Can Christians be sure of salvation?

Christianity is other worldly, next worldly, in its nature.

But because Christians are resurrected into a Heaven of persons, this life is a necessary and potentially valuable prelude.

As a loose analogy: a doctor must first attend medical school. School is finite and much shorter than medical practice; but (If opportunities are grasped), that which is learned at school may have "permanent" and beneficial effects on the large future beyond.

Thus the benefits of medical school are best grasped when the student knows he is destined for a long professional practice.

Thus we are meant to be confident in our salavation, confident that we resurrect and go to Heaven after this life. Confidence is correct.

But we will go to Heaven only if we make the choice to follow Jesus, just as we will only become a doctor if we learn at medical school.

If we fall into bad habits at medical school, we will cease to want to become a doctor; and will drop out. Likewise, when our mortal life is wrong, we may choose to reject Heaven.

Otherwise, our own salvation is indeed assured.

What was John the Baptist doing when he baptized?

John the Baptist was seeking the Lamb of God, and at the same time building a group of disciples and followers for the Lamb when he was found.

He did this by baptism; which was a 'diagnostic test', a supernatural method for discernment.

When John baptized, he could see the movement of the divine spirit. When he saw the spirit descend and touch upon a person during baptism, this person was accepted as a disciple.

These disciples would then bring other people to John for "testing".

The author of the Fourth Gospel (miscalled "John" - actually Lazarus) was one such disciple, and brought his sister's betrothed husband Jesus to John for testing.

When Jesus was baptised, the divine spirit descended and stayed with Jesus. By this, John knew that Jesus was the Lamb of God; and Jesus became fully divine - such that he could consciously participate in creation and perform miracles.

John, and also Jesus's chosen disciples, continued to recruit followers by discerning-baptism for a while; but John's essential work had been done by finding Jesus and being the agent of his divinization - thus John's ministry waned as Jesus's waxed.


Note: To evaluate the above, you might try reading the earlier chapters of the Fourth Gospel, bearing in mind this "diagnostic"/ discerning explanation of the nature of baptism.

Why people stay in Leftism after the fun stops

Leftism gets individuals, and got our civilization, by being more fun than Christianity. 1966 and 1967 were fun years... Swinging London, the summer of love.

It retrospect it was superficial, pretentious... Sex, drugs rock and roll... It was at root a promise of hedonism, a world of guilt-free pleasure. But it was fun...

But very quickly, by 1968; Leftism took a different turn, towards angry, violent demands for pacifism, feminism, antiracism and the rest of it. Instead of "freedom" there was a growing bureaucracy of Human Rights.

The process, the bait and switch, has continued person by person ever since; liberation, followed by assimilation into The System. The System growing ever stronger, the hedonism dwindling to its recent rock bottom of lockdownsocialdistancing...

Yet, once grabbed by the hedonic promises of Leftism, it is a rare individual who steps away. And no society, no Nation has stepped away... We live in a Leftist world.

Hardly anybody seems to notice that what began as fun has ended in dullness, fear and mutual resentment.

Why? Because the process, at root, is a positive feedback cycle of leaving God, of rejecting God, of living without God - each decision a step further away; each step reinforcing the previous.

Why no learning, no noticing, no negative feedback, no rebellion against the lies and fakery? Because each step is a removal of the heart, the core, the very capacity for judgement and learning.

By now we are less than a civilization, less than Men..and each individual has walked this path, step by step, by many choices.

This dullest, seediest, most mundane of apocalypses/ revolutions

A brief further word on this striking phenomenon from WmJas Tychonievich*.

I had not been prepared for just how stupid the apocalypse would be, how obscene, how inane. 

Nothing so romantic as an Armageddon, no grand Last Battle, no stern Götterdämmerung. No, the earthy expression turns out to have been nearest the truth all along: when the shit hits the fan. 

And how interesting is that?


Note: My impression is that people are 'keeping cheerful' by resolutely Not-thinking; all are hope-less.

...What, after all, is there to hope for? (Materially-speaking - and that, apparently, is everything.)

Fearful of what is happening, and especially of what may happen (with full official-media support) - but nobody is excited.

Resistance is too little, too late; subversion doesn't work, because of the docility, gullibility and empty-headedness of the mass population; counter-revolution ruled-out by the lack of any substantive support.

Because we (as a civilization) are getting just precisely what we ask for: a God-less world in its fullest implications - which means There Is No Alternative to ever-fuller assimilation into the nothingness that is The Borg/ The System/ The Matrix... 

No alternative but death - which to Modern Man is just another kind of Nothing.


*Wm's title echoes the close of TS Eliot's Hollow Men poem - which seems ever more precient:

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with a whimper.

The medical Inkling - Robert "Humphrey" Havard

Over at The Notion Club Papers; I've republished a paper from 2009 in which I give an account of Robert Havard (aka Humphrey, the Red Admiral and UQ = Useless Quack) who was the medical Inkling (and the doctor to both JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis). In it, I examine a paper Havard published in the Journal of Physiology of 1926; comtrasting its style and methods with those prevalent some 80 years later.

Perfect moments in life - their relation to Heaven

It is fairly common for atheists to feel that Heaven solves no problems . One idea is that Heaven is merely a continuation, a perpetuation of life, and not qualitatively different. Hence they assume that Heaven is more-of-the-same; therefore no answer to anything...

Or else, atheists feel that if Heaven is indeed qualitatively different from this mortal life, then such a different state would not so much solve, as obliterate, the problems of this mortal life. For instance, if Heaven is a state of ego-less bliss, then 'I' am no longer my-self; so 'my' problems have been removed only by removing 'me'...

(This idea of Heaven as inhabited by qualitatively-changed "unrecognisable" people is somewhat like 'solving' unhappiness by extreme intoxication, anaesthesia or some kind of destructive brain surgery... Yes we get rid of misery, but only by getting rid of any aware state of being; by reducing each specific individual human to something other, or less.) 


But there is another way of framing this business...

When I was a young man, I did not believe in any life but this mortal one; and I gravitated towards a 'philosophy' whereby life was 'about' perfect moments - (somehow, to be decided - I hoped) expanded to occupy total significance.

I envisaged that I may be able to experience perfect moments such that one would expand to occupy my total consciousness in a timeless kind of way - or else that I might project my-self into this state; and that perhaps death would take me while in such a timeless state.

So, I would sometimes experience a perfect moment, and I would know at that time that I was experiencing perfection. (And it was important that I did recognise and acknowledge these moments.) My intention was that I would live primarily to experience such moments; and my 'real' life was such moments - the rest being just preparation, filler or for bodily sustenance.

Consequently; if I found myself in a perfect moment, I would try to hold and sustain it as long as possible; wring every drop from it. With predictable results.)  


This has been a fairly common strategy for living since the 1800s among non-Christian, and not-supernaturalist, Romantics - for example, Ralph Waldo Emerson articulated such a philosophy, and James Joyce with his 'epiphanies' (I discovered and was much influenced by Joyce at age 19). CS Lewis describes (and analyses) such moments with great clarity in his autobiographical Surprised by Joy as being a focus of his pre-Christian life.

I would now regard this as a genuine but partial truth.

I believe that such perfect epiphanic moments are indeed possible, they are truly important, and they can happen - although they do not always happen. For example, I had many such moments as a late teen up to age about 21; but there were long periods afterwards when I did not have any such (no matter how I tried or wanted - and, of course, trying is a problem!).


So what do I now think about perfect moments?

My understanding is (stated briefly, and partially) that Heaven consists of life lived at the level of these mortal perfect moments. 

What, then, is the difference between epiphanies in mortal life and in Heaven?

The first is that perfect moments have a different purpose. In this mortal life the perfect moments are experiences from-which we are supposed to learn; for example, I have learned from them a foretaste of the many and various joys of Heaven - a vision that, when contemplated, may fill me with hope and clarify my aims.

But for one who believes that this mortal life is everything and death is extinction; the perfect moments are sad - they lead to the emotion which the German Romantics called Sehnsucht - a bittersweet yearning, which invades even the moments themselves (rapidly eroding their perfection).

Sehnsucht derives from our knowledge that the moment is inevitably transient; it will not last; our memory of the moment and our capacity to experience that memory will weaken and extinguish.

So that the perfect moment is gone, even as it is being recognised...


Yet when they are regarded as insights into the Heavenly state, the transience of perfect moments is not a problem but related to their function. Because the ultimate concern of mortal life is not 'cashed-out' in this life but the next; not mortal memory but the permanence of recollection in an immortal resurrected Man.  

(Because immortality is immunity to the entropic processes that are inevitable and intrinsic to mortal life. Immortality is perpetually-self-renewing.) 

