Essays on spiritual subjects that develop themes from the book Meeting the Masters.
Saturday, 1 August 2020
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.
@William - We have discussed how astrology impressively predicted that this would be a year much as it has turned-out; is anything upcoming supposed to be 'in the stars'?
I haven't really studied astrology properly for the last 15 years so I'm not sure what's coming up but I do remember that the significant factor recently was a conjunction of Saturn and Pluto, both planets that bring plenty of challenges and upheaval, in Capricorn in January. This will last for about a year as Saturn moves forward then goes retrograde in May returning to within a degree or so of Pluto in October. Maybe that's a time to watch out for.
Is is a sin to want this all to just be over, and move on spiritually? Not through despair any longer, I might add (although I have been there also many times before), but a feeling of being tired of swimming against the current all the time, a sense of longing to at least be in an environment where one doesn't feel totally in disagreement and opposition to everyone and everything, all of the time. I have reached a point where just about any and all communication with anybody about anything feels pretty pointless...the feeling is that I really long for a deeper, expanded fellowship of truely like-minded souls, no longer atomised as is the situation at present, but able to collaborate and create based on a shared metaphysical understanding, not an endlessly divisive one. It feels like a longing for heaven or at least another spiritual classroom where at a minimum everyone there wants to learn and acknowledges there is a shared purpose and direction to aim for...to remain here feels like stagnation...
From the Corona Virus monomania to identity politics to climate change, everything is a tiresome 'no go' conversation to me, as I assume completely different things to my companions about the basis of reality. But aren't these topics always on the lips of literally everyone, almost all of the time?! To give a few examples, a recent walk with friends in beautiful mountains and lakes. I felt invigorated and emersed in a loving embrace with God's creation. I always feel like this when in contact with nature, a sense of being at some level, at home. The views were inspiring and I felt the Holy Spirit present with me. My friends (both atheists) and I stopped to admire a small waterfall that offered fresh water to refill our water bottles for the hike. Spontaneously the observation of its beauty emerged and I agreed with them. Inwardly acknowledging the aliveness of this encounter with nature. But my friends didn't stop there and began their usual pop psychology and evolutionary explanations, to in my mind 'kill' the waterfall...they discussed how evolution had made us value the source of water for survival, parts of the brain and circuitry that supposedly supported their radically reductionist explanations for anything beautiful being only so because of some mechanism of chance, etc. I walked slightly ahead groaning inwardly, did I pick up the gauntlet and argue against the obvious shallowness of this literally deadening world view? I have done so many times before and *always* am met with anger, incomprehension or just dismissal as though I were a ghost. So I have given up. Things have come to a point of no middle ground, as Bruce oftentimes observes in his blog. Their assumptions seems so firmly routed their is no room for discussion any more. A later 'discussion' becomes rapidly heated as I suggest that the costs of the worldwide social distancing/lockdown policys are massive and enough to question the value of having gone down this road at all. The massive economic consequences, the job losses, the compromise in medical care for cancer patients, the fact that many of those who died were predicted to die anyway even by the official models in a year or so anyway due to other co-morbidities and frailty - the inescapable end point of human mortality. All water off a ducks back! The incredulous response - "Yes, but people are dying!"
What is the point in even discussing anything anymore? The overall effect is to withdraw and become an island of one. Even with close family, there is no point in trying to share how I experience the world. It is just off the map as far as they can perceive it. And to believe in the resurrection of Christ? A shudder inducing, inexplicable form of mental illness in an age of reason, when we should know better. Utterly incomprehensible! Apart from Children and immediate family life, which is still worthwhile and fulfilling, the rest of human civilization feels alien, remote but forcibly in my face, demanding I be joint in lock step with the official narrative about all of the above. Fighting it off all the time is tedious and energy sapping.I long to be removed from it permanently to ideally go to Heaven and be with God, or at a minimum a kind of reluctant hermitage like bubble within the world until that longed for time will finally come. I don't blame you for your blogging ennui. It seems everything has been said, repeatedly and we should all have enough to know and decide what we need to do and get on with doing it! The waterfall is beautiful because God created it and each and everyone of us. The great gift of God's love is freely given and to be cherished by any of wisdom who can seek to repent and receive the astonishing gift of eternal life with sincere and humble gratitude. Or we can keep seeking to explain it all way, deny our very own beings and sleep walk into oblivion. Not for me!
