Hope

Yesterday I had my usual late afternoon/early evening walk. There are several local routes that I can take and this time I chose to go to the local common though common is something of a misnomer as it is a largely wooded area of about 400 acres with paths and tracks that wind through it as well as a couple of  fairly substantial ponds. When I set out the clouds were gathering and by the time I got to the wood the sky was dark and the rain started. The weather echoed my mood. Evil is spreading apparently unchecked throughout the world at the moment, and the latest announcements in England advising pregnant women to get pecked and speculating that university students may not be allowed to lectures next term unless they too have been pecked are too extraordinary to need comment. The latter struck me with particular force as my daughter is about to start her second year at university. What is equally extraordinary is that most people seem quite happy to go along with this. To me it really does show that when you reject God you are easy prey for demonic influence.

So, my mood was sombre. The rain came down and, though the tree cover meant I only got slightly wet, I was still feeling rather damp inside because of the current state of the world. Then a small bird darted across the path and settled on a branch just a few yards from me. As I approached he didn't fly away and I saw that he was a robin. I went nearer and still he stayed on his branch. I thought to myself how fine it would be to be one of those saints like Francis who can talk to the birds because they sense the saint's holiness and have no fear of him at all. I tried a few words. The robin looked at me. I spoke some more. He flew off. Oh well.

I continued my walk through the woods and spoke to God as follows. "I know we should not ask for signs and I know you have given me many graces during the course of my life, many more than I deserve. But the world is in a truly dark place now and there seems to be hardly anyone standing up for truth and goodness. Can you give me a little indication that those of us who are holding out against the current evils are on the right track?" Goodness know what I was expecting. Maybe for the robin to come back and sit on my hand but that didn't happen. In fact, nothing happened so on I walked and within a few minutes came out of the wood and joined the road that led back to town. See the picture below. Just at that moment the sun came back out and the clouds began to clear. That was encouraging but could easily have been coincidence. I was slightly hoping for a rainbow but that would have too much to ask and almost vulgar in its ostentation so I continued on my way. Then I had a sudden impulse to look to my right. There was a road sign just by my side. I was on Christ Church Road. That was good enough for me.

Ancient Aliens and Shamans

I've been watching a few more Ancient Aliens programmes. (See here for a previous post on the subject.) The series gives an interesting overview of ancient history, mythology and sacred sites as well as more modern unexplained phenomena and events, and even if you don't go along with its underlying premise and see everything through the same unvarying prism it does, it still raises many thought-provoking questions about our past. Its main fault for me is that it materialises spirituality by reducing all supernatural things to extraterrestrial intervention. The higher spiritual is brought down to the level of the technological so, although the contributors think they are breaking into new ways of seeing and understanding the universe and consciousness, they are actually just transferring the contemporary world view, basically a secular one, to the spiritual plane. We need to see the spiritual in terms of the spiritual not in our own terms.

The most recent programme I saw was about shamans and how they might be tuning their minds and bodies to other dimensions of being where they encounter intelligent life forms, inevitably in the context of this series interpreted as extraterrestrials. The techniques used include dance, rhythm and drugs derived from various plants. I don't doubt that shamans do indeed enter into otherworldly realms of being and supernatural states of consciousness but I would caution against regarding all these as spiritual. One of the most important lessons to be learned on the spiritual path is that between the purely physical world and the real spiritual there is a vast area of being in which live all kinds of creatures, some highly intelligent, some non-human. This psychic or astral world may seem a spiritual world because it is a non-material one but it is not where God and pure truth are to be found. It is an intermediate domain between Heaven and Earth and you will find good and evil there just as you do here but you will not find Christ though you may well find beings imitating him or masquerading as him or even thinking they are the equivalent to him. If shamans really did have access to the spiritual they would be much more than they are which is a curious mixture of the psychically powerful healer and the everyday human with all the virtues and vices of the everyday human. Shamans are magicians not saints.

