If you are like most people, then you are preoccupied by money, your job, your social network, your love life, and having a comfortable living. These things are certainly worth paying attention to; they have value. However, beyond these mundane needs there is a greater need. Some may call it spiritual, but it isn’t necessarily tied to any kind of religion. Spiritual is sometimes a euphemism for 'intangible'. The struggle and eventual reward that I'm discussing now is intangible. You can't see it, hear it, smell it, taste it, or feel it. Yet, it still exists. It is real...and perhaps the only thing in this world that truly is real.

Escape from our prison!

Cthulhu is a being from another time and place. He is quite alien to our dimension and His race gave mankind a chance to grow outside the normal confines of Mother Nature. Some acknowledge Dread Cthulhu as a metaphor or symbol while others see Him as a real entity or force trying to push awake and rise from the depths. Both theories are valid, but the important thing is that Cthulhu's condition is similar to ours. He is not dead, only dreaming… waiting for when circumstances allow Him to Awake, and from there all manner of changes will occur.

The Sleeping God represents such qualities as power, endurance, determination, will, creativity, alienage, and hedonism. When Dread Cthulhu wakens, He shall teach His chosen people new ways to kill and revel. Cthulhu's element is fire. This is also why Lovecraft described Him trapped beneath the ocean in the corpse city of R'leyh. The element of water is a perfect prison for our Drowned Lord.

The idea of a prison is also something that Cthulhu and man have in common. We are both prisoners. Our generally accepted reality is only one kind of prison. It's easy to see how man cannot easily break free from the society and culture which surrounds him. However, an even more insidious prison contains us! Man is not Awake, not conscious, he cannot do, he can only react. He has no self-awareness and is more or less in a sleeping state. This is not so easy for people to understand, so I will elaborate.

Take yourself, for example. You are made up of a long list of drives, desires, and needs. And as you are still an animal, these drives take precedence over your individuality. Your drives, desires, and needs create masks for you to wear in order to satisfy them. Everything you want in life is your mask or false front; and the frightening thing is that it wears you rather than the other way around. You as an individual do not exist; all that exists is your various disguises. So, your lust creates a lustful persona for you to adopt, your fear of heights creates an acrophobic persona for you to adopt, and your hunger for positive recognition creates a wanting-to-be-liked persona that you eventually become. And in the end, there is no more "you"...merely your masks.

If there is no "you", then where exactly are "you"? It is buried, asleep. Chances are you haven't been the real "you" in a long, long time. Your collection of masks merely carries out mechanical reactions to what your drives, desires, and needs are.

Is this any way to live? Hell no! Why would anyone choose to accept a life in prison once they knew it existed? They wouldn't, simple as that. So now that you know you are in prison, there’s only one option open: escape. To escape our prison, we need to remember ourselves. That means we have to put away our masks and remember the essential part of ourselves that almost never finds its way to the surface.

So how do we remember ourselves? Start by observing. Watch the self as if we were looking at our self from a distance. We must observe our outer self, as well as, our inner self. Our outer self is what we do physically, the way we rest our hand, the position of our feet, the words we speak, etc. Our inner self is everything that we are thinking and feeling. Both of these worlds must be watched closely. At first, we must avoid the temptation to judge because then it's easy to overcompensate and start deceiving ourselves; we focus on the wrong things. For now, just observe and take notes.

The first thing we notice is the struggle to begin this work. We make all kinds of excuses, or rather, our masks create excuses for us to use...for they are our current masters, not ourselves. We think that we are already Awake, that we don't need to put forth the effort. Once these various roadblocks are removed, we can initiate a tremendous change.

The second thing we notice is that prolonged self observation is difficult. It is easy to become distracted. Our masks get in the way, a particular mask reminds us to fulfill its need and then another mask requires us to do the same. Self observation is the time to take off our masks.

The third thing we notice is how strange this new state feels. It is like peering into the void and when one looks long enough, one becomes the void. There is a feeling of calm, of control which we never experience in "real life". Self-Remembering makes us more conscious, it wakes us up a bit. Now that we are Awake, we can act for ourselves without the masks. This is a pure state above reality. When we Awake, so does Dread Cthulhu! Transcendence starts at home with our selves. The stars will not be right for Him until they are right for us. After months of struggle, we have a basic idea of the situation's gravity, then the importance of escaping from our prison is foremost in our minds. Now that we have a taste of freedom, we can assist our Dark Father with His battle to Awaken. There are three paths for us to change reality and thereby stir the Great Old Ones...

1. artistic endeavor
2. ritual ceremonies of black magic
3. spreading the word

Another way of altering reality is through sorcery. Black magicians enter into a state of gnosis, not unlike the Self-Remembering state of Awakening. This gnosis or personal revelation has a way of transforming reality. It affects the magician's subjective reality to the point where objective reality (to a certain degree) is altered. Again, we can think of the magician himself as a small mirror. The personal mirror can change the great mirror of reality.