I do know just how you feel David. I feel the same way. But this time was predicted as was the fact it would come to an end. We are being proved in the fire. Heaven doesn't require courage because there's nothing to fear but it does require people who have shown they have courage. This is the time we have to show that but the reward will be quite out of proportion to the suffering.
Yes, I will try and focus on that. There is clearly still a great deal of value in life as it is, or else God would have brought things to an end already and not a moment later than necessary. For what it's worth, your blog posts and Bruce's have often been what I most needed to hear and a focus for subsequent meditation. When all else is stripped away, I am left with the centrality of family and loving relationships as the most meaningful part of life. I suppose a self-imposed withdrawal from the world as much as possible is for my good anyway, although clearly impossible for practical reasons. The strong feelings I have a growing need to do so for spiritual self-defence are perhaps an understandable and necessary step up that path that is being prepared for those who wish to pursue it. Best wishes and prayers to you and yours William, may you find the spiritual courage and wisdom you seek in the challenging days ahead. We always have hope, faith and love. We can trust we will have enough, however arduous things may seem.
Travelling through the country today on public transport I am struck by the current feeling of our people. Fear. Anxiety. Survival. Separation. Resignation. Passivity. We don’t even seem interested Starbucks or Poundland. The masks have spun things to another level. And the change was merely a little change added in at the last minute as a bit extra it seemed. A tiny adjustment from a suggestion, to a request which was then communicated as a we should wear them in shops. Yet this request/advice has produced 100% compliance! With NO enforcement! More so than any previous lockdown rule it seems. Why? A few non mask wearing shopping experiments soon made it clear. Terror of visible social non compliance and possible confrontation. We do not want to be visibly socially bad and uncaring or stupid. (There are more colloquial words). I also imagine from my own responses that the internal judgement is more real than the external. But it works the same. For the 60% that just want to know the rules and advice to follow that is fine. But of the remaining 40% (made up statistic) the option of the walk of shame and the risk of disturbance and being refused our stuff doesn’t seem worth it. 100% compliance in 6 visits (apart from the staff). And then why take them off when you leave? Might as well just stay safe... Social shame is extending our voluntary mask wearing wider. And because it is sustained through social self policing it will not disappear quick like sanitising shopping trolleys which we loved doing a month or two ago but has petered out because it was a lot of work. So we wear masks, constant reminders of fear, anxiety and death. As one woman said to her child, better to do it than catch the virus and die. How many times has her 4 year old been told similar and worse over the last 5 months? And the damage to skin care regimes and complexions... So yes, I too am inclined to pause and allow the unfolding of the human story to fade into the background a little and grant space for the grace of living god. Chris
I very much like your last paragraph Chris. And I agree with the rest too. However I am on a train going to the West Country at the moment. It's a 3 hour journey and many people seem to want to wear masks all the way but I would say a good 25% have taken them off.
Thanks William. Yes token gestures on transport are insufficiently frowned on to maintain conformance. Maybe because we have been doing it for months. A truce between wearers and non wearers emerged. And 3 hours in a mask isn’t nice. Plus they won’t throw you off. Yet the signs say requested in shops and required on transport... I wonder if it will stay 100% in shops or swing to your transport 25%. Once people realise they will still serve you it will probably erode. Happy travels. I am half way. Chris
Thanks Francis. Enjoy is always a good word! I'm going for a long walk along the Cornish coast today with fish and chips at the end. Simple pleasures are the best!
13 comments:
The English atmosphere is rather un-conducive to blogging at present - I feel; a subdued period of waiting...
