It's Time to Wake Up

 Anyone who hasn't seen through the evils of the current time as summed up by the litmus tests is in danger of being complicit in them. You may think this is unfair and that people cannot be blamed for succumbing to relentless one-sided propaganda but we are supposed to be intelligent, conscious adults. We are called to look beyond appearance and to develop aspects of our mind that see reality beneath the surface. These aspects, which can be brought together under the category of spiritual discernment, exist but we will not develop them if we limit our conception of the human being to a materialistic level. To do that in this day and age I will go so far as to call a sin because it is a failure of spiritual responsibility and shows disrespect towards the Creator. We are not innocent. We are not victims. We have a duty to God and part of that duty is to recognise him and to understand his purpose for us. Both of these are important. It's no good acknowledging God but behaving according to the understanding of this world. There are people who think they recognise God and believe in the spiritual but if these people fail to apply that recognition to what goes on at the material level then they lack insight and their spirituality is sterile. They might believe in the spiritual but they don't understand it.

Equally, it's no good acknowledging God but thinking all you have to do is focus on the spiritual and what happens in the material is of no concern to you. The material is the spiritual. It is part of it and must be seen in the light of the spiritual. God favours marriage not divorce and we are meant to bring the material into line with the spiritual not separate the two. It's always from above downwards but God saw his creation and said it was good. He instructed man to work in it and take care of it. Taking care of the material means bringing it closer into line with the spiritual so that it may serve as a vessel for the spiritual in which to manifest. It is through the material that the good, the beautiful and the true can be known and expressed.

God allows evil so that good may come of it. The good may be the awakening to truth in the human heart as it recognises and rejects evil. The evil is not good in itself but it can help to bring out latent good. We should not make the mistake of thinking that evil is part of God's plan but, given the possibility of it arising in a world of freedom, it can be used by God. Nevertheless, to slightly paraphrase Luke 17:1, even though there must be evil in the world, woe to him through whom it comes. There is never any justification for evil.

Most people are lost because they recognise no reality beyond this world and even many who do believe in the spiritual subordinate that belief to worldly considerations when these assert themselves. Which means they don't really believe. If you really believe in the spiritual you must see everything in that light. There is no situation in which the spiritual is not primary. The body must be fed and life must be lived in the world while you are here but even these things are secondary. The spiritual must always be the root reality of your existence, and if you make it so you will be supported. That doesn't mean life will easy but you will be supported. When times like the current times arise and the worldly powers seek to force you in a certain direction all you have to do is the right thing by God. You need not worry about consequences which is not to say that there won't be consequences. There may well be but these are external to your true self. I don't say this lightly but the most important thing is always to remain faithful to God.

The present time can be understood as one in which the attempt is being made to undo creation and return it to chaos. This is why the spiritual and the natural are both under attack. The aim is to unravel reality and reduce it back down to raw matter untouched by the creative breath of spirit. The relentless focus on equality is one aspect of this. True equality can only exist in the uncreated state of complete equilibrium. The greater the activity of spirit, the greater the inequality precisely because spirit is creative and creation differentiates. It disturbs basic oneness which is the state of unexpressed potential in chaos before creation. Oneness in this respect is the same as nothingness. Equality is death. Why? Because the only way it can be reached is by reduction to nothing. We have fallen for the ideology of equality because we think it means fairness. Everyone is the same. No one is better than anyone else. But that is not the spiritual way which always tends towards greater freedom, more individuality. This is certainly within the context of God and the overall oneness behind creation but to use oneness to crush difference is a diabolical ploy aimed at destroying the hierarchy of being and bringing the higher down to the level of the lower. It is intended to desacralise. We lost spirit and we are currently losing the natural as well. Computer technology is one arm of that and the rejection of the fundamental reality of male and female is another.

