If you don't know history you are at the mercy of the fads and fancies of the day. You have no real means of comparing current opinion to anything else and therefore you will find it much harder to see where current opinion might be right and where it might err.
One of the ways in which the world is currently being remade according to a materialistic agenda is through the neglect of history. People are either being completely separated from their past, their roots and traditions, or else these are being deformed and presented in a quite different light, one in keeping with modern leftist ideology which is the prism through which everything is increasingly viewed. A leftist will assert that this has always been going on, telling us that the winners write the history. But what is happening now seems to be a much more conscious attempt to destroy the past in order to reconstruct human beings in a form that has no connection to their true and natural being. For while the winners always have presented history in terms favourable to them, there was still, especially in spiritual matters, a concern with truth and a desire to be faithful to the good and the beautiful. Now that concern has been replaced by an ideological commitment to the destruction of truth, and those desires have been corrupted into a focus on false goodness and distortions of beauty.
Human beings have struggled to bring order out of chaos. History is the story of that struggle and shows the upward path humanity has taken as it makes its way out of a crude biological response to the environment to an engagement with intellectual and spiritual matters. In its arts it has tried to find and express higher representations of beauty. Through its religion it has sought to encounter God and understand something of what he is and what he wants from us. Through its sciences it has searched for deeper insights into the world. All until recently, that is. Latterly it appears that we only wish to celebrate the human being as a material construction, risen from the mud and without any higher input or spiritual responsibility. Moreover, something that can be formed into what we want it to be and according to our own will.
When the past is represented as inferior to the present in all aspects then it has nothing to teach us. We are wiser. We know better. But how can we judge? Our only criteria are the prejudices of the day so we have a circular argument, one which inevitably leads back to itself since it is the premise on which the conclusion must be based. This is not an argument for the superiority of the past but one for learning from experience. Nowadays we prize youthfulness over age, the new over the old. Consequently we are shallow creatures, full of arrogance who believe our elders have nothing to teach us. This attitude is natural, and perhaps even creative to a degree, if one really is young, but it is profoundly ignorant when it runs through the whole of society.
The study of history should be an essential part of proper education for without it we are like a rudderless ship adrift in the ocean. We are at the mercy of ideologues, sophists and charlatans. Tradition is not outdated ignorance but the distilled wisdom of the past and, even if some traditions are rightfully outgrown, they should still be thoroughly understood and their lessons learned before they are discarded.
Tuesday 28 August 2018
Friday 24 August 2018
Women Readers
For Albion Awakening I've written a piece looking into why there are, or appear to be, fewer women than men who reject the Leftist ideology, especially in the context of spirituality and religion.
Since it went up there it's been greatly augmented by some illuminating comments.
http://albionawakening.blogspot.com/2018/08/women-readers.html
Since it went up there it's been greatly augmented by some illuminating comments.
http://albionawakening.blogspot.com/2018/08/women-readers.html
Saturday 18 August 2018
Some Reflections on The Masters
Every so often I return to what was the original subject of this blog which is the reality of those spiritual beings I call the Masters. I sometimes feel I have to apologise for this designation because it seems, on the one hand, old fashioned and, on the other, a bit New Agey. But I don't care about the old-fashioned accusation and, as for the word itself, it seems a reasonable term to describe someone who has mastered his lower nature and who stands in relation to the rest of humanity as a teacher and guide. Besides, they would occasionally refer to themselves by this word though that might have been because it was an accepted term for such beings at one time, and they just used what was familiar. More often, they would call themselves brothers which is also a good way to think of them. They are our brothers, albeit, of course, our elder brothers.
I return to this subject because it is something I can talk about in the field of spirituality that comes from my own experience. It has nothing to do with my thoughts or beliefs or intuitions. It is not a part of any religion I might have or system I might follow or metaphysics I might incline to. It is the result of direct personal experience. But if that were all there was to it then it would not matter to anyone else. However, I strongly believe it does have relevance for others. If we knew that there were beings who have fully realised their essential oneness with God but who were, at the same time, wholly individual, indeed more genuinely individual than anyone I have ever met in this world, and that they watched over us and tried to guide us, within the limits of spiritual law, then we might be strengthened and encouraged for the spiritual task that lies before us. If we knew what awaited us, because what they are we can be too, then the darkness we often appear to be surrounded by might not seem as impenetrable as it sometimes does. Even people with the greatest faith can doubt. Anything that helps those struggling towards the light is surely good and to be desired.
