The Unlearned believe X, the Clever think Y, the Wise know X

This, or something like it, is a well known saying. It roughly means that common sense natural perception, uncorrupted by ideology, sees the basic truth about life. People are different, men and women are different, there is a supernatural meaning to the world, an afterlife exists, that sort of thing. But when people are subjected to a certain kind of ideological conditioning and reeducation, they lose their native wit and start imitating what they imagine to be more intellectually correct attitudes. But those few who reject theories and abstractions and are able to look at the world as it is and human beings as they are, develop the direct insight which brings real knowledge. Which is, in fact, the only means to real knowledge. That doesn't mean they are right in all things all the time for they remain subject to human error. But they are largely correct in the broad sweep of things.

It seems clear that as human beings evolve, their intellectual centre, the way they engage with the world, moves. It starts off as an instinctive perception which is God guiding us unconsciously. We don't understand much but we know enough to lead an existence that is more or less in harmony with our immediate environment and the world. This is primitive but it is not out of kilter with reality. As human beings progress and develop intellectually, becoming, in the process, more detached from their environment which makes them better able to understand it on some levels and less able on others, the mental/rational faculties come into play. We lose our connection to Nature and the unconscious oneness with life, and start to guide ourselves from our own understanding. 

This is a great step forward but unless it is supported by divine revelation and a proper religion it can lead to blind ignorance as it obviously has now. Reason only operates in the material world which is that of the senses. It cannot rise to higher perception. Consequently we have grown out of the unconscious instinctive mind and into the self-centred mentally focused one and that has now made us prideful enough to reject what cannot be grasped with this new mode of thinking. We desperately need to move on to the next phase for if we don't there is real disaster ahead. We will separate ourselves more and more from reality, ironically enough in the name of reality but a pseudo-reality, of course.

The next phase is the development of intuitive insight, a direct insight into the mind of God. This is the stage when God once again guides us from within but this time the process is conscious. There is an understanding about what we perceive. It is not just instinctive and beyond our control nor is it thinking from a part outside the whole. It is unseparated from being and complete in itself. Thinking is knowing is being, all one movement.

Clever people are often stupid. By that I mean they don't actually know anything real. This wouldn't matter too much but they think they do and actively reject deeper reality because it goes beyond their understanding. The world is run by such people and our education system turns them out in their thousands. Unless enough people wake up to the higher reality of their own nature and move on from this intellectual dead end into which we have carelessly walked I foresee a collective insanity. Signs of it are already to be seen. 

You Shall Be As Gods

It seems that Satan's temptation is always the same.  It is the one he succumbed to and it's the one he whispers in our ears today when it speaks as much to the materialistic technocrat as the magician or new age enthusiast or any person who takes to spirituality without seeking to do God's will instead of his own. It is what he says to the feminist as he leads her to disrupt the natural order of being for her own ends, and how he appeals to the radical leftist whose resentment is played upon to make it seem virtue in his eyes. 

The thing is Satan is right. We do have the potential to become as gods. But not in his way which is the way of pride and ego. The only way is through Christ and this is the polar opposite to the one proposed by the fallen angel.  For it is not our little self that becomes a god as in Satan's inverted distortion of the truth.  It is the seed of Christ within us that can grow when we align it with its source. We can only become as gods when Christ is born within us. We must go beyond ourselves to becomes as gods and we can only go beyond ourselves through Christ. The old man is not deified. A new man must be born.

Deviations of Modernity

At one time, I thought of writing a book on the deviations of modernity but lost interest as the whole thing would just have been one long round of negativity. The more I thought about it, the more I realised I would have ended up including practically everything about the world today in my analysis of what was wrong with it.  Its art, its politics, its science, its philosophy, its culture, its education and even its religion. For nowadays each one of these serves to sidetrack man from his true mission of self-knowledge. None of them really helps to align him with it.  Each one is, to some degree, destructive of truth. Most of them are based on lies and reduce humanity to a spiritually shrunken version of itself.  The prospect was too unpleasant to contemplate.  I didn't want to appear, even to myself, a miserable moaner with nothing good to say about anything.

That having been said, the negativity is not in me but in the world as it is today and though a book is too much for me to do, a post on this blog will make the point almost as well. After all, there isn't that much to say. All these deviations tie up together and come from the same place. They are all a denial of the fullness of what a human being is. They restrict humanity to how it appears to be in this world. They don’t all do this in the same way and to the same degree but each does it to some extent.