The bulk of humanity is asleep. Seduced by comfort and entertainment, we allow ourselves to be manipulated by powers that seek complete separation from God. We are losing our freedom because of fear and many seem willing to accept anything merely for a quantitive extension of life. But life is eternal anyway! To paraphrase again, this time Matthew 10:28, we should not fear what can kill the body but what can kill the soul. It is our spiritual immune system that needs boosting now.

Unaffiliated Christianity

I am an unaffiliated Christian belonging to no church though raised in the Church of England and familiar with Catholicism as I had a friend who had been a Benedictine monk whom I often accompanied to Mass. The fact of my not belonging to a particular church might be regarded as a lack of religious commitment or being a spiritual dilettante but I see it as something positive, and I will tell you why.

Official Christianity arose during a time of humanity's spiritual childhood. We needed authority and guidance from without. Some people still do and that is fine but others, while not dismissing the external church, have reached the point at which they must begin to know God for themselves and that means they must turn to inner guidance. They must start to rely on their own spiritual intuition, albeit helped and supported by tradition, scripture and revelation. I certainly do not dismiss any of that. On the contrary, it is absolutely essential but there comes a point at which it is no longer enough.

There is an important difference between salvation where you see through the allurements of the world, the flesh and the devil and accept the reality of God, and theosis in which you actually start to become a son of God meaning of like nature with the Father. In the former, you are still centred in your earthly personality but have turned to the truth of spirit but in the latter you begin to know yourself as an authentic spiritual being, here in this world. It's a question of perspective. The former is outside, the latter has begun to step inside the spiritual world, to become a member of the heavenly host. This has to do with the sanctification of the soul which is what Christianity is all about.

If I am not a member of a church from where do I get my Christian beliefs and practises? Like everyone else I get them from the universal teachings of Christianity, from the New Testament and from the light shed by the saints and mystics, but these are supplemented by an inner awareness of Christ who dwells within all men as "the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world", as the King James translation eloquently has it. For Jesus does not just exist in the Bible and history. He can be a living presence in our own hearts and minds if we will but respond to him as he is, and as we do respond to him in that way we start on a journey to become like him.

Outer Christianity and inner Christianity are not rivals. They are two sides of one whole just like the soul and the body. But it is the soul that takes precedence over the body. If the two are in harmony then all is well but when, as now, outer Christianity has largely lost touch with its inner self then it becomes necessary for those who are serious about the spiritual path to withdraw from what is becoming a pile of ashes from which the fire has practically departed, and turn their attention inwards. I know many will disagree and quote scripture to prove I am wrong but the current uninspiring state of outer religion indicates that it is time to move into a new and higher understanding of life in which we no longer act just passively with regard to our religious engagement but seek to know God directly, without intermediary. This is not just possible but what God wants. Indeed, I would suggest we can tell it's what God wants by the fact that all the mainstream churches have fallen in line with the globalist agenda. They have left God and if we want to know God we must leave them or, if leave is too strong a word, then we must go beyond them as they are in their earthly forms. God himself is pushing us in that direction. Will we respond or not?

Be Like a Tree

This was something the Masters told me during the first year they spoke to me. It sounds profound yet simple but, to be honest, I wasn't entirely sure what they meant at the time. In the context of my life then I understood them to be telling me that I should learn to be unmoved by the vicissitudes of emotion and stay grounded but I suspected there might be more because the Masters' words were often capable of interpretation on several levels. For example, a tree has a strong trunk with green leaves at the tips so it is both solid and delicate, firm and still at the centre but responsive and moving at its edges, a good example for the spiritual aspirant who must be centred in the unmoved Mover but able to respond to those around him. A tree gives (fruit, flowers, wood, oxygen) while seeming to ask little for itself. It stands tall but does not bend. It remains unbowed in the most difficult of circumstances. Its roots go deep down into the soil, the underground even, while its branches extend to the heavens. In fact, it could be said to unite heaven and earth which is just what many mythologies have said it does do as the axis mundi. Then we have the Tree of Life, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the Tree under which the Buddha gained enlightenment, even the Tree on which Christ was crucified. The whole of manifestation is sometimes seen as a tree. It is the most profound of symbols.

