currently conditioned to do the will of our egos for the most part in a varying degree according to each human being. Also, certain egoes are stronger in some persons than others, this is easy to see. However, on a large scale, we can argue that the willpower, related to Tiphereth is under the control of our egoes, subjectivity and the four bodies of sin. The road to self Mastery depends on us using our willpower to put our will back at the service of our Being. Simply put, that our Being controls our willpower to dominate the four lower sephiroth instead of the other way around. Tiphereth is the knight who has to do all the work of the Father. He is the knight that must slay the dragon in order to marry his beloved wife, the divine mother kundalini. The dragon is really symbolized as the totality of the shadow of our Being, it is our own inner Lucifer. The four bodies of sin with all their unclean elements symbolizes the dragon. The physicality of the dragon represents Malkuth, physicality and the element earth. The scales and reptilian features of the dragon represents Yesod, the vital body and the element water. The fiery breath of the dragon represents Hod, passions, the emotional body and the element fire. The wings of the dragon represents Netzach, thoughts, elusiveness, the mental body and the element air. Any aspirant towards the Mastery of self must start by working on dominating these forces. The works of the knight must be imitated so that we can become Masters of our own kingdoms. This is not a matter working a a few days or weeks. It is a lifelong commitment. It all comes down to how much willpower we are able and willing to manifest for the benefit of the Being. We have hinted in previous works that for example in order to control our thoughts, dominion over our physical, vital and emotional energies are necessary. Things follow a natural progression which must be respected in order to be successful. Mastery of self begins with the fight against the dragon, the dominion over the four tattvas, the four elements within our interior kingdom.

Malkuth

Malkuth is the tenth sephira and it is physicality and the third dimension.  It is the physical world which is perceivable through our eyes. Moreover it is the play out level of many phenomena originating in other dimensions such as emotions and thoughts. The physical world perceived by our eyes exists only in that form precisely through our eyes. On an interior level, Malkuth is the physical body. Malkuth means “kingdom” in Hebrew. As the tree of life represents different densities of energy, Malkuth is the physical density. It is merely a play out level or a manifestation level of more subtle energies. When we observe the tree of life with its superior and inferior dimensions, we can see that Malkuth, the third dimension or physicality is caught in the middle of everything. Using the tree of life we can comprehend the failure of interpreting what is visible to the physical eyes as everything that exists. The physical dimension is merely a dimension of manifestation or even reflection. This is very similar to the Nordic cosmology where it is explained that Midgard is the realm of man in the middle of the eight other worlds or rather dimensions. When one perceives another person, it is obvious that one perceives the other person’s physicality through the eyes. However, the entire tree of life is also in their entire being although not visible with our eyes. For example, we see the physical body, but we do not see the thoughts or emotions. Nevertheless, we are all aware that they exist and we can also feel another person’s emotional state as well as thoughts. So, Malkuth is merely the physical manifestation of the tree of life or a human being although both consist of many other more subtle dimensions such as thoughts, emotions etc. These other dimensions such as thoughts and emotions can emanate from superior levels of nature or inferior levels of nature called Klipoth in Kabbalah or Hell in Christianity. Malkuth is represented by the element earth. And it is feminine as it is receiving or rather accommodating all of the other spheres. Psychologically speaking, Malkuth can represent our attachment to physical or materialistic things. This will typically imply our house, apartment, car, clothes, accessories etc. It can relate to our life situation and our identification with it, or our desire to change it. To have more physical things as a means to feel more secure whether that’s a better job, better car or more money. One of the main triggers for greed, the need of accumulating resources in fear of running low or not to have shelter, food etc. In reality, our current life situation good or bad will never be permanent, thus there is no security to find in the external world. If we hate our lives we can take advantage of that and use our lives as a means of self discovery and growth. The only thing that has permanence in us is the being and the consciousness thus this is where the real and only security can be found. The being belongs to eternity, physicality belongs to time, lets treat it accordingly! Malkuth also represent our addictions towards physical expressions of one self. This can include many sports people or athletes which abuse and push the physical body to extremes. The abuse of the physical body can result in depletion of this center which may in turn steal energy from the mental and emotional center. People who overly identify with their physical expression will often find themselves in vanity. This implies giving too much identification with how they or others look physically.