I know just what you mean, Bruce. There's a sense that we're treading water at the moment waiting for who knows what but something.
@William - We have discussed how astrology impressively predicted that this would be a year much as it has turned-out; is anything upcoming supposed to be 'in the stars'?
I haven't really studied astrology properly for the last 15 years so I'm not sure what's coming up but I do remember that the significant factor recently was a conjunction of Saturn and Pluto, both planets that bring plenty of challenges and upheaval, in Capricorn in January. This will last for about a year as Saturn moves forward then goes retrograde in May returning to within a degree or so of Pluto in October. Maybe that's a time to watch out for.
Is is a sin to want this all to just be over, and move on spiritually? Not through despair any longer, I might add (although I have been there also many times before), but a feeling of being tired of swimming against the current all the time, a sense of longing to at least be in an environment where one doesn't feel totally in disagreement and opposition to everyone and everything, all of the time. I have reached a point where just about any and all communication with anybody about anything feels pretty pointless...the feeling is that I really long for a deeper, expanded fellowship of truely like-minded souls, no longer atomised as is the situation at present, but able to collaborate and create based on a shared metaphysical understanding, not an endlessly divisive one. It feels like a longing for heaven or at least another spiritual classroom where at a minimum everyone there wants to learn and acknowledges there is a shared purpose and direction to aim for...to remain here feels like stagnation...
From the Corona Virus monomania to identity politics to climate change, everything is a tiresome 'no go' conversation to me, as I assume completely different things to my companions about the basis of reality. But aren't these topics
always on the lips of literally everyone, almost all of the time?! To give a few examples, a recent walk with friends in beautiful mountains and lakes. I felt invigorated and emersed in a loving embrace with God's creation. I always feel like this when in contact with nature, a sense of being at some level, at home. The views were inspiring and I felt the Holy Spirit present with me. My friends (both atheists) and I stopped to admire a small waterfall that offered fresh water to refill our water bottles for the hike. Spontaneously the observation of its beauty emerged and I agreed with them. Inwardly acknowledging the aliveness of this encounter with nature. But my friends didn't stop there and began their usual pop psychology and evolutionary explanations, to in my mind 'kill' the waterfall...they discussed how evolution had made us value the source of water for survival, parts of the brain and circuitry that supposedly supported their radically reductionist explanations for anything beautiful being only so because of some mechanism of chance, etc. I walked slightly ahead groaning inwardly, did I pick up the gauntlet and argue against the obvious shallowness of this literally deadening world view? I have done so many times before and *always* am met with anger, incomprehension or just dismissal as though I were a ghost. So I have given up. Things have come to a point of no middle ground, as Bruce oftentimes observes in his blog. Their assumptions seems so firmly routed their is no room for discussion any more. A later 'discussion' becomes rapidly heated as I suggest that the costs of the worldwide social distancing/lockdown policys are massive and enough to question the value of having gone down this road at all. The massive economic consequences, the job losses, the compromise in medical care for cancer patients, the fact that many of those who died were predicted to die anyway even by the official models in a year or so anyway due to other co-morbidities and frailty - the inescapable end point of human mortality. All water off a ducks back! The incredulous response - "Yes, but people are dying!"
David
What is the point in even discussing anything anymore? The overall effect is to withdraw and become an island of one. Even with close family, there is no point in trying to share how I experience the world. It is just off the map as far as they can perceive it. And to believe in the resurrection of Christ? A shudder inducing, inexplicable form of mental illness in an age of reason, when we should know better. Utterly incomprehensible!
Apart from Children and immediate family life, which is still worthwhile and fulfilling, the rest of human civilization feels alien, remote but forcibly in my face, demanding I be joint in lock step with the official narrative about all of the above. Fighting it off all the time is tedious and energy sapping.I long to be removed from it permanently to ideally go to Heaven and be with God, or at a minimum a kind of reluctant hermitage like bubble within the world until that longed for time will finally come. I don't blame you for your blogging ennui. It seems everything has been said, repeatedly and we should all have enough to know and decide what we need to do and get on with doing it! The waterfall is beautiful because God created it and each and everyone of us. The great gift of God's love is freely given and to be cherished by any of wisdom who can seek to repent and receive the astonishing gift of eternal life with sincere and humble gratitude. Or we can keep seeking to explain it all way, deny our very own beings and sleep walk into oblivion. Not for me!
