Just to review the classifications of petty tyrants, don Juan tells us that the primal source of energy, or the ruler of the universe, is The Tyrant. This resonates with Gurdjieff’s Sufiesque idea that our world is run by an “Evil Magician.” It also fits with the Gnostic Demiurge, the STS [Service to Self] hierarchy that dominates our world from fourth density. It is in comparison to this Matrix Control System, The Tyrant, that even the worst of the despots and authoritarians of our reality are petty tyrants.

The purpose of the petty tyrant in our lives is to teach us detachment. It is a challenge to deal with impossible people, but by doing it, we acquire sobriety and serenity. In short, out of the fire comes light.
Don Juan described the steps of utilizing a petty tyrant to achieve a state of expanded consciousness. The first step is to consciously decide to seek Truth. As Gurdjieff noted, the question must be a “burning one.” Neo, in The Matrix, had a “thorn in his mind.”

The next step is to change one’s views about themselves and the world. This means to no longer accept the party line of the Matrix, and to begin the work of digging beneath the surface. This process reveals to the seeker that there is evidence everywhere of the hyperdimensional reality in which our own is embedded. Once this realization is made, the individual must decide if they wish to access that reality, or if they are simply content with the present one. The Matrix presented this as choosing whether or not one wishes to take the red pill, or the blue pill.

This is, essentially, the choice to become a warrior. A warrior, in mythical terms, is an individual who is capable of self-discipline and control over himself because this is what is necessary to take the next step of becoming a person of knowledge. This is knowledge that is only accessible by integration of the higher mind into the third density reality. This then becomes the mustard seed of the growth of the self into fourth density whereby the knowledge can be directly accessed [Gnosis]. Unfortunately, this understanding has been seriously derailed by many New Age teachings wherein the “intelligence of the heart” has been completely twisted to mean feelings or emotions or indiscriminate “love.”

Gurdjieff describes this process as “fusion.” He remarks that inner unity is obtained by means of “friction,” by the struggle between “yes” and “no” in man. And this is where we find the usefulness of the petty tyrant. Petty tyrants produce friction in our lives. They are annoying, irritating, aggravating. They can drain our energy with their demands on our time and attention through the hooks of pity and manipulation. They can lie about us, have fits and give performances of righteous indignation that is based only on their own illusions, violate our privacy, our free will, and just a host of fun and games. But, what is important is that they are like sparring partners who teach us forbearance and timing. Of course, that is not their intention. But as Mephistopheles told Faust, “I am he who constantly intends evil, yet does good.”

The machinations of STS in our world are like that: the Matrix, the Predator, the Evil Magician, the fourth density STS Control System, entropy; by whatever name you call it, it functions by draining us of our energy, uses us for food, and manipulates us for further purposes unknown; and it is done via agents, vectors of direction, sirens: psychopathic petty tyrants.

If we practice against the petty tyrant successfully, we are enabled to take the fourth step: to become seers. And here we don’t mean a psychic who looks into a crystal ball; the meaning is one who sees what is real.

And so it is that when we discover a petty tyrant in our lives, a strategy is necessary to induce them to spar with us, a systematic harassment that not only engages them, but also causes them to expose themselves for what they are to other people. In this way, not only are they helpful in honing our skills, they are rendered unable to inflict their tyranny on others. That is, of course, another purpose of this public recapitulation.

A key fact to remember is this: in the deepest sense, we are not sparring with an individual; it is with a program, with “agents of the Matrix,” the “mechanicalness” of the world, or the fourth density controllers pushing the buttons and pulling the levers behind the scenes. As the Apostle Paul wrote: ‘For we are not wrestling with flesh and blood, contending only with physical opponents, but against the despotisms, against the powers, against the master spirits who are the world rulers of this present darkness; against the spirit forces of wickedness in the heavenly, supernatural sphere.’ (Ephesians 6:12)

And in the dynamic of Castaneda’s account of dealing with the petty tyrant, we discover how it is that Knowledge Protects. Give the lie what it asks for: Truth.”

– The Wave 5&6, Laura Knight-Jadczyk