For what it's worth, I can proclaim that these Masters exist. They are among the saints who belong to the company of heaven, and they really do seek to inspire and guide us. The way they normally work is through impression to those whose minds are sensitive enough to respond to them on what might be called the spiritual plane; that is to say, the level of mind that exists above the thought-making level and to which the imagination is the earliest approach. It is what we come into contact with as we start to open ourselves up to higher, non-material reality but it also requires a degree of personal purity, honest aspiration and love of God. Anyone can study material science if they have a good enough brain. To study spiritual science is a different matter. For that you need to cleanse your being of the stains of the world, the flesh and the devil. At least, you need to be going in that direction.
The Masters do seek to impress us, or those of us who are open to higher spiritual things, but this impression does not usually take verbal form. It comes as ideas which we then have to translate into ordinary mental form ourselves. In this process, the idea can be, usually is if we're honest, contaminated to a degree. It can be affected by our prejudices and preconceptions, our already existing beliefs, our self-centredness which may put a particular slant on it and also by wishful thinking. This is just how it is and that is why we have to use our own intuition and powers of discrimination to sift through any proclaimed spiritual teaching or communication. I don't suppose much comes through in a completely pure form but that's not necessarily a bad thing since we are here to learn to understand spirituality ourselves and not just be spoon fed stuff which we consume indiscriminately.
The Masters combined wisdom and love to a high degree. They were patient but firm, loving but demanding. They expected hard work and dedication to the path. Nothing less was acceptable. I'm saying here that their love did not in any way blind them to reality as contemporary notions of love sometimes appear to do. If you wanted to be their disciple, you had to be prepared to sacrifice. That rule still applies just as it would in a monastery or for anyone under any spiritual discipline. Love must be aligned to truth or it is just personal feelings.
There is a hierarchy even in heaven. This fact alone points to the enduring reality of the individual self. If spiritual attainment were just the realisation of one's identity with God; that is to say, full identification with the uncreated part of one's being, with being itself, it could not be so. We would all be Christ, we would all be the Buddha. But that is not the case. The unfolding of consciousness does not end. There are always deeper aspects to reality and fuller unions with God. The Masters were far above anyone in this world but there were higher Masters above them who spoke to me on a few rare occasions and the difference was noticeable. The power and majesty of these beings was something I shall never forget.
It is nearly 20 years since I last spoke with the Masters but I keep them in my heart and in my mind. I do not pray to them. They do not supplant God or Christ. But I speak to them. I ask for their guidance and I think I receive it. What I do with it, how I react to it, is up to me. That is my responsibility and this is a basic law of serious spiritual work. God, either directly or through his messengers as the Masters actually told me to think of them, inspires us but we must ground that inspiration. We must manifest it in our own being and bring it through to the world to the very best of our ability. In this way, we can approach the hierarchy of heaven and start to make ourselves worthy enough to join their ranks.
For anyone struggling along the spiritual path, as hard now as it's ever been, the words I was told almost 40 years ago apply. They are words to give us comfort and strength as we journey through life in this world.
Work and love, and at the end you will join us again, triumphant.
I return to this subject because it is something I can talk about in the field of spirituality that comes from my own experience. It has nothing to do with my thoughts or beliefs or intuitions. It is not a part of any religion I might have or system I might follow or metaphysics I might incline to. It is the result of direct personal experience. But if that were all there was to it then it would not matter to anyone else. However, I strongly believe it does have relevance for others. If we knew that there were beings who have fully realised their essential oneness with God but who were, at the same time, wholly individual, indeed more genuinely individual than anyone I have ever met in this world, and that they watched over us and tried to guide us, within the limits of spiritual law, then we might be strengthened and encouraged for the spiritual task that lies before us. If we knew what awaited us, because what they are we can be too, then the darkness we often appear to be surrounded by might not seem as impenetrable as it sometimes does. Even people with the greatest faith can doubt. Anything that helps those struggling towards the light is surely good and to be desired.
