Spiritual contact: then and now (from willed control and external authority, to soul and love)

Spiritual contact in the past - for example the forms of monasticism, or the various formal magical systems - desired to re-establish contact with spirits (and perhaps the divine). But nearly-always the practices recognized the pitfalls and dangers of adults reverting to fully immersive and spontaneous Original Participation. 

Indeed, if fully established, OP would be a form of psychosis.  

Yet until the modern era, during which adults increasingly became alienated from the spiritual (and the divine); Original Participation remained intermittently strong. Therefore, the dangers were pretty effectively averted by a combination of training conscious will-power, under control by a structured external system of authority. 

For instance; spiritual exercises (e.g. of St Ignatius of Loyola, but other monastic traditions can often be interpreted analogously) developed willed-control and direction of the imagination; and also the process was undertaken in obedience to an explicit and structured hierarchy of external authority.   

But as Original Participation weakened over the generations, the imposition of control and authority largely extinguished and replaced spiritual contact - leaving merely everyday conscientiousness and obedience operating in a mundane bureaucracy.  

Now that OP has all-but disappeared for most people, most of the time (except in dreaming sleep, intoxication, mental illness etc - i.e. impaired consciousness); those who desire to establish and experience spiritual contact need to develop new practices that are both effective, and also tend to avoid the pitfalls resulting from spiritual passivity and open-receptiveness. 

Instead of developing a focused and conscious will-power to direct spiritual practice from the level of mundane personality; the aim could be to locate and work-from the real-self: the immortal and eternal soul which is in contact with the world of spirit. 

And instead of external authority structures; spiritual processes need to come from within love; on a Christian understanding of love as personal affiliation and commitment deriving from the choice of harmony with divine creation. 

(And not abstract/ universal/ generic/ willed love, nor the mere emotion of love; but from a soul-level endorsement and priority of actually-existing inter-personal, and inter-"Being", love.) 

NOTE ADDED: To be more explicit than in the post; the "safety" features of the above recommendation, are mainly related to its being a personal practice; done by each for himself; and with each person accepting responsibility for the practice and its consequences. Therefore, if a person is self-deceiving about the reality and nature of spiritual contacts; then he deludes himself, and probably harms himself: and it is his own fault. This is the incentive for him to get it right, and to identify and correct his errors over time. In the conditions of our actual life, I don't think we can do better than that. 

Synchronicity and "signs-following"

In reading Gareth Knight; I came across the concept of "signs-following" (S-F); which he used to describe the confirming effect of synchronicities that may follow after a significant life-experience, insight, or decision.  

As an example of signs-following; a new life-project might be decided upon, and this is followed by a series of synchronicities in our subsequent life, that (apparently) conform the validity of the new plan. 

Perhaps a phone call from a thematically-linked person out of the blue, a highly relevant book is found in an unexpected place - or falls from a shelf, a job-opportunity opens in exactly the right place... that kind of thing. 

It strikes me that this is a formal conceptualization of a common - perhaps unconscious - way that many people have of checking that they are on the right lines, have make the correct choice. 

Certainly; in my own life, important and correct decisions have always been confirmed by "signs-following". 

And this is, indeed, pretty much how I would expect divine providence to make itself known; and S-F is therefore potentially a very important matter! 

However, it would be a mistake to make a formal, explicit dogma of this way of checking; since if S-F is made into a system then it can be manipulated. 

In the first place, we may fool ourselves; by interpreting genuine coincidence as purposive, or my misinterpreting a negative sign - a warning - as if it was positive confirmation. 

And secondly the natural tendency can be exploited by external and malign powers; especially nowadays when launching a major Litmus Test strategy. 

It can be seen that top-down totalitarian strategies simulate "signs-following" - for example in the 2020 Birdemic scam, where the initial statements were followed by apparently confirmatory events of the dangers - which were either cherry-picked, semi-staged, or misinterpreted; and the pre-selected conclusions were mega-amplified by officialdom and media. 

Similarly, the "AI Revolution" almost exactly four years ago; was a top-down launched and sequenced strategy; whereby it seemed as if one after another "breakthrough" just happened to come along on cue - to confirm the impression of a qualitative advance in civilizationally-valuable technological functional capability. 

At an inter-personal level; planned sexual seduction often tries one-sidedly to exploit the innate human tendency to regard S-F as evidence of a special relationship. 

My conclusion is that signs-following are, on the one side, an essential aspect of a Romantic Christian life; and, on the other side, there must be discernment concerning the possibility of self-deception and external manipulation. 

 

How to be more creative

If creativity is understood as I described recently; then we can see why it is that in practice creativity is so rare, and also why the usual notion of "creativity" is almost the opposite of reality. 

Creativity is only natural and spontaneous if and when a person is motivated by his "soul" - his ultimate and eternal inner self. Furthermore, the soul must be motivated from love of God, and to participate in divine creation. 

But that is very seldom what motivates people. 

Instead, people are motivated by this-worldly expediency; by the desire for money, status, security, sex and all the rest of it. Now of course there must be some such motivation, or else we would not even survive, and would soon become dysfunctional. 

Nonetheless, to orientate towards, be-motivated-by, live-in-terms-of, this-worldly expediency is Not creative. 

 

Real, ultimate creativity comes from the soul and is orientated towards divine creation; creativity does not come from the personality, and creativity is not orientated towards our situation in this mortal world. 

It is not creative when our "personality" is in charge - especially when we are trying to manufacture and shape our personality to enhance our this-worldly success; e.g. when we are trying to behave as other-people (or we ourselves!) expect "a creative person" (e.g. a poet, musician, scientist etc.) to behave. 

It is not creative when our thinking, speaking and, actions are orientated towards trying to get the external world to acknowledge us as "creative" - nor when we are trying to achieve status, money, sex (or whatever) as a consequence of our publicly-acknowledged "creativity" (e.g. to be a "recognized", or "successful" poet, musician, scientist - or whatever). 

In the end; such is the pressure of this-worldly expediency that it seems is if - although every person, indeed every Being, is innately creative - extremely-few people actually are-creative at any time. 

And those who sometimes are genuinely being-creative, find it impossible to sustain for very long. 

This is because of the unrelenting pressure to survive in this mortal life, as well as the temptation to succeed. By "succeed" I mean optimizing our benefits in this-worldly terms; aiming to reap the many and various potential benefits of impressing or manipulating other people, or The System.

Indeed, it is not merely incapacity and other-priorities that suppress creativity; genuine creativity is actively suppressed by in-themselves by people-themselves; and it is also actively suppressed by some-people in other-people.

This active suppression of creativity can happen (or be justified) by "practicality" backed by a moralizing zeal that we, and others, ought to be this-worldly; that people ought to work for their own survival and success, ought to help themselves, their families, their employers, the country etc. 

Such considerations of our Duty are necessary and valid requirements for our survival and thriving in the mortal life and world... 