Perfect moments, indeed, may give insight into what it is like to be a resurrected immortal living in Heaven.

We can potentially imagine what life would be like if it was lived as one perfect moment after another... Or more exactly, lived such that perfections blend-into a continuous, fluidly-changing state of being; a process of living. 


We can also see (from our experiences in mortal life) that such a Heavenly life would entail a world constituted people who all were committed to living in such a way; people for whom this was the most important way of being; and therefore people necessarily harmonised in means and ends, in methods and purposes, by their mutual love, freely consented.

I learned this need for a loving Heaven; because I recognised that so many people had no interest in perfect moments, did not recognise or value such moments; rejected the situations and attitudes that led to such moments. People who had other ideas of what life is for or about.

I presume such people would not want Heaven, and would not be found there (but some other place or places) - and therefore such people would not in Heaven (as they so often do here on earth) continually operate to prevent, sabotage and subvert perfect moments.


We can and should enjoy perfect moments, because their joyfulness is perhaps the best part of mortal life - but that is not all; that is not the end of the matter.

The joy of perfect moments is not used-up in current pleasure, nor limited by the durability of brain-based memory - because such joy signifies potential knowledge. 

It is up to each-of-us to recognise and live-by that knowledge.

Our global descent into madness - by William Wildblood

Essential reading over at William Wildblood's blog. An excerpt:

We are living in times which are both extraordinary and just plain dull.

Nothing of any real interest is taking place even though recent events have been both dramatic and unprecedented. But none of it really means anything as nothing can mean anything in the absence of God.

Now he has been forgotten for so long that in most people's minds he has become like Odin or Zeus, merely an old tribal god we have long since outgrown. Unfortunately, this simply means that human beings have begun to lose the will to live though they are still afraid of death. Without a spiritual background to life, it becomes merely a sorry succession of moments of seeking pleasure which eventually palls and then all that matters is avoiding pain.

Our science is no longer the search for truth and understanding about the universe but a kind of technocratic support system crippled by ideology. Our art is the product of sterile minds digging into the body of the past and thinking they are making something new from the corpse.

And our religion, what there is of it, amounts to little more than warming up the leftovers of a feast most of which has long since been consumed so the nourishment has gone. As for politics, well that is all of whatever stripe quite obviously moving closer and closer to totalitarianism.

Read the whole thing...

Charles Williams taking abstraction to the max...

Over at The Notion Club Papers; I explain how Charles Williams's rigorous and honest abstracting tendency was helpful in bringing me to an opposite set of assumptions.  

This age of repentance (not faith)

Clearly this is Not an age of faith. It is common to hear someone complain that he lacks faith; and where there is faith is seems too weak to resist the assaults of life. Christians are unable to live in accordance their beliefs, in an age when these are opposed on every side.

Others say they would like to be a Christian, but cannot make themselves believe.

In sum; a gulf has opened between what might be termed conviction and achievement.

I have even heard it said that 'I cannot repent' of sin, of wrongdoing. Or 'I cannot make myself repent', 'I find that don't even want to repent'.  


Does this stuff matter? Yes, of course it matters; it is a diminution of life. But for a Christian none of this matters ultimately.

My point is that repentance is of infinite power and scope. If someone lacks faith, he can repent his lack of faith. If someone cannot live in accordance with his beliefs; this too can be repented.

And if somebody cannot repent, does not want to repent - then this too can be repented. Yes! We really can (and should, of course) repent our lack of repentance - and thus the work is done.

A Man that wants to be a Christian, but cannot make the 'leap of faith' is already a Christian.


A Christian is defined by his ultimate conviction, by what he ultimately wants; not be what he achieves. We are all sinners -what is decisive is whether this is acknowledged; and what this means is that it is our conviction that counts, and not our behaviour.

For example - that primary domain of sin in modernity: sexuality. Sexual morality is defined (for a Christian) by ultimate affirmation - not by what a person actually does. What we actually do may be a product of our specific personality - which substantially innate, inborn, inherited - and our specific social environment.

Nearly everybody can be 'broken'; can be compelled, tricked or seduced into sexual immorality given certain combinations of circumstances, sufficient severity and duration of pressure. Most people can potentially (whether with little or much pressure) be induced into denying morality, supporting immorality - by attitude, word or deed.

And the same applies to other forms of moral behaviour.


Conversely, a person may behave in accordance with approved Christian sexual morality; but only passively, perhaps because he is a plaint personality living in a moral environment. Or because he is too afraid to break some taboo, or afraid of some consequence of prescribed morality. Or because he simply has no opportunity to act immorally.

Yet that same well-behaved person may believe (in his heart, as ultimate conviction) that some or other sexual immorality is actually good - or that the whole business of sexual morality is actually nothing-but convention or social control.

We can see that what matters is ultimate not proximate; will not ability; freedom not influence; conviction not behaviour; spirit not psychology. 


The necessity is that immorality be repented - which entails inwardly affirming the truth of Christian morality.

The power of repentance for a Christian is that it renders us independent of environmental circumstance, it even renders us independent of our inborn and acquired personality.

By repentance; we rise above the proximate uncertainties of psychology, above impulse and instinct, to the ultimate clarity of the heart's desire and conviction.

By repentance; we escape the limitations of our mental and physical weakness and become rooted in the indomitable strength of our hearts.

By repentance; we live from our free agency: which is divine. 


If you desire in your heart to love God, be Christian, and follow Jesus; then all you need do is repent your failures, then you are home and safe.


Note added - clarification: Repentance is a rigorous discipline! Repentance is Now - or not at all. As previously noted: inwardly to say 'I may/ intend-to repent In Future' - is not merely an actual failure of repentance: it is the 'Sin against the Holy Ghost'. In other words, an assertion of intent to repent but not doing it is the worst kind of sin; because it means that we know sin but deny it; we know God but deny Him. This is, to say the least, an important fact; and it depends upon the distinction (above) that repentance is always free and possible now; whereas reform of action/ attitude/ behaviour (etc.) is contingent.
 

The death of Charles Williams and the dwindling of The Inklings - a God's-Eye-View

My alternative history, counter-factual, 'if only' speculations can be seen at The Notion Club Papers blog.

Against bullet-point thinking: our Ahrimanic habits

If we use Ahrimanic as a shorthand term for that kind of bureaucratic, abstract materialism that has grown (over the past couple of hundred years) to dominate The West and The World - and acknowledge that this is an intrinsically evil mode of thinking; then we can begin to see how deeply this has invaded our lives. ...How Ahrimanic habits have become so ingrained that we reach for them even as we try to combat them.

This began with the man who invented this (broad) usage of Ahrimanic: Rudolf Steiner. Having described the terrible consequences to be expected for Man if he continued down the Ahrimanic path; Steiner himself created an Ahrimanic system of spiritual development! - with checklists, methods, training. He made an international, hierarchical bureaucracy to guard and administer his legacy. He preached individualistic Heart Thinking and intuition; but constructed an enormous quasi-factual archive of materialistic information on history and prehistory, the structure of the universe, spiritual techniques, politics and society, education, medicine, agriculture...

The form of the message refuted its content.


The pattern is common, almost universal - especially as the world converges into a single mega-bureaucracy; and clearly most of us find it very difficult to avoid falling into the Ahrimanic trap.

Consider Romantic Christianity. Our first, habitual, response on learning about the fact that it is necessary for each individual person to practise intuitive discernment, to live from his true (divine) self etc - is to ask for a canonical reading list, a course of study, a directory of approved authorities, an organisation to join, a set of bullet points about what to do.

Such advice can only be general - hence the form must work-against the content...

Even on a daily basis; (unless we catch our-selves first) too often we pay primary attention and expend great energy on looking for external guidance and structure - a curriculum to follow; and simply forget to attend to our actually-present intuitions of the heart.


At the bottom line, if we each are individuals (from eternity), and each are experiencing a bespoke (tailored to the individual) mortal life (that God is creating for our benefit, for us to learn-from); then our case is unique, and generic advice can never take us very far, especially not in a positive direction.

(We can reliably be told some generic things Not to do - to avoid; but almost never what we personally ought to be doing, here-and-now.)


I think the Ahrimanic problem arises from our tendency to put-off, to procrastinate, to plan instead of do.

Yet we will never be closer to God than we are Now. The Only time to begin to live from our Heart Thinking is Now. The lessons of mortal life that we need to learn (for our own eternal Good) are all around us - Now.

If this Intuition-Now perspective can perhaps become a counter-habit; maybe we can (starting Now!) begin to roll-back those pervasive Ahrimanic reflexes that have been socially-inculcated, and which work towards our eternal detriment.

