Creativity and Christianity - in Traditional compared with Romantic Christianity

The can be a conflict between creativity and Christianity - in the sense that being a Christian can be experienced as a constraint and inhibition on creative work. 

This has been experienced especially since the Romantic Era (from the late 1700s) - and some of those geniuses (and others) who were most deeply committed to their creative work (whether in arts or sciences) made 'a religion' from their creative work - took it with the utmost seriousness and made great sacrifices. 

In the 20th century, indeed, it became usual for the greatest creative geniuses to be raised as Christians (or sometimes as Jews) and then to reject Christianity in favour of a kind of 'Genius as Hero' ideology. 

Creativity and Christianity began to be seen as antagonists - since if a genius put his work first it seemed to mean putting Christianity second, which is not to be a Christian at all... 

Yet it was Christianity that sustained the greatest works of genius. And being raised in a religion seems all-but vital to serious creative work; so that when society became thoroughly atheist - creative genius all-but disappeared and is by now undiscerned, disvalued and even suppressed. 

This because without a basis in 'the transcendental'; creativity becomes subordinated to expediency - careerism, money or status seeking etc. 

It seems that unless a genius 'understands' his work to be contributing to divine creation (and this 'understanding is usually implicit) - then he will not give that work the effort and priority which the highest achievement requires. 

So the relationship between Christianity and creativity has become complex. This is because very few people have been raised as serious Christians over the past few generations; spontaneous, un-conscious Christianity is a thing of the past. 

As of 2021 serious Christians are, in effect, adult converts - because in a secular society even serious cradle Christians will need to make at least one (often more) renewed conscious commitments to their faith.  

To be a creative person and to convert to Christianity as an adult can be a significant challenge to creativity. Because when an adult converts he is (nearly always) converting to a particular church or denomination; with a complex framework of rules and expectations. 

Converts are held to a higher standard than cradle church members - and are usually required to make vows and promises of a rigorous and binding nature. 

So the creative Man who becomes a Christian typically finds himself having made a serious commitment to work from-within a detailed and rigorous framework of constraints and expectations. 

This framework of Christian (denominational) practice, doctrine, theology and authority may well interfere with his established creative practices. He may feel his thinking repeatedly bumping-against boundaries - to cross which would seem to take him beyond orthodoxy and obedience. 

He may well feel himself creatively confined - and, at the extreme, may feel safe only when repeating that which has been said before; ringing changes rather than being truly original... 

Consequently, his work may lose its spontaneity, distinctiveness, energy and flow -  it may become second rate, derivative, un-creative.   

I interpret this from the perspective of the changing nature of human consciousness; and that Romanticism ought to usher-in a new way of being Christian that is ultimately based on shared motivation and alignment of creative work, rather than an explicit and external framework of rules. 

The creative Christian (ideally) ought to be working-from, rather than working-towards; working-from the basis of sharing the Christian priority of love. Creating is something that should come from a base of commitment; rather than something that operates inside a framework. 

The hope of Heaven is based upon a commitment to live eternally by love, in Heaven; and to embrace the transformation that is resurrection which makes this possible for Men.

So the Romantic understanding of Heaven is a place where love overflows into creating - a place where our 'work' is co-creating with God; as was the case with primary divine creation when it was the love of God was the cause of Creation in the first place.

 

In other words; Romantic Christianity aims to make genuine, innate and endogenous personal creativity one important way of being a good Christian, a taste of Heaven itself - rather than an incipient source of conflict. 

And this 'works' by aiming at a harmony derived from a basis in love rather than from a set of rule. 

As so often, the loving family provides the best analogy (which is, indeed, more than analogy!); because the family is supposed to attain harmony not primarily by adherence to a framework of practices and rules; but instead from the mutual love of its members. 

Family members are aligned by having the same aims (so they are pointing in the same direction) and then by mutual concern for the other members: a fluid kind of adjustment which is experienced as the voluntary desire to remain in harmony and to help other members in their own loving and creative endeavors.

If creativity is understood in this fashion; then it is indeed optimal from the creative perspective. Instead of Christianity being felt as constraint, it instead provides meaning. 

After all, real creativity is not solipsistic, it is done for the creator alone. Creativity must ultimately be be for others; it needs an 'audience' who will understand, appreciate and use the creative work. 

Romantic Christianity looks towards a world in which everyone is a creator and also audience; and where creator and audience are united by the divine purpose and harmonized in their work by their commitment to love. 

A note on abstract, universal "love" and Jesus

Continuing from the earlier post today:

I have made the observation that some of the people who most vehemently profess abstract, universal love are those who do not exhibit or appear to experience any actual, personal love of specific persons - except their memories of family love during childhood. 