Are We in Hell Now?

 In my last post I considered who might go to hell and concluded it could be anyone who didn't want to go to Heaven. Here I want to look at a more radical possibility. Are we actually living in hell now?

As the 19th and 20th centuries progressed human beings became increasingly separated from God. This applied even to religious people because religion became more materialistic, less centred on the sacred mysteries of God and more humanistic in focus. It was demythologised which means stripped of inner meaning and brought into line with scientific materialism. The psychic atmosphere in which everyone lived was secular and the next world was further removed from this one. Reactions sprang up with souls thirsty for the sacred looking to the East or to New Age type beliefs but these were also heavily contaminated by the materialistic ethos and there was a clear lack of genuine spiritual direction. Spirituality meant what you could get out of it more than making yourself right with God. The idea arose that all forms of spirituality were saying essentially the same thing and answering the same call, but a deeper analysis shows this was not the case and for many of them God was peripheral instead of being absolutely central as should be the case. And even if God is central the question remains what sort of God? For there are many false gods born of human imagining and projection not to mention demonic inspiration. The true God is known through revelation, through his creation and in the human heart but the heart has to be tuned to the right note, away from the key of self, to perceive him clearly.

It would be my contention that just as there is a divine plan for mankind so there is also a demonic plan. I won't waste time trying to convince people that supernatural powers of evil exist. If you are a Christian this should be a fundamental part of your belief. Indeed, most religions would acknowledge this. Their aim is to absorb the energy from human souls for their own benefit and use. They have cut themselves off from the source of life and need life energy to maintain their existence. So they seek to corrupt souls. They have been active for millennia, of course, but recently, possibly in line with cycles of existence and stages of evolutionary development, possibly as a lesson and a test, they appear to have been allowed greater influence over mankind. 

What is their aim? It is still the corruption of souls as it always has been but now there is something else. I believe, and I believe this because of what I can observe around me, because of the pattern of recent history and because of intuition, that they are seeking to make hell on Earth. That is to say, they are seeking to externalise hell onto the physical plane, to extend their domain, as it were.This project, ongoing since at least the 1st World War though groundwork was laid much earlier, has clearly moved into a new phase over the last 18 months with the global health scare, a scare that is not rooted in nothing because everybody would see through that quickly, but is rooted in something that has been grossly over-exaggerated and used as an excuse to exercise a radical new level of control over the populace who accept this because of fear forced on them by politicians, the media and, perhaps worst of all, scientists who have sold their souls to the devil and exercise the intellectual authority of their position in a totally corrupt way. There are still many who don't and all praise to them but they are not given anywhere near the same level of publicity that their fallen colleagues who serve the unholy ends of the demonic agenda are allowed. I am not saying these people are aware of who or what they serve but if their hearts are not fully open to truth, beauty and goodness they can easily be co-opted, and they have been. 

Modern culture is largely the creation of hell and it is creating hell on Earth. From music which has descended from concern with the beauty of melody and harmony down to the savagery of contemporary rap in which incessant beat predominates musically and violence and anger lyrically, to the well-known distortions of 20th century art, to film from which simple goodness has long since been banished and we are left with ever more sordid attempts to break taboos. The list is endless and the degeneration affects every branch of the arts. I won't labour the point other than to add that it's important to realise this is not the grumbling of an old man who complains that "Things were better in my day." They weren't as bad but the process was already in full swing when I was growing up in the '60s and '70s. That process has continued on its downward path but it did not originate then. It stems from the severing of culture from the spiritual and its contamination by materialism.

If hell can be defined as separation from God then it should be obvious that we are in hell now. God is meaningless in our contemporary world even in the churches where his spiritual reality is increasingly being lost and his relevance is only acknowledged as support for the secular humanistic project so completely failing to remember the words of Christ that "My Kingdom is not of this world." For many of the modern churches, as they proved when they shut their doors last year, Christ's kingdom is of this world but it's not even a kingdom because it is subordinate to the worldly powers.