Resentment: shun it - Gratitude: nurture it

It sometimes seems as if the primary purpose of the mainstream modern world is (when not inculcating fear) to cultivate resentment.

Resentment is, in my estimation one of the most evil of sins, because of its characteristic to grow - by feeding upon itself, by brooding upon grievances, by finding confirmation wherever it looks, and by stimulating others to behave in a way that apparently justified the resentment. Resenters are seldom popular with those they resent, so resentment tends to lead to grounds-for-resentment...


Well, let's just stop right there! Because in reality there are No grounds-for-resentment - and the idea that there are such grounds is a part of the sin-encouraging atmosphere of many social circumstances. For example, I have often heard it said that (given 'history') it is 'not surprising' or 'understandable' that - say - the Irish resent the English. Thus has soul-rotting resentment been celebrated and encouraged for generations*. 

The fact is that resentment is evil - so there are never Any grounds for it; and we should not speak as if it were a natural response to maltreatment.  Resentment may, like most other sins such as fear or lust, be 'inevitable' as an occurrence; but that does not make it Good. 


This is because the primary harm of resentment is upon the soul of him who resents.

The conviction of 'justified' resentment is a major cause of unrepented sin; exactly because the resenter regards the person who (he believes) has damaged him as being 'to blame' for his own resentment.


We see all around us extreme examples of 'victim groups' who have fallen into a seething, growing, self-excusing and apparently permanent state of sin; because of their continual inflammation-of and brooding-upon their (real or imagined, it makes no difference) persecutions.

And, of course, much of the modern world is long-term dedicated to creating resentment-groups of self-styled victims.

This systematic and deliberate encouragement of sin is actually even worse than exhibiting the sin itself - since encouragement (by propaganda and other forms of persuasion, by financial reward, by manipulating social status through awards and publicity etc) is a more deliberate, chosen, and strategically self-seeking activity than simply falling into the trap of self-justifying resentment.


If one were to add-together all the (billions of?) people in the world who are either self-identified members of a resentment/ victim group; with those whose self-imposed task is to encourage resentment and the perception of victim status (in politics, civil administration, charities and NGOs, corporations, schools and colleges, the arts and academia, the police and military, religions, health services and so on...) - then we come to a very high proportion of the people in the world who are in a chronic state of self-righteous, hence unrepented, sin.

(Selling resentment is big business, nowadays - with many addicted consumers.)

And because it is unrepented sin that leads most people to choose damnation and to reject the gift of Jesus; I think we must conclude that the powers of darkness have been extremely successful in corrupting this world to the point that (apparently) so many will opt for Hell, and despise any Heaven that requires them to drop their resentment.


I would say that, in general, damnation requires moral inversion - that is, the reversal of values: such that evil is seen as Good and vice versa. Mass resentment is a core example of value inversion. As is the fact that modern morality - and to such a high degree - is rooted-in the conviction that the sin of resentment is actually a virtue, and indeed defines virtue. To be a member of a victim group defined by active resentment is currently regarded as an actual moral plus!


The antidote to resentment is gratitude. First gratitude to God for creation and sustaining, and for loving us as a parent. Second gratitude to those who love us... usually people from our family, in the first place - but also true friends, if we have any.

But in general a life dominated by gratitude - properly directed - should be our ideal; repented when we fall short.

Gratitude (once established) also has the property of feeding-upon-itself, and finding grounds for more gratitude. So, while we are all sinners and will all lapse - we can always repent our resentments, and affirm our gratitudes - and that will suffice for Jesus Christ!

Because it is our great good fortune that He does not ask us for perfection in thought, word or deed; but only to acknowledge that which is Good - and that which is evil. And that is our third (and consummating) major cause for gratitude!

*Note: I am 1/4 Irish.

My tendency to reverse causality

It is actually one of the most difficult of insights genuinely to reverse the direction of causality - especially for the first time (ie. doing it for yourself, rather than following in footsteps). But I can see that I have often made what I regard as my most-important 'breakthroughs' by reversing assumptions. For example, reversing the causal arrows of a relationship between entities or phenomena.

For instance, in medical science, maybe my best idea was related to 'depression' (i.e. severe endogenous/ psychotic depression, or melancholia) being a psychological response to immune-activating illnesses. This reverses the usual idea that depressed people have - as a consequence of their psychiatric condition - raised imnune markers, symptoms of malaise, pyrexia, increased rates of autoimmune and cardiovascular diseases etc. (This also meant that effective antidepressants worked by treating these physical causes and symptoms, rather than by treating the 'emotions'; again a reversal of causality.)

Reversing the direction of causality for depression and its treatment may seem simple, and it is simple once formulated; but it took me about fifteen years to sort-out and piece-together.  Once the idea was formulated there was plenty of evidence to support it - but it was having the idea that was so difficult.


I came across a similar thing today in relistening to a lecture by William Arkle. It suddenly struck me with full force that I had taken Arkle's scheme of God's work and reversed the causality, in a way that might well confuse anyone following my frequent links to Arkle's work.

From Arkle I got the invaluable insight that God's purpose is to produce 'divine friends' - to raise his Sons and Daughters to (as near as possible) God's own level and to participate with God in the ongoing work of creation; but for these divine friends each to be a distinct person, an individual - so that each brings something new and original to the work (rather than merely repeating what God already brings to the business). This understanding I still hold-to.

But for Arkle, God's problem is how to make individuals from an original divine unity - from the singleness of one creator God. He suggests that this was achieved by God first dividing himself into male and female, then implanting a little flame of divinity into each person, then making a complex educational world unique for each person (i.e. unique from the specific perspective in which each specific person was 'placed' by God). In this varied reality, each person becomes unique by tackling the challenges and problems differently - thus Men grow-apart and become more and more different. So much for Arkle...

But underpinning my own Christianity is Mormon theology; which has men and women as distinct from the beginning, and each man and women an unique 'being' existing from eternity. (This also applies to God, who consists of two Heavenly Parents, a man and a woman).

From this combination between Mormonism and Arkle; I have developed my own understanding of God's problem which ends-up being almost the opposite of what Arkle said. I believe that God started-out with zillions of unique individuals (at odds with each other), living in a state of chaos - and God is aiming at a state where the 'divine friends' are able and desirous to cooperate harmoniously in the ongoing work of creating.

For me, now, this is the key to the specifically Christian concern with love; since it is by love that unique individuals are able-to choose-to cooperate in harmony (as we can imagine would happen in an ideal family).

It also clarifies the role of Jesus's work, which made it possible for any number of unique Men to choose (by following Jesus to resurrected eternal life in Heaven) to make a permanent commitment to loving creation. Each person is bringing his or her own unique perspective, abilities and motivations to the job - so that divine creation may continually expand in scope while remaining in harmony.

(My favoured analogy for Heaven is with an idealised wholly-loving extended family of immortals; continually being added-to by new and unique people - by descent, marriage, adoption, and true-friendship; but always - because of their mutual love - working together, and cohering in their work; because they each work for each other, as-well-as for themselves.) 

Such a view is simple enough to explain (it didn't take me many words!) yet was probably impossible to formulate explicitly until the 19th century at earliest...

At least there seem to be no pluralist philosophies of this kind, until first Joseph Smith (the Mormon prophet) and later William James (the philosopher and psychologist) saw and embraced the possibility. This idea of metaphysical pluralism is, for me, one of the very greatest US contributions to the history of human development. Because, as far as I know, all previous philosophers/ theologians - since the ancient Greeks - seem to have assumed the primal unity of reality.

So here is another example of reversing causality - and an indication that it is a genuinely difficult thing to do!

Christianity: The old ways have failed

At this time, looking around, we can see a rapid and catastrophic failure of even the most devout Christians.

The mainstream churches are essentially dead - because watching stuff online is just more TV; online groups are just social media. Social-distancing destroys society. Any church that states health is their priority, is no longer a church.


What is worse, extremely few (ex?) Christians acknowledge this catastrophic failure. In reality, what has been revealed about Christianity in the past half-year, by the response to the birdemic, is a really Big Thing in the history of the world: and especially the past 2000 years.

We are living through a transition of comparable significance with any in world history: comparable to the invention of agriculture or the industrial revolution - and happening must faster than either. 


Sudden and very complete collapse has affected the traditionalist and conservative and patriarchal churches, as well as the liberals and sexual-revolutionary radicals. Therefore, it really is no use to be harking back, and to pointing at the old ways.

External sources of tradition are broken; the old ways have failed.


Christians are now mostly isolated or in small groups. 'Fighting' rhetoric is nonsense in this context, because we are massively outnumbered and out-powered, and even the law is against us.