But setting aside all that, I would like to consider the tree in a different aspect here, as a pattern for spiritual development. It is this aspect that I believe the Masters were referring to. One can certainly take the injunction in that respect.

So, how does the tree work in this way? To begin with, it is not the Tower of Babel. There are many schools of esoteric and mystical practice, in East and West, that try to reach God by building a tower to heaven. These have evolved a whole host of methods and techniques in the attempt to do this. It could be a form of yoga or mantras or particular meditations or work on the body or an elaborate metaphysical system or even, and most crudely, drugs and sex. These all have their effects on consciousness but they do not bring true spiritual awareness and they do not do so because they are attempts to take heaven by force. In effect, to steal from God. They are man trying to gain the fruits of the spiritual on his own terms rather than God's, and they will all eventually suffer the fate of the Tower of Babel, if not in this life then later.

The path to true spiritual understanding and being is through growing not building. It should be a natural process that comes from within rather than being imposed from without and, in this context, all that comes from the mind is deemed the without because the thinking mind is external to spirit. That does not mean that growth cannot be encouraged. It should be, but it should not be forced for then it will be artificial and therefore false.

Be like a tree means approach the spiritual path in an entirely natural way, always aspiring upwards but letting growth come from within and not trying to induce it by mechanical means. For one thing, this ensures that the motive is right, that it comes from love of God and not egotistic desire that seeks to gain the rewards of spirituality, power, consciousness, whatever, without being worthy of them. There are certain techniques that have been developed that may well bring results of a sort but, as Valentin Tomberg points out in his letter on the Tarot card the Tower of Destruction, those who build a tower in the attempt to gain heaven will eventually find it struck by a thunderbolt. This means that they will sooner or later be brought back down to earth. The results of their seeking the spirit by building rather than growing will not last. The path to God cannot be built by man and, when all is said and done, true spirituality only comes through grace. 

Grace is a concept that is much lacking in a lot of contemporary spirituality because a lot of contemporary spirituality dispenses with God who is the source of grace. But the entrance to Heaven is only gained by means of grace, and grace is only given to those who grow like trees not to those who build towers.

Heat and Light

I don't know the truth behind the current anthropogenic global warming scare. Maybe it's based on some kind of reality, maybe it's partly true but not in the way presented or maybe it's just completely hyped up and 'the science', as it often does now, has followed the funding. What I do know, though, is that it is a spiritual distraction.

Let's be clear about one thing first of all. We should obviously respect the environment or, as it should properly be called, the Creation. We should respect our natural environment, we should respect our intellectual environment and, most of all, we should respect our spiritual environment. But the relentless focus on the physical only points to how little we respect the other environments in which we live and move and have our being, and how much we damage them. Chiefly, we damage the spiritual which we either don't acknowledge at all or else see largely in the light of the priorities of this world. 

I am sure the climate is changing somewhat but isn't that always the case? It's reasonable to think that human activity since the Industrial Revolution might have contributed in some way to this, and I would be the first to decry the pollution industrialisation has caused. We do need to change. That is a basic and obvious fact. But what do we need to change? Our cars and boilers and and diet and habits of over-consumption or something more fundamental? Here I should say that I don't have a car, don't bother with heating until the temperature is truly low and am not much of a consumer of stuff. Also, I haven't eaten meat for years but, quite frankly, none of these things mean much. It is obvious that the idea of climate change is being used to advance another purpose. Amongst other things, it is being used as a secular religion to keep people away from developing a proper relationship with God and attending to their salvation. Concern with it eats up energies that should be turned inwards towards God and causes these energies to dissipate into agitation and self-righteousness to no real effect. Great heat but very little light as you might say, given the subject.