For what it's worth, I can proclaim that these Masters exist. They are among the saints who belong to the company of heaven, and they really do seek to inspire and guide us. The way they normally work is through impression to those whose minds are sensitive enough to respond to them on what might be called the spiritual plane; that is to say, the level of mind that exists above the thought-making level and to which the imagination is the earliest approach. It is what we come into contact with as we start to open ourselves up to higher, non-material reality but it also requires a degree of personal purity, honest aspiration and love of God. Anyone can study material science if they have a good enough brain. To study spiritual science is a different matter. For that you need to cleanse your being of the stains of the world, the flesh and the devil. At least, you need to be going in that direction.
The Masters do seek to impress us, or those of us who are open to higher spiritual things, but this impression does not usually take verbal form. It comes as ideas which we then have to translate into ordinary mental form ourselves. In this process, the idea can be, usually is if we're honest, contaminated to a degree. It can be affected by our prejudices and preconceptions, our already existing beliefs, our self-centredness which may put a particular slant on it and also by wishful thinking. This is just how it is and that is why we have to use our own intuition and powers of discrimination to sift through any proclaimed spiritual teaching or communication. I don't suppose much comes through in a completely pure form but that's not necessarily a bad thing since we are here to learn to understand spirituality ourselves and not just be spoon fed stuff which we consume indiscriminately.
The Masters combined wisdom and love to a high degree. They were patient but firm, loving but demanding. They expected hard work and dedication to the path. Nothing less was acceptable. I'm saying here that their love did not in any way blind them to reality as contemporary notions of love sometimes appear to do. If you wanted to be their disciple, you had to be prepared to sacrifice. That rule still applies just as it would in a monastery or for anyone under any spiritual discipline. Love must be aligned to truth or it is just personal feelings.
There is a hierarchy even in heaven. This fact alone points to the enduring reality of the individual self. If spiritual attainment were just the realisation of one's identity with God; that is to say, full identification with the uncreated part of one's being, with being itself, it could not be so. We would all be Christ, we would all be the Buddha. But that is not the case. The unfolding of consciousness does not end. There are always deeper aspects to reality and fuller unions with God. The Masters were far above anyone in this world but there were higher Masters above them who spoke to me on a few rare occasions and the difference was noticeable. The power and majesty of these beings was something I shall never forget.
It is nearly 20 years since I last spoke with the Masters but I keep them in my heart and in my mind. I do not pray to them. They do not supplant God or Christ. But I speak to them. I ask for their guidance and I think I receive it. What I do with it, how I react to it, is up to me. That is my responsibility and this is a basic law of serious spiritual work. God, either directly or through his messengers as the Masters actually told me to think of them, inspires us but we must ground that inspiration. We must manifest it in our own being and bring it through to the world to the very best of our ability. In this way, we can approach the hierarchy of heaven and start to make ourselves worthy enough to join their ranks.
For anyone struggling along the spiritual path, as hard now as it's ever been, the words I was told almost 40 years ago apply. They are words to give us comfort and strength as we journey through life in this world.
Work and love, and at the end you will join us again, triumphant.
Thursday 16 August 2018
Sunset in the West
The philosopher
Seneca who lived during the time of the Roman emperor Nero, sometimes regarded
as a forerunner or type of the Antichrist, said that when the state was
corrupt beyond repair and degenerate to the core, the wise man would not
pointlessly battle against it but look beyond it to the greater cosmos and
become a citizen of that. He would detach himself from worldly passions and
remain rooted in reason, and so find his freedom in living above the messy
disorder of the lower world.
Continued on Albion Awakening
Saturday 11 August 2018
Atheism
In a comment on his blog a while ago Bruce Charlton quoted Rudolph Steiner as saying that "to deny God is a sickness."* I think this is perfectly true. Atheists are sick but it is a sickness of the soul caused by a stunted imagination and a rebellious will. So it is a moral sickness, or that is certainly a large component of it.