Childhood family love (or even, in some people who lack families, a recognition of the lack of family love and a yearning for it) is a sufficient basis for a Christian life. After all not everybody has a loving marriage, or children and a loving relationship with them. 

On the other hand, some adults reject the ideal of individual and personal love - and instead profess that abstract and universal "love" is a higher value and morality than individual/ personal love. 

I have often heard this argument. The idea that individual love is a childish thing, the sign of an immature, narrow and selfish personality. 

...That the higher love is impersonal, embraces everybody equally (or perhaps loving unknown strangers more that family - to compensate for natural 'xenophobia'); maybe embracing all animals; maybe indeed every living thing; or, maybe The Earth itself (and this love of Earth considered not as loving an actual, conscious, purposive individual such as an angelic being - but as abstractly loving a deific abstraction).  

What did Jesus say on this matter? 

As so often the Fourth Gospel can be a touchstone for Christians. Here, in what some call "the Gospel of love", Jesus is always described as loving specific persons, and never as expressing abstract, universal love. 

My understanding is that Jesus wanted Christians to be a family, that is not 'organized' by abstractions, but as individual persons bound in presumably extended-family-sized (and overlapping, especially by marriage) groups cohering by personal love. 

Be that as it may; I think Christians can be confident that Jesus did not regard abstract, universal love as a higher ideal than personal love - quite the opposite. 

Is Christianity selfish? Yes! But why is that a bad thing?

There is a very funny novel by Michael Frayn called The Tin Men (1965) - set in a computer establishment where one of the characters is attempting to construct a 'Samaritan' robot that is 'altruistic'; such that it will willingly sacrifice its own existence for others. 

The background assumption is that self-sacrificing altruism is the highest form of ethical behaviour - and this is indeed probably the mainstream assumption in all modern atheistic leftist societies (which, nowadays, means everywhere). 

Considerable humour comes from the problems of programming this robot - in particular the difficulty that when the robot is made to want to sacrifice itself, and seems to get 'satisfaction' from doing so - then this no longer counts as self-sacrifice because it is merely selfishly doing what makes it happy. 

The ideal seems to be a robot that will willingly sacrifice itself for others, or at least others who are also moral agents - if that can be detected - but will be made more miserable by doing so...

This is one of many paradoxes and incoherences that come from the common idea that altruism is the highest moral value and the proper guide to living. 

One frequent idea is that the greatest public moral exemplars are those who - supposedly - live for the benefit of others despite cost to themselves. 

(Or, at least, donate time or money to organizations that claim to facilitate this... hence the structural role of 'charities' in objectively validating the moral-superiority claims of the ruling classes: charitable work 'proves' that these are truly altruistic people who deserve their fame, wealth, power and status.)

But altruism merely kicks the can further down the road; because altruism fails to provide any meaning to life. 

If my life is to be devoted to preserving and enhancing the satisfaction of other lives, and if this ethic is general (so that society aims at being composed of people all and always doing stuff for each other - but never for themselves) - then this fails to provide any understanding of what all these other lives are For. 

Why is it good for me to 'help others' - help others to do what, exactly? 

What ever 'that' is - which altruism is directed towards - must itself surely be the primary reason for living? 

(I felt this strongly when I worked as a doctor. The left-liberal altruistic ethic reduces to reducing-suffering in others - since this is regarded as a self-evident Good - so medicine ought to be a perfect exemplar. But it did not feel like that. As I then was I knew of no purpose or meaning in life and denied P & M in the universe; so I found it strange that I was supposed to get maximum life satisfaction from keeping people alive and functional to live lives that they themselves mostly regarded as meaningless, futile and miserable (especially in psychiatric practice). Yet everybody apparently assumed that this 'helping people' was one of the best things about being a doctor, and why I was a doctor.)

Altruism is vacuous as a guide for living. 

Yet the nonsensical altruistic ideal persists - especially as the very basis of leftism - which claims to be the ethic of altruism; with society organized on that basis. Leftist ethics nearly all assume that it is the highest duty to live our lives (and donate our taxes) for 'other people' (or, at least, those 'other people' currently defined as worthy by the leftist Establishment). 

Leftist governments (ie. all governments) assume total power to monitor and regulate all human lives on the basis that this is necessary to ensure that everybody lives and works primarily for everybody-else - and to do otherwise is selfish and evil. Anyone who fails actively to support the altruistic authorities is thus selfish and evil. 