The strength must thus be inner - or it will be absent; the fight is spiritual - or else the outcome will be surrender.

Even merely to stay a Christian is very difficult (and clearly too difficult for most 'devout' churchgoers) - but mere stasis is not an option, growth is needed for survival.

Therefore, each Christian requires new (previous untapped - or hardly used) sources of strength, motivation, conviction. Christians must Think and to Be in unprecedented ways - and ways that are qualitatively different from the mainstream of impulse gratification and totalitarian bureaucracy.

We can't get this secondhand, so every serious Christian needs to be actively working on this - every day. The problem is of absolute urgency - it brooks no delay. Once active and faithful Christians are falling-away daily, hourly.

You may be next; and by that time you won't even care; because if the Holy Ghost has been known and then rejected, the route back is notoriously uncertain.


Unlikely as it sounds, Christians can have absolutely solid faith that it can be done.

We are never left bereft; since God is both our loving father and the creator; so there are innumerable ways we can be (and are being) helped; if only we recognise them, and meet them halfway. Thanks to Jesus Christ: the Holy Ghost is ever present, and bottomless well of guidance and encouragement.

Properly considered, the Christian situation is really not too difficult for anybody, and anybody who wants to be Christian can have it and hold it.

But we will not find help and strength if we keep looking in a place where Christianity has departed, if we keep depending on authorities that have abandoned the faith, and who address the body instead of the soul.

We must look in the proper place: the true and indestructible House of God.

Birdemic versus influenza: selective microscopic attention generates pseudo-evidence supporting the Big Lie underpinning the Global coup

I have commented before, from a scientific perspective, how the application of microscopic attention to scientific observations or theories that you want to reject is a common form of dishonesty; and most modern professional-researchers (self-styled 'scientists') are neither intelligent, nor competent, nor truth-seeking enough to understand this. Indeed, they are deeply-invested-in Not understanding it.


We see the inverse side of this phenomenon in relation to the birdemic (and other phenomena that the media wants us to regard as significant, common, universal - such as 'racism' or 'global warming'...).

This works by putting a microscope onto one thing, but not another; thereby psychologically amplifying one but not the other phenomenon, making it occupy grossly disproportionate attention.


Compare the birdemic with a bad influenza year, such as 2014-15 or 2017-18. A truthful, truth-seeking comparison of the death rates suggests that the birdemic and flu are not-significantly-different in dangerousness.

However; the microscope has been applied to every aspect of the birdemic, but not to flu - and this produces so much distortion that a detailed comparison is (if we are honest) impossible.  

We can only say that we could not be confident that there was any significant difference in overall mortality.

However, nobody with power/ influence is interested in flu.


Nobody puts a microscope onto flu by looking for extra cases, by interviewing flu victims, by funding vast amounts of research into the 'distinctive' clinical features of (say) the 2017 strain of flu, compared with previous years.

Nobody changed the rules to insist that anyone who had previously at some point, or was probably currently suffering, flu; would be classified as having-died-from flu. Nobody prevented post mortems that might confirm a non-flu cause of death.

Nobody sent teams of reporters to the worst hospitals, mismanaging flu by providing Intensive Therapy to doomed 85 year olds with multiple pathologies - who later inevitably died, after blocking the scarce facilities for several weeks, so that potentially curable patients could not use them.

Nobody interviewed every sufferer from flu (which - as well as hospitalising and killing a vulnerable minority; also can feel absolutely horrible; and often debilitates people for several weeks) - nor did anybody list celebrities with flu.


And when the flu deaths stopped and hardly anybody was ill from it, as always happens, when the weather became warmer and sunnier and people go outside more; nobody introduced mass population testing for flu - using an unvalidated and unverifiable test that almost-certainly has (like all known screening tests) an extremely-high (but unknown, because not validated) false-positive rate when used in a non-pathological population.

Nobody then called positive (unvalidated) flu tests 'cases' - and then claimed that this meant the disease was getting worse, despite no more deaths.

Nobody pretended that the inevitable geographical and social variations in flu cases (or indeed deaths), which are known and seen for all infectious respiratory diseases. There are (nearly) always different mortality rates from infections by class, race and correlated with IQ for instance. This doesn't mean anything except that people are different, and different people are not randomly distributed. 

Nobody suggested that flu needed universal +/- compulsory vaccination, nor that universal flu vaccination would be universally effective (which it never is, and cannot be). 


And - most of all - nobody treated influenza outbreaks by the wholly-hypothetical methods of universal (indeed Global) lockdown and social-distancing - forever! Instead, the influenza pandemics were managed by tried and tested methods, methods that had controlled and terminated all previous respiratory viral pandemics.


But then people assumed that the birdemic was different-from all previous respiratory viral pandemics such as flu...

But why did they assume this? Oh yes; because a microscope was applied to the birdemic, from the very beginning (or maybe before it had really begun); which (from the beginning) totally distorted perception and warped judgment, and led to unprecedented chronic, monomaniacal panic...

But why was the microscope applied to the birdemic in the first place - when there was Never anything to suggest it was significantly different from any other bad flu year?

That is the proper question - and the answer is known.


However, if you haven't already seen all this - and don't already know the real reason for the birdemic from your own direct personal experience; then there is no point in my writing any of this; nor of you reading it.

Because you are incapable of learning.

 

Real learning, and the reality of Time

It is an error, a self-deception, to harp-on about Time: to use concepts of Time as an-always-present, simultaneous, reversible, meaningless... Or that Time is No Time, All Time, Arbitrary Time...

I have read a great deal of Christian and New Age writing that uses some non-common-sense version of Time as the core explanatory concept. These are 'explaining' phenomena and spiritual ideas in terms that Time is Not (as it seems) linear and sequential and irreversible - but instead Time is actually something else... Such as every moment always present, Time is an illusion of mortal life, that the future creates the present, that the past can be changed - and so forth.


I know from my own case; that such Time talk may produce a bewildered and disorientated frisson of 'enlightenment', 'insight', spiruality'...  It temporality provides an aura of mystery and magic. But I also know that it goes nowhere. Time talk paralyses life if taken seriously - and if not taken seriously it dissipates and diverts proper effort.

People have been harping about Time in the mainstream for more than a century, and if one examines the results - they are not impressive. The very mode by which people describe their Time ideas tends towards extreme abstraction, the mathematical, bureaucratic; it is dull, life-less.

It Doesn't Work.


Okay - we may agree on what does Not work, and we can stop doing Those Things. Yet that knowledge is of little value unless we know what to do instead: as always it's a case of: If Not - Then What?

Well, we should accept that we live in Time, amd that time is linear, sequential, irreversible - albeit it may run at different speeds for different persons and in different places. And this is especially the case for Christians; because Christianity is about a Saviour born at a particular point in Time, who changes reality from that Time; and whose gift is a resurrection to Heaven that may happen to either or both of us in the future, but has not happened yet.

We need, I suggest, to avoid Time as an abstraction; and also abstraction and sytematisation in general: no schemes, no models, no lists, no bullet points...

For Christians we start with Love; and that means from actually-existing Love. Start from where we are, as particular persons - Not starting from what we 'ought' to love, but from what we do love. And we shouldn't expect, strive for, hope-for permanence in the things of this mortal life; we should not aim at progress in the transient things of our life on this earth.



Mortal life is about Learning, but this is Not the learning of 'psychology', nor the learning sustained by memories - which are transient, brain-dependent, mortal things...

Real learning could be defined as experienced-experience! Learning happens when we really live and notice our experience.

Real learning is when our real-self (which is divine) has an experience.

Our real-self is eternal, and does not depend on our body: this real-self is what lived as spirit before this mortal life, and what gets resurrected after death - if we accept the gift of Jesus Christ. Therefore, anything learned by the real-self is learned forever.


No amount of shallow experience by our false, transient, 'personality' selves amounts to the learning we need...

Backpacking across the Sahara or up Everest is completely worthless unless the real-self experiences something; as should be obvious from the shallow dullness of nearly-all the breed of travellers and explorers; and the spiritual trivialisation that has increased with the range and scope of journeying in the modern world.

The real self never experiences the desert or the mountain - only the transient personalities are affected by it. "I took my fake-self through X and Y extreme and exotic experiences". In the end - who cares? It has no more profound or lasting a significance than watching tonight's 'news' on TV.

One who actually experiences, with his real-self, the act of sitting on a chair and gazing out of the window - has learned something in his life; which very probably cannot be said of another individual who walked on the moon.

Obviously!


But really-experiencing experience is (for most people) difficult, intermittent, brief. There is no obvious way that we can make such things happen: certainly methods and training have proved themselves ineffectual.