We are living in a form of hell now and it's going to get worse. The separation from God will continue. The vice will be tightened and the spiritual corruption spread. But do not despair. Never despair. It is a great privilege to be living at this time. If you are in any way aware of the reality of God and the degradation of the contemporary world this means you have been sent to play a part in a holy war. You are a soldier for Christ. Your fight is on the mental plane and therefore you should know that even your thoughts can be used by God to increase the power of the light in this world. You don't have to go out and do anything publicly but through your thoughts and prayers you can serve God and help souls struggling for truth in the spiritual quagmire of the contemporary world. This world may be turning into hell but heaven awaits those who simply wake up to that fact.

Note: To say this world is turning into hell does not mean it is fully so. Goodness, truth and beauty still remain and always will. Their power and impact is severely damaged but God will never leave us without some kind of access to them. To take just one example, we have access to much of the beauty and wisdom of the past in a way that could not be dreamed of by our ancestors who did not live in such spiritually degenerate times.

Who Goes to Hell?

Anyone who wants to which means anyone who doesn't want to go to Heaven. But understand that wanting to go to Heaven means loving God because God is Heaven. It's not just the desire to be saved or to have a beautiful afterlife surrounded by your loved ones or whatever it might be. It is loving God, your Creator. So, who goes to hell is anyone who doesn't love God. 

Let me explain what I mean by this. I don't see hell as just a place of darkness or fire or cold or whatever it might be, somewhere you are constantly tortured by demons with pitchforks. That may be an extreme version but hell could also be a place of utter banality. There are probably different hells of different degrees of separation from God that are created by the mindsets of those who go there and so reflect different mentalities. There may be hells corresponding to the various vices as in Dante or there may be intellectual hells where clever materialistic atheists go. They won't exactly suffer but they won't know the joys of Heaven and, unless they repent and turn to their Maker, they will start to shrivel up spiritually which means their consciousness and sensitivity to life will gradually attenuate, becoming less and less responsive. They will fade not blossom.

Those who go to hell are not necessarily bad people as the world sees bad. They are spiritually unresponsive in one way or another but they are not necessarily wicked or evil. They have just failed the greatest lesson of life which is to love God. Clearly, none of us loves God as we should but even wanting to love God is enough for him to work with.

Non Volo Peccare

An Imaginary Conversation.

Official: Have you had the medical intervention yet?

Normal Person: No. I've done some unwise things in my time but I still have some sense.

O: What do you mean?

NP: To do something unnecessary and potentially risky out of fear or because you've succumbed to state propaganda or media pressure is surely foolish?

O: It's not unnecessary and if you don't do it for yourself, you should certainly do it to protect others.

NP: Most people's immune system is more than capable of dealing with the illness so it is unnecessary for most people. However, I agree with the last part of what you say but would put it in a different context. Spiritual contagion is worse than physical contagion and to provide an example of someone relatively immune from that is surely the best service you can render your fellow man at the present time.

O: But what if you get ill and infect someone who then dies because of your negligence?

NP: Negligence is a loaded term. When did it become an acceptable word to describe someone's right to determine what goes into their own body? Besides, if the peck works who will die and if it doesn't why are we even having this conversation?

Etc, etc. 

This debate could go on indefinitely and still get nowhere as both participants are starting from totally different premises. For O the body is central. For NP it's the soul.

Note: I translate the title I Do Not Want to be Pecked but it's been a long time since I studied Latin so that may not be entirely accurate.

All Men are Created Equal

 Stanford historian Jack Rakove makes the following interesting point.

"When Jefferson wrote “all men are created equal” in the preamble to the Declaration, he was not talking about individual equality. What he really meant was that the American colonists, as a people, had the same rights of self-government as other peoples, and hence could declare independence, create new governments and assume their “separate and equal station” among other nations. But after the Revolution succeeded, Americans began reading that famous phrase another way. It now became a statement of individual equality that everyone and every member of a deprived group could claim for himself or herself. With each passing generation, our notion of who that statement covers has expanded. It is that promise of equality that has always defined our constitutional creed."