And yet; if these considerations of Duty are made everything, and all the time and receive all our best efforts; then we shall never be truly creative, and shall fail even to try to fulfil our God-given positive reason for experiencing this mortal life on earth.  

The spiritual-magic of the rulers: narrowing, hardening, and concentration of the will

One of the themes that goes back to the start of this blog is that demotivation is a profound problem in modern Western civilization; and that this relates to our alienation - our lack of participation in the world outside of our-selves. 

To this could be allied a feeling of lacking energy, which is partly a consequence of lacking strong motivation. 

However, the methods by which a depleted and demotivated person can attain greater vitality and purpose have their hazards - because most of these either increase our dependence on external sources, rendering us open to manipulation; and/or they have a tendency to narrow and harden the whole person. 

This trned has been culturally observable for many centuries or millennia, if one is open to the possibility; the conquering Roman and Normans discovered strong energy and purpose via a culture based on architecture and legalism. 

But there were significant human costs, or rather de-humanizing, anti-spiritual costs; whereby religion became more concentrated and single-pointed - more like a magic system of achieving willed objectives, and thereby became more alienating and isolating from relationships with God, the world of spirit, and indeed relationships with other people at a profound level. 

This is seen nowadays in the prevalent Careerism of the ruling classes, combined with intrinsically-invasive bureaucracy - and their consequent extreme hardness, narrowness, materialism, greed; and a dependence on external direction that is both habitual and ideological.

My point is that there are short-medium term and effective methods of achieving purpose and a kind of meaning in life; that are profoundly dehumanizing in the long term. 

These amount to their adherents incrementally painting themselves into a corner of emptiness, desperation, and despair; from which they can only escape by annihilation of self-awareness, and ultimately willed self-destruction. 

This extremely brittle form of adaptation to life then forms the basis for that de facto embrace of spitefulness and induced chaos as a crude and negative reaction against the narrowing and hardening which caused the situation in the first place. 

My point here is that the "will-power"-driven careerism - narrowing and hardenening of personality and institutional policy; the linkage of energy, will and direction to external authority; are very powerful on their own ground.

Those who desire to resist and oppose the dehumanizing and alienating tendency of our civilization are therefore doomed to fail if they meet the Romans, Normans, or their successors on their own ground. 

Their own ground includes the primacy of legalistic thinking, bureaucracy - including its assumptions of virtue as including obedience to external (invariably systemic) authority. 

An ancient example of this fatal self-weakening is my interpretation of why the more creative and mystical Anglo-Saxon "Celtic" Christianity (from Ireland via Iona and Lindisfarne) was overcome by the later Roman mission initiated by St Augustine of Canterbury and St Wilfrid (variously Abbot of Ripon, Bishop of Hexham, Archbishop of Canterbury) - at the Synod of Whitby.  

Celtic capacity for resistance to Roman takeover was fatally undermined and weakened because the Celtic church shared the fundamental bureaucratic and legalistic assumptions - the structured hierarchy rooted in obedience - of the Roman Church - and the Romans did bureaucracy much, much better than the Celts! 

Apparently the debate was won by the gelaitstic argument of forcing the Celts to agree that the Pope of Rome was the ultimate Christian authority, and that "therefore" all Christians must obey everything that the Pope (via his representative Wilfred) told them to do. 

I would link the Roman, and later Norman, triumphs to their architecture, to their stone temples/ monasteries, cathedrals, and churches - as well as their stone forts and castles. 

The very structure of these stone buildings, plus the highly formal and single-pointed-purpose rituals enacted within them; was a cause as well as an effect of the narrower and more concentrated form of cosnciousness that began its long and to triumphant march to domination in The West.  

Such combination of authority and obedience, systemic organization, buildings, and rituals; constitute a kind of magical activity (a method, a science indeed, for focusing conscious will power to affect people's consciousness, and shape the world) that continues, and it continues to be effective, even now.  

This magical system of domination is not essentially Christian, and has indeed become anti-Christian. But its domination will continue - including among Christians - for as long as those who oppose it in their hearts, continue to share its assumptions in their heads, and by habit and expediency.

"We" cannot stop or defeat "Them" so long as we meet Them on their own ground of systemic discourse (politics, government, law, mass media, etc); and so long as We defer to Their core assumptions regarding the ultimate value and rightness of external authority.

Unless we rid ourselves of these ultimate assumptions as to what is proper and right, and replace them with other and more powerful, motivating assumptions; We shall succumb to Their will...

We shall continue to be overcome by Their narrow and concentrated spiritual-magic, as much or more than by their material power. 

What is creativity?

Creativity is a positive personal contribution to divine creation - an addition to divine creation.  

Creativity is possible because each Being is unique (ultimately; none other is the same) and therefore each Being has something unique to add to divine creation. 

Indeed; creativity is an inevitable consequence of any Being living 

1. From its uniqueness; and 

2. In-harmony-with divine creation. 

Creation is not something we strive for!

Simply by thinking, acting, living harmoniously with divine creation; the uniqueness of each Being ensures that something "original" is always and inevitably being added to creation.

That which enables us to live in harmony with divine creation is Love: Love of God, and of Divine Creation itself.  

And this is what God wants from us: God wants us to expand divine creation in ways that God cannot.  

Note added, for clarification: Creativity requires both uniqueness and harmony with creation. Uniqueness on its own is selfishness, hence a kind of evil. If all Beings lived only from their uniqueness there would be chaos. On the other side; harmony with divine creation on its own is merely passive and ultimately futile. If all Beings lived merely in passive harmony with divine creation, there would be no point in their existing; since nothing at all would be added to God's work. 

A core purpose is to learn from life, not try to make a better world

A core purpose is that we should learn from life; that is, should spiritually learn from our actually-existing life. 

Learning is validly "core" because it can always be accomplished, by every person, in all possible circumstances.

Conversely; it is not our purpose to strive for "a better world". 

People who strive for a better world have - at root - only one suggestion, a single way of working; which is to adopt a set of rules, a "system", and to incentivize compliance. 

This Does Not Work, and trying does harm; but the opposite - ignoring rules, and lax enforcement, does not work either... 

Neither option is valid: Legalism is bad, anti-legalism is bad. 

The proper inference is that making the world better is not a proper activity, in essence it is not what we ought to be doing - plus, of course, hardly anybody is in a position to do it.

What we can and should be doing is to learn from our situation; and one thing we should learn is the futility of trying to make the world better. 

Of course, that is a negative message - but when it is learned it clears the ground for something better - for understanding what we can do and should do about "life".

We can realize, recognize, learn: 

1. What is needed, and 

2. That we cannot make it happen. 

1. What is needed is that the world be governed by love (not by rules, nor by rule-breaking or chaos).

2. We cannot, by any means, make a world governed by love.

Therefore; if we personally want a world governed by love despite that this is impossible in this world; we should seek, evaluate, and (if true) follow - one could claims that he can make a world governed by love, and can give us access to that world.  