Is spiritual 'progress' then even a possibility? And what would such progress mean, in terms of the real-self? - how could we know?

Well, yes progress is possible whenever the real self has experience; and significant progress actually-happens when that experience is one that we personally need.


We are all incarnated into this mortal life with different needs from our earthly lives; and when our real-self has experiences that address those needs, then we have made spiritual progress.

Often, these needed experiences are to-do-with Love; and that is why we should look for such experiences in relation to those we Love. That is our only 'method' the only 'technique'...

In other words; if we want to make spiritual progress - we would be best advised to starts from whatever person or other entities that we now-and-already Love; and Not to start from any kind of external-generic description, prescription, formula, flow-chart... 

And when we die, our real-selves will be that-much-better from those experiences.


This can be understood as our destiny. Our destiny is those experiences that we need from this temporary incarnation, and would benefit-from. And it is a task of our life to experience those experiences in particular... Not just to have the experiences in an external and behaviouristic sense, but for the real-self to experience them. 

Can we know that this has actually happened? Well here I cannot speak for others; but it seems to me that I do know the broad nature of my spiritual progress through life by the Golden Thread of enduring and special memories.

I'm not sure what each of these experiences on the thread means; but I am sure that these experiences happened when real-learning happened.

Like all memories, these are presumably dependent on the temporarily incarnate body; but they seem to have a special quality by which they were marked-out; and which reassure me that 'progress has been made', and that my life has not been in vain.  

Love in this world, and the next

The promise of Jesus Christ was that our eternal life in Heaven will be resurrected, with bodies; and of our-selves. In other words that we will remain the same people we are, but purged of evil by our commitment to God and his creation.

Therefore Heaven is a place of actual incarnated (embodied) persons, the same persons that once lived mortal lives here on earth; and that Heaven is a place of love between these people.

This means that there is potentially a bridge between our mortal lives and our immortal lives; and that bridge is the people we have known and loved during our mortal lives.

Simple Christians have always known this - known it more clearly, and given it far greater prominence in their faith and hopes, than most of the theologians and religious leaders.

What this means in practice is that it is possible for us to continue loving relationships with - for example, our parents, spouses and children, through eternity.

Of course, because love is not and cannot be coerced, this means that there would need to be mutual commitment - but given that, we can look forward to a perpetuation of our deepest loving relationships.

Furthermore, this knowledge itself serves to deepen these relationships in mortal life. Because, instead of regarding all our possible mortal relationships as necessarily ephemeral, and subject to the inevitable entropic changes and death of mortal life - we are instead inspired and fortified by the potential chance and choice that such relationships can be permanent, and capable of continual growth, in Heaven, forever.

Thus faith and knowledge of Heaven acts 'backwards' on our mortal life; to make this mortal life better than it otherwise could have been.

For a Christian; our love here-and-now is not just here-and-now and doomed to decay and annihilation - but may also be there-and-always. 


Note: It was one of the great achievements of Mormon Christianity to clarify and emphasise these Christian facts - which had never received their proper emphasis since the Fourth Gospel, and had become neglected and obscured through the centuries.

The New Normal is living in somebody else's psychotic delusional state

It began with the trans-agenda, when common sense and biology were thrown-out and criminalized to reorganise the world on the basis of a handful of delusional individuals; but was rapidly followed by the whole planet living in demented chaos on the basis of a fake response to a fake birdemic.

Welcome to the New Normal of international totalitarianism - aka The Great Reset - aka 2030 Agenda - aka Hell on Earth; as given-you compliments of the actual demons and possessed zombies of the Global Establishment, with the enthusiastic co-operation of their willing victims: the billions of self-damned souls.

Because when a Big Lie becomes a mandatory daily-'truth', then we are in the realms of both psychosis and sin: the sin enabling the psychosis - the psychosis defending the sin...

 

APICHATID - A Priori It Cannot Happen And Therefore It Didn't

It is inferred motivation that organises our experience. The motivation we impute is what takes individual 'facts' or observations, and makes sense of them.

If we do not conceive an organising motivation, then there is no rhyme or reason to what-happens: our life is intrinsically experienced as chaos - just one damned thing after another.


And 'damned' is appropriate - because this is a hellish way of living: hellish in terms of how it feels, and hellish because it is one of the strategies of hell to try and convince people that there is no shape nor story to their lives.

Without motivation, life is always and everywhere chaos. And when a wrong motivation is imputed; this distorts experience in a way that can seldom be corrected by further experience; because whatever happens is simply fitted-into the pre-existing (wrong) explanatory framework. 

The lesson is that we need to be more careful about choosing our explanatory framework, because it is the explanatory framework which chooses which 'facts' we will believe (not least because the explanatory framework decides what counts as a fact). 


This can be illustrated by the common device of APICHATID - which stands for A Priori It Cannot Happen, And Therefore It Didn't*.

APICHATID is most commonly seen in relation to 'supernatural' phenomena, such as miracles. Most mainstream modern people have the 'a priori' assumption that miracles cannot happen; therefore when asked to evaluate any specific claimed-miracle, the facts are irrelevant; because they will inevitably conclude that it was Not a miracle - but had some other explanation. 'Evidence' has no bearing on this outcome.

We see APICHATID in relation to the 'recent changes' of 2020. Most mainstream modern people have adopted the Official explanatory framework that everything/ anything which happens is due to a deadly plague.

No other explanation of motivation is considered respectable - anything else is either a 'conspiracy theory' and therefore By Definition untrue, and/or supernatural, woo-woo nonsense.

Therefore it does not matter when diametrically opposed claims are made from one week to the next. It does not matter when the Establishment (including media, by whom people get their official info) are caught lying again and again. It does not matter that the official-narrative is incoherent - at both micro- and macro-levels...


If I am, let us suppose, correct that the true motivation behind 'recent events' is really-and-truly supernatural and demonically-evil; then naturally the great mass of people are not going to understand it at even the most basic level of comprehension.

Because I am saying that the truth is recent events make a narrative, a story - and they are strategically aimed at human damnation; whereas for the mass majority this motivation is a case of APACHITID - and for them there is no narrative, story, strategy or meaning to whatever has-happened or will-happen.

Indeed, the concept of APACHITID applies (with modified words) to the here-and-now. On a daiy basis people are in the grip of something like: a priori this cannot be-happening, and therefore it isn't. As they live their lives, experience events, observe phenomena - none of it matters, the Official Account remains true: because this cannot be happening... 

Whatever 'this' is', it is all-and-always just a response to a natural disaster; and all possible (as well as actuall) dishonesty, incoherence, contradiction must-be merely down to individual human incompetence or greed - or the lies of our own eyes, our lives, our memories.

Hence the ultra-weird reverse psychosis of these times. Whereas the normal psychotic believes his own deluded experience and ignores everybody else's; we are living in an era when normal people believe the delusions of 'everybody else' (ie. government and the media), and ignore their own experience.  


The moral is clear: You need to be-damned-sure that your inferred motivations are correct, or you will surely-be-damned.


*APICHATID is slightly-adapted from an idea by Stanley Messenger. 
 

Experiencing the animated world - what, specifically, do we need to Do?

It is one thing to understand that this is a living, purposive and conscious ("animated") world we inhabit; but another and more difficult matter to experience it as such.

At least that has been my experience, and apparently the experience of many others: we find ourselves stuck, thinking in the materialistic fashion that innately imposes the usual alienated life in which everything is experienced as a 'thing' - and we find ourselves unable to relate the our environment.

Of course I have tried to experience the world as alive and conscious - but it seldom works. Indeed, the very act of trying is what seems to block the process. It is as if my willing forms a skin around my-self.

As so often - it seems I had things the wrong way around; I was trying to do the opposite of what was actually required. The clue came from reflecting upon a passage about Heart Thinking in a talk by Stanley Messenger that I have posted before.


I regard it as a primary insight that we need to make a conscious choice in order to move forward to the next and destined development of consciousness.  It won't just happen-to us: we must actively choose to make it happen: meet our destiny half-way...

I also regard it as necessary that we recognise the primacy of intuitive thinking - thinking which is based-upon direct contact between beings (not merely indirect communications, such as language)...

So that, in effect, we think each others thoughts, without perception or mediation; without need for language or any other symbolism.


At one point in that above-linked lecture entitled "Crop Circles: gateways to new worlds"; Stanley M comments that Beings (such as angels, or the so-called dead - or, implicitly, the manyfold Beings that surround us in our environment (sun, moon, stars, wind, mountains, trees, animals...) - cannot talk to us unless we first our-selves produce a language, more exactly a channel of contact, in which we can talk to them.