Continued on Albion Awakening.

Is Racism a Leftist Invention?

In my post on Empire and Albion I used the word 'racist' which I normally try to avoid since it carries so many assumptions that I don't necessarily agree with. It's become the worst of epithets with which to brand someone, and expressing horror at it is a means of displaying one's perfect moral integrity.  But is it actually a real thing?

What I mean is that much that is called racist would really better be described as culturist. I am not denying that some people do discriminate (another word I'm not happy using in this context since discrimination is generally a good thing) purely on the basis of an individual's skin colour, and some do regard other groups from a position of prejudice. But unless this leads to ill treatment and injustice (which, again, I'm not denying it often has), it is not that evil a thing. It just shows that humanity is basically tribal and mostly prefers its own sort. That may not be the most enlightened of attitudes but nor is it the worst of sins. Practically all our grandparents would be described as racist by modern standards. Are we really better than them?

But the true issue I believe is cultural. It is natural, and probably healthy, to prefer one's own culture to others. People like the familiar. Is that so terrible? But live and let live, you might say. It's fine to like your own culture but you must give other cultures equal consideration and not regard yours as superior. This is where I would part company with you. Certainly, everyone can learn from others and no one should be dismissed but, at the same time, some cultures really are better than others in the sense of more evolved and truer to higher things. It is folly to pretend otherwise. For if you do, you are giving a child sacrificing cult the same validity as Christianity, and I don't imagine many people, even on the left, are quite prepared to do that just yet.

I believe that as long as you respect human dignity and regard all people as sons and daughters of God then racism, or, to be more precise, what is often called racism, is not the wicked sin it is made out to be. If you deny basic human brotherhood, in thought or by your actions, that is a different matter but racism now means that you must give everyone completely equal consideration, and regard all groups and all cultures as more or less equivalent.  That simply is not true and it is only ideology that demands we pretend that it is.

We are all sons and daughters of the one Father which is where the anti-racists have it right. But there is no reason to think that all peoples have equal capacities in all things. Inevitably prejudices and injustices of the past have led to an over-reaction today but we have to find the point of truth which is based on what is real not on what we might like to think. Scientists tell us that modern homo sapiens evolved in Africa and spread across the globe around 70,000 years ago but subsequent evolution has taken place since then and brought us to where we are now. Moreover, we do not know what spiritual factors might be involved that are not detectable by modern scientific methods or DNA analysis. And it may be that God provides different bodies for souls to learn different lessons. He likes variety and he is not a slave to the egalitarian dogma. I repeat, because I have to, if racism means treating people with injustice then clearly any reasonable person is against it, but if it simply means recognising that there are differences between peoples of different ethnic backgrounds, what is the problem?

Souls have no race as conceived in earthly terms. And all souls are working towards the same end which is the realisation of God. That is the primary truth. But in this world God expresses himself in multiple ways not all of which are always equal in all ways. That is the consequence of the dual reality of the one and the many which is the hallmark of creation.

I am aware that anything which argues along these lines can be misused and twisted into saying what it is not saying. But you cannot dismiss something because it can be distorted into something else. The perversion of a rule is not a valid way of judging the rule. So let me emphasise with St Paul that there is no Jew nor Greek in Jesus Christ. However that does not mean there is no Jew nor Greek at all. It simply means that we are all one in God. What is more, it does rather depend on the fact of turning to Jesus Christ since the oneness is in Christ not anywhere else.

Could anti-racism, as it is increasingly interpreted, be yet another way that the powers behind the modern left are using to remould human beings into something that is separated from its source in the reality of the spiritual world? Is it another way that they attempt to indoctrinate and control minds and make all people the same but the same in their preferred way rather than God's? So we are not all one in Jesus Christ but all one in a materialistic form which denies the reality and truth of God? Is the attack on racism, so called, actually part of an attack on humanity?

Empire and Albion

A post on Albion Awakening about the merits or otherwise of the British Empire.

http://albionawakening.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/empire-and-albion.html

The Radical Evolutionist

A while ago someone who had read one of my little tirades against contemporary leftism said to me "So you're a conservative then?" People often assume that if you're not one thing you must be the other but I don't identify with either political side, being only concerned with politics to the extent that they reflect or deny spiritual realities. From that perspective, I would certainly say I lean more to the right than the left but the modern right doesn't have much that is traditional about it, particularly since it has abandoned any religious attitude to life. And even when it is religious, it tends to be stuck in the past and unable to evolve. That is not necessarily a bad thing, given the direction change usually takes nowadays, but it can also lead to rigidity and an arid spirituality of the letter rather than the spirit.

