Spiritualities that Fail the Test

 If your spiritual path has not revealed to you that Satan now struts openly on the world stage perhaps it is time you reassessed it. Here's some of the latest evidence for that. Link. But, as I say, this is just the latest evidence. It has been apparent for some time that all worldly authorities in all fields, all, none are exempt, have succumbed to spiritual evil.

It may be that you are a follower of what my blogging colleague Francis Berger calls System Christianity which subordinates the truth of Christ to the ways of the world. You believe in God or think you do but, when push comes to shove, you believe in good as defined by the worldly powers more. To put it bluntly, you don't have enough real spiritual substance in you. 

Or it may be that you are some kind of non-dualist who essentially sees everything as spirit and so don't acknowledge the reality of good and evil. If so, you are walking in a cloud which may seem very beguiling, soft and comfortable but is in fact a fog of illusion. Non-duality teachings are limited in that they deny the positive reality of creation, rejecting the truth of the individual self for an amorphous oneness that turns them into robotic escapists who, unbeknown to themselves, are actually numbing themselves to the love, beauty and spiritual glory of reality, perhaps because they are afraid of being hurt. There is said to be a place for such souls on the higher planes where they can exist in a kind of self-absorbed bliss and peace but cut off from the reality of God and the rest of creation. They are enclosed within themselves even if they think of it as the Self or Nirvana and must eventually be reborn in the physical world and experience all the desire, pain and sorrow that makes a fully aware and spiritually sensitive human being. Non-duality, far from being the acme of spiritual teaching as often supposed, is really a one-sided (pun intended) view of reality that ignores the whole purpose of creation. This is not to retreat to the pre-manifested state of infantile oneness but to make fully-functioning creative gods of individual human souls.

However, you can only make these gods in the right way through Christ. If you try to make yourself a god by any other way, whether that be through technology like the transhumanists or a spirituality that sees yourself as already God like some of the non-dualists, then you risk following the path of Satan, the first being that wished to be God on his own terms. The contemporary world situation shows more clearly than ever that it is only Christ who can save us from, on the one hand, demonic attack, and, on the other, our own fallen nature. All goodness is summed up in him and it is only through him that we can find a path through the darkness into which this world has descended. If that wasn't apparent before it certainly should be now. This is what is meant by things coming to a point.

Earth is a School pre-order

 My publisher has sent me a handy link to a page on their website that has pre-order buying links for Earth is a School at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kindle and so on. On the Amazon page you can have a look at its contents.

https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/axismundi-books/our-books/earth-school

Liberty and Equality

 It should be obvious to anyone nowadays that the modern evils known as racism and sexism are being promoted as the deadliest of secular sins as part of the attempt to dismantle Western civilisation and install a new mindset in which nothing is better than anything else so everything is mediocre and therefore more controllable by our overlords, worldly and otherwise. Just like the mad crow disease of present times these secular sins were not built on nothing which gives them a certain viability if not examined too closely, but they have been grossly exaggerated and used as a means to destroy any idea of difference and even make difference itself a bad thing.

Equality is the great dogma on which liberal Western democracies are built. It might have seemed like a step forward at a time when the gap between rich and poor, powerful and weak was as great as it was, and the movement towards less inequality surely did bring certain benefits in the short term. But the flaw that lies at its heart is now being revealed. If equality, and equality alone, is taken as the foundation of a culture then that culture will collapse into the lowest common denominator and it will eventually collapse altogether. Equality is totally contrary to human nature and to enforce it is to force human beings to live against both their natural and their spiritual instincts. It becomes a tool to push the higher down to the level of the lower. This does not mean that the higher should dominate the lower (except spiritually) but liberty and equality are not natural bedfellows despite what the ideals of the Enlightenment may pretend, and it is liberty that is the great spiritual quality as far as human beings are concerned.

Equality is often said to be rooted in Christianity. If it were how strange it is that it is never mentioned in the Bible and was only discovered to be a Christian virtue 1800 years after the time of Christ. Oneness in Christ is a Christian virtue but that is not equality which is a materialistic distortion of it. Equality is actually a property of unformed matter, matter untouched by the creative breath of spirit, which is why you see it most at lower levels of evolution. The more life evolves, the more unequal it becomes because the freer it becomes and yet within that inequality there is also a spiritual oneness. To realise the truth of this apparent contradiction is one of the major goals of the spiritual path. It and it alone explains the mystery of love.