Now; SM actually meant 'talk', as the mode of contact - and he deployed 'channeled' conversations as his medium. However, I would regard such perceptual and 'hallucinatory' experiences as being pretty-much inaccessible-to, as well as mostly inappropriate-for, modern Men. But if I modified 'talking' to the kind of direct and intuitive knowing that I regard as primary and necessary; I found that my question was partly answered...

It became clear that what was needed was for me - consciously and by choice - to initiate direct intuitive contact with Beings, thereby to dicover from experience that they were alive.

And this was different from what I had been trying to do - which was to be receptive to the 'communications' from things around me. I had been trying to experience the world as I did when a young child - but this time consciously. I had been looking, listening and feeling; when what was actually required was for me to make an active approach...

That is what I tried to do. The problem was that It Never Worked. What never? Well, hardly-ever. 


My conclusion was that this is not sufficient, it was not specific enough, thus it didn't work.

The questions arose: what (from all the infinite environment) should I approach, and how should I make this approach for it to be effective?

One clue is that this must involve 'heart thinking'; a term which means the same as intuition - and thinking with the heart is distinguished from head-thinking/ reason/ logic on the one hand; and gut-thinking/ instinct/ spontaneous impulse on the other hand. In practice, heart thinking is happening when knowledge 'appears' in conscious thinking, knowledge that we know to be from another Being (not our-selves) inserts-itself into our stream-of-thought.

So, that tells me how to know when it has-happened (and it is characteristic of heart thinking that it is retrospective. We know that an intuition has-happened - but do Not know when it is-happening.

A further characteristic of heart-thinking is that it is self-validating; while it is happening, I am sure of it, I don't doubt it. It brings with it that faith which is the natural consequence of trust. And trust is the consequence of love.

So, we begin to see how all the necessary elements are fitting together... Still, the problem remains - how exactly to initiate this process of heart thinking, how to make contact, and with-what to make contact?


(Because there are plenty of ineffective recommendations knocking-around; notably the 'exercises' prescribed by Rudolf Steiner - despite that most of these ideas come (whether directly or indirectly) from Rudolf Steiner. Steiner suggested an essentially arbitrary method, by which some-arbitrary-thing is picked-out (e.g. a plant) and then a mental-concentration form of meditation is practiced; whereby (through practise) thoughts are compelled to remain focused on the object, and to follow certain prescribed themes. I mention this only as an example of something well-meaning that has proven itself solidly-ineffective over the course of a century, during which Anthroposphy has become ever-more Ahrimanic, passive and politicised - and nearly all Anthroposophists (who practice these exercises) have become psychologically-indistinguishable from the mass of mainstream, bureaucratized, totalitarian-minded leftists.)


I got the clue for this next and final step from another comment Stanley Messenger made in the 'crop  circles' talk, from about 1h 22mins before the end; which was (in my slightly edited transcription):

The huge evolutionary step that has been taken over thousands of years in Man's history is that a conscious being now exists in the universe which can arrogate to its own consciousness the freedom to decide what is true - to create universes. 

And this is a perilous and devilish capacity; and is at the same time a capacity that can raise mankind to the level of the gods.

What is the difference between those two possibilities? The difference is whether, in this growth of self-awareness, mankind will come to the realisation that the perceptions of the heart are more fundamental than the perceptions of the brain. The realisation that our capacity to know through the heart reaches a more profound and truth-filled level than can be reached by perception, hypothesis and analysis.

The difference between this new freedom on the one hand to deny and destroy the reality of the cosmos; and the opposite capacity that it can create new universes of its own; depends, in the end, entirely on whether there is love in the heart - or not.

If there is no love in the heart, then this advance to a freedom of knowledge is the most Satanic thing that could possibly have happened to Mankind.


In the first place, this distinction is a stunning clarification of the catastrophes of 2020. We are ruled by those who have-not love in the heart, and the masses have allowed/ chosen that love should leach from their hearts in all world-relations excepting some of the human. Hence we have embarked upon the perilous, demonic, Satanic pathway - which is the terrible consequence of Man's choice to misuse his new freedom to create new universes.

The 'reality' that that is being created - before our eyes - is literally a Satanic hell; in which people's capacity to choose what they believe, is being used to believe the inversion of those true values that derive from God and creation.

We have created, and are developing, a 'universe' where lies are truth, the ugly and disgusting is celebrated as beautiful, evil plans are celebrated as idealistic visions; and where all representations of God, the Good and Creation are being subverted, mocked, destroyed, vilified and punished. Then all this is being locked-in by a global totalitarianism based on fear, resentment and despair. 


But most vitally this 'love in the heart' requirement is the final clue to how to experience our living in an animated world; a world of Beings.  How do we come to know these Beings, how do we begin to have a relationship with these Beings?

Firstly, we focus on those Beings we love.

Only by love can there be heart thinking. So anything and every-thing we love - but nothing else - is suitable for us to address. As well as people alive and around us we may love someone we have never met, perhaps one who has died; or an author, composer or artist from the past. We may love a pet, or other animal. And we may love any environmental 'thing' - a particular plant or tree in our garden, a landscape or hill, the crescent moon or the constellation of Orion.

We may love something 'made' like a house, a church building, a picture, an old car, a much-used tool...


But love is not arbitrary. The point is that we must truly, spontaneously, already love the Being we address.

Love is not an aspiration, but a necessity: an absolute requirement.

Start with what we actually love: that is vital.


Secondly, we ourselves actively, by conscious choice, express our love: and so we open the channel of communication.

A mistake is to try and manipulate, or get-something-from, that which we address. Animistic thinking is magical - but it is not magic. (Magic is an attempt at manipulating reality.)

What is needed is analogous to the difference between telephoning your mother, and making a sales call; the difference between patting a dog, and using a carrier pigeon to send a message; between a real fan-letter expressing gratitude and delight, and asking for an autograph.

Love is - in the proper sense - disinterested.

Being based in Love; we might rightly express such emotions as gratitude, appreciation, respect, admiration, even adoration.


Putting all this together:

If we want to experience the whole of reality as living and conscious - experience the animated universe - be in relation-with the world; then we begin by knowing this is true, selecting that which we actually love; and then opening the channel for direct contact by expressing that love in positive, generous, affirmative and appreciating ways.

After which we may expect to become aware of our heart thinking - so that the responses to our consciously-chosen initiation of contact becomes consciously known by us, as having appeared in our own consciousness.

We will know that we have-been in direct communication; and will intrinsically (at the time it happens) know the validity of this process.

Spiritual Warfare? More like a demonic Anschluss

I got the term Spiritual Warfare (or 'Unseen' warfare) from Russian Orthodoxy, where it refers to the combat between a devout Christian - perhaps a hermit, monk or even a Saint - and the powers of darkness that will attempt to subvert and corrupt him to the side of evil - for example by demons pretending to be angels, or by flattering him into spiritual pride (prelest).

Indeed, the world (i.e. of Holy Russia) was seen as the battleground of such forces.

But while we are in a kind of war at present; it is striking that the fighting (I mean spiritual struggle) is almost-wholly on one side: that is the side of evil.


Evil is escalating the spiritual war; and 'Good'? What is 'Good' doing?

Well, 'Good' is not so much losing the fight, nor even failing to fight - as lining the streets cheering and waving flags to celebrate the invasion of Satan and his demons to become (or become explicitly and openly) the new ruling class of each nation, of the world.


So we don't have a warfare, we have something like the Anschluss when there was an invasion and takeover of Austria by Germany in 1938; and also - at the same time -  the Austrians wanted the Germans to invade and take-over.

Apart from a small and weak minority; it was all on one-side.

In other words; in this fight there is evil... but there is no Good.


And that is what I perceive around me, what I gather has happened around the world: evil has invaded and taken-over; and everybody (except a small and weak minority) has welcomed them.

The spiritual warfare, the battles between Good and evil - are not in the public arena, not on the town squares and major streets; but in the hearts of a few (invisibly few) individual men and women.


After all, that is where such battles always have been fought - primarily, truly and ultimately. It's just we were used-to seeing some kind of social, institutional, representation of the side of God/ of Good. And that is now absent.

In this current Anschluss, we see only celebration enacted in public; the spiritual battleground, the resistance, is invisible.

The fighting is mostly unobserved - un-seen, and its outcome unknowable; except when we can see for ourselves (and this is not difficult) the defeat of Good, the active embrace of evil. 

Time ran-out around 2000AD

It seems to me that up until around the millenium it was possible for there to be a fairly gentle transition to where we ought (spiritually) - to be; if only enough people repented; but from about 2000, there has been no way of avoiding the (looming) catastrophe.

