Blog break

I shall be letting my brain lie fallow for a couple of weeks so won't be posting anything here during that time. All comments are still welcome though.

Love of God

Bruce Charlton has been writing recently in his usual illuminating style about the love of God and this set me thinking because, in a way, this is the only important question for the whole of life. Love of God, the intuitive recognition of and opening up of the heart to our Creator, is the key to everything.

Here is a paradox. You must be virtuous to get to heaven but the virtuous man does not go to heaven. All civilisations worthy of the name acknowledge the law which is right behaviour or what C.S. Lewis in his short but important work The Abolition of Man called the Tao. This is the correct way to act with regard to the gods, the universe and one's fellow man. Details may alter but the essentials are remarkably similar everywhere. And yet this is not enough. Observing the 10 Commandments will not get you to heaven. The Pharisees do not go to heaven and this is true even of the good Pharisees not just the ones who observe the letter of the law but neglect its spirit.

The only thing that will get you to heaven is the love of God. Nothing you can do, nothing you can think, no belief you have will get you to heaven but handing yourself over to God in absolute faith and trust and love will. A good person is still himself but you can only enter heaven when you give yourself to God, empty yourself of self and  are filled with love for your Creator. That is because this love is the only thing that will cure the stain of ego that blocks your entry to heaven.

Good people do not go to heaven. Consider that for a moment.

Don't think this is an impossible task. God is always there, waiting to respond to any overture we might make. Even a little attempt to love on our part. All we have to do is turn towards him in truth and love and he will respond. There will still remain much work to be done because the ego self, the swollen self-regarding me, is very powerful but once love for God has risen in our heart then we are facing in the right direction. In fact, even the recognition that we lack this love and the sincere desire to acquire it is an important first step in the purification of the self and its preparation for eventual entry into the Kingdom of Heaven.

I'll tell you the reason for this. It's just common sense really. Love of God shows that you actually recognise and want what heaven is. If you don't even want it, how can you expect to go there?

Masks and Liberty

In England since yesterday it has become what they call mandatory to wear a face mask every time you go into a shop. I hate the idea of this and don't much like the physical reality of it either. There appears to be no solid evidence that these do any good and people have been shopping without masks for the last few months without there being any resultant spike in cases of Covid 19 that can be traced to this. Why bring this ruling in now when cases are falling? If I mention this to anyone I know I am told I am acting like a conspiracy theorist. I don't have a wide circle of acquaintances but every single person I have spoken to on the subject of my reservations about masks, mentioning such things as personal liberty and coercion by government, says I am being ridiculous and should just do what everyone else is doing. To do otherwise is selfish. Of course, this is the sneaky card played by the powers that be. You are protecting others by your actions so not to wear a mask is the sign of a bad person. You are being shamed into compliance.

Why write about this on what is supposed to be a blog about spiritual matters? Because this is a spiritual matter. Call me a conspiracy theorist if you like but it seems that we are gradually being forced to give up more and more of our freedoms, freedoms that we in the West have taken for granted for a long time. We are doing it because of fear and for our own perceived good but how else did you think this would be brought about? Clearly, in our modern world it would need be done in an underhand manner, making it seem we are getting a good deal. What we do voluntarily, we don't resist. I don't believe there is some worldly cabal engaged in a secret power grab but I do believe there is a supernatural plot (let's call it what it is without fear of seeming absurd) that has been busily engaged for at least a century to bring about our separation from God and our spiritual enslavement. The operation has been ramped up since the turn of the millennium and has moved into an even higher gear this year.

What, then, do we do about masks? I went into a small local supermarket yesterday without a mask to buy a pot of yoghurt. Just one thing. I was testing the waters to see what would happen. Nothing did but I felt bad for the staff. All the other shoppers were wearing masks and I felt I was putting the supermarket employees in an uncomfortable position to no real purpose except for my own self-satisfaction. Why should they have to confront non-cooperators? As I was going out I apologised to the security person who actually wasn't wearing a mask herself though she had one in her hands. I said I didn't want to cause anyone any embarrassment but I didn't want to wear a mask. She said she didn't mind. She couldn't force anyone to do anything they didn't want to do. She herself got claustrophobic wearing the thing. She was perfectly friendly.

I've thought about this. Part of me thinks that we should resist what is obviously a totalitarian ruling, unacceptable in a democracy. People mention seat belts in cars to me but I don't think it's the same thing at all. There is a very strong unavoidable symbolism about being made to wear a mask. You and everyone else are being dehumanised, rendered faceless and gagged. This is not just imaginary. The symbol in this case actually becomes the reality. Once you have submitted to it, a corner has been turned.