Then it is being used to attack basic freedoms, impose control and eventually reduce human beings to lines of data.  This is what it is really about. Control. Once you realise that you can free yourself of any worries you might have about climate change. Do you think most people really care? Those at the top are using those at the bottom to advance their own ends. Those activists at the bottom are the ones Yeats described as "the worst - full of passionate intensity", convinced of their righteousness but animated by anger and resentment. Many, no doubt, mean well but they are being manipulated.

This does not mean we should treat our world as a resource to be plundered until there is nothing left of it, but the concern with climate change is tinkering with effects. We need to look at causes and the cause of our disconnect with nature is our disconnect with God. Even if, by some miracle, we got the climate to behave just as we would like it to behave (and what exactly is the ideal temperature?) we would be no better off in terms of our interaction with the world. We live in a state of complete alienation and that will not change until we turn back to God and see ourselves as spiritual beings whose fulfilment and duty lies in loving and serving the Creator.

Climate change, real or exaggerated, is a complete red herring. What we should be aware of is the agenda of control it is being used to advance. We should also know that this is a materialistic preoccupation. That is not to say we can use the world greedily or selfishly for that is even more materialistic. The world is the creation of God, that which he looked upon and saw was good. But don't separate it from its Maker. Use it, we were meant to cultivate the wilderness, but use it with love and respect as a good steward. Then things like climate change fade into insignificance. Get your relationship right with God and your relationship with the world will automatically follow on from that.

Anyone who takes this position must be prepared to be assailed by a barrage of statistics proving he is wrong. I would never say one should ignore reliable data but data is open to interpretation and figures can be selected to serve an agenda. But, there is something more. Those on the spiritual path must be guided by intuition. Now, intuition is very good at the big picture but it sometimes falls short on the details.  We don't have to know how and why the climate change agenda is a stalking horse to bring about some other desired end but we can see that is precisely what it is and one of the reasons for that is this. Climate concern is relentlessly pushed as the correct thing to believe for all right-thinking, well-motivated people who have the good of humanity at heart but I have to tell you that nothing that is truly good is promoted by the mainstream nowadays. We are in a spiritual war in which the spiritually harmful is constantly promoted at the expense of the spiritual healthy. It isn't right to defile or exploit our planet. We should reduce our consumption merely as a matter of putting spiritual things first. Our materialism and over-consumption are sins, no doubt about it. But the climate change agenda is just the latest example of deceiving people by leading them into a false good. The precise details behind this operation may be elusive but an obvious effect is the tightening of control and reduction of freedom. We are being coerced into giving up our freedoms on many fronts now.  Just as we have recently accepted restrictions in the name of saving our health so we will shortly be required to accept more restrictions in the name of saving the planet. But what is really behind that?

It's not increasing heat we should be worried about but fading light.

Neutrality Will Soon No Longer be an Option

 The world is dividing up into two camps. Those who are for God and a rightly ordered creation and those who will not accept the reality of these things, who are, in effect, against them because if you are not for them then you are against them. It is a question of two goods or actually a real good and a supposed one, and it is a test of your inner orientation. The supposed good will be pushed hard as the real good and the real good will be depicted as the home of the mad and bad. The process is already well underway, obviously so since 2020 or the turn of the millennium or the 1960s, depending on how alert you are to the changes which are always ratcheted up just one more notch, but actually stretching back many decades, even centuries for those with the longer view.

The great majority of human beings today have no spiritual roots and no spiritual education. This is a condition that has been long prepared for. Most people have now grown up in a secular, materialistic, atheistic world and are consequently ripe for the picking. They have no higher reference points when confronted with the evils of the present day. The saying that we should always put things down to stupidity rather than malice, though it may well be true on many occasions, actually obscures the fact that behind the scenes there really is malice. We don't see it because we don't look properly and that's because we no longer know how to look or even where to look.