Why Does Believing in Christ Save You?

The answer to that is, surprising as it may sound to those raised in certain religious backgrounds, it doesn't necessarily save you. After all, the demons believe in Christ and he himself said in Matthew 7: 21-23 that “Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven." 

But let us assume that the belief in question is the sort that saves. Why does it do so? It cannot simply be a matter of thought. The current world situation has revealed many Christians who think they believe in Christ not to do so really. They have gone along with the worldly agenda without questioning it for the most part. Their leaders certainly have which fact, incidentally, shows the absolute necessity nowadays to think for yourself and not follow leaders, even (especially?) religious leaders. We are called to save ourselves. Through Christ certainly but we must adopt a creative faith meaning one that is alive to the movement of spirit. It cannot just take its nourishment from outside whether that be community, religion, religious teaching, scripture, whatever. It must also grow from the Word of God that is within every human heart and, in fact, this is now the more important of the two factors. Our spiritual vitality must come from within if we are to have any spiritual vitality.

Believing in Christ saves when it is the true inner belief because it is the tuning of the soul to spiritual reality, the opening up of the heart to divine truth, and this then starts the process of spiritual transformation. Christ is truth. Accepting Christ is accepting truth. Not accepting him is rejecting truth. If you reject truth you cannot be saved because you have put yourself outside reality. If you accept truth, really accept it through Christ who is its personification, that truth will grow within you.You will start to become it yourself and this is salvation. You accept truth, you become truth. There is no other salvation.

Jesus said that he who does the will of his Father will be saved so the only belief that counts for anything is that which affects the whole being. It is not that God is pleased if someone does his will and then says "Ok, you're in"! It is that this very belief spiritually changes a person by removing the dead weight of unredeemed matter and converting the soul into a real spiritual thing, one of the same quality as the spiritual world. Only heavenly substance can enter heaven.

Definitive Proof of the Existence of God

 

God, Man and Woman

Bruce Charlton had a very good piece recently about how Christian women used to be more religious than men but now are less so. You could probably extend this to include other religions even if Christian apostasy is much further down the line then that of other religions. The premise is that women are more conformist so will adapt themselves to the prevailing culture, but they are also more concerned with being, and being perceived as, good. If what society deems good really is good that is an excellent thing but when, as now, society has been completely corrupted by materialism, atheism and their cultural consequence which is leftism, it is disastrous. Women will follow the path of least resistance and most acceptance within the group. Couple this with feminism which, cutting through the fog of all the intellectual word-spinning and ideological propaganda, really amounts to no more than the female attempt to usurp the role of the male and which lures countless people into pursuing a path they should not be pursuing and which will not make them truly happy or fulfilled,  and you see that women are potentially in an even more spiritually dangerous place today than men. 

One can see why so many women adopt feminism even though that means undermining their true being. It appears to promise them so much and claims to redress error and set right injustices of the past. It comes in a shiny package and appeals both to egotism and resentment, carefully rebranding these as noble sentiments - an old trick of you know who. But everything it offers is on the material plane and even there its gifts are poisoned. Spiritually, it is entirely regressive which is why when it moves into spiritual matters it is always on the old pagan, Gaia worship level which is something humanity should have long outgrown even if Nature and the Feminine have been undervalued in the West since at least the time of the Reformation. But that is a different matter. You don't correct error by making more error. The fact is feminists are spiritually ignorant, woefully so. The story in Genesis concerning Adam and Eve represents a profound truth about the created order and points to the path of fulfilment and truth for both sexes. God created Woman as a companion and helper for Man and, like it or not, this does give him headship. It means he should look to God and she should look to him. But it does not make him superior or justify resentment. It is just a simple fact that corresponds to the nature of each sex's being and to which both sexes should strive to make themselves worthy. It's a partnership with each partner having different roles and fulfilling the other. To rail against it is an act of rebellion, one that comes from pride and the ego, and to upset this order puts Woman at odds with the truth of her own nature and thereby creates disorder. At the same time, to abuse it on the masculine level which no one can deny has happened historically is also wrong and quite obviously so. The partnership is based on love and mutual help.

