The primacy of primary thinking! - To argue and clarify this counter-intuitive yet vital fact of reality was surely the great achievement of Rudolf Steiner.
There is nothing more important than our thinking - so long as that thinking is of the most important kind...
The obvious difficulties are first that almost-everything in our culture and habits tells us that thinking is trivial, is merely an epiphenomenon to the 'real' stuff which is all about action, material things - the perceived and measured world.
And yet... Why is it that 'thought crime' became a phenomenon in the evil totalitarian dictatorships? And why is it that this crime has returned to dominate 21st century life. After all, what is a 'hate crime' (which can get you sacked, mobbed and imprisoned) except a crime of thinking.
Even if you don't believe that your thinking matters in the modern world, even if you believe that thinking is just something that goes on inside your head - the Establishment, the Authorities disagree. They believe that thinking what they regard as the 'wrong' thing is a serious crime, and the legal system (and employment law) has been reshaped to accommodate this.
So - officially - thinking affects reality; and it is assumed that specific kinds of thinking can be inferred or imputed.
But a Christian will recognize that the Establishment/ Authorities/ Officialdom/ Media are evil; and are imposing a system of increasingly inverted values - where lies are truth and truth is 'fake news', where vile ugliness and mutilation is beauty and beauty is oppressive, where purposive evil rewrites morality so that marriage, family and Christianity are presented as breeding grounds for racism and terrorism.
What They say is good is always evil (in implemented practice, if not theoretically), and what they excoriate most systematically and over the long-term is the genuine good.
So, when They create (or reintroduce) the concept of thought crime; they are acknowledging the primacy of spiritual warfare; but taking the side of evil.
Christians, on the other hand, all-too-often ignore or deny that we live in a state of spiritual war - and especially that the side of evil in this war rules the world, including all the major social institutions, including the major Christian churches.
Such are the End Times, and Christians cannot claim we were not warned. Although the prophecies turned-out very differently than expected - they have turned-out exactly as claimed in the sense that almost all the world has taken the side of Satan, including most (almost all) self-identified-Christians!
The inverted-fake-Christians (who follow the ideology of The World) persecute the few remaining real followers of Christ, in the name of Jesus!
But how to fight our side in the spiritual war? Primarily by thinking. By primary thinking.
Most of thinking is passive and shallow and Of The World; either being mere habits of association - drilled by socialization and propaganda, or externally imposed concepts and 'facts'. Small wonder that so many people regard thinking as unimportant and actions as the only 'real' activity.
That is exactly what They want you to believe!
While They regarding Your thinking as of ultimate importance, They want You to regard Your thinking as merely trivial, subjective, internal.
It is a strange aspect of these ultra-materialistic, globally-bureaucratic, corporate-dominated times - that real, primary thinking is probably the single most valuable force for good in the world, now.
Because such thinking is not 'in the head' or cut-off-from reality; but actual participation in the ultimate reality of divine creation and create-ing.
It turns-out to be a good deal more difficult to think properly, primarily, intuitively, from our true (and divine) selves, from the heart (rather than intellect or instinct) - yet that is what we most need to do to fight the hourly and daily spiritual battles in the war of good and evil, now and tomorrow.
5 comments:
This post connects well with your thoughts on prayer ("Prayer works by love: love is that which is aligned-with God's motivation in creation. It is love that 'ensures' our prayer is aligned with the goodness of divine creation.").
There is an important video about mass psychosis circulating right now: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=09maaUaRT4M
This focus on thinking (from what you call our "true self") is key to both how we got here and how we can get out.
Joost Meerloo, author of “Rape of the Mind,” compares the reactions of citizens living in totalitarian states to that of schizophrenics. Both rulers and the ruled are ill. Both live in a delusional fog, as the entire society and its rules are sustained by delusional thinking.
As noted in the video, only deluded people regress to a child-like state of total submissiveness, and only a deluded ruling class will believe they possess the knowledge and wisdom to control society in a top-down manner. And, only a deluded person will believe that a power-hungry elite ruling a mentally regressed society will result in anything but mass suffering and financial ruin.
The NPC meme was born of a study indicating estimates of up to 80 percent of people don't even have an internal dialog. Not even when they read.
@MS - The video is one of the half right but ultimately wrong things - from a secular libertarian source.
The organization is headed by Claire Fox who I used to know somewhat in my pre-Christian days when I published in LM magazine (which developed from Living Marxism) and their later Spiked Online, and I spoke at something she chaired at the Edinburgh Fringe (hazy memory). She is quite well known in the UK and speaks on BBC Radio's The Moral Maze.
Suffice to say she is not spiritual and not a Christian; and any explanation of our predicament that leaves-out these primary causes is going to be misleading.
I quite enjoy this stuff in smallish doses, but my enemy's enemy is not necessarily my friend.
@BC
I agree with this assessment. While everybody is tripping over each other trying to find worldly and global solutions to an other-wordly problem, while simultaneously incorrectly diagnosing the problem, the path forward is actually quite simple and personal.
@MagnusStout
The comments on that video are interesting. Lots of confusion and many of the commenters thinking the video is not about them but rather their supposed adversaries. "No YOU'RE the brainwashed one, not ME!"
I tend to believe the "brainwashed" ones are those that get their sense of reality from information that is delivered to them (eg, mass media, bureaucrats, corporations), rather than personal experience, primary thinking, intuition, discernment and common sense.
Nicely said Bruce. sharing this quote from RS.
"I ought not to expect that my thinking can give me knowledge of the truth, I ought rather solely to expect of my thinking that it shall educate me. It is of the utmost importance that we should develop in us this idea, namely, that our thinking educates us."
The World of the Senses and the World of the Spirit: Lecture II
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