I suppose one must distinguish between active atheists and passive ones, the latter being the majority of the Western population almost by default these days. But even the passive have every opportunity to consider the question of whether or not God exists. After all, it is the most important question anyone can ever ask themselves, and to put it to one side is only acceptable if you are either a fool or else very immature. I don't say young because for many children, especially pre-adolescents, the question of God is extremely important. It's only when they begin to be corrupted by the world that it becomes less so.
I suppose one must distinguish between active atheists and passive ones, the latter being the majority of the Western population almost by default these days. But even the passive have every opportunity to consider the question of whether or not God exists. After all, it is the most important question anyone can ever ask themselves, and to put it to one side is only acceptable if you are either a fool or else very immature. I don't say young because for many children, especially pre-adolescents, the question of God is extremely important. It's only when they begin to be corrupted by the world that it becomes less so.
Then there is the denial of Christ. Some of this must come from the poor performance of the Churches and of Christians themselves. People reject them because of their shortcomings, not seeing that, in dismissing Christ along with them, they are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But any real reflection on Christ or unbiased reading of the Gospels must make a sincere person see the truth. Once again, it is a sick soul that rejects Christ because he is the pattern of truth and this exists within us. If we are faithful to the truth within ourselves, we will recognise Christ. If we are not faithful to the truth of our own internal being then we will also dismiss the truth of Christ. People don't like hearing this but there it is. To deny Christ is to deny real truth, goodness and beauty for he is the embodiment of all of these.
But the other problem is that most people don't even think about God now. They have had little or no spiritual education and they are so preoccupied with material things that they don't worry about the spiritual at all. At least, not until they have to confront their own mortality and then it is often too late because the habits of a lifetime are so ingrained that they cannot be thrown off. But we cannot escape our spiritual responsibilities. We all have come across religious teachings. We are not deprived of access to the truth. It is our own decision as to whether we accept or reject the reality of God. The fact that our culture pulls us away from God is disastrous but it is not compulsory that we follow mainstream tendencies. We are perfectly capable of seeing beyond the cultural influences if we make the effort. Unfortunately, far too many of us don't want to make the effort and that is because we don't want to make the sacrifices. We are too comfortable in our material world to relinquish that. Or else we are too attached to our intellectual prejudices to want to give them up. Even those who do accept God often do so on their terms rather than his, and this is not that much different to not accepting him at all.
You might think I am being too harsh or dogmatic here but this is so important in a world that has abandoned its religious traditions and embraced a self-satisfied intellectual self-sufficiency. There is no point in treading lightly to avoid upset. Not now at this late stage. If we actively deny God we are either sick or full of pride and complacency. However much the atheist may hide his soul behind a pleasant outer facade, once you scratch beneath the surface you find a shrivelled, stunted being that is fighting against life and true goodness, and is doing so because of a lack of love. Of course, believers may lack love too but an atheist necessarily does because to deny God is to deny the reality of love which you can only do if you do not have it or feel it. I am not talking about affection or empathy or anything of that kind here but proper love, the difference being that spiritual love is not centred on the one that loves but reaches up to something higher and beyond. If you have this kind of love in you then you are aware, to some degree at least, of God. Love points to its source. So, if we reject God, we reject love even though we may cover that rejection up with worldly imitations of love.
The world is becoming more chaotic as it drifts further from any spiritual rootedness. We are surrounded by lies and that is corroding us inside as we adjust to it as normality. It is not normality. It is spiritual corruption which may leave us healthy looking on the outside but rots us from within. If we don't start to reach out to our Creator, we will sever our connection to him and that means that our inner being will start to wither and fade. How could it not? God is the source of life and light. If you deny him then you must fall into darkness. This is the plain truth which we ignore at our peril.
