Path of Liberation

[lizcrosssmith]

No: HPFGUIDX 68909

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Ivan Vablatsky 
<ibotsjfvxfst at y...> wrote:
> 
> Hans Said: 
> 
> >Harry will come to know divine Love, symbolized probably by a 
> > demonstration or sacrifice of great love. 
>                          
>> and further said:   
> 
>> How J.K. Rowling will turn Harry's liberation of the heart into a 
>> ripping yarn is impossible to say, but to me it's certain that she 
>> will expand on the love in Harry's heart and that this will 
liberate his emotional consciousness. > 
> 
>  
> Talisman inquires:
> 
> >Do you think Sirius's death could be this sacrifice? 
> 
>  
> Hans' now:
> 
> I just don't know. I had imagined something right at the end of 
book 7. 
> > Something that would require Harry to make a choice. He didn't 
really have 
> > much choice in Sirius' death, did he? 

My two cents:

My understanding of Alchemy is quite limited, but a friend of mine 
who is a self-described Hermetic used to discuss the tree of life and 
the journey along it and the many winding paths available.  He said 
that the easiest path is the old "straight and narrow" up the 
middle.  This is the perfectly balanced path that meets each 
challenge without excesses.  The outer paths are the excesses on 
either end of the continuum that can cause a person to lose their 
balanced perspective.  For example: one can be ruled by one's heart 
or one's head.  A person who is ruled by only their heart will be 
unbalanced and make their own path more difficult by the decisions 
they make.  Many will be good decisions, but there will be poor 
decisions as well.  On the other hand, someone who makes all their 
decisions based on their head – or purely logically – will also make 
their path more difficult.  The well-balanced person who is cruising 
up the straight and narrow path toward enlightenment/self-
actualization/etc. will employ a synergy of both intellect and 
emotion.

Now, I'm not sure if that makes any sense at all, it probably would 
make more sense if he explained it, but based on that, Sirius had to 
die.

I say that because Sirius is one extreme.  He is the 24-hour emotion 
channel – all emotion, all the time.  This makes him endearing, but 
weak.  He is weak because he lacks balance and acts rashly.  His 
rashness is why he ended up in Azkaban.  He had other options than 
personally, individually hunting down Wormtail.

On the other hand, we have good old Snape who is the other extreme.  
He's the intellect who believes that emotion and love makes one 
weak.  It is no coincidence that he teaches the exacting discipline 
of potions or that he set a logical test as a guard for the 
Sorcerer's Stone.  It is not surprising that Occlumency is something 
he is proficient at.

These two gentlemen are both strong forces in Harry's life.  He needs 
to learn to strike a balance between Sirius' emotion and Snape's 
logical intellect.  In the beginning of OotP, Harry has become way 
too much like Sirius – looks like him, acts like him, thinks like 
him, and struggles to keep from being as rash as him.  Sirius was 
such a huge influence on Harry that had he lived, Harry might never 
have been able to achieve the balance he needs to achieve 
liberation.  Harry was already beginning to measure himself by Sirius 
and his father's yardstick.  Sirius and James weren't prefects, so, 
hey, it's cool that I'm not one.

Anyway, that's my two cents.  I may be way off the mark.  Who knows?

Liz