From its own point of view, the keynote of the left is the idea of progress and I am definitely in favour of that. As far as I am concerned, this is not the issue to find fault with as regards leftist preoccupations. If we define a conservative as wanting to remain in the past without change and a progressive as seeking change, I am in the latter camp. But what sort of change? That's the point. It seems to me that the modern left wants to remake humanity severed from its roots and the natural truth of its being. We need to grow but proper growth must come from the roots. In fact, if you take the example of a tree you see that when the tree grows, the roots must actually go deeper into the earth. That’s an example to think about. To progress and go further you don't deny the past. You deepen your roots and understand them better, perhaps going from a shallow grasp of what they really signify to one that better takes in their grounding in the bedrock of truth.

So it's not the idea of progress I reject in the left but progress cut off from the past and based on a false foundation. That is why I call this post (with a tip of the hat to John Michell*) the radical evolutionist. Radical, of course, means of the roots, and evolution must grow out of the past to be real progress. What doesn't grow stagnates and then dies but to change the traditions of the past without having fully understood them and absorbed their lessons can easily lead to disaster. We need to have the proper balance between past and future, being faithful to our roots but able to expand beyond their current expression. The perfect example of this was Christianity which stayed true to its Jewish roots while also going dramatically beyond those, though without denying or rejecting their fundamental nature.

The question then arises is Christianity, as we now understand it, the limit to our growth? Has our spiritual understanding gone as far as it can go or are there further horizons beyond those we now can see? Of course, a Christian would say, yes there are but these will be revealed in heaven. Very true but that's not what I mean. Is there a deeper understanding of spirituality that we can, and therefore should, have even now? We cannot dismiss the expansion of consciousness that has taken place over the last 2 to 3 centuries but we have to see that that has usually manifested itself on the material plane instead of the spiritual one as it should have done, and often with very bad results. Somehow we have to integrate that with a genuine spiritual understanding, particularly, for us in the West, one centred on Christ though not restricted to Christianity as it has been. What this means is that our spirituality must become a more active, inner one and not remain a largely passive thing dependent on established doctrine. This higher understanding has always been present within Christianity but usually regarded as proper only for mystics and saints.

I said in a comment on an earlier post that we are living at a time when we have to find our own path to God for only thus can we know him for ourselves and not at second hand. The inner path need not reject the outer path but it has to make any truths of that path our own. Traditional Christians might baulk at such a statement knowing that it can lead to heresy and inflation but they should understand that a developed spiritual consciousness requires full participation of the imagination, which is a spiritual faculty when properly developed, and it must be an individual achievement rather than a collective one. At the same time, those wedded to contemporary beliefs about progress have to see that the future must be built on the past and cannot do without the truth of Christ. That must be the soil in which any new understanding about life has to grow. This will not wholly replace but deepen the faith and knowledge of the past.

The wonder of God is that there is no top nor bottom to an understanding of him. We are called to deepen our knowledge of divine reality until we reach the point of transformation into a higher being, one that includes but transcends the merely human as we now know it. It is a fifth kingdom, one beyond that of mineral, vegetable, animal and human. This was the state of the Masters who taught me and it can be our state too. This is the spiritual meaning of radical evolution.

* who published a book of essays under the title The Radical Traditionalist.

The Empty Heart

Imagine the human heart is like a dial with a pointer on it indicating its orientation. Thus, north or twelve o'clock would be where God or the true Good is located and south or 6 o'clock is where evil or the anti-good is to be found. The heart can point in any direction depending on the inner motivation of the individual but its real direction is not always obvious to the outside observer or even the person concerned.

This is because the real spiritual good is not the same as the good defined in worldly terms. I would say there are many people nowadays who seem to be good citizens, who tick all the right boxes and who imagine themselves to be good but inwardly they are hollow people and their heart is not orientated towards the real good at all.