Think of the present times as a great test. You have been sent to Earth or asked to come here now because there is a great opportunity. The grain is being sifted with the wheat, having proved itself to be of the right quality, going on to higher worlds. The chaff, according to the Bible, will be burnt in unquenchable fire. I am slightly more optimistic. I think that those who don't make the grade will find themselves in outer circumstances that reflect their inner spiritual state in the post-mortem world but in all God's prisons there is a door to which the prisoner holds the key. This is because the prisons are not actually God's but created by the prisoner himself as an outgrowth of his own consciousness. There is a way out but it will require repentance and change on the part of the prisoner, and, while always possible, this may not be so easy in the next world so it makes sense to get it right in this one.

For a long while because society and the culture has not been actively anti-spiritual it was possible to avoid making a decision about whether to side with truth or let yourself be drawn into darkness and lies. And don't forget that spiritual darkness does not appear dark to the spiritually blind, only to those with sight. But this is no longer possible. Now the culture all over the world is anti-spiritual. Even where there is still some sort of religion it bows down to the worldly powers and conforms to the worldly agenda. You cannot compartmentalise this world and the next and say that this world has its own rights which you must respect. You only respect this world when it recognises and puts itself to the service of the next. Certainly, this world does have its rights but they are always subordinate to the rights and the truth of the next world and must be seen in that light. Ignore that and you have lost the thread and imprisoned yourself on the horizontal by which I mean you have become a citizen of this world rather than the world of God. This world is part of the world of God but only when it acknowledges the hierarchical lineage and sees the vertical connection as primary.

As the demands to bow down to the idols of the modern world continue you will have to make a choice. But first of all you are going to have to wake up and see that these are idols and that they require worship. Nothing really changes in the field of spiritual battle. The form changes but the basic elements remain, and a fundamental element of the spiritual life is that "You shall have no other gods before me." Why? Not because God is jealous but because he is truth. To put worldly idols before him is to have deserted truth. Those idols are not just the false gods of the past, many of which were demons and fallen angels though some were probably what are known as egregores, thought forms given substance by human attention and energy, and others even angelic beings serving God but even these are not due worship in their own right. 

There are modern idols too and one of the most powerful today is science. Especially when it becomes 'the science' but even before that it was still an idol when it was practised for its own sake and seen as a final arbiter of truth. Science as an investigation into the creation pursued almost as a form of worship is a high calling but when it has become severed from that vital connection it risks descending to the satanic. I am not just talking about bombs and instruments of destruction. There is physical destruction but there is spiritual destruction too and modern science stands charged of that crime.

Another powerful modern idol is politics. I will venture to say that all party politics is of the devil and that is certainly so in the modern world. We need governing you will say, and some systems are certainly better than others. True, but all of them replace God with something of this world and in the end that is what matters. If you leave spiritual truth out of the equation then your sums will never add up. Politics is corruption and active involvement in it corrupts the soul. This is more true than ever now when lying has become an essential tool in the politician's kitbag. If you expand the definition of politics to mean those who stand for God and rightly ordered creation versus all the rest then I would moderate my earlier statement but how easy it is to be dragged down to the worldly level and lose your grounding in God if you do actually involve yourself in the political field. Fair better to focus yourself fully on the spiritual. God is calling all who will listen to come to him now, ignoring all other voices which will only lead astray. Hear his voice and follow that to the exclusion of all else. And remember that those who follow God should not expect reward in this world for they are working towards the next and that is where their endeavours will bear fruit. 

Sickness and Health

We should understand life, not just physical but spiritual too, in terms of health and sickness and the latter should be recognised as such and not redefined as just a different, equally valid sort of health. If we do not have that attitude then society will become sick and out of touch with reality. As now.

Rational distaste for something is not irrational fear of it. The feeling of disgust for the unnatural all human beings experience when in a spiritually healthy state should not be stigmatised as prejudice or intolerance but seen as part of a properly operating spiritual immune system. Of course, the old adage of hate the sin, love the sinner means we should always distinguish between the sickness and the person who is sick but loving the sinner does not mean accepting or, worse, celebrating the sin.