(This is how things go - every time necessary change is delayed, the cost rises; until eventually there is no-way-out.)

In other words, I have, somewhat reluctantly, concluded in retrospect that those people were correct who said that (approx) 2000 was a spiritual watershed period - representing an unavoidable transition to something qualitatively different.


Of course, too many New Agey people assumed 2000 (or, alternatively, 2012) would be a transition to something transcendentally better that would Just Happen - without any special effort...

Indeed, spiritual enhancement would be something 'done to us' (for our good) - and done to to everybody.

To be accomplished (they would say) by some kind of cosmic shift in 'energies' or 'frequencies'...


Well, 2000 was indeed a transitional time - but it turned-out that the transition to something better entailed that individual persons would know what to do, and consciously make a personal effort to do it.

It turned-out that people would not be improved by external intervention and en masse, but only one by one, and only if they met the transformative influences 'halfway'.

It turned-out that the path to a better world was active not passive; conscious not automatic, individual and not at the planetary level.


I don't think that anything 'cosmic' happened-to-the-world around 2000; instead it was about that time that many or most Men had changed qualitatively to becoming creatures that were Not naturally and spontaneously religious (as amost everybody had been in the past).

The millenium was therefore the first time that people could genuinely choose to become Christian; but also the time when Men must choose to become Christian.

And also it was the time when the evil trends of modernity - atheism, leftism, bureaucracy - had reached a point of no return - began to move rapidly towards that Global Totalitarianism, embracing all major institutions, which become explicit and locked-in earlier this year.


2020 is where 2000 was going, unless we had repented. The milennium was when time ran-out: and the future became an inevitable catastrophe.

Inevitable catastrophe... but what kind? 

The innate trend is towards mass dyscatastrophe (the bad sort) - and only by conscious, effort can specific individuals take a path to eucatastrophe (the good kind).

And also - as a strong generalization; eucatastrophe will only be possible after, but not during, this mortal life. It is now too late, time has run-out, for the good kind of catastrophe here on earth.  
 

Social-distancing is a reification of spiritual reality

As I was musing this morning, it struck me (but not for the first time) how all actual societal honours (prizes, awards, recognition) are now corrupted...

How it is a simple fact that those institutions which award honours - whether the monarch, government, NGO or supranational agency; in science, literature, arts, academia, medicine, churches or the socio-political realms - such as law and administration... all are corrupted beyond the point of having embraced net pursuit of evil.

Given this situation; I could not imagine any honour, from any organisation, that would be worth anything now. Quite the contrary! To receive an 'honour' from any actual modern institution is to be marked and tainted, since one has been 'recognised' as an exemplar of the values of an essentially-evil group-entity.


Honours - which are 'supposed' to encourage and enforce both societal cohesion and social teleology; are instead systematically-deployed to dissolve all Godly, natural, spontaneous and social bonds; to set each against all; to delete overall purpose, hence destroy genuine motivation.


The effect of this is an extreme form of abstract 'socially-distancing'. In our inverted world, to be 'honoured' is to be 'marked as his own' by a representative of Satan.

Simultaneously - the best are ignored, if not actively hurt.  And thus the organising status structure of human association has been destroyed, and reconstituted against-itself.

It seems as if the world in 2020 is a reification, a materialist model, of Ahrimanic spiritual reality. Our public, bureaucratic, media-mediated world of dead-data explicitly represents its own demonic ideals. Our tokens of esteem have become injections of poison. 


Hidden in plain sight... Hidden, to those on the inside of this ideology.

Incoherent chaos to those whose understanding is superficial and mechanistic.

Obvious to those who recognise the malign guiding intelligence, and its goals.


2020 is spiritual war, not an arena of political in-fighting; the true proximate measure of success is Goodness, not happiness; the true ultimate stakes are damnation, not death.

What are Their plans for Us?

I suppose Their eventual plan is for a massive population reduction - down to about 1 billion (that's what some of Them have said, anyway).

So I guess the intermediate stage will be a world of almost pure materialism and denial of the spirit; in which 'non-essential' workers are pretty much on permanent house-arrest and curfew (like a couple of months ago); living off diminishing doles provided by the 'essential' workers - who are paid less, work more, and are told exactly what work to do.

And then, incrementally, being killed-off by whatever combination of starvation, disease, poison and violence best suits each location and society.

But then, this isn't an end-point either, because these are demonic powers - and They have no End Point except self-chosen-damnation.

The ongoing situation is being engineered to prevent awakening among both the doomed masses and the Establishment and their minions who are dooming them.

The Establishment need to believe that they are doing-'Good' (i.e. to believe that evil is Good) - and that is why the social goals cannot be approached directly and explicitly. The 'cover stories' (Climate Change, Antiracism, Birdemic etc) are aiming at the Establishment self-conception, mainly.

These are among the Big Lies that enable Them to convince Themselves that they are fighting for Good.

When only the Establishment and Their minions remain - they will be set against each other - pursuing different evil priorities (sexual revolution versus antiracism, socialism versus feminism, fighting Climate Change versus fighting the Birdemic etc). That is, a war of rival versions of inverted-Good.

The Godless masses seem able to damn themselves whatever happens, and for whatever reason - whatever implausible and incoherent, temporary fig leaf of justification is casually tossed in their direction.

The one thing the masses seem sure about through everything - is that God is not real. Or, if God is real; God is not important. Therefore, the Only thing which Really matters is that their own short-term suffering should be minimal.

So long as the masses can imagine being forced into a worse situation than they currently inhabit, they will strive to avoid that worse situation At Any Price.

Hell is a world of negatives - there is no positive Good, only the double negative of lesser suffering.

Taken from my comment at Francis Berger's Blog.

Hope for this world? And/or the next?

As Christians, we hope for the next world - for life beyond the portal of death. It is this hope that prevents despair; and this hope is the natural (unforced) consequence of trust in Jesus Christ; which is trust that he can and will lead us to resurrection into Heaven; also trust in God (the creator) who will ensure that we are able to do this, if we choose.

But what of hope in this world and for this-world (the temporary world of our mortal life)? Well, such this-worldly hope is not necessary. I see no reason why a Christian must live in hope of betterment of this-world.

The main thing that can be said in favour of hope in this-world is that we never truly know all the relevant information, nor how other people will choose; thus we never know for sure that the worst will happen. This is the best argument for never-giving-up.

We may calculate that there is zero hope; but our calculations may be defective and will certainly be based upon incomplete - hence distorted - information; plus at least some of the information in our calculation will be false - lies or misunderstandings.

However, there is nothing wrong with a Christian having no realistic hope in this-world - so long as it does not lead to despair and giving-up. A Christian might perfectly well write-off this world, and work for the next.

But a hope-less Christian would also need to recognise that - in the meanwhile - there is a reason for his being alive, here and now, in the situation he actually is-in; and that therefore there is something important that he ought to be doing - some lesson that he yet needs to learn.

The point I wish to make here is that I think it is probably a waste of time for Christians desparately to try and generate some grounds for hope in this world - but I would observe that many Christians (including myself) are prone to do this. I mean, we tend to use the wriggle-room of uncertainty about the future to insert some grossly improbable scenarios about what might happen - like tens of millions of people suddenly becoming Christian (at the last minute).

Of course it might really happen, such is not precluded --- but really it is futile to waste our time on such scenarios - and certainly we should not Pin Our Hopes upon them - or else despair is even more likely.

I think it would be better to say something like: I see no realistic hope for the world from our present situation and on current trends; but I might be wrong... And leave it at that.

If we try to define one or several of the most probable directions of the (highly improbable) saving of this world, and if then we then put most of our (finite) resources of time and work into accomplishing this remote hope - then we are probably misdirecting our efforts.

When the future of this world is evaluated as hope-less, this means it is unworthy of any specific hope; and it is wrong to push for (almost-certainly) futile hopes - when there are so many other things that need to be done, that we personally can do, and which have much better hopes of yielding fruit.

Our proper task is most likely to be something specific and close-to-home, and directed at preparation for Heaven, which has reasonable hope of yielding fruit --- rather than some-thing directed at saving a world/ civilization/ nation etc. that (our honest evaluation tells us) does not want to be saved and very-probably is not salvageable.

Motivation misdirection (more on why we are such cowards)

A major reason why modern people are such cowards (compared with all previous generations) is that they lack strong motivation - this is ultimately because they lack religion; and proximately because the actual primary motivations that modern people do have are feak and weeble.

We are officially supposed to be motivated by artifical, false, incoherent, changeable, and distant concerns. That is what is permitted and encouraged; and any other concerns we might have that are personal, based on experience and common sense - are demonised and (increasingly) punished.