On the other hand, Jesus said that we should render under Caesar what is Caesar's which means obey the law of the particular society in which we find ourselves. However, this brings up the interesting question of what actually is Caesar's. Your face?

We may be forced to wear masks if we want to buy food which we obviously have to do. But those who do not wish to give up their spiritual freedom must resist this in their hearts. The Masters once told me that sometimes it is the will and not the action that counts. This may be one of those times.

Remember The Signs

For many of us when we come into this world we are thrown into a place very hard to come to terms with. This is because our source is in the spiritual world which is a realm of beauty, goodness and truth. But this world, beautiful as it is and it is beautiful because it is the creation of God, is a darkened environment, corrupted by supernatural powers ranged against the light and also by the thoughts and actions of human beings themselves. You may doubt this but the evidence, inner and outer, is irrefutable for anyone alert to spiritual truths.

A large majority allow themselves to be swamped by the world, by 'reality', and generally ignore whatever exists within them that points to a higher reality. Even many religious people do this, seeing their religion in terms of this world instead of using it to see this world in terms of the light of God. But there are also people who are aware of that light within their own minds, however dim it may be, and decide that this is the light in which they must walk, come what may. They retain a connection, even if that has become but a memory, to their true origin which is not in this world but a higher one.

The present time is a crisis in the history of humanity. God and his agents have long known of its coming and have prepared for it as much as possible, given that the crisis was inevitable and they cannot interfere with human free will. The crisis was inevitable because it is partly the result of humanity starting to grow up and become more independent, and that is a good and necessary thing even if the short term consequences are not good. But it is also inevitable because of the nature of time itself and the fact that it proceeds cyclically. That doesn't mean that things go round in circles because time proceeds historically, linearly, too, but there are cycles within the forward moving direction and we are coming to the end of one now. It's both the end of a cycle and a definitive point on the line.

For a sensitive soul the current atmosphere, mental and spiritual, is constantly and aggressively attacking the soul. Such a person feels and even knows one thing but everything around him or her pushes in another direction. It can be hard to sustain a connection to truth when practically the whole modern world is against it. One cannot retreat to the past or adopt the spiritual belief system of a different group of humanity which may be less affected by modernity because it is imperative that one is what one is. By that I mean a person's vision must be whole. You are a person living in this place and at this time. Here and now is where you are meant to be. If you try to be something else there will always be an element within you that is being false. Something will not ring true. Spirituality means integrity or it means nothing.

If you can't escape to a time or place other than here and now, what should you do when you find yourself assailed by the world? When you need spiritual support, where do you go? I mean where other than to a religion but even religion in our day has often been taken up into the world though its truths remain, of course. But no religion is what it was in terms of its spiritual content. You may dispute that on a personal level but in general terms I don't see how you can seriously take exception to the statement. Religion is a public institution and all public institutions have been corrupted. This has been an ongoing process over several decades but the corruption is now so deep that you just can't miss it. This cloud does have a silver lining because it means we are forced back on ourselves and that is as it should be. To become truly spiritual, we must be self-reliant though with the important proviso that we are self-reliant in Christ not reliant on our own spiritual prowess.

I have taken the title of this post from Aslan's advice to Jill when he sent her down from his country into Narnia to carry out a specific mission in The Silver Chair. Before he sent her down he gave her certain instructions and pointed to signs she would encounter that would recall her mission when that might escape her attention in the context of dealing with the everyday world. I believe something similar happens to us. We are sent out from the higher worlds and born into this one. We lose most of our connection to those higher worlds though a kind of afterglow remains in the mind during childhood, to a greater or lesser extent depending on the individual. But we have certain impressions stamped on the soul which we need to make the attempt to access. These are the signs from above that we must remember when the world is too much with us.

Two Paths

If you see yourself as a moral person and accept the reality of the world (i.e. do not regard the world as some form of illusion) there are really only two paths before you and you must choose the one in which you walk. The first is the path of the love of humanity or what is called love. Whether it is or not is a different matter. It is probably just a question of putting the perceived good of humanity first and not love at all but let us leave that quibble aside. This path involves seeking universal good and relieving, as much as possible, suffering though only suffering on a physical or psychological level. Spiritual suffering, which exists, is ignored because if acknowledged it would put the truth and relevance of the whole project at risk.

