In a crumbling world such as ours it's very tempting to feel one should react to current events and respond in some way to what's happening 'out there', whether it be in the field of politics, the economy, social or cultural matters. We feel obliged to have an opinion or else it seems we are being irresponsible and don't care about the world. We must approve or disapprove. If we don't, we are turning our back on the world and that's wrong.
I disagree. One can safely say that everything now is bad. That's just reflects the general degradation of the world and is the way of the end times. We do not have to react to events in the end times when they are all going to be spiritually negative. Even if some are less negative than others, they are all still negative. This is especially the case when you realise that many of these events are manipulations anyway, designed to push us in this direction or that. Our task at this time is to attune ourselves to the spiritual by which I mean the reality of God not some idea of ourselves as higher beings in our own right. Forces will try to pull us away from this central truth. We will be distracted or diverted, our passions aroused, provoked into anger or indignation, required to take sides on worldly matters. All of this just keeps us locked in the material even if we give our reactions a spiritual justification.
I am not saying one should turn one's back on the world although it may come to that. But nor should one partake in it or even take it that seriously. Of course, if one lives in the world and not as a hermit one has to take it seriously up to a point, but one should not allow oneself to get involved in it. There will be many attempts to force involvement on us. You may see x is wrong so assume that what opposes x must therefore be right but often they are just two different aspects of what is seen to be the same thing when viewed from above.
All the attempts to elicit emotional involvement should be ignored even when they appeal to supposed spiritual concerns. Try to see everything as part of collapse. That may seem a depressing attitude to take but it is the only realistic one in an end times scenario. If you feel it is your part to resist collapse then by all means go ahead but you should still know that the outer world only matters as support for the inner world, and that must always be primary. To try to maintain the outer world as a structure for inner growth is the sole requirement, but there will come a time when that is no longer possible and one must retreat to the fortress of one's own mind and not take any part at all in what is happening out there. You cannot act as a beacon for those who seek to flee the collapse if you allow yourself to be defined by it or are in any way identified with it. Detachment is the need of the moment though this should be the detachment of one who is attached to God not simply lack of concern for the world.
6 comments:
"All the attempts to elicit emotional involvement should be ignored even when they appeal to supposed spiritual concerns."
My friend and I both agreed this admonishment was gold. Thank you.
Glad you liked it.
We are encouraged to form opinions on thousands of questions where our opinions do not matter and the grounds of those opinions are very dubious. As you say, this leads to emotional involvement and a great deal of bootless conflict, internal and external. I say this as someone who is chained to this spiritual treadmill. To change the metaphor, I think of this as something like one of those vast all-you-can-eat buffets, such as they set out on cruise ships. Almost everyone heaps too much on their plate and by the end of the cruise feels slightly ill. Something similar happens when we heap too much miscellaneous information into our heads, much of it information we do not need and only superficially understand. Writers like Toynbee and Spengler say that this sort of widespread but brittle erudition is a symptom of late-stage civilizations. There is in these doomed dinosaurs a pervasive delusion that the looming disaster can be averted simply by thinking. Not thoughtful action, for that is not possible, but just thinking and thinking and thinking.
We are trained to absorb as much information as possible and taught that the more information we have and can process the better, and the more developed we are as human beings. But the system reaches overload and becomes self-justifying. The question we should ask ourselves is to what end is all this information? Spiritual truth is simple. Profound and without bottom but essentially simple. However, we think the more complicated, the more intelligent it must be. Wrong.
I like to read but believe it is possible for a man to read too much. As with alcohol, there is individual variation in the point of intoxication. But a man who has read more than he can hold will be fuddled because he has taken on more notions than his mental metabolism can digest. I'm sure you have met the type: superficially wise but in fact a mass of contradictions. Your understanding of spiritual truth is much better than mine, but I am comforted by your assurance that it is simple. That has always been my intuition. The requirement for us to "become like little children" has been give some insidious interpretations, but I take it as a warning against those who think heaven is akin to an elite college and only brainiacs are enrolled. As I am about to retire, I've been clearing out my campus office. Packing up hundreds of books for the shredder, I was forced to think how much rubbish I have read in my life.
How strange, I was thinking just the same this afternoon. I have read all my life and reading has been one of the joys of my life but I read much less nowadays. Partly because of poor eyesight, partly because of failing powers of concentration but mainly, I think, because "of the making of many books there is no end," and that applies to reading as well. You can just carry on stuffing your brain with, well, stuff.
I used to want to know everything but I've long realised that is just pride. One day we will know everything (though there will always be more to know if you don't mind the paradox), but it will be a natural knowing not an informational overload.
Years ago I was told that spiritual truth is simple but it is easy to get lost in philosophical speculations which lead nowhere. Becoming like little children must mean plain seeing without thinking too much. It doesn't mean not thinking but not getting caught up in thought. That's what I think anyway!
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