David
I do know just how you feel David. I feel the same way. But this time was predicted as was the fact it would come to an end. We are being proved in the fire. Heaven doesn't require courage because there's nothing to fear but it does require people who have shown they have courage. This is the time we have to show that but the reward will be quite out of proportion to the suffering.
Yes, I will try and focus on that. There is clearly still a great deal of value in life as it is, or else God would have brought things to an end already and not a moment later than necessary. For what it's worth, your blog posts and Bruce's have often been what I most needed to hear and a focus for subsequent meditation. When all else is stripped away, I am left with the centrality of family and loving relationships as the most meaningful part of life. I suppose a self-imposed withdrawal from the world as much as possible is for my good anyway, although clearly impossible for practical reasons. The strong feelings I have a growing need to do so for spiritual self-defence are perhaps an understandable and necessary step up that path that is being prepared for those who wish to pursue it. Best wishes and prayers to you and yours William, may you find the spiritual courage and wisdom you seek in the challenging days ahead. We always have hope, faith and love. We can trust we will have enough, however arduous things may seem.
David
Travelling through the country today on public transport I am struck by the current feeling of our people. Fear. Anxiety. Survival. Separation. Resignation. Passivity. We don’t even seem interested Starbucks or Poundland. The masks have spun things to another level. And the change was merely a little change added in at the last minute as a bit extra it seemed. A tiny adjustment from a suggestion, to a request which was then communicated as a we should wear them in shops.
Yet this request/advice has produced 100% compliance! With NO enforcement! More so than any previous lockdown rule it seems. Why? A few non mask wearing shopping experiments soon made it clear. Terror of visible social non compliance and possible confrontation. We do not want to be visibly socially bad and uncaring or stupid. (There are more colloquial words). I also imagine from my own responses that the internal judgement is more real than the external. But it works the same. For the 60% that just want to know the rules and advice to follow that is fine. But of the remaining 40% (made up statistic) the option of the walk of shame and the risk of disturbance and being refused our stuff doesn’t seem worth it. 100% compliance in 6 visits (apart from the staff). And then why take them off when you leave? Might as well just stay safe... Social shame is extending our voluntary mask wearing wider. And because it is sustained through social self policing it will not disappear quick like sanitising shopping trolleys which we loved doing a month or two ago but has petered out because it was a lot of work. So we wear masks, constant reminders of fear, anxiety and death. As one woman said to her child, better to do it than catch the virus and die. How many times has her 4 year old been told similar and worse over the last 5 months? And the damage to skin care regimes and complexions...
So yes, I too am inclined to pause and allow the unfolding of the human story to fade into the background a little and grant space for the grace of living god.
Chris
I very much like your last paragraph Chris. And I agree with the rest too. However I am on a train going to the West Country at the moment. It's a 3 hour journey and many people seem to want to wear masks all the way but I would say a good 25% have taken them off.
Thanks William. Yes token gestures on transport are insufficiently frowned on to maintain conformance. Maybe because we have been doing it for months. A truce between wearers and non wearers emerged. And 3 hours in a mask isn’t nice. Plus they won’t throw you off. Yet the signs say requested in shops and required on transport... I wonder if it will stay 100% in shops or swing to your transport 25%. Once people realise they will still serve you it will probably erode. Happy travels. I am half way. Chris
Enjoy (is that the proper word here?) the time off, William. Breaks are good, perhaps even necessary, every now and then.
Thanks Francis. Enjoy is always a good word! I'm going for a long walk along the Cornish coast today with fish and chips at the end. Simple pleasures are the best!
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