Calling Things by their True Names

We live in a world of lies. Anyone who tries to break free of that will be attacked and the attempt made to depict that person as mad, bad or stupid. I know this might sound rather an extreme statement, maybe even bordering on paranoia, but it is really just a simple observation of how falsehood seeks to protect itself. On some level those who represent falsehood, who maintain and promote it, know that what they are doing is contrary to reality. When truth appears, it threatens them and must be destroyed. Specifically, the reputation of the person who speaks it must be destroyed. Of course, Jesus was actually killed but anyone who tries to follow in his footsteps will face opprobrium when they run up against the falseness of this world and are forced to pick a side. 

For the more one breaks free of the worldly illusion (fundamentally the denial of God because of a wish to be God oneself), the more one will be attacked. As my teachers told me "the greater progress you make, the more you will be assailed by evil in all its forms." This manifests itself both inwardly as attempts to make you succumb to various forms of sin, pride, anger, fear, self-righteousness or whatever, and outwardly in the form of attacks by others who are not usually conscious of what they do but nevertheless can be used because of their own deficiencies and failings.

You cannot adapt a spiritual world view to a non-spiritual one. If you try to compromise with the default non-spiritual position of the present time, which embraces most of the apparent advances that have been made in recent decades (in the form they are understood at least), you will either end up betraying yourself and falling back into the non-spiritual or else being made to look hypocritical and foolish. You really have to start from a completely different position, one that does not take any of the standard liberal nostrums, panaceas and assumptions as necessarily and indisputably true. If you try to include these as part of your spiritual understanding, they will just take over and the spiritual will become secondary. If they have any truth in them that will be included in a higher form in the spiritual position. But taken on their own terms they just deny the spiritual or, at best, relegate it to a dependent role which effectively denies it anyway.

We live at a time when there is an all out assault on truth through science, through politics, through art, through various social movements and even through forms of spirituality that subtly and not so subtly distort the real. This is why it is important to speak the truth from the highest point one can and not to compromise. Compromise means failure. It means that that with which you compromise will first colour and then consume your spiritual position. At the same time, don't over-react to the lies by rejecting the elements of truth within them. They must have such or else they would not have become so attractive to so many. But see these elements from the higher standpoint and you will find that very often the secondary has been made primary and the primary ignored. For instance, loving your neighbour comes after loving God and is dependent on that. Unless you exercise discrimination with regard to this teaching it means (theoretically) that you will direct equal love to Satan as to Christ. An extreme example undoubtedly but one that is intended to bring out the absurdity of taking this teaching out its proper context and misapplying it or else applying it to all and sundry equally.

When you read the Gospels you find that Jesus did not mince his words. He spoke truth and it was frequently unwelcome. In this he echoed the earlier prophets who were often persecuted by their communities. He was direct and he did not compromise in what he said to make it more palatable to his audience. He was able to do this because he was operating from the position of complete truth. Although we do not have the absolute direct vision that Jesus did, those who can see the primacy of God can still speak from that knowledge and should do so. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valour but this discretion must be for reasons of prudence not fear. In general, the time has come to call things by their true names and not worry about the consequences.