* Here's the link to that post. http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-difference-between-being-atheist.html
You might think I am being too harsh or dogmatic here but this is so important in a world that has abandoned its religious traditions and embraced a self-satisfied intellectual self-sufficiency. There is no point in treading lightly to avoid upset. Not now at this late stage. If we actively deny God we are either sick or full of pride and complacency. However much the atheist may hide his soul behind a pleasant outer facade, once you scratch beneath the surface you find a shrivelled, stunted being that is fighting against life and true goodness, and is doing so because of a lack of love. Of course, believers may lack love too but an atheist necessarily does because to deny God is to deny the reality of love which you can only do if you do not have it or feel it. I am not talking about affection or empathy or anything of that kind here but proper love, the difference being that spiritual love is not centred on the one that loves but reaches up to something higher and beyond. If you have this kind of love in you then you are aware, to some degree at least, of God. Love points to its source. So, if we reject God, we reject love even though we may cover that rejection up with worldly imitations of love.
The world is becoming more chaotic as it drifts further from any spiritual rootedness. We are surrounded by lies and that is corroding us inside as we adjust to it as normality. It is not normality. It is spiritual corruption which may leave us healthy looking on the outside but rots us from within. If we don't start to reach out to our Creator, we will sever our connection to him and that means that our inner being will start to wither and fade. How could it not? God is the source of life and light. If you deny him then you must fall into darkness. This is the plain truth which we ignore at our peril.
* Here's the link to that post. http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-difference-between-being-atheist.html
Friday 10 August 2018
What's the Difference Between Nationalism and Patriotism?
Some thoughts on this on Albion Awakening.
Tuesday 7 August 2018
Disintegration or Salvation
The ideological movement which has ended up as the modern left or just modernity in general began by denying the primacy of spiritual reality. It then rejected the
spiritual altogether and now, as an inevitable consequence of that, it is in
the process of denying nature. This is inevitable because once the foundations have
gone the whole building will begin to collapse.
This denial of nature started with the dismissing of the natural ties of individual to country (in line with the intellectual's preference for the abstract over the real). It moved on to undermining the family. It then reduced the miracle of humanity to the mundanity of a naked ape. It proceeded from there to the rejection of the difference between the sexes. Psychological differences went first and steps to remove physical differences are now being taken. This won't stop. It cannot stop once it has started on this path of disintegration. First principles are challenged. More and more is rejected. The human being is slowly but surely dismantled because once you turn away from God, you turn away from truth and then you descend further and further into an enclosed form of consciousness that concludes by isolating itself completely from reality.
This denial of nature started with the dismissing of the natural ties of individual to country (in line with the intellectual's preference for the abstract over the real). It moved on to undermining the family. It then reduced the miracle of humanity to the mundanity of a naked ape. It proceeded from there to the rejection of the difference between the sexes. Psychological differences went first and steps to remove physical differences are now being taken. This won't stop. It cannot stop once it has started on this path of disintegration. First principles are challenged. More and more is rejected. The human being is slowly but surely dismantled because once you turn away from God, you turn away from truth and then you descend further and further into an enclosed form of consciousness that concludes by isolating itself completely from reality.
Alarming stuff, isn't it? But it is none
the less true for all that. We fail to see how we are destroying ourselves
spiritually because we live in a time of unprecedented luxury materially. We
have rejected God partly through arrogance and partly, extraordinary as it may
seem, through simple negligence. We are protected from many of life's tragedies
through the achievements of science and technology, but this has blinded us to
our utter dependence on Nature. Simply because God cannot be proved by any of
the limited means at our disposal, we choose to dismiss him. But how can you
prove the existence of a spiritual being by material means? Thought, as we know
it, being a function of the brain, is material. It is a phenomenal thing but
God, being the Creator of the phenomenal world, cannot be found in it any more
than an author can be found in his book except by implication.
And yet we know that, miraculously, this
author actually did enter into his book 2,000 years ago. He rewrote it from
inside and, in so doing, gave his characters the chance to become like the
author themselves and not remain limited to the dimensions of the book.