If one can see why women might turn to feminism why should men pay it any attention? It seems to me that any man who supports feminism actually has no love for the feminine. How can he if he goes along with it being trashed? But perhaps men follow the party line on this matter because they are weak, easily influenced by the zeitgeist or ideologically committed to the post-Enlightenment materialism which is the philosophical framework on which feminism is built. At any rate, no Christian man (or woman for that matter) can support feminism. I believe there are people who call themselves Christian feminists and even invent theologies to justify this aberration. You might as well talk about peaceful wars. If you are a Christian feminist you are not a Christian.

The metaphysical dynamic between the sexes on which the order of creation is built becomes easier to understand if you equate them to the vertical and horizontal polarities of existence. Men are more likely to aspire upwards and to seek truth. They are more hierarchical and also more interested in abstract thought. For women life is all about their relationships and maintaining the safety of the group. This is a very important part of life but it should not be the dominant force or society will descend into conformity, mediocrity and, as now, a prioritising of security over freedom. Women should rule children and men should rule the adult world. This is in line with their particular skills and orientations. When you have women ruling the adult world, the adult world becomes infantilised, risk is removed and in the end civilisation and culture will collapse.

The Name of Jesus

Several times in my life I have felt myself to be attacked by malign psychic forces. Sometimes this has been in dreams and I describe an incident from not too long ago here. That was very dramatic and unmistakeable but these attacks can also happen in waking hours and then they are usually not so obvious. For instance, we are attacked through our thoughts and emotions which can be manipulated, if we allow them to be, by the dark forces to bring us down into the kind of world they inhabit, one of anger, delusion and lies. My teachers told me that the more progress you make on the path, the more you are attacked by these beings and that has been my experience.

There are various ways to protect yourself against these attacks. One very simple way is just to watch out for your thoughts and emotions and not allow these to be corrupted. Keep your thoughts on the full reality of God, seeing everything in his light, and do not let your feelings become contaminated by anger, fear or, a particular weakness of mine, irritation. You can still feel these emotions but try to place them in the context of God's love which can burn them all up. I don't pretend this is easy. It's the work of a lifetime but that's what we are here to do. Life is work, specifically spiritual work, and our labours in this world will be rewarded in the next.

Of all the weapons at our disposal to fight evil I have found (not that it's a new discovery!) there is none more potent than the name of Jesus. This is a kind of gleaming white sword of fire that can cut right through any demonic attack. "In the name of Jesus Christ, Son of God, depart!" There is no more powerful utterance. Not only does the very name appear to disarm the demons but by appealing to Jesus you summon his aid, both in your own imagination, which is important, and in reality. You are bringing his presence to the field. In a very real sense where his name is spoken, there he is.

Non-religious people might just regard this as a kind of mental trick, a spiritual version of a placebo which works because you believe it will work. They might point to the fact that Jesus's name varies slightly from language to language. But that is because they are viewing the operation from within the limitations of their own materialistic worldview. The truth is that the name of Jesus in any language has a spiritual power beyond all others because it is a form of Jesus himself. In the spiritual world our names are us and we are our names. It is almost like a face. It is certainly a real aspect of the person. And because Jesus is the greatest person, his name is the greatest name. Just to say the name Jesus brings Jesus into your life, though the greater your faith and love the fuller will be his presence. He is life and truth and so no wonder the demons, who have set themselves against life and truth, flee when he comes.

The Symbolic Meaning of the Peck

 Francis Berger has a good post about the poor choices people have made because they fail to recognise the fundamentally evil nature of the global System, the tentacles of which spread into every area of life whether that be political, scientific, cultural, even religious. He mentions people who have willingly submitted to the peck, a thing supposedly originally intended for the most vulnerable and the elderly for whom the risks would be outweighed by the benefits, but which is now being pushed on everyone, including, incredibly, children who are effectively being asked to put themselves at risk for the sake of their elders. When a civilisation does that we can safely assume it has sunk to a new low. Of course, there  are all sorts of excuses and justifications offered but the bottom line is that children are being experimented on and not for their own benefit.

The post drew from me the following comment which I also want to put here because I haven't seen this idea expressed in quite these terms elsewhere but I believe it lies behind many people's reluctance to go down this pecked path.