The proponents of this path want to make human beings, all human beings, happy. That is the rationale for everything. No one must be left behind. There must be no inequality. The reasonable nature of this seems indisputable. Those who oppose it must be bad people. But what if it is based on a false vision? What if the happiness it seeks to provide is a spurious happiness which merely satisfies the material side of human nature and ignores the spiritual? To be sure, some kind of therapeutic spirituality might be included in the overall package but this would be as a sop for the emotions only or a means to bring about some kind of psychological effect, whether that be thought of as balance or control or the stimulation of pleasure. It would not be a genuine spiritual understanding which is necessarily rooted in the vision of man as a spiritual not a material being. He is a soul using a body not a body (which term includes the brain) with a soul, whatever a soul might be in the latter case. It certainly could not be primary or body and brain would have to be seen in its light.

The path of humanity is the one we are on. It is the way practically all modern discourse tends but it is based on a lie. I call it a lie rather than a falsehood because a falsehood might just be an honest error but the roots of this path go back to deliberate denial of truth. This path has a destination, as do all paths, and its ultimate destination is into nothingness, the dark world of spiritual separation and emptiness. This is because it denies the reality of what we are. It restricts us to our material selves.

The path of humanity is humanism and humanism is just a pretty way to describe atheism. That is the grinning skull reality that the humanistic mask covers up. The mask quickly rots away and you are left with the empty skull. Humanism is basically nihilism.

The second path is the path of the love of God. This acknowledges our spiritual roots and does so in a way that shows our dependence on a Creator. Self-sufficient spirituality, popular today among those who tire of material things and want spiritual ones, is a contradiction in terms. But because there are many levels of reality between the purely physical world and the properly spiritual one, it is relatively easy to mistake something beyond the physical for the spiritual. Following the path of the love of God, which is the path of humility and gratitude, helps protect against this error. That is not to say that spiritual humanists will not find something approximating to the spiritual or their idea of it. "In my Father's house there are many mansions". But at best they will only enter into one of the outer spheres of creation. They will not know the Creator and they will not enter the Kingdom of God which is only open to those who love him.

The Contemporary Assault on the Soul

I don't think assault is too strong a word when what we are witnessing now is the attempt to expunge any notion of a spiritual component to the human being at all, one which will lead, if followed through to its natural conclusion, to the complete separation of earthly man and the spiritual realm to disastrous effect. There may still remain something called religion or spirituality but it won't be that at all.

It is now evident that the only way to preserve a real spiritual integrity in the world today is to reject modern ideology in toto. If you allow its tenets to enter your mind in any form they will act like a cancer and spread throughout your whole system. Any concession will eventually bring about submission to the idea that humanism (see previous post) overrides the reality of God. This is why such things as feminism, anti-racism and all the other -isms are pushed so relentlessly nowadays with the pushing becoming harder and harder and resistance increasingly depicted as sinful. The whole of modern thought is fundamentally an attack on God and if this wasn't always apparent, it surely must be now.

Just as people are currently being pressed into faceless, dehumanising, anonymity-creating, bureaucracy-conforming wearing of  masks in an increasing number of situations under the guise of protecting yourself and (even more insidiously manipulative) protecting others, so many modern attitudes are presented as advances in terms of fairness, tolerance and compassion. Who would want to hold out against such things? But in the same way that mask wearing creates a culture of suspicion, distrust and fear and subtly modifies human behaviour and psychology in all sorts of adverse ways so these modern attitudes corrupt our minds on a spiritual level. By focusing on the purely human, using that word to refer solely to human beings materialistically considered, they cut us off from deeper spiritual truths. Which is, of course, the real intention.

We can tell this by the fact that the process never stops. What seemed innocent enough at first, just the righting of a few historic wrongs, has gathered pace inexorably with more and more truths rooted in the reality of God and Christ either rejected completely or else reformatted to be something quite different. The demands constantly increase and become more extreme. At the same time, what is normal and natural is reinterpreted and shifted to the left, using that word to mean anti-spiritual which is fundamentally what it does mean and has done since at least the French Revolution, on a near weekly basis though there are periods of lull and consolidation and others of strong forward activity. The method employed is constant attack. This is not how truth proceeds. Truth does not attack. It simply presents itself. Evil attacks but good just is itself. This is how we can know, even if it wasn't already quite clear, that the motivation behind the contemporary assault on the mind is evil.

Leftism is driven by hate. Ultimately it is hatred of God but there are many other lesser objects of its hatred which are usually figures it wants to drag down because of envy and resentment. Eventually when it runs out of things to tear down it starts to hate itself which is why we say that the revolution ends up eating itself*. Hatred needs something to feed on and when it has consumed its enemies it cannot simply stop and rest. It must continue with new enemies.