Nothing else will suffice - if it is agreed that a world governed by love is the only answer to our deepest yearning, and that such a world cannot be this world. 

The world as it actually is, and is actually experienced, by everybody; can teach us exactly this - and teach it very clearly and forcibly... 

If we are open to spiritual learning, and recognize that as a core task of this our mortal life.

 

Saint Aidan's forked timber - Bamburgh church

Saint Aidan's church in Bamburgh is an exceptionally beautiful and interesting building; dedicated to one of the most significant of British Saints: Aidan; who came from Iona in the middle 600s to found the monastery on Lindisfarne, the Holy Island. 

This stimulated the Golden Age of Northumbria; during which the kingdom dominated Anglo Saxon England and was the centre of sanctity (especially Saint Cuthbert) learning (especially Saint Bede) and arts (especially the Lindisfarne Gospels). 

At this time, what is now the village and castle of Bamburgh was the capital of Northumbria and Anglo-Saxon civilization, it has since become mostly prized for its picturesque seaside setting, and the tourist attraction of the (much later built, and enormous) castle - regarded as being the site of Sir Lancelot's Joyous Garde in Le Morte d'Arthur. 

Anyway; it seems that Aidan was visiting Bamburgh and staying in a wooden hut situated against the church wall where he became ill and died while leaning against a large forked beam. 

His body was returned to the Holy Island for burial, but the beam was preserved as a relic and inserted into the church fabric, from which splinters were often abstracted by pilgrims. 

In 793 AD; the Priory at nearby Lindisfarne was the very first place in England that was sacked by the Vikings. The beam apparently survived at least two church burnings (whether by Vikings or Scots) - and was eventually included into the current fabric of what had become St Aidan's in medieval times...

Where it remains: raised far above the depredations of pilgrims. 

Well, such is the story - more or less. 

As a bizarre relic; St Aidan's Y-shaped beam makes a nice companion to St Kentigern's Holy Stain. 

The foreground is the nave, from the 1300s ("Decorated" Gothic period, with an early and simple version of the typical curving tracery at the tops of windows) - through the arch is the chancel (below) from the 1200s ("Early English" style, with its tall, narrow lancet windows). 

Pictured below from outside, on the west; the nave and transepts are to the left, the chancel (with a steep pitched roof) to the right. 

Later restorations and modifications include the top layer of the tower, the pointed shape over the side door of the chancel - originally to allow monks direct access to the chancel. 

Also from Victorian times is a memorial window and statue of the national heroine Grace Darling holding an oar (it used to be outside, explaining the erosion) - which at our visit had been considerably adorned with many shells, pebbles, and a fishing weight - presumably placed by modern pilgrims.

 

Friendship between adult men and women

I don't like to write much of a personal nature on this blog, and I don't intend to start; so don't ask! 

But it strikes me that friendship between adult men and women is a topic almost wholly neglected; indeed the possibility is sometimes outright denied, or else regarded as of insignificant importance compared with M-F sexual relationships, and male-male friendships. 

And my own contrary experience is relevant evidence; and so it may be worth describing - in general terms, at least - in order to make a point and support an argument. 

In my adult life between late teens and early thirties (when I married), I had several serious, reasonably long-term, women friends who were pretty much distinct from the girlfriends. 

These were all women whom I respected and found attractive, but the relationship was not primarily romantic - and we both typically dated others during the span of friendship.  

What I find interesting in retrospect is that, looking-back, I have more positive memories about my women friends than my ex-girlfriends. Indeed, from here it seems as if the friendships were more wholesome, and probably did me more lasting good, than the relationships with girlfriends! 

[Note: As a general comment, I regard real friendship as self-justifying - as not requiring justification in terms of some other advantage. Friendship is therefore one of the things we are here for.]  

Unsurprisingly; friendships with women seem to occupy a different category than those between men. 

Male friendships are mostly about shared interests and purposes. 

Women friendships require a broadly common interest, in order that activities be shared; but are less "functional"... this needs further explanation. 

I suppose all genuine friendship is voluntary and (therefore) must include mutuality: i.e. benefit on both sides. 

There is a sense that male friendships are more "functional", more focused on the business of living. It could be said that a rewarding aspect of male friendship is the sense that the both men thinks the other is "worth" expending time and effort on. 

In terms of benefit; "worth" in M-M friendship typically has some functional aspect - perhaps in terms of work, status, money, achievement - or at least in terms of the convenience of someone with whom to discuss a serious hobby, watch or attend sports events etc. 

With a female friend, mutuality is also the case, but the "benefit" is less of a functional matter; and the conversation typically less focused. 

I think what is especially rewarding in man-woman friendships is that someone of the opposite sex whom we respect and find attractive, apparently feels much the same about us; such as to spend time in our company. 

So the "benefit" of M-F friendship is perhaps mostly a matter of self-worth as a human being. At best, it is about having a place and a stake in "life", by which we are linked with another person in a chosen and complementary way.  

And maybe that is why such friendships with women have apparently left-behind good memories; despite the relationship largely lacking tangible, explicit, or material "benefits"?    

It might be argued that friendship between a man and woman cannot be stable because of the inevitable sexual tensions and potential for these to change over time, and perhaps each in different directions.

And this is probably true. But then some of these M-F friendships did last for several years, which is significant; and on the other side, male friendships were also often temporary and usually dependent on context and convenience. 

After all, this mortal life is not, and cannot be, stable. It therefore makes sense to value all that is positive and significant; despite that it will ultimately, inevitably, be partial and temporary. 

Conscientious Obedience versus Creativity - the problem of Christianity

For a very long time, in most of the world, Obedience has been prized as a Christian virtue. 

Indeed, in practice, obedience is often the primary virtue; in the sense that obedience to God, the locally-dominant Church, and legitimate secular authority was instilled and enforced as the basis for all else. 

I say "primary" virtue; because the absence of such required obedience was often deemed sufficient sufficient to trump any other virtues or distinctions. Much might be tolerated - but disobedience was not.  

Thus; to become and remain a full-member of most serious Christian churches (i.e. not-liberal-mainstream churches) typically entailed the convert adopting a lifestyle of Conscientious Obedience to complex requirements. 

Such a requirement of Conscientious Obedience is not restricted to Christianity; but on the other hand, Christianity is the only religion that defines itself as rooted in Love, and which aims at the eternal afterlife of a Heaven rooted in Love, and with individual humans retaining (and enhancing) their individuality through resurrection. 

And in the Heavenly state (if the IV Gospel is to be believed); resurrected individuals work with God and Jesus Christ - not as obedient servants, but in a familial participation in a co-creation.

In a nutshell; Jesus want friends, not servants. 

(In a nutshell: God made divine creation, and did so as a consequence divine love; but it is by Jesus that we were each enjoined to live by love as individual persons, and through Jesus that this was made fully and eternally possible by resurrection into Heaven.)

What this means is that Christians are supposed - proximately as well as ultimately - to be creative.

"Creative" in the sense of actively living-from their own selves, in alignment and harmony with God.