When a world cycle comes to its
conclusion, as the current one is doing, some curious things happen. The
natural order of being becomes inverted as matter becomes more material, and
therefore more the focal point of consciousness, and spirit correspondingly
recedes further back in awareness. Hierarchies are disrupted and the 'pairs
of opposites' on which depend the functioning of the world, instead of working
harmoniously together, become oppositional as their positive sides begin to
take a back seat to their negative aspects. Even time and space become
qualitatively different with the one speeding up and the other contracting though
this cannot be determined with material instruments since they are subject to
the same pressures. This story is told in different ways in the Hindu
conception of the four yugas or ages through which a world
cycle passes, and the ancient Greek and Roman idea of Gold, Silver,
Bronze and Iron Ages which are periods of descending spiritual understanding
and ability to live harmoniously with the gods and nature.
Things have come to such a pass that we can see this happening in our own lifetimes. Truth, goodness and beauty are being trampled underfoot as the elements of choice, selection, judgement and separation required for each one of them to manifest properly are condemned as evil and destructive of a desired oneness. But real oneness only exists in two situations. One, before creation, when all is spirit, and, two, material dissolution when all quality has been driven from the world. That point cannot actually be reached, as that would be complete annihilation, but it can be approached.
Things have come to such a pass that we can see this happening in our own lifetimes. Truth, goodness and beauty are being trampled underfoot as the elements of choice, selection, judgement and separation required for each one of them to manifest properly are condemned as evil and destructive of a desired oneness. But real oneness only exists in two situations. One, before creation, when all is spirit, and, two, material dissolution when all quality has been driven from the world. That point cannot actually be reached, as that would be complete annihilation, but it can be approached.
What can we do, given that the process is
unavoidable? We can do two things, I would say. One, resist it absolutely, and two, let it
take its inevitable course. We resist it within ourselves by not letting
ourselves be caught up in it. We speak out against it. We proclaim the truth
about it. We give as many people as possible the chance to see it for what it
is. But then we have to accept its inevitability. Outwardly this process is
going to happen and most people will be part of it. They will even fight for
it, thinking they are doing good. The current is flowing in one way and we
cannot change that. All we can do is not allow ourselves to be taken along with
that current and try to help others who are swimming against it. Outer things will be what they will be but we are the captains of our own ships and nothing can take us where we do not wish to go.
This cycle of spiritual decline or materialisation of consciousness is not without its positive side. It would be a strange act on God's part to create a scenario that is all doom and gloom with nothing to lighten the darkness. What it does is furnish an environment in which self-consciousness may come to the fore with its natural mode of understanding which is reason. If we are to become co-creators ourselves, which is God's plan for us, this is a necessary stage to go through. Before you can move on from self-consciousness, you must develop the self. Before direct insight can arise there must be the capacity to understand. But this stage should be gone through and we should progress to a more active spirituality. That we have failed to do, identifying with the times instead of transcending them which is the opportunity for those who recognise the illusory nature of the modern world.
Note: I wrote this before reading Bruce Charlton's last post on Albion Awakening but it seems to cover similar ground. I think this may be because, as Bruce has often pointed out, things are coming to a head.
This cycle of spiritual decline or materialisation of consciousness is not without its positive side. It would be a strange act on God's part to create a scenario that is all doom and gloom with nothing to lighten the darkness. What it does is furnish an environment in which self-consciousness may come to the fore with its natural mode of understanding which is reason. If we are to become co-creators ourselves, which is God's plan for us, this is a necessary stage to go through. Before you can move on from self-consciousness, you must develop the self. Before direct insight can arise there must be the capacity to understand. But this stage should be gone through and we should progress to a more active spirituality. That we have failed to do, identifying with the times instead of transcending them which is the opportunity for those who recognise the illusory nature of the modern world.
Note: I wrote this before reading Bruce Charlton's last post on Albion Awakening but it seems to cover similar ground. I think this may be because, as Bruce has often pointed out, things are coming to a head.
Friday 3 August 2018
Don't You Want To Live in an Equal Society?
This is what someone asked me when they read one of my criticisms of the left in these pages. It's a reasonable question because a common notion is that the left fights for equality and fairness while the right is only interested in perpetuating privilege. This is a very one-sided appraisal, of course, but it is not totally without substance. Nonetheless, even taking it at its own estimation, it has serious problems.