As the left becomes more extreme a number of well-meaning people on the right mount rearguard actions. But unless they speak from a real religious point of view they will fail just as they have over the last few decades. The unholy passion of their opponents is too intense. When all is said and done, the choice is God with all that implies or not God. If you have not chosen God you will fall to the zealots and absorb some of their attitude. The division between those faithful to spiritual truth and the rest will only widen in the coming years. Make sure you are not pulled away from truth by the need to fit in or desire to seem reasonable. Sometimes if the devil doesn't get souls through hatred he can get them through moral ambivalence or vacillation or even, as the saying has it, good intentions. He offers poisoned sweets in the form of seemingly fair or, on the surface, reasonable opinions and attitudes that, if consumed, will end up separating an individual from the truth of Christ. The time is coming when anything that is not actively for Christ will be against him.

* As a matter of interest, this observation goes back to the journalist and pamphleteer Jacques Mallet du Pan who wrote in 1793 that "like Saturn, the revolution devours its own children."

Humanism

Humanism which, in one form or another, is the assumed belief system of the modern era is fundamentally anti-human. Despite its avowed aim of ennobling man, it actually degrades him because it denies that in him which raises him beyond the natural world. Its rejection of God takes away our status as a spiritual being come to Earth and at a stroke abolishes the sense of higher and lower (closer to God or further away from him), reducing the human soul to a mere by-product of material forces. Then, with its goal of seeking to eradicate suffering, humanism isolates man in this world, banishing him from his true home in the spiritual realm. This is because the reality of tragedy in this life which so offends the humanist comes from the fact that we are part animal and part angel. It is the conflict between these two aspects of our being that is responsible for suffering at a level beyond the purely physical. If you get rid of tragedy, you get rid of the spiritual. It is obviously not wrong to address the fact of suffering but to seek to remove the possibility of it altogether as seems to be the humanist end goal would be to kill the human soul. This is not meant as an excuse to ignore suffering but an attempt to show the inner cause and even, up to a point, spiritual necessity of it. Suffering is mysteriously tied up with love. If you remove the possibility of the one you also remove the possibility of the other. It is possible that we only love to the degree that we either have suffered or are able to suffer. I have often remarked on the fact that the faces of the people I regard as the most spiritually aware are those that have suffering etched into them. Suffering gives depth, not inevitably but it can do depending on how one reacts to it.

When Man tries to become more than Man by himself he becomes less than Man. Without the idea that he is a son of God, in his deepest nature a being not of this world, he can never go beyond himself. And yet the essence of true humanity is that we can go beyond our earthly selves. That reality lies behind all our greatest achievements and best ideas of ourselves and our place in the universe. However, if we are to go beyond ourselves we cannot do that as ourselves as we experience ourselves to be now. We have to see ourselves as spiritual beings not earthly ones. The great mistake of many religious people is to think that they can take their earthly self, their normal human self, intact to heaven.  Not so. All spiritual teachers who know what they are talking about have proclaimed that it is not change but transformation we need. In the humanist conception of man transformation is impossible because the human being is a material being only. Matter cannot change into spirit unless spirit is already present as the underlying reality.

Humanism has led to the smashing of the hierarchy of good. We no longer recognise the higher as higher or the lower as lower because we no longer recognise God as God and what the reality of God actually means. Without God as the highest reality the ladder of being is levelled to the ground and qualitative differences are negated. Humanism, which ostensibly sought to raise man, has only succeeded in dragging him down. Looking at the present situation in the world that process is still taking place. We are being dragged further down. If man does not know himself to be potentially a god does he then become just another beast? It would seem from current events that may be precisely what happens.

Some humanists think we will evolve to a higher state of consciousness but fail to understand that  evolution in this sense only brings out what is already there. It doesn't come from nothing as the higher cannot come from the lower. Even more foolish, indeed inhuman, are the transhumanists who imagine that by melding man and machine they can create a higher being. If they ever succeed in this unholy operation they will find they have only created a living hell.

Human beings have tried innumerable ways to reach heaven without acknowledging the reality of God and Christ because they have not been willing to make the sacrifice this entails. But it is a good sacrifice that only requires the giving up of our spiritual sickness. The unrepentant ego is like a cancer and it must be cut out. There is some pain in this but the alternative is death. Humanism is the path that leads to death. Yes, man is a noble creature with unlimited potential but only when he takes his place as a son of God. Without God man is nothing but a vainglorious braggart swollen with self-importance but inwardly empty.