When someone wants to meditate, the work starts in Malkuth, the physical body. Practically speaking, this means that the aspirant must find a comfortable position. One can sit on the bed, on the chair, laying down etc. However, the spine should be erect and the body should be relaxed. In order to penetrate into more subtle aspects on the tree of life, the aspirant must first control Malkuth. This is understood when observing the tree of life in the sense that Malkuth and Yesod are intimately related and need to be travelled before commencing on the other sephiroth, if ascension of the tree is what we are after. The physical body must be relaxed, and under the command of the consciousness in order to release energy needed for travelling upwards the tree of life. It is hard if not impossible to enjoy a serene mind if the physical body is tense. Likewise, it is equally hard to maintain emotional equilibrium if we allow our body to be flexed and tense.

“To remember oneself and to relax the body is something we have to do constantly” – Samael Aun Weor

The work starts by relaxing and controlling the physical body through willpower, relaxation and concentration. Likewise in order to dominate the four bodies of sin during daily life. One needs to control Malkuth. One needs to know how to be present in the body, to be grounded, to be relaxed. We will be able to Master the flames of emotion and the whirlwind of thoughts when we know how to be relaxed, even when others around us are not. This implies a need for a presence in our physical bodies, to always be aware of what’s going on, to be alert, vigilant and observing it from moment to moment. In addition, it implies an acceptance of whatever life circumstance we are in, good or bad. Our life circumstances must be accepted and even used as a gymnasium to discover our defects, rather than something that must change externally so that we can be happy.

Yesod

Yesod is the ninth sephira and the world of vital energies. Yesod is the home of the ninth sphere. Yesod is located above Malkuth and it is very closely related with physicality. In fact, if one holds up one’s hand while separating the fingers against a white background, the vital energy is perceivable through the physical eyes if one’s focus is placed on the space between the fingers. It is also possible to see a person’s vital energy around the head. Stand in front of a mirror about 1 meter away. Raise your thumb, extend it outward and place it between your eyes about 30-40 cm apart. Place your eyes and focus on the thumb and you will notice two heads in the mirror. At one point the two heads will merge together and it will be possible to see the vital energies surrounding the head. One must also relax the eyes and breath. Yesod is related to the vital energies and it is the world of sexual energy. The physical body is animated by the vital body through an extensive network of nadis. The Nadis are subtle energetic channels which conducts the vital energy and the major vortexes of these energy channels are called chakras. The healing and optimization of these energetic channels forms the basis of acupuncture Our sexual energies are our vital energies, life energies and the very foundation needed in order to animate the physical body. Everything we do in life is the outcome of sexual energy. Without it we would just be dead thus, it is life itself. Therefore, its importance cannot be understated ever. Yesod means “foundation” in Hebrew which implies its fundamental importance on ascension in consciousness and related to the building of the internal temple. It truly is the rock or foundation on which our internal temple (soul) must be built upon. Yesod can be symbolized by a great fountain of life. This fountain of life giving waters must be cleansed, purified and even fertilized and sublimated. This is a purely sexual matter. Yesod in its foundational aspect of the being relies on sex as the great force needed for giving birth to the intimate divine faculties. The waters of the fountain lies the fundament or foundation for the garden or temple if we will. This is symbolized very beautifully in the movie “Pans Labyrinth”. We have stated before that the quality or lack of it concerning our emotional and mental centers relies on the quality of our sexual center. Thus, it is absolutely necessary to cleanse our sexual waters before attempting to cleanse or elevate our emotions or thoughts. The sexual energies should not be spilled. Instead, they should be harnessed and elevated. This is a work of transmutation which one can do with a spouse, or as a single person.