Several times on this blog I have pointed out that if you have a true sense of real goodness within you, you simply must turn to the source of the good which is God. You must know that goodness has a source and see it is not in you or in human beings as they are in this world. You will clearly perceive this as a living (not theoretical) fact if your awareness of goodness is real. That is why I say all good people believe in God. They know that is where goodness comes from. A real being of truth and love. If you don't see this then your understanding of goodness is flawed.

The modern world is better than the past in many ways. It is, by and large, less violent and there is, by and large, more freedom. The technological achievements of the last couple of hundred years have given even the ordinary person a much higher standard of living than even the very rich enjoyed in the recent past. But from a spiritual point of view we have fallen on evil times. Our hearts have hardened and our minds have clouded. Orientation towards the true good has fallen away to be replaced by a concern with worldly good that, when stripped back to its origins, is grounded in nihilism. There is no mystery left in the world, no meaning, and that is why we cover up our own inner emptiness with the pursuit of money or worldly success or seek to distract ourselves with shallow forms of entertainment or, for the intellectually inclined, mind games and mere cleverness.

None of this leads anywhere. If life is not spiritual it is void of sense and this void will be felt by each one of us and eventually manifest itself as the feeling of hopelessness. It must. We are spiritual beings and can only ultimately be satisfied by God.

Is Leftism Atavistic?

The hero's journey is a well-known archetypal tale in mythology in which the hero breaks out of tribal consciousness and the warm embrace of mother nature, and forges an identity for himself as a self-conscious individual. This he does by achieving some great deed which often involves overcoming a fearsome monster. By differentiating himself from the mass he blazes a trail for the whole of humanity to follow. This is what we have been doing as a species throughout the period of recorded history and it has brought us to where we are now.

Continued on Albion Awakening.

The World Has Been Healed

Continuing with the theme of the last couple of posts, it would be a mistake to conclude that the world had been damaged irreparably or that the damage could deflect God's ultimate purpose or even, from the standpoint of true things, that it altered anything at all substantially, despite how it may seem from our very limited perspective caught up in its effects.

But perhaps it might have done were it not for one thing, the most important thing ever to have happened in this world and that, of course, was the birth of Christ. Christ's birth, life, death and resurrection healed the world of the damage done by the Fall and defeated Satan. Satan still has power but only what we allow him if we reject the life of the spirit. Henceforth anyone can banish him and his works simply by turning to Christ and inviting him into their heart. It really is as simple as that. But it must be the true Christ we invite and not some manufactured image that imitates him. For sometimes we project our idea of Christ, a Christ who fits in with our prejudices and preconceptions, onto the real Christ and then take the imitated projection for the reality. We can have a 'gentle Jesus, meek and mild' or a Jesus who teaches love but not truth (or vice versa) or a Jesus who turns a blind eye to sin in the name of acceptance of everyone or a Jesus who offers forgiveness regardless of repentance or a Jesus preaching justice without mercy (or vice versa) and many other sorts of fake Jesus based on our own ignorance and desires. None of these will help us. They are in fact idols.

We can only know the real Christ if we reject the world and follow his commandments, the chief of which is to love God (and therefore truth) above all else. If there is anything that comes before this then we are not following Jesus but ourselves in some way.  To avail ourselves of the healing offered by Christ we have to take the medicine and that does not always taste pleasant to the earthly self. It's rather like the rich young man who thought he had done everything required but when it finally came to the point he could not cross the threshold between acceptance and denial.

I am not saying no one can lead a proper spiritual life if they are not Christian but I think that paths without Christ are incomplete. C. S Lewis' insight in The Last Battle regarding Emeth the Calormene who followed Aslan in his heart without knowing him outwardly strikes me as pertinent here. If we follow the light of Christ as it shines within our own heart, we are closer to him than if we follow him outwardly alone. No doubt in this case there will remain work to be done after departing this world but then that is true for all of us except the greatest saints. And no doubt too it is easier to follow Christ in our hearts when we follow him outwardly too, but I think we have to accept that God has provided different paths at different times and some of them may actually include important elements of truth neglected in Christianity.

But I am going off the point. The point is that despite the damage inflicted on the world by the fallen angels in the past and at the present time, God remains in charge. 'Not a sparrow is forgotten, and the hairs on your head are numbered'. That is hard to believe sometimes but only because we can't see the whole picture. If we could then the hardships we endure now would not seem so hard. The world has been healed by the entry into it of Jesus and from now on, however dark it may seem, we should know that the light shines eternally beyond the clouds.