This entails that the traditional and long-term emphasis on Obedience as a core virtue of Christianity is mistaken; it is a fundamental misrepresentation of what is required. 

Instead of Obedience; Christians should be striving for Creativity (properly understood). In other words;  Christian ought Not to be merely obeying, not merely to live by following instructions, not merely to subordinate his will to the will of another. 

Indeed; a Christian should not aspire primarily to "serve" anything or anybody; not other individual humans, not human groups, not the church, not humankind; and not (even) God nor Jesus Christ.

Because if Christians are to fulfil God's vision of creation, fulfilled by Jesus; then Christians should be aiming to be more creative; and creativity is first of all "endogenous": it is generated from within.

As well as coming endogenously; for creativity to be genuinely creative, it needs to be in-harmony-with divine creation...

So we could say that the desired creativity is generated from Love: love of-God, and also love of "fellow Men" - which I take to mean love of "divine creation". 

And therefore such individual creativity is from its origins aligned-with divine creation. 

In sum: the traditional and inherited idea of Obedience as central to Christian living is wrong. 

Some kinds of obedience do indeed have a secondary and expedient ("means to an end") role in this mortal life - but obedience is not a primary virtue for Christians; and it is wrong for Christians to aspire to the negative intention to subordinate their "selves" to any external will. 

Instead; Christians ought to aspire to the positive goal of encouraging their inner-generated creativity; an "overflowing" from each individual person's Love of God and of Divine Creation. 

All this happens because true creativity originates in love. It is by love that personal thinking and activity which originates in the uniqueness of each individual; is also, by its nature and origin, harmonious with divine creative intent.       

  

NOTE: The conflict between creativity and obedience can be seen in the life and legacy of Jesus Christ himself - as well as many of the great "genius" Christian innovators who followed over the centuries. 

The recurrent pattern is one of a highly creative, individualistics, and disobedient founder; swiftly having his work reduced to a system of instructions to which obedience is required. The unique and personal gets reformed into just-another variant of institutional, generic-religion. Inner and individual creativity is displaced (and suppressed) by an external social-system demanding conscientious obedience. 

Two of many possible examples are St Francis of Assisi - whose individual and creative innovations were institutionally-incorporated into monastic and university structures - even during his lifetime. And more recently Joseph Smith the Mormon prophet - whose extraordinarily fertile, wild and free, inner-derived personal creativity - crystallized into a prescriptive and obedience-focused, extremely-conscientiousness-demanding, social system. 

What needs to be borne in mind is that conscientiousness (which is, roughly, a personal disposition and aptitude to obey external demands) is reciprocally opposed to the highest forms of publicly-recognized individually-generated creativity as seen in genius. 

The Head Girl is an anti-genius! 

No demography without biology; or, you can't validly predict human reproduction on the basis of maths and stats alone

I keep seeing people online making invalid but would-be reassuring demographic predictions concerning the future of human populations on the basis of purely mathematical criteria. 

I mean optimistic predictions that despite (for instance...) massive sub-fertility, strongly dysgenic reproductive patterns, and a tremendous weakening of natural selection against spontaneous mutations that cumulatively erode functionality (especially behavioural functionality); the world human (or especially Christian", "Western" or "Developed nations") populations will rapidly be able to recover from the ongoing and multi-decade demographic collapse. 

And recover without suffering dysfunctional consequences - is the hopeful assertion. 

The reason for non-validity of predictions is nearly-always the same: trying to explain and predict human reproduction without taking into account human biology; implicitly as if humans were abstract, self-multiplying entities. 

But humans are animals, and subject to biological constraints; and so reproductive explanations and predictions are certain to be wrong when some of the most important and relevant biological factors are unknown, unappreciated - and omitted. 

I am certainly not claiming to have known all of the biologically relevant aspects; but compared to most would-be "things will work-out fine" demographers the range and depth of my knowledge of human biology is truly titanic! And the errors-by-omission that they are making are blazingly obvious. 

But human beings are not just biology, and we are ultimately spiritual in our natures - so even the most ideally-informed human biologist would not be able to understand human reproductive behaviour without taking spiritual and divine aspects into consideration. 

However; when spiritual and divine aspects are included, these then become subject to critique. 

If the reassuring,"don't worry", demographers seriously posit an optimistic future on the basis that "God will save us" (in some fashion or another) then this is an explicit model of divine intervention that itself requires critical examination. 

Such an assumption that God would need, or even want, to step-in and save "us" (whichever "us" is meant) from demographic decline or extinction by some miracle, is certainly not obvious to me!

Indeed, the opposite seems at least equally plausible:

I mean the assumption that the most purposively-evil civilization in human history may deserve, or perhaps need, to be functionally-eliminated; if creation is to continue with good hopes of maximizing human salvation. 

My aversion to the RIP (Rest in Peace) trope - more on its anti-Christian implications

I have mentioned before my personal aversion to the RIP "Rest in Peace" trope; or, more exactly, that I think the wished desire for "peace" is revelatory of the alienated perspective of a modernity of consciousness. 

It is striking how much a desire for "peace" is expressed in The Book of Common Prayer (in origin a product of the 1500s modified in the 1600s, mainly). 

And - while this old usage of the peace word is much broader than the modern one (and while it may also reflect a rather temporally and culturally specific yearning to end the many generations of bitter intra-Christian religious conflict in England) - I nonetheless regard the oft-repeated yearning for peace to be an early indicator of a shift away from the desire for resurrection into post-mortal Heaven, toward the modern desire for post-mortal annihilation. 

Of course, peace is - in context - a Good Thing, and the idea of "resting" in peace is desirable and valuable; yet in a Christian context, peace is not a goal in itself, but essentially a means to an end. 

And while the opposites of peace - such as war, conflict, hassle - are mostly undesirable, especially post-mortally; even this may not be wholly true to human nature. 

For instance; the broad "Valhalla" idea of a warrior paradise of daily fighting and slaying, followed by a diurnal restoration of health is expressive of a desire for something very different from "peace". And if Paradise includes pleasurable sexual activity, this desire likewise opposes a wish for peace.  

Peace is analogous to sleep: where the phase of deep and dreamless sleep is restorative, essential, and culturally undervalued; nonetheless if unconsciousness were to become the core aspiration in mortal life, this aspiration negates any positive reason for mortal life. 

If the nature of our life was that we mostly wanted to escape it and rest in peace; then why bother with living at all?

If it is best to be un-conscious, then why develop and mature towards adulthood? Why even be born? We might as well short-circuit to death; and thereby skip the whole messy and often miserable business of being-alive. 

For the modern consciousness; the notion of Resting in Peace is a covert suicide wish; in which suicide is assumed to lead to a post-mortal destruction of everything that is our-self. 

For the modern mind, peace and death are an escape from life. 

By contrast; what Jesus made possible and offered us is More life and a better life...