“The Elohim are male and female.  Man and woman united sexually during the supreme ecstasy of love are really one terrifically divine Elohim. In those moments of sexual union, we are really in the Laboratorium-Oratorium of Holy Alchemy” – Samael Aun Weor, The Perfect Matrimony

One of the practices for singles is pranayama. To attempt at this work without the sexual force is similar to wanting to drive somewhere without any fuel in your car. The creative forces is regulated through physical relaxation and the breath. Breathing is essential for the transmutation of the sexual waters. The real fight begins once attempts are made towards the retention of the creative force. Lust is always present, but it can be beaten by transmuting it into love for our divine mother and our being. Once the effects of chastity is felt in the superior centers in the heart and the soul, the work becomes easier. Inspiration is given in the heart and doubts towards the holy teachings fades away. When we use the word chastity we do not mean the abstention from sex, but white tantra, or the great arcanum as explained in previous posts. For people who are single, the creative forces can as mentioned be sublimated into the heart by performing meditational like breathing exercises. Through concentration, breathing and the relaxation of the physical body, the sexual energy can be moved and directed towards the heart. This will enable the heart to feel superior emotions greatly inspiring and beneficial for our work.

The waters of life, Yesod, the ninth sphere is dominated by not spilling the waters for the sake of desiring momentary sensations. Instead, it must be kept, nurtured and transmuted so that we can enjoy the real fruits of the garden. Later on, this force is sublimated higher and higher and purified on more and more subtle levels. The importance of this aspect regarding awakening of consciousness can be summed up by its very name in Hebrew, “foundation”.

The Kundalini is not a blind force. The Kundalini is not a mechanical force. The Kundalini is controlled by the fires of the heart and can only be developed based on Sexual Magic and sanctity – Samael Aun Weor

The retention of this force often causes great havoc and disturbances in our emotional and mental centers. Especially in the beginning of the work. As this happens, we must intensify transmutation practices and meditation in order to purify our waters and subsequently to eliminate our psychological aggregates. This happens on an emotional and mental level. In one way one can say that the path to Mastery is a higher and higher purification of our sexual, emotional and mental energies. These three brains, sexual (yesod), emotional (hod) and mental (netzach) are so intimately related together. It is impossible to talk about the purification of one aspect without mentioning the other two. They all connect with each other in specific ways and the sexual center is its foundation.

Hod

Hod is the eight sephiroth and it corresponds to our emotional body and relates to the fifth dimension. It is related with the element fire. For most people, to control our emotions is perhaps the hardest thing we can ever master. This can depend a little bit upon whether we are the type of person who identifies mainly with emotion, intellect or physicality/action. This also relates again to which tattva or element we mostly identify with and thus mostly express ourselves through. It is also affected greatly by which of the four elements or tattvas our zodiacal sun sign corresponds to. In any case, emotions are a huge obstacle for everyone, but everybody express it in different ways. The emotional body is the body of desires and fears, fear being also a desire only with a different polarity in the sense that we desire to avoid something. Most people think the mind is hard to control and it most certainly is, but to control the mind becomes impossible without any form of control over the emotional center. This center stretches from the lower abdomen and up towards the heart. The lower abdomen is the home of our lower emotions and the heart is the home for higher, inspirational emotions. It is harder to access elevated emotional states whilst an identification with the lower vibratory emotions are still being entertained. We must not expect to not feel negative emotions, but rather, to train ourselves to employ vigilance and willpower when their manifestations are at play. Emotions are controlled by settling the vital forces through breathing and by changing our focus through an act of willpower. For example: Lets imagine we are living with someone who has the habit of stealing our food which is of a great annoyance to us. We have been making a very nice homemade pizza the night before and the last 3-4 slices are foiled and put in the fridge overnight. We look forward to eating the rest of the pizza the next day. As we get up the next morning, we enter the living room, we see our roommate, without asking us the roommate is gorging on our pizza that we spent so much time to prepare. We see this, become angry in a matter of a few seconds and either we express our anger directly towards our roommate or we choose to keep the anger in ourselves in a passive, poisonous way which will consume our thoughts and energy for hours, if not days. This all happens so fast, the combustion of the fire that is emotion is so dominating and all consuming, but what actually happens? As we enter the room and see our roommate eating our pizza. The sight of this spectacle enters through our receptors and a perception is produced immediately. The perception produced will be dependent on our state of consciousness. As we see the pizza as ours and also as something that we had the desire to eat later, the external image of our roommate eating the pizza then do not harmonize with our internal state. There is a conflict of the external and the internal and an imbalance is produced. Then immediately upon seeing the image of our roommate eating our food we feel something in our lower abdomen. We can feel the negative emotions of anger and desire piercing our lower abdomen. The emotions quickly invade our mental body. Thoughts of anger and pride screams simultaneously in our heads in demand to see “justice” being done. Then the thoughts as we identify with them enters into the causal body, the body of will and then its a done deal. That’s when our subjective interpretation of that external image physically manifests in the form of anger, maybe gluttony, maybe pride etc. This happens in a matter of a few seconds thanks to our egoes and the mechanicity of our way of interacting and reacting. This is just an example. Someone eating our food can be irritating and it certainty does not mean that the roommate had the right to eat it, but this is about mastering ourselves. This is about not being a slave of negative emotions like anger and pride. This is about not wasting our energies, but to concern ourselves with the building of the inner temple.”