There is the idea that somehow a society in which everyone is equal would be a more 'spiritual' society. But actually, it would only be more spiritual in the sense that materialistic people think of spirituality. That is to say, as something that pertains and relates to human beings primarily as they are in this world. We say that an equal society would be a fair society and that is good. But this is judging the purpose of human life as being fulfilled in a material world, and disregarding the fact that there may be another, higher, purpose behind life as we see and experience it in three dimensional, phenomenal terms. That life should be fair is the plaintive cry of the child, but adults know that it is just not fair. This doesn't mean that we should not try to make it more just, but it is a recognition that God has more important matters in his project for humanity than making things fair and equal here and now. There are deeper issues involved. To make something a priority which God has apparently not made a priority could be a mistake. Of course, a response to this might be that it is not God but man who has introduced inequality into society, but that is an assumption. The degree of inequality has surely been influenced by men but not the basic fact of inequality which exists throughout nature.
Generally speaking, it seems to be the case that the more equal a society is nowadays, the more atheistic it becomes. Why should this be so? I would say it is because when you abolish hierarchy, you also start to abolish the sense of higher and lower or even high and low. You reduce everything to a level playing field but that means there is no feeling of greater or lesser. The very idea becomes offensive. So God, as the archetypal greater, becomes less easy to accept. And this has ramifications beyond the loss of transcendence, ramifications which a society devoted to equality cannot fail to bring about. Virtues that relate to hierarchy are lost, virtues such as nobility and honour, the very ideas of height and depth, all these are lost or, at least, greatly reduced in their meaning and significance. Cultural relativism becomes the norm because hierarchical distinctions are no longer tolerated. Everything's equal, after all. And then the sense of truth as an absolute begins to fade. It must because this again demands a hierarchical understanding of life, and the appreciation that some things really are better than others because they correspond more to reality. Reality is not equal. It is there as a fact and you either accommodate to it to a greater or lesser degree or you don't. Right there, like it or not, is superiority and inferiority.
An equal society becomes one where mediocrity is the order of the day. It is one opposed to excellence of any sort and any condition, and where greatness is discouraged unless it is totally conformist which, of course, almost by definition, it is not. If everyone is fundamentally equal, this is the inevitable consequence. Such a society becomes one where people don't seek to transcend themselves in a vertical sense because the horizontal plane of being is given full priority. In fact, the vertical plane, necessarily hierarchical, is just denied. It doesn't really make much difference if you say that the equality you want is only one of opportunity. Once you introduce the idea of equality as a dominating principle of your society, it extends everywhere, and everywhere it beats all things down to its own level.
Now, clearly none of this means that a society should be ordered with rigid castes in which no one can rise, however exceptional they might be. Balance is required in all things, and hierarchical quality must be balanced with a sense of the essential oneness of humanity. But, and here's the point all egalitarians need to understand, if you make equality the cornerstone of your system, as we increasingly do today when it has become the default assumption of what is good and right, and to oppose it in any way is the sign of an immoral person, then you are condemning your society to flatline mediocrity. You are going to bring the higher down to a level that is manageable by everyone. You are going to damage quality and ratify the medium and the average. Today we have reacted to a perceived excessive hierarchy of the past by rejecting hierarchy altogether as a fundamental principle. This has resulted in the impoverishment of culture and understanding. It goes hand in glove with materialism and the rejection of higher levels of truth and being. It is the reduction of human beings to their most basic elements.
It's worth bearing in mind that those who are most insistent on equality are often those who feel themselves inferior in some way or another. Their motive is an unadmitted resentment and envy. From such impure beginnings no true system can be built.
Everyone wants to live in a just world. That is a true and worthy aspiration, and probably a long way off. But to confuse this with a world of equality is a mistake. Equality is undue focus on the horizontal plane but human beings to be true to their essential humanity must live on both the horizontal and vertical planes with the latter seen as ultimately primary. There is equality of being but not of realised being. Even some of the saints stand closer to the throne of God than others though all have their fullness of the divine.