We live in an age of spiritual sickness but don't recognise it because we don't know, or won't accept, that there is such thing as spiritual health. If we were true to the inner compass we all have when not turned aside from it by selfish desires, ego, ideology (any ideology), prejudice, wishful thinking and so on we would know it and be spiritually healthy. With plenty still to learn but in a good spiritual state, aligned with both God and nature. Now, however, we are very sick and getting more so by the day. The good news is that the cure is always at hand and only requires that we cease to resist reality. The bad news is that most of us do resist reality.

Ideological Tools of Corruption

 A previous post pointed out the fallacy of the all men are created equal dogma which lies behind much contemporary materialistic ideology. It would be my contention that this has been deliberately used as a means of destroying the traditional values of Western civilisation centred in the reality of God and the truth of creation. I say Western because that is where the attack has been centred but it is a global project that will encompass all traditional forms of belief which will either be assimilated (Westernised Buddhism appears to be particularly easy in this regard and Islam particularly difficult) or destroyed. The fact that they haven't gone for Islam yet shows they don't regard it as a real threat - for now.

Anti-racism, feminism, the same sex agenda all derive from the materialistic attitude to life and are used to bring down real spiritual values which are based on a vertical (qualitative and hierarchical) approach to reality rather than a horizontal (quantitive and egalitarian)*. That's why they are pushed so ferociously. Add to them measures taken to contain climate change and coronavirus and you have the framework of a universal system based on atheistic materialism which is being used to control mankind and to separate human beings from their spiritual source, locking them firmly in this world with no avenue of escape. In this system no true freedom of thought is allowed. Everything and everyone must be brought into the fold, submit to the ideology and conform to the agenda. The only religions tolerated will be those that allow themselves to be spiritually castrated as so much contemporary Christianity does. The System will be universal, global, unquestionable and without exit or escape. It will be the iron prison of group think in which the good is redefined to mean worldly good, the soul rigorously denied and the Creator chased from creation.

Something like anti-racism might seem fair and reasonable to the superficial glance but what is the purpose behind it? Is it just to treat human beings with justice or is it a Trojan horse used to dismantle hierarchical concepts of reality and traditional ideas of the ladder of being that stretches up from earth to heaven, with higher states to which we should aspire and conform our being. Might its real, unstated intention, and certainly its effect, be to unmake reality so it can be remade according to a new agenda that has no room for divine truth? Similarly, why is feminism pushed so hard? Is it to separate human beings from their true spiritual state and remake them according to a materialistic agenda? Once again, that is its effect despite what many of those promoting it might believe. The devil always lures people into his schemes with a false good so that the true good is first overlooked and then destroyed. This he is successfully doing with all the favourite movements of modernity, most of which superficially appear as the righting of past wrongs, and may indeed right some past wrongs,  but have the overall effect of destroying genuine spiritual awareness, an awareness centred in the reality of God and the truths of creation.

This approach to the issues of today should not be reduced to a left/right culture war. That idea is a distraction and a diversion. This is nothing less than a spiritual battle for the soul of humanity. So make sure you pick the right side. Trust your intuition and don't be misled by power and authority in any form. There will be many false goods dangled before your eyes. To go along with these will be presented as the mark of a good person. To reject them, a sinner according to contemporary ideology. But that ideology is based on an erroneous idea of what man is and if you are true to your divine source you should know this. How do you attune yourself to this divine source? God presents himself to us in Nature (the Creation which is not perfect in this world but has enough perfection in it to show its source), in Scripture (which should call forth an intuitive response in the rightly oriented) and in your own heart. None of these are completely perfect but that is as it should be because personal discernment is always required for a self-conscious being that is supposed to grow into a god. But they all contain more than enough to guide us to reality if we will allow it. Learn from this threefold approach to see the truth and free yourself from the lies of the modern world. 

*The horizontal is not denied but subordinated to the vertical which is primary.