“Kindness is a more crushing force than anger” – Samael Aun Weor, Revolution of the Dialectic

If we start by observing ourselves from moment to moment, our consciousness can intervene in the mechanicity of the ego structure. Upon seeing our roommate eating our food, the emotions of anger starts to be felt in our lower abdomen. If we are really aware of ourselves, we will in this moment simply observe the emotions that come in to play. In order to calm down the emotional body we start by relaxing the physical and vital body and this is done through the breath. We inhale deeply and relax the abdomen totally, it is like we are letting it go. Only like this are we able to control the emotion that hits us, and only by being in control of it can we be in a place of deciding as to whether or not we wish to entertain it. Then we simply observe the emotion and consciously choose not to pick it up. We identify with the one that’s doing the observing rather than that which is observed. It is a bad idea to try and defeat anger or any bad emotion in the mind. If we are “on fire”, it just simply wont work. The vital forces of the body must be calmed down and that is done through breathing and observing ourselves. There will be certain people more prone to anger than others and these “hot headed” people must be even more cautious about not becoming identified with it. The emotional body is the body of desires. When the external world corresponds to our internal world in a way that is harmonizing with our desires we feel happy. When it doesnt we feel sad, scared or even angry. It is better to try and reach the absolute still point through works of meditation, the desireless state. That doesn’t mean to become some kind of ambivalent zombie, but to rather be in the equilibrium of the being which no external phenomena should shake. Our level of Mastery over our emotions is directly related to our corresponding level of inner work and our level of being. When we have a strong, unshakable gravitation towards our inner temple, it provides for us a place we can always remain in peace no matter what the external circumstances will be. There exist also the higher emotions which are connected to the activation of the heart center and its faculties. This is the place of love and it is nourished by the transmutation of the sexual waters and developed through meditation and actions of love towards our fellow man. If we are able to cultivate these higher emotions then simply we will draw inspiration from elevated sources of energy and it will be harder for lower vibrational emotions to manifest in us.

Netzach

Netzach is the seventh sephiroth and corresponds to our mental body and relates to the fifth dimension. It is related with the element air. “Netzach” means victory in Hebrew and those who dominate this realm are really victorious ones. To defeat the elusive nature of the mind, an intimate relationship with Tiphereth, willpower is needed. It is crucial to try and experience that spark of consciousness which triggers self remembering during daily life, but the mind must ultimately be dominated with willpower. Our thoughts are mostly projections from the emotional center in forms of fears or desires. Even when reaching a point of control over our emotions, we will still be bothered by thoughts. These are the elusiveness of the air element and the wings of the dragon which never seems to get tired ever. For example have you noticed how the mind never seems to be tired even when the body is? Subjective thoughts from the ego construct can be transcended by remaining present in the physical body, breathing and relaxing particularly the head. In meditation whilst trying to calm the mind, one can feel that the subtlest of thoughts produce agitation in the mind. Just a flicker of thought causes the neurons to fire producing agitation and expenditure of our energy. When we are in daily life letting our thoughts roam freely, we are often unconscious about the draining of our mental center this causes. Thus, the more we allow our thoughts to roam during daily life, the harder they will be to control during meditation. The mind must be silent if we are to experience that which lies is beyond.