There is the idea that somehow a society in which everyone is equal would be a more 'spiritual' society. But actually, it would only be more spiritual in the sense that materialistic people think of spirituality. That is to say, as something that pertains and relates to human beings primarily as they are in this world. We say that an equal society would be a fair society and that is good. But this is judging the purpose of human life as being fulfilled in a material world, and disregarding the fact that there may be another, higher, purpose behind life as we see and experience it in three dimensional, phenomenal terms. That life should be fair is the plaintive cry of the child, but adults know that it is just not fair. This doesn't mean that we should not try to make it more just, but it is a recognition that God has more important matters in his project for humanity than making things fair and equal here and now. There are deeper issues involved. To make something a priority which God has apparently not made a priority could be a mistake. Of course, a response to this might be that it is not God but man who has introduced inequality into society, but that is an assumption. The degree of inequality has surely been influenced by men but not the basic fact of inequality which exists throughout nature.
Generally speaking, it seems to be the case that the more equal a society is nowadays, the more atheistic it becomes. Why should this be so? I would say it is because when you abolish hierarchy, you also start to abolish the sense of higher and lower or even high and low. You reduce everything to a level playing field but that means there is no feeling of greater or lesser. The very idea becomes offensive. So God, as the archetypal greater, becomes less easy to accept. And this has ramifications beyond the loss of transcendence, ramifications which a society devoted to equality cannot fail to bring about. Virtues that relate to hierarchy are lost, virtues such as nobility and honour, the very ideas of height and depth, all these are lost or, at least, greatly reduced in their meaning and significance. Cultural relativism becomes the norm because hierarchical distinctions are no longer tolerated. Everything's equal, after all. And then the sense of truth as an absolute begins to fade. It must because this again demands a hierarchical understanding of life, and the appreciation that some things really are better than others because they correspond more to reality. Reality is not equal. It is there as a fact and you either accommodate to it to a greater or lesser degree or you don't. Right there, like it or not, is superiority and inferiority.
An equal society becomes one where mediocrity is the order of the day. It is one opposed to excellence of any sort and any condition, and where greatness is discouraged unless it is totally conformist which, of course, almost by definition, it is not. If everyone is fundamentally equal, this is the inevitable consequence. Such a society becomes one where people don't seek to transcend themselves in a vertical sense because the horizontal plane of being is given full priority. In fact, the vertical plane, necessarily hierarchical, is just denied. It doesn't really make much difference if you say that the equality you want is only one of opportunity. Once you introduce the idea of equality as a dominating principle of your society, it extends everywhere, and everywhere it beats all things down to its own level.
Now, clearly none of this means that a society should be ordered with rigid castes in which no one can rise, however exceptional they might be. Balance is required in all things, and hierarchical quality must be balanced with a sense of the essential oneness of humanity. But, and here's the point all egalitarians need to understand, if you make equality the cornerstone of your system, as we increasingly do today when it has become the default assumption of what is good and right, and to oppose it in any way is the sign of an immoral person, then you are condemning your society to flatline mediocrity. You are going to bring the higher down to a level that is manageable by everyone. You are going to damage quality and ratify the medium and the average. Today we have reacted to a perceived excessive hierarchy of the past by rejecting hierarchy altogether as a fundamental principle. This has resulted in the impoverishment of culture and understanding. It goes hand in glove with materialism and the rejection of higher levels of truth and being. It is the reduction of human beings to their most basic elements.
It's worth bearing in mind that those who are most insistent on equality are often those who feel themselves inferior in some way or another. Their motive is an unadmitted resentment and envy. From such impure beginnings no true system can be built.
Everyone wants to live in a just world. That is a true and worthy aspiration, and probably a long way off. But to confuse this with a world of equality is a mistake. Equality is undue focus on the horizontal plane but human beings to be true to their essential humanity must live on both the horizontal and vertical planes with the latter seen as ultimately primary. There is equality of being but not of realised being. Even some of the saints stand closer to the throne of God than others though all have their fullness of the divine.
Thursday 2 August 2018
Iona
Albion's geographical reach can't easily be defined but this article extends it to Scotland.
http://albionawakening.blogspot.com/2018/08/iona.html
http://albionawakening.blogspot.com/2018/08/iona.html
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| Port Ban on the island of Iona. |
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