A post-mortal state in which we remain-ourselves, but immortal, and living-on in a world (Heaven) based-on love between its inhabitants...

A world that is negatively without evil, decay, and death - but therefore positively a world where love and creation are permanent; where memories, relationships and growth are cumulative.

There is surely a place for "peace" in Heaven, but peace is not the point of Heaven. And when peace becomes the major aspiration, we implicitly reject the offer of Jesus and instead aspire either to lose our-self - either by some kind of dissolution back into the divine one-ness; or else in mainstream culture when people reject continued-living and prefer annihilation.  

Who wins, who loses, the game of Idolatry (and AI-dolatry)?

Real relationships are between Beings; and Beings are eternally existent. 

Beings are described in terms of attributes such as life, consciousness, purposiveness, agency etc. But ultimately Beings aren't inferred from observations; but must be known directly, known by intuition; known "by assumption".

(We are born with such innate, "instinctive", intuitions: necessarily so.) 

Therefore there is potential for error, for delusion, for false assumptions; as when a person treats a not-Being as a real Being: and this is called Idolatry. 

Classically; a situation of idolatry might concern something like a carved wooden idol that not a Being but is related-to (by at least some people) as if it were A Being.  

We can imagine how such a situation might arise and work. There are those who know that the idol is not a Being - evil priests, perhaps; and there are those deluded persons who relate to the idol, believe the idol is an agent, and believe the idol is a god. 

These idolators then believe that what "the idol" tells them is true, and will obey what "the idol" tells them they must do. 

Meanwhile, of course, it is the evil priests who are manipulating the situation in order to create and sustain the delusion that the idol is A Being (and a god). 

The evil priests might arrange for the idol apparently to move, speak, eat... That the evil will emit messages that are received and interpreted by the priests. They might even arrange that the idol would seem to kill, or order killings.   

And the evil priests who create and sustain the delusional idolatry might self-consciously and (more or less) sincerely regard themselves as unselfish, and operating the system "for the benefit" of the deluded idolators - at least insofar as the priests themselves judge "benefit". 

In other words; the evil priests may regard themselves as good priests.  

 

In reality, the nature of this situation is that the idol is a tool of those who know that the idol is not a Being. 

The population is divided into "those who know", and "those who are deluded". 

Those idolators who delusionally believe the idol is a Being are controlled by those manipulators who know that the idol is not a Being.

The mass of idolators are at best unwitting, unconscious, objects of manipulation - perhaps manipulated for their own benefit? Or perhaps for their own exploitation and harm. 

But while they remain deluded; idolators are in no position to evaluate benefits or harms. 

*

An idol might be almost anything. 

It might be as simple as a doll, a statue, or a picture; or the idol might be a more complicated device such as a clock-work, an animated simulacrum.

An idol might be something something imperceptible; including something abstract; like a church, ideology, values. 

The idol might be a computer, a robot, or a software programme: as with our currently prevalent AI-dolatry. 

Whatever the idol might be, the basic situation remains identical: Those who know the idol is not a Being are - indirectly, via the idol- in-control-of those who have a delusional-relationship with the idol.

The deluded idolators are controlled; both physically in terms of their actions, and spiritually in terms of their assumptions, convictions, motivations, beliefs, and faith.

In a state of idolatry; the winners are those who know the idol is not a real Being; the losers are those who regard the idol as an agent. 

And those who regard the idol as an agent are losers - even when they believe they are winners! 

Because idolators are incapable of knowing benefits from harms.  

The only way out from this situation; is for the deluded idolators to become aware that their idol is not a Being, not alive/ conscious/ purposive/ intelligent: that the idol is not an agent.

Note: The concept of Idolatry is a core subject of Owen Barfield's profound study Saving the Appearances. 

Magical self-journaling

I have written before of my practice of "journaling", which goes back more than forty years. For a long time now, this has consisted of the (almost) daily, early morning (before 11.00 am) practice of writing in a notebook for an hour or more. 

But this is not at all like writing a normal journal or diary - it is not-at-all meant to form a record of my doings, nor even a record of my thoughts (such as a "commonplace book") - because the notes are ephemeral. 

I do not look at my writings again after they are written, except during the actual process, and sometimes to jog my memory to write a blog post on the themes that arise. 

Indeed, I invariably destroy everything I have written during this process! 

Evidently; my writing of this kind is not for other-people, nor is it for my future self. 

So what is my "journaling" for? 

I have realized that my journaling can be conceptualized as a magical process - directed at what Dion Fortune called (in a much and variously quoted definition) the purposive activity of using techniques of changing human consciousness in accordance with will...

The way I do journaling is self-directed and consumed by itself; it forms a synergy between the processes of writing and thinking: in general terms it is a means to an end. 

The intent is to discover, induce, and sustain; a particular and focused frame of mind directed towards my current concerns.

In specific terms, this magical-self-journaling can have many purposes related to changed consciousness. 

At the most general, it could relate to changing my own emotional state. This could be therapeutic - to improve how I feel when I am in an aversive frame of mind. Or it could be to enhance a mundane habit of thinking into an enchanted mood. 

Or magical self-journaling could be directed at fairly specific problem solving, relating to some dominating concern; such as when I am doing theoretical science, philosophy, or theology. 

Or, it could be about actually finding and clarifying some vague or nagging problem about which I am unclear. 

It could also be about developing an inner "contact"; a direct relationship, with some other person or Being. 

In principle (but I do not do this) this might at one extreme be "automatic writing" when the writer passively channels further writing. 

Or (and I don't do this either) it might be to try and develop some kind of alliance with a contacted Being, to attain some this-worldly goal. 

In my case; this could be to make an inner contact with some (usually deceased) person or Being for friendship's sake, getting to know another; ultimately from a motivation of love.   

In a nutshell; I think of this magical self-journaling is a fairly stereotyped activity that can be directed at many possible ends. 

In principle the aims might be passive and contemplative - a matter of dreamlike attunement to reality, the stimulation of inner imaginings; or might be almost the opposite: active and purposive, including creative. 

And, as with all magic, the method is not intrinsically Good, because magical self-journaling can be directed at either good aims - i.e. in-alignment-with God and creation ("White magic"); or evil ends such as selfish self-gratification working against the divine (that is to say Black magic). 

Which, of these; and whether an episode of magical self-journaling serves the broad intentions of Christian faith, or else opposes this; is a product of my choice, my freedom. 

Recreational light entertainment, and when it is worth consuming

Ideal light entertainment - but excellence is always rare

It is a pleasant thing to spend an hour or two in consuming TV mass media with relations and friends; and obviously this is best when the quality of the movie or television is high. 

For example; lastnight I re-re-watched with the family, that really excellent movie from 2023: Dungeons and dragons: honour among thieves. This is close to perfect light entertainment: continuously-engaging, funny, clever, and moving; based on a masterful script and editing. 

But that is not always possible, because there just are not many high quality things; and the mood has to be right as well! 