“The true Human Being is the innermost. He does not have problems. The problems are from the mind. As long as we continue to be imprisoned within the corrupt and rancid norms of the intellect, it will be more than impossible to experience that which is not of the mind, that which is not of time, that which is real” – Samael Aun Weor

Those who want to enter into the greater mysteries must abandon the animal intellect. Animal intellect is luciferic and demonic. The great Masters have the mind of a child. We must live in great awe and tremble as if in the presence of God. We must terminate our intellectual pride. We must have the innocent and simple mind of an infant. We must not conceal crimes. – Samael Aun Weor, Major Mysteries

A common thing many people do is to try and balance the mind in the mind itself. For example to try and balance a negative impulse or thought in the mind with a positive one. A feeling of guilt from the emotional center crystallizes as a negative thought in the mental center and a positive thought is needed to balance it out. This leads us nowhere and only causes further agitation and excessive strain on the mental center. The mind is indeed the arena of dualism and it is a battlefield of a constant war between the opposites, the thesis and the antithesis. The mind subjugated to the concepts of the ego is a true slave and will by definition never be able to mold itself to the parameters of the consciousness. These problems all really have their origin in our identification with our thoughts. To escape the shackles of our thoughts is to escape identification with them. This is done through experiencing and thus identifying with higher and more real aspects of our being such as for example the consciousness itself, the observer. By experiencing being the observer, the consciousness itself, it is easier to disengage our identification with thoughts as real. Once we have invested in a thought in terms of energy, its harder to let it go in the sense that we desire value from our investment, constantly trying to justify our identification with thinking by more thinking. We like to think that we can solve things in the mind, but it just cannot be done like more alcohol can cure a hangover for one day, but will make it worse down the line. The mind should ultimately be a vehicle for the consciousness to express itself through. If we consider the place of Netzach on the tree of life, its relationship towards the emotional center is obvious and therein lies the clue. Our thoughts are the product of our emotions whether conscious or unconscious. Try to be observant of the thoughts hitting you throughout a day and you will find that there is a relationship with the emotional center as most thoughts will be a reflection of a fear or a desire. Therefore, as we have hinted towards many times, there is a natural progression. Thoughts will be conquered when emotions are, and emotions will be conquered when the sexual waters are, which are the real root of all desire and the great stabilizer should we choose to fertilize it. Only then can we make of the mind, a great receptor for the being , the consciousness to express itself through.

We live in times where as a society and a culture the precepts of self Mastery just isn’t found or never encouraged in the media, and even worse, maybe even censored. Particularly when there is a need for it more than ever. To find inspiration towards the path that leads to direct experience of the divine is a human birthright. In order to get motivated to kill a dragon we need alot of inspiration and force. Beings who are walking the path are obliged to share their experiences in order to inspire and shine a light. It is obvious that certain dark groupings knows about the path and uses it to gain power over people, instead of teaching them about the forces that will free them they use it against them. The precepts of self Mastery lies always in us though, and thus it is our responsibility to work. The precepts of self Mastery lies in the tattvas, the four elements and their interplay between each other and the power of harnessing their forces rather than them harnessing us. It is necessary to cultivate self observation and self remembrance. If you ever find yourself in a situation you cannot bear, try to remember basics; breathe, dominate the creative forces firstly, then see the emotional center stabilize, and finally try to mobilize willpower to unidentify with thoughts. Choose the being and the consciousness over the ego. Strive to fight against yourself in order to attain Mastery and you will see that Mastery over externalities comes naturally and in fact is not even needed, because Mastery of self implies Mastery of externalities. We will dare to say that the greatest feature of self Mastery is the Mastery of the sexual force and to the extent we manage to purify our sexual energy. This is because that energy forms the root of our very being. It is crucial to develop direct experiences so that faith in the being is cemented. In this way, the willpower of our Being can be used to crush the head of the serpent, and the knight (tiphereth) will kill the dragon by driving a stake (kundalini) through its very heart. Then we can become like the pentagram, with the upward triangle facing up, thus symbolizing the spirit dominating the four bodies of sin.