Modern motivations are feak and weeble because they are misdirected: deliberately. What I mean by this is that our precise, primary natural and spontaneous motivations; are culturally-misdirected into vague, secondhand abstractions.

Take for example the three things that are this week supposed to motivate the people of the world: 1. the birdemic, 2. antiracism and 3. CO2-related global/ climate/ warming/ change...

1. Pretty-much everything we know about the threat of global pandemic is abstract, statistical and via the mass media; concerning people we don't know, don't care about - and maybe don't exist. We are supposed to be concerned not by the actual risks to our health but acting to keep 'other people' safe. And this is not something that lasts a few days or weeks, but the New Normal. In essence, we are supposed to be motivated in our moment-to-moment actions, now and forever, by our desire to contribute to better data summaries, and the blanket approval of the media/ government.

2. Antiracism. Everybody is supposed to care passionately about some incident that is supposed to have happened in the USA. We know nothing about this except what comes via the mass media; and we have been told what this is supposed to mean, and what we are supposed to do about it. In sum, the supposedly major ethical principle of our lives is that unknown strangers in foreign countries who are (apparently in as many ways as possible) defined as qualitatively different from ourselves (yet, somehow, simultaneously identical...); must matter more to each of us than people who we know and love - our relations, friends and neighbours. 

3. The 'environmentalism' of change/ warming/ climate/ global/ carbon... Again personal knowledge and experience counts for nothing. We are instead told to care only about the average concentration of a chemical, assertions about what is has happened thousands of miles away and hundreds of years ago. We must believe the truth and accuracy of statements linking remote causes with distant effects, mathematical theories about the future, socio-economic hypotheses about what 'must' be done - and we are expected to feel all this as an overwhelmingly urgent imperative.

In sum, we are cowards because we cannot genuinely and strongly and personally be motivated by unnatural, artificial abstractions; and these unnatural, artificial abstractions are the only ones officially allowed us.

Thus abstraction doth make cowards of us all...

How is it possible to discuss metaphysical assumptions?

One reason for the near-universal uninterest-in/ hostility-towards metaphysics (i.e. the philosophy of our primary assumptions about reality) is that people assume that there is nothing to say about them.

Person 1 claims to assume ABC, while Person 2 asserts BCD, while 3 asserts E and F... and where can we go from there? Each person argues from somewhat, or totally, different premises - and no real discussion seems possible; merely each party asserting his own (possibly unique) point of view...


In practice, however, there is work to be done before any such negative conclusion is possible.

Firstly, most people deny they have any (un-proven/ un-proveable/ un-evidenced/ not-derived-from-logic) primary and foundational assumptions - they would need to come to a point where they acknowledged that they did simply-assume some things as valid (even though unaware of them).

Others might claim assumptions, but closer examination reveals that their self-knowledge was in error: either their true assumptions are significantly/ altogether different than supposed; or else the people have not sufficiently and correctly articulated their own assumptions - and when these assumptions are better stated, perhaps they will no longer be accepted as valid?

One way in which such errors come to light is by identifying assumptions and following them to their implications - to make sure we endorse the implications. Another 'check' is that all the assumptions are compatible, and do not contradict or clash.


So, there is usually a fair bit of work to be done before engagement.

Perfect coherence is not necessary; because all linguistic or mathematical statements of assumptions are secondary and indirect 'models' of reality; simplified hence ultimately wrong; being necessarily selective and biased models of the fullness of reality. 

Once assumptions are acknowledged and indentified and found to be sufficiently coherent; then their origins can be looked-into. From whence did these assumptions arise, and what kinds of check have been applied to them?

Are they perhaps spontaneous and intuitive, or were they arrived at from external experts, or from logical analysis; or are they scientific hypotheses - and if so, what is the foundation of the validity of testing them?

What is regareed (assumed to be) the best origin for assumptons - and why? 


When one has oneself done metaphysical work, one becomes able to identify others who have done (or are doing) this. Even when/ if that other person settles upon different assumptions, or reaches different conclusions from them; then it is often interesting and helpful to see how they proceed.

I personally am well-disposed towards any well-motivated writer who is making an honest and sustained metaphysical effort - and will usually feel I am learning something worth learning.

In a world where unconscious, unexamined, denied and incoherent metaphysics is not just the norm - but increasingly mandatory and the necessary rationalisation for strategic evil - I feel among friends when I read any real metaphysics, from anyone.

Why it's best to be English

I take it that being English is the best thing to be - since the mass media regard it as so shameful. The rule in mainstream culture is Anything But English - much as spirituality is Anything But Christianity.

If I was a celebrity; I would call myself Irish - and would years ago have obtained an Irish passport on the basis of my Granny's birthplace; just as I would say I was spiritual but not religious, with a particular interest in Zen - or, even better, Sufism. I would play-up all non-English (exotic, victim-status) aspects in my history as happens in almost every celebrity biography on Wikipedia.


(Exaggerating, inventing and lying-about one's origins and ancestry to claim victim-status is regarded as acceptable; since it displays agreement with the prevalent moral framework, and accepts the validity of our dominant paradigm.)


Since the mass media are puppets of Satan (to put matters succinctly); this hostility tends to suggest that if you are - like me - an English Christian; this might just be the best possible thing to be - simply because the worst kind of people regard you as their prime enemy.

I know this isn't conclusive; because even the most evil people have some good in them; and it might be that there is indeed something especially evil about the English - but on the whole, I take the prevalent anti-Englishness on the part of the most loathsome of persons and institutions as a big compliment!


But why should it be that there is enforced a perpetual Open Season on the English by people who are themselves deeply subservient to the agenda of evil? My understanding is related to what I call Romantic Christianity - and that there was some divinely-required work of this kind that the English were supposed to do, from around 1800-ish...

This Did Not Happen; and instead the English abandoned Christianity and the spiritual; invented such (over the long-term) blights of leftism as radical atheism, the sexual revolution, abolition, pacifism, feminism and socialism; to make modern England among the worst examples of anti-Christian, morally-inverted, soul-crushing, bureaucratic, nihilistic, materialist and despairing nations.


But, apparently, something about the English is still feared by the powers of evil; as was evident after the pro-Brexit vote: there followed a shock wave of (almost incoherent) terror through the Global Establishment, apparently because they feared that the English might awaken to their destiny...

Well, it did not happen, and now shows no sign of happening. To all appearances, the current English are abject in their embrace of the new Globalist, self-loathing, before-'other'-abasing totalitarianism.

But the Establishment remain uneasy, and intend to ensure that the English are pressed-down; and stay on the ground, sprawling and grovelling...


For such reasons, I think it is still - despite everything - best to be English (assuming you are English); and I shall not be trying to pass myself off as anything else.

Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1886)

Just a brief note to endorse what generations of readers already know: Little Lord Fauntleroy is a superb children's novel!

Having found the same to be true of Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden - I moved on to tackle FHB's earlier, and most famous, story - but I must admit that I had to force myself. I needed to take Fauntleroy on trust - because I could not really believe that it would be much good, nor that I personally would like it...

My mind was too full of images of nauseating, cloying, simpering boys with long blond hair in velvet suits with lace collars (some depictions of LLF even cast a pretty girl in the lead role). But eventually I got myself to tackle it - and was quickly swept away by enjoyment and appreciation.

The USP (Unique Selling Point) of Fauntleroy is that he is close to being a perfect child - beautiful, tough, clever, kind, stoical, generous, athletic, brave - and everybody loves him (including other children)...

Now, saying this is one thing, but to make such a good child firstly convincing, then interesting (let alone likeable to the reader - since we are usually most inclined to resent perfection), is quite an ask: a tall order. Many have tried, and failed... But FHB does it!

The way she achieves this, is to structure the book as (mostly) a series of interactions between Fauntleroy and a sequence of contrasting people, in a variety of situations: his mother, the local grocer, a shoe-shine boy, other kids playing a game, a lawyer, sailors on board ship, the Earl his grandfather, a 'society' debutante beauty surrounded by her admirers etc.

Thus she does not just tell, but shows us the effect that a truly good child could have on the people he met. These dyadic interactions also lead to much humour of the 'talking at cross-purposes' kind - generally because Fauntleroy is immediately liked by people, and naturally assumes the best of them; so they do not want to disillusion him or let him down. Most end-up becoming better people themselves in response to F.

So, in multiple ways - small and larger - we find Fauntleroy making the world a better place, and in a way that is very believable - given the premise that he is indeed, the kind of 'perfect' child that he is depicted.  

Altogether, Little Lord Fauntleroy is an unique, original, enjoyable and extremely effective novel; of the first rank in its genre. So, don't be put-off!