Sometimes it is "light entertainment" that is wanted - and even "3 star quality" will suffice; which means three stars out of a possible five, which translates to "worth watching, but only once". 

We therefore end-up by mostly-watching mostly-OK things, where compromises are required; and I enjoy some aspects, but not others. 

With three star movies and TV I need to feel that the makers were doing their best, from their perspective - which I very seldom share, to try and make something good: to put-on a Good Show. 

A Good Show is always difficult to produce, therefore those engaged must be trying their best; quality does not happen as a by-product of some other agenda. Those engaged must be doing their best to serve the needs of the medium.  

This is why I don't bother even trying anything that has an obvious and evil (IMO) agenda as its main priority; because these are invariably of low quality as programmes or films. 

An author or production team who are prepared to interrupt the action, pervert character, or damage the structure and pacing; in order to deliver a politically correct lecture - will not make even an acceptable product.   

Acceptable light entertainment, despite reservations

So I often watch things like the TV series Foyle's War (or, at least, the first five series); which overall has much to enjoy as light entertainment; I think because its (main) author Anthony Horowitz is a skilful writer, who here seems to have been doing his best to write good television drama.

There is much to appreciate in the acting of the main protagonists, the characters, the settings, clever plotting. And this mostly offsets the author's biases concerning what the war was "about", who it was fought-for (from the British people's perspective) and why - Horowitz, unsurprizingly, sharing the usual mainstream official/ mass-media false persepctive that has been typical of WWII movies since the 1970s. 

In other words; in what I regard as ranking as a 3 star product, the false-to-history agenda needs generally to be subordinated to dramatic needs; which means the agenda can be noticed, recognized and filtered; and without spoiling the overall effect.  

Given the pervasiveness of Leftist and/or alien agendas in the arts, literature and media generally; this is the only way that one can enjoy light entertainment nowadays. But it is noticeable that most of the works that fall into this category come from fifteen-plus years ago, so the supply is drying-up!

 

James Herriot - and the increasingly important matter of "the man behind the books"

Another huge Herriot success, indeed his best-selling book; which led to scores of copycat volumes of 

Fill in the celebrity name's someplace-or-another. 

James Herriot was an extremely popular author of the 1970s. He was a vet who wrote humourous books about his life ministering to farm animals and pets in Yorkshire. 

The books were known by everybody, from age about ten years onwards, and led to a tremendous growth in the demand for vet qualifications (to the point that now vets are paid less than school teachers), and a significant expansion in tourism in the Yorkshire Dales, where the fictional tales were set. 

The books were also adapted (and quite faithfully!) into two movies, and a Sunday evening TV series "All Creatures Great and Small" which was probably the most popular and beloved British family drama of all time.  

As well as their many laughs, skillful writing, and fascinating subject matter; one of the pleasures of reading James Herriot is the likeability and goodness of the actual man behind the books - whose name was Alf Wight.

As well as the evidence of the books themselves; my evaluation of JH's character came from the biography by his son, and a visit to the The World of James Herriot - museum in Thirsk, built in the real-life practice (actually serving the North York Moors, much more than the Yorkshire Dales).  

I have found that, as I get older, my inference as to the ultimate personal quality of an author has become ever more important an element in my reading. 

When I believe that an author is "a good chap" (or "chapess") then I am much more likely to enjoy and re-read; and when I beleive the opposite, I am increasingly unwilling to read, and likely to discard the volume into the rubbish bin.  

In other words, I am less and less inclined to try and separate the author and the work - at the ultimate level. 

This does not mean I expect a "good" author to have only what I regard as "good" opinions and behaviours; but it does mean that I choose to read those who I regard as deep down and primarily "on the right side". 

And that I am less and less inclined to enjoy and seek wisdom from those who are, at bottom, against God, Divine Creation, The Good etc - even when such people may have considerable skill and surface appeal. 

This has led to a good deal of re-evaluation and rejection, and a greater concentration upon relatively fewer individual writers.

It's not that I avoid Bad authors entirely - after all I continue to explore...

But once it has become clear that the character and intent behind the work is malign, I tend to quit swiftly; and move-onto something else more wholesome! 

Note added: I suppose it should be clarified that the most important aspect of "the man behind the books" is the author's "state of mind" at the time of writing - because this may change subsequently, for better or for worse. For example JK Rowling seems to have been a different and better person at the time she wrote the Harry Potter series, than she has been subsequently. Another possibility, which I will do no more than mention, is that an author subsequently died; and (intuitively) post-mortally seems to have become a resurrected Heavenly denizen - and that some kind of contact with the author's current self happens via the process of reading.

Since most of the world is literally insane - why aren't things a lot worse?

This is something that puzzles me: By my best understanding, I regard almost-everybody as literally insane, delusional, psychotic; with respect to (typically) several criteria.(!) And more and more people seem to be entering this category every year. 

As I have often said here; among those who kept their sanity through the events of the Birdemic and Peck, almost all seem to have succumbed to one or another of the species of AI-dolatry.

While plenty of others (who pride themselves on their critical acumen) are on-board with one or more of the several warmanias that - apparently without concern or comment - fill the mainstream- (and alternative-) media, and are the subject of major corporate and financial leader's statements - as well as being prominent among the pronouncements of the governmental and supra-governmental leadership class. 

Then there are spite-filled Schadenfreude-addicts; who genuinely regard negatively-motivated destruction of people and organizations they personally hate or resent, as evidence of civilizational progress!  

Such matters cannot be argued, and I have no intention of arguing them further here! 

But, given the pervasiveness of self-celebrating evil and lunacy; the question arises as to why things are not a great deal worse than they already-are. 

Of course; sooner or later, "things" will be, because they must be, qualitatively and undeniably worse, with a general collapse into chaos - yet this has been deferred for much longer than I would have thought possible. 

I am sure that overall-human-goodness cannot happen except from good persons with good motivations - yet where are these people? 

I can't see them, at least not among the living; therefore my best guess is that the well-motivated good persons must be among the dead (specifically the resurrected dead in Heaven) - and perhaps too among the non-human denizens of this earthly reality. 

I think we owe these "invisible" entities heartfelt gratitude for "things" being as good as they are, instead of a lot worse.  

And maybe such gratitude could be the basis of our-selves repenting, and allying-with these positive influences among these deceased persons and not-people. That way (and Not by the usual political strategy of making forming alliances with slightly-less-than-average evil entities); we might genuinely help the world to become a better-place than otherwise.   

Give Heaven a chance! (Heaven versus progressive reincarnation)

From the overwhelmingly-dominant atheist-materialism of our time and place; it is perhaps natural that people who feel the alienation of living in an (officially) purposeless, accidental, dead universe; will find themselves seeking relief from alienation and a snese of despairing futility. And will therefore find themselves trying to recreate the spontaneous paganism of the remote past, and (if remembered) of their early childhood. 

Such is the basis of that Neo-Paganism that has been a significant sub-theme of The West ever since the 1950s, and currently under the vast umbrella of New Age. 

