I say long-anticipated because even by the time I finished writing Dancing to the Melody I anticipated going into more detail in a sequel that I figured might be able to be titled something along the lines of "Scoring the Melody". Basically what I had in mind was to look more closely at the grades or degrees based on the Tree of Life. In particular I had noticed something somewhere, maybe even in the Zohar itself or something I had read about the Zohar, something that had led me to think that a clearer knowledge of the grades or degrees might become available during the transition between Magister Templi and Magus. I think I came up with this due to a description of the path between Binah and Chokmah. Maybe it had said something about an understanding of spiritual evolution or something like that.

A complication of course is the fact that many people deny, sometimes quite vehemently, that living beings can attain the grades beyond the abyss. If they are right then even if that path does yield interesting knowledge about the grades and degrees of spiritual evolution that information would still only be obtainable by discarnate entities.

In thinking about the Supernals, the Sephiroth above the abyss, it might be useful to read Vivianne Crowley's "A Woman's Kaballa". In that book she describes the development of children as a journey down the Tree of Life, starting in Kether. It is an interesting contrast to the idea that the higher reaches of the Tree are unreachable. I recommend that if you want to study the Tree of Life you should read that book as well as Aleister Crowley's "Book of Thoth".

The main point that Dancing to the Melody tries to convey is the idea that enlightenment is actually quite a simple thing. Basically I was trying to demystify it, and to point out that enlightenment might actually quite common and widespread. If you are enlightened, chances are most of your friends are too. It may have seemed very mysterious and mystical and rare in unenlightened milieus, but that probably says more about unenlightened milieus than it does about enlightenment.

One of the books that doubtless influenced me was The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment by Thaddeus Golas. I also recall fondly a Christian friend's suggestion that whatever it was that Jesus was trying to convey surely must be so simple that even a child can understand it, as indicated by phrases such as "like unto a child" and the famous "suffer the children to come unto me".

I use some Tree of Life based terminology in Dancing to the Melody but whether, and if so how, it corresponds to any Tree of Life based initiatory systems is peripheral to the main intent, which is to point at an observable and describe the conditions sourrounding the observation. basically I tried to describe a simple concept of ordinary everyday enlightenment. The Tree of Life references are an attempt to correlate the observation with existing traditions not in an attempt to support the concept but, rather, as a start toward trying to use the concept to gain insight into existing traditions. Basically I was saying there seems to be something there, maybe it could in some way be involved in various existing traditions.

I still think that there is something there. I just do not know what it corresponds to in the terminologies of various traditions. Enlightenment seems an apt term, maybe common enlightenment or everyday enlightenment might be even more apt terms.

People who are cautious of organised religions and hierarchic magickal orders and such will quite likely suspect, as I do, that such constructs seem to share an occupational hazard of losing track of enlightenment somewhere along the line in the formalising of systems or constructs. Much of the perceived virtue of Dancing to the Melody is that it seems to cut through the obfuscation and convey in a concept of enlightenment in a way that many people find clear enough to grasp. The attempts to relate it to Tree of Life based systems might actually detract from its clarity rather than being helpful. I think that most likely where I will end up going with it is not so much a look at what the phenomena I refer to as enlightenment is based upon but, rather, what some of the potential mechanisms for unenlightenment might be. I have taken the position that enlightenment is something quite simple, and the idea that complexity can obscure it or prevent it or undermine it kind of flows out of that quite naturally.

I am interested in the mechanisms that corrupt institutions systems and constructs that purport to aim at enlightenment. I suspect that it will be necessary to try to grasp the concept of illumination, which was deliberately left obscure in Dancing to the Melody. Part of the reason for leaving the illumination concept obscure was that it did not seem to make much sense to bother inquiring into the nature of illumination in the absence of its purported effect, that purported effect being enlightenment. The idea was that enlightenment is an observable and the hypothetical cause of that observable is something I labelled illumination. I wanted to allow plenty of time for readers to observe the proposed observable before launching an inquiry into the nature of its cause or causes. If we cannot agree about enlightenment how likely is it that we can agree about its cause or causes? It seems reasonable that before we investigate the cause of something we should agree about the effect whose cause we want to investigate. If we cannot agree about what the label enlightenment refers to then trying to understand the cause or causes of enlightenment seems premature.

By now (November 2006) I know that the concept of enlightenment presented in Dancing to the Melody makes enough sense to enough people that it is worthwhile to launch an inquiry into the nature of the hypothetical cause, which Dancing to the Melody refers to as illumination. We can start simply by asking whether people who we regard as an enlightened seem able to reach any agreement whatsoever as to how they became enlightened. For that discussion, please see the page about illumination.