This statement in its distorted form has become the basic dogma of the modern world and I would submit that it lies at the root of our rejection of reality. That is to say, it is used as a justification for it, a kind of religious principle that is taken as obvious and good and right, and to deviate from which is the mark of a wicked person. The fact that it is clearly false doesn't stop us from believing or pretending to believe it. For the masses it is a way to get back at those that have been over them or have more than them. For the weak it is a way to cut the strong down to size. For the sentimental it is a way to make them feel they are decent  and kind people. For the demons and their disciples in the world it is a way to bring down real truth and goodness which are necessarily hierarchical. I would suggest a far more accurate statement is one that the Masters made to me which was this. "Men are by no means equal on the earth plane but that is no reason to dismiss anybody." This statement takes care of both aspects of truth. The fact that we are all the children of God, in potential at least,  but there are older and younger children amongst us. If all men are created equal there is then no higher or lower. There is nowhere to go.

Leftism is Materialism

 I often see articles or comments debating which elements of what they call 'wokeism' but is really just a more developed form of leftism have gone too far and how we should pull back from the situation we now find ourselves in. You have writers like Jordan Peterson and Douglas Murray as good examples of this sort of thing. Unfortunately, all these articles and comments still accept or assume that some aspects of leftism, whether it be anti-racism or feminism or egalitarianism or whatever, should be retained. It can be hard for a person raised in the modern world to see that all aspects of leftism should be totally rejected but that is the case because if you don't cut it all out, it will just return in some form or other. It is like a poison that will spread throughout the body unless you are cleansed of it entirely. This is because the thing itself is an anti-God, anti-creation ideology. It puts the human being first. That is the, at first sight inoffensive even seemingly benign, seed from which all the other corrupting elements grow.

It's no good bemoaning the dire cultural/spiritual state of affairs if you support any aspect of what's led up to it. You have to go to the source and the source is the rejection of God and transcendent reality, including the laws of creation and the way reality is structured. This doesn't mean we should return to the past. We reached a fork in a road we were meant to be travelling down but we took the wrong turning, the one that downgraded God to first of all something of diminished importance and then to nothing at all. We forgot the reason for being in this world, taking it as something existing in and for itself. Unless we go right to the roots of our problem then whatever we do will be of no significance. The old word for repentance was metanoia which implies something much more deep-seated and visceral than simply regretting or being sorry or changing a few things but leaving the core untouched. It means a complete change of heart, a wiping of the slate and total reorientation of being. Anything less just won't do.

We must understand that we cannot graft some form of spirituality on top of our materialistic assumptions and our human-centred ideologies. We will be no better off. We have to throw out the baby with the bathwater, the baby in this case being materialism in any form. This baby has grown up to be a monster and you can't incorporate it into anything wholesome. It must be destroyed utterly.

This might seem a shocking thing to say because it goes against everything we have been taught over the last few decades but the reason should be clear. For years we have pretended that a humanistic ideology rooted in materialism was basically good, being centred around fairness, equality, compassion etc, but it just got out of hand occasionally as now with the so-called woke agenda. But this is the inevitable outcome of leftism. It's what happens when God is not at the centre of human life, and the true God not some manufactured version that actually just conforms to leftist this worldly priorities and has no proper spiritual purpose. I repeat, this doesn't mean we should return to the past. We couldn't even if we would. But we have to return to God and Christ and live in the full awareness of God's plan for humanity which is the growth of the soul. That can only happen when the soul turns away from the world. Leftism is completely of this world which should be obvious once you realise that it is rooted in the very human characteristics of envy, resentment, fear and self-hatred, albeit disguised in pretty clothes. If you don't see that you have chosen to live in a lie. Why is that?