I was in this phase myself around the early and middle 2000s; so I know that it has partial value of a psychologically therapeutic type - it does help somewhat with the aspects of alienation and meaninglessness. 

However, Neo-Paganism falls down when it comes to purpose in life; and without purpose, meaning tends to become just an emotion, and therefore ephemeral.

To summarize; the spiritual quest has two main aspects: participation and hope. 

Participation is the sense of being part of reality, of having a relationship with The World here-and-now. 

Hope is about purpose, it is to do with an ultimate "happy ending".   

The Neo-Pagan perspective finds hope in reincarnation; because people correctly realize that there Must be a continuation of our lives after death if there is to be objective meaning and purpose to our mortal life. 

And for reincarnation to be hopeful it must be progressive and positive: I mean that successive reincarnations must be believed to build cumulatively towards a qualitatively better life and world. 

If reincarnation is just an endless cycles of more-of-the-same, this is not hopeful; therefore to be hopeful the scheme of reincarnation must assume that reincarnation is a type of learning that stretches across many lifespans, and is aiming-at a kind of paradisal state of being. 

However, although progressive reincarnation is indeed hopeful; that hope is deferred a long way (in some case, such as that of Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy, a very long way) into the future. 

So our hope must be located beyond many, many reincarnations; since a large number of reincarnations are required before paradise can plausibly be established...

It being pretty obvious that spiritual-progress is not rapid; because spiritual progression can be observed - if at all - only by generalization of many persons across considerable sweeps of human history.

By contrast; (properly understood!) Christian hope is located much closer to now; much nearer than multi-resurrections. 

Because resurrection into Heaven happens after our mortal death - which may be soon, but is never further than some decades hence.  

Therefore, I am perhaps surprised that Neo-Pagans very seldom give Heaven a chance! Since, if heaven is true, it is a much more hopeful prospect than progressive reincarnation.

To my way of thinking; the only serious questions are related to what Heaven is really like, and whether it really is a possibility. Because if Heaven is like I believe it to be, and is indeed possible for anyone what really desires it - then:

Heaven beats reincarnation hands-down! 

Sea Monkeys! (And Primary Creation)

Like many boys of my generation, I came across Sea Monkeys in the classified ads section of American comics - in my case, superhero comics - with extraordinary illustrations and bizzare claims such as that above. I found the whole thing highly suspicious but fascinating; and wondered for years what Sea Monkeys really were. 

When my kids were small, I discovered for myself; because we raised and kept Sea Monkeys for more than a year; before handing the colony and equipment on to a neighbour.

What the Sea Monkeys actually are is a remarkly inexpensive (starting at only ten pounds) kit to grow and maintain a colony of multiple small creatures rather like shrimps; using various dessicated components that are reconstituted with water; and some special powdered food administered once a week.  

They grow very quickly, so this keeps the attention of kids rather well. But most of the Sea Monkeys experience is a game of imagination - as indicated by the illustrations! To enjoy Sea Monkeys you need to enter into the spirit of the thing. 

As always happened in our house, the kids wanted the pets, but fairly soon lost interest; and it was me who looked after the pets - mostly grumbling, but secretly I liked doing so (except for cleaning-out the tropical fish tank in later years - that was a real chore). 

To stimulate a further wave of interest, and for my own satisfaction, I expanded our Sea Monkey venture with a bigger and illuminated tank containing a pirate ship and treasure...

A later venture was with another kit growing a Trilobite-looking creature called a Triops. 

This was very interesting, albeit gruesome; because the Triops kit includes various other creatures that are intended prey for the carniverous Triops to devour, plus several Triops only one of which survives as the ultimate winner. 

The great advantage of the Triops is that is looks great, and grows Very fast (shedding its skin) to about two inches long; whereas the Sea Monkeys max-out at only about half an inch or usually less. 

The dis-advantage is that the Triops has a very short life cycle of about three weeks, I think - terminated by a horrible death when it turned inside-out. 

Luckily I saw this first, and therefore the kids didn't!

I was reminded of all this by my daughter, who is a high school science teacher, telling me that she has started a Sea Monkey colony in her tutorial group classroom, and some of her eleven-twelve year old kids are really enjoying the experience. 

A plus for Sea Monkeys is that the colony can be kept going for a long time - years; so apparently they live "forever". 

What is actually happening is that Sea Monkeys are dying; but reproducing and being replaced by the next generations - enabled by proper care and fuelled by food (and perhaps light).  

It strikes me that this is an analogy for what I term Primary Creation: the creation we inhabit as mortal beings here on earth. 

To the outsider view, if we regard humans as interchangeable and replaceable, then the continuous and inevitable changes and losses from entropy (degenerations and death) the System or colony can be balanced or exceeded indefinitely by continuing "creation".

In other words; so long as divine creation continues, so long as God's energies are being added to the System; then Life-as-a-whole remains despite death (and despite evil). 

While, at the same time, every individual part of that System (every specific Sea Monkey) is always undergoing entropic decline in function and death. 

What Jesus did by the Second Creation, by making resurrection into Heaven a possibility; can be imagined by assuming that what appears to be the case when looking at the overall colony, really is true: that each individual Sea Monkey is immortal. 

Each Sea Monkey is everlastingly sustained as an incarnate being, by its own innate source of divine creative energy. 

And there is no need ever to add food or clean the tank! 

Just a few more weeks of blogging?

I have been informed by the host of this blog that, from December 16, almost everything I have ever written will be forbidden by the new content policy. 

This is the relevant section. 

Misleading Content 

Do not distribute content that deceives, misleads, or confuses users. This includes:

Misleading content related to civic and democratic processes: content that is demonstrably false and could significantly undermine participation or trust in civic or democratic processes. This includes information about public voting procedures, political candidate eligibility based on age / birthplace, election results, or census participation that contradicts official government records. It also includes incorrect claims that a political figure or government official has died, been involved in an accident, or is suffering from a sudden serious illness.

Misleading content related to harmful conspiracy theories: content that promotes or lends credibility to beliefs that individuals or groups are systematically committing acts that cause widespread harm. This content is contradicted by substantial evidence and has resulted in or incites violence. Misleading content related to harmful health practices: misleading health or medical content that promotes or encourages others to engage in practices that may lead to serious physical or emotional harm to individuals, or serious public health harm.

Manipulated media: media that has been technically manipulated or doctored in a way that misleads users and may pose a serious risk of egregious harm. Misleading content may be allowed in an educational, documentary, scientific, or artistic context, but please be mindful to provide enough information to help people understand this context. In some cases, no amount of context will allow this content to remain on our platforms.

As can readily be appreciated, if enforced this outlaws (by the mainstream socio-political standards that will surely be applied) not only most of what I have written, but almost everything of any value I have ever read online. 

Well, 16 years of daily blogging is not a bad run! And I cannot say I am surprised; since this is part of a top-down long-term and ongoing global project of omni-surveillance and micro-control; and I already inhabit the most censored polity in the developed world. 