"The more I think about it the more I realise that the problem with the peck is not that it has all the adverse side effects it does nor that it is unnecessary for most people nor even that it might kill you. The main problem is that accepting it is an act of spiritual submission to the System. In the end all the other problems don't matter. They are certainly there and can back up spiritual resistance which is intuitively based, but the evil of the peck is that it is designed to facilitate and strengthen the mindset of God rejection. You are handing your soul over to the secular, materialistic, atheistic System. This is not final, repentance is always possible, but the further down this road you go, the harder repentance becomes.

A statement of this sort would be regarded as completely mad by most people. "It's just a vaccine." But that's the point. It isn't just  a vaccine (in fact, of course, it isn't even a vaccine). It's a moral or spiritual choice and the thing itself is secondary to what it represents."

This act of spiritual submission is why some people have such a profound sense of rejection of the peck. We don't quite understand why to submit to it involves bowing down to the prince of this world and accepting him as our master but we perceive that it does. I don't pretend to know why this should be but the feeling is there on an intuitive level and it is through the intuition that God speaks to us. He is telling us about this intervention in no uncertain terms.  I don't see the peck as the mark of the beast but it could bear a similar relationship to it as someone like Nero is said to have done to the antichrist. A precursor or lesser copy cut from similar cloth. The fact that the earthly powers are pushing it so hard and so desperately only lends credence to this idea.

St Catherine's Chapel

 A few people have commented on the cover of my new book Earth is a School. As with my two previous books published by Axis Mundi, I selected the cover from images associated with places near where I have lived. In this case it was Bridport in Dorset where I lived from 1985-1988. My first book Meeting the Masters has a picture of Beachy Head on the Sussex coast. I lived in Eastbourne from 1996-2000. The cover of Remember the Creator shows le Mont St Michel on the Normandy/Britanny border. I lived in the nearby town Avranches from 1988-1996. So you see I am working my way backwards. If I do another book it will have to be a picture of somewhere around Yercaud in South India where I lived from 1980-1985.

St Catherine's chapel stands on a hill near the village of Abbotsbury in Dorset in the south west of England. It's assumed to have been built in the 14th century from its style though no documents survive to confirm that. It was used by the monks of the nearby Benedictine monastery presumably for retreats for private prayer and contemplation. Although at 260 feet the hill is not very high it does command spectacular views over the coast and may have been used as a beacon for ships at one time, a light on a hill. So in a way there is a connection with Beachy Head lighthouse and le Mont St Michel. For me they are all spiritual beacons.

One of the others pictures I considered for the cover was a very striking image of the chapel under the Milky Way. The symbolism of souls ascending to the heavens in the form of stars was very tempting but, from a practical point of view, the image was probably too dark for a book cover. But here it is to compare with the eventual choice.

Because that is a sample from a picture library it has a watermark on it but here are two unstamped photographs fished off the internet.

St Catherine herself was, of course, a famous Christian martyr who lived in the 4th century in Alexandria. Her nobility, heroism, devotion, wisdom (she is supposed to have beaten fifty pagan philosophers in debate) and unshakeable faith led to her being one of the most venerated saints in the Middle Ages even though most of the stories around her are probably legendary. Joan of Arc claimed that Catherine was one of the saints who advised her. In Orthodox Christianity she is known as a Great Martyr and Holy Helper. Her feast day is on the 25th November, by happy coincidence shortly after the book comes out. Legendary stories or not I am sure that there is such a person in Heaven.

Earth is a School

 I have a book coming out at the end of October, though it was actually written last year. It's called Earth is a School and presents the case for the material world being a spiritual school specifically designed to develop consciousness and bring the human soul to an understanding of its own divine nature. The idea is that this world, though corrupted by evil, is still the perfect environment for the job it was originally intended to do which was to develop infant humanity into mature sons and daughters of God to the point that they could become co-creators with him. This, however, is an entirely voluntary process. There is no coercion. That having been said, the book suggests that the present time is a time of real decision, foretold in the New Testament, when the souls of all human beings are examined to determine their future path. Professor J.M. Smith of the Orthosphere and Bruce Charlton were kind enough to provide endorsements, and I would like to express my thanks to them here.

It's listed on Amazon UK here and Amazon US here and you can read excerpts there, but it should be available in the proverbial "all good bookshops".

Here are the front and back covers.