But I suggest that those readers who value any particular aspects of this blog might be wise to make personal copies quite soon; because it is not likely to be around for much longer. 

Personal understanding is a spiritual virtue; when we work things out, think things through for ourselves

Our task in this mortal life includes that of understanding; meaning that we understand by working things out and think things through For Ourselves. 

If we look at the way the world is, life is not clear and easy, it is not straightforward, there are many external obstacles and we ourselves are usually poorly constituted to do that which ought to be done. 

We don't clearly know what ought to be done, and insofar as we decide what ought to be done we are not made such that doing what ought to be is easy. Quite the contrary! The world is confusing and we are confused; our will is easily misled, vacillating, and pretty feeble!

If we assume that this is not an accident but instead part of the basic design; then we may infer that the way that things have been set-up by God in this divine creation. 

We are not good at doing what ought to be done and really needs to be done, even when we are able to discover what that is. 

I therefore assume that the first-line, the main and preferred method by which we are supposed to navigate through life; is for people to work out for themselves what they ought to do, and how to do it. 

And insofar as we can do this appointed task of understanding in any domain of existence; I think the experience improves us as people - improves both temporarily in a mortal context, and potentially in an eternally resurrected future. 

That, at least, has been my experience. I spent a great deal of my childhood and early adult life learning what other people said and wrote about academic matters, science, medicine; but I did not do what I was supposed to do and really think for myself, really understand, until my early 30s. 

I was a lecturer in epidemiology when one of the first things I worked-out was what is happening when we randomize and take an average; as happens in a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT).  

Lots of people were saying that an RCT was the best form of evidence for effectiveness of a medical intervention, and the larger the RCT the better. But in all my reading and questioning, it became evident that nobody (literally nobody I could find, and I looked hard) had actually thought out what randomization was doing in this context, why large numbers were supposed to be better, and what happened whne results were averaged and the averages applied to the treatment of individual patients. 

I had to work this out for myself, from my experience as a scientist and doctor, and by thinking hard about things. 

Once I had understood, for myself, it soon became obvious that nearly-everybody had misunderstood what was going on in RCTs, did not grasp the intrinsic and unavoidable problems of averaging, and the effect of striving for ever larger numbers in trials. 

Most of what people "know" about most things is merely obedient parroting of authorities, and there is zero understanding. 

High intelligence and encylopaedic knowledge do not help at all, of themselves - because without genuinely personal understanding rooted in an individual act of working-out; expertise merely leads to more convincing wrongness, elaborate pseudo-justifications, and armour-plated error. 

Of course, this was only a tiny but of understanding I developed; but even so, it was enough to change me fundamentally. 

I would say that (when I have done this, which is only a few times) it has been one of the few life-experiences that I am sure were fundamentally Good For Me. 

It was enough to let me see the difference between real understanding and parroting.

It was a generally applicable skill of discernment; that revealed that nearly-all of "expert" discourse is nothing more than mosaic work; the assembling of secondhand assertions. 

I could not recommend highly enough the long-term spiritual value of thinking things through for yourself, to attain a personal understanding of whatever is most important to you. 

What is interesting and motivating - eternally? Answer: Qualitative addition to divine creation. (More about Heaven)

In considering Heaven, we need to consider what Heaven is, and whether we personally want it. 

I have written before that I believe Heaven is the Second Creation in which all inhabiting Beings have been resurrected such that they live only and entirely from Love; and what this means, in practice, is that Heavenly life is essentially a matter of "Creating" - by which term is meant each Being as an individual adding to divine creation, in harmony with God's intentions and methods. 

"Adding" to creation should be understood in a qualitative sense - with each Being adding a new kind of thing; not just adding more and more of the same kind of thing that already exists. 

Quantitative addition, adding more and more of the same kind of thing, soon gets boring; even here on earth and over a mortal timescale. 

This is why consumerism is addictive: people "need" more and more "stuff", always seeking novelty - feel bad if they don't get more; but get less and less satisfaction from each unit of consumption.  

But it does not add-up, people are never lastingly gratified - we get used to consumption and "more stuff" loses its effect, so that we have to increase the dose to get the same effect. 

Exactly the same applies to sex; as is evident from the behaviour of those who focus their lives on getting ever-more sex with ever-more desirbale persons and succeed. Gratification fades inevitably, desire declines; and the need for novelty always escalates into "experiments", boundary transgressions, and perversity. 

Quantitative addition is therefore a negative-motivation: we need to continue doing something so as not to feel worse; but getting it does not accumulate to feeling overall better.  

Heaven, by contrast, is a positive-motivation. More and more of that which is qualitatively added to creation builds to greater and greater joy. 

An analogy is deeply-loving relationships with family and friends; we cannot have "too much" of these, and more is cumulatively better.  

In Heaven; our valuation of love and of creating does not fade; it remains continually rewarding and motivating, and as love and creating develops. 

In contrast; here in mortal life on earth this ability to love and create inevitably and always is eroded, sooner or later; eroded by entropy - by degenerative change in ourselves leading towards death of every mortally-incarnate Being.

(In mortal life; we ourselves inevitably eventually become incapable; and we are only sometimes capable, and seldom fully capable.) 

Love and creation are also and always tainted by evil; because we are not wholly-aligned with divine creation; and our strivings are inevitably corrupted to some extent (sometimes very fully) by pursuing selfish, manipulative, exploitative gaols. 

(This, I believe, is pretty much what Jesus meant by stating that All Men are "sinners" - No Man is fully and always completely-aligned with God's motivations and with the nature of divine creation.) 

(Indeed; sustained life in mortal conditions actually depends upon parasitic exploitation of other Beings - Life is competitive, Life lives-on death. Evil is unavoidable in this First creation. Mortal life - without Second Creation - is tragic in a classic sense: its flaws are intrinsic, and lead to the unhappy-ending of death.)

 

Such is the nature of First Creation of God - and the desirability of the Second Creation of Heaven via Jesus Christ, when in Heaven there is no entropy and no evil. 

Heaven solves the problems of entropy and evil; and enables life to become rooted in love and creation - because our-selves have been transformed by resurrection. 

In Heaven; qualitative creation happens spontaneously, because each Being is unique and wholly-aligned with God and creation; such that our personal creation is therefore necessarily in harmony with God and other Heavenly Beings; and our creation is the manifestation ("expression") of that "something unique" we we all are and always have been. 

I regard it as a fact that we each are, and always were, unique Beings - so there is no need to strive for "originality"; because insofar as we are true to our-selves, we will be original. This is how and why all creation in Heaven is qualitative. 

"The Problem" - solved by Jesus - was not originality, but to make it such that our native originality is harmonized with that of other Beings and of God. 

So what is lastingly interesting and motivating in Heaven, as on earth, is Loving Creation; but in Heaven this is "pure" and uncontaminated by entropy and evil; such that eternity is eternally added-to by qualitatively-new, unique, individual activity.