This leftist ethic of altruism is also used to attack Christianity; on the basis that (supposedly) Christians pretend to be more altruistic than anyone else, but are really super-selfish in their desire to sacrifice happiness in this world (including to allow preventable suffering in this world) in return for a promise of a joyous resurrected eternal life in Heaven. 

(...Which is, anyway, impossible nonsense - hence merely a feeble excuse for callous indifference to others.) 

Perhaps in response, a weird kind of Christianized-altruism (which is not really Christian) sometimes develops; which, if taken seriously, leads quickly to immiseration and death - as shown in the misguided and self-destructive life of George R Price which ended in suicide

Suicide is, indeed, a rational response to the ethic of altruism; since it may be understood as helping others by removing one's own baleful influence, or by ceasing to consume scarce resources... 

Indeed, altruism suggests that it may be better never to be born in the first place; so that selfishness is not even a possibility, and others are left with more. 

(This is another commonly expressed view - buttressed by the contemporary fake-environmentalism which sees all living Men as undesirable CO2-emitters.)

In sum - altruism amounts to an ethic of self-hatred and death; which is probably sufficient to explain why it is so vigorously propagated by the modern Global Establishment.  

It is therefore vital to realize that altruism is not an ultimate ethic, nor indeed a good thing at all if taken as an abstract, general or universal commandment. 

By contrast; the Christian morality is based upon love, and focused upon Heaven - which is a place of love: a place that is entered only via an eternal commitment to live by love. 

And the reality of Christian love is seen, primarily, in the family; secondarily in marriage; and only much more rarely in friendships with unrelated people. And not all people are capable of love; and some people refuse it. 

Which fact means that actual mortal Christian love is partial, i.e. involving particular persons. Mortal love is not universal, nor meant to be - and love may be strongly bound up with the greatest knowable joy, as well as voluntary misery. 

"Abstract, universal love" ('of fellow Men' or whatever) is something other and not Christian love; indeed it often (not always) functions as an anti-Christian or indeed Antichrist phenomenon.

A Christian is one who believes that to love and to be loved is the greatest and most important thing in this mortal life (and beyond) - whatever emotions it brings. 

But in this mortal life love is usually partial, may be infrequent, and is always temporary because of death.

Thus, the greatest desire of a Christian is that this love we have experienced partially may be made full and eternal...

Which is why Christians want to accept Jesus's offer of resurrected life everlasting in Heaven; where this ideal state of love is realized powerfully and forever. A Christian has decided that he wants this for himself; and hopes that many others will want it too - but especially those people (and other Beings) whom the Christian loves. 

(And therefore - in its essence - Christianity has, indeed, nothing to do with altruism.) 

A short note on Mark's Gospel

I wrote the following in response to an e-mail question asking about some verses in the Second Gospel:

My understanding is that Mark's Gospel is a fragmentary, incomplete, later account of secondhand recollections of some things Jesus did, which the collector ("Mark") did not really understand. 

Mark's Gospel reads like somebody gathered many accounts of Jesus's life and sayings; and recorded them for posterity without trying to explain how they fitted together or what they meant. 

Thus Mark is more accurate than Matthew or Luke (which were apparently compiled from some of the same sources, and/or from Mark itself), in that Mark is not imposing a single interpretative scheme on recollections; but at the same time Mark cannot stand alone. 

Validly to understand Mark, and discern what in it is meaningful or valid and what is not, requires a perspective learned from the Fourth Gospel ("John").

"First impair the minds of Men"... How to make a convincing Virtual Reality/ Totalitarian System

My brother once reported to me something insightful he had heard from a friend: If you wanted to make a truly convincing computerized virtual reality system - you would also need to impair the consciousness of the user. 

In other words; there are two sides to a convincing virtual reality. 

On the one side there is the coherence of the virtual simulation; and on the other side there is the perceiving and interpreting mind of the 'user'. 

The insight was that no complex, real-time simulation can be fully, self-consistent when an alert and insightful mind is using it. 

But - if the mind of the user can be simultaneously impaired; then he can be totally convinced by an imperfect simulation. 

When the perceiving mind is unimpaired, then the deception is detected from the inevitable incoherence of any complex virtual world. 

Yet why is complex-virtuality necessarily incoherent? Ultimately, because it is a lie, and all lies are incoherent with reality. 

(Which is why one lie always leads to more lies. And why a 'cover-up' is always needed, and will itself always ramify.)  

This is maybe a deep explanation of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem. The only coherent truth is reality, therefore all models of reality are not true; therefore all models will be incoherent as experienced by the real human mind.  

To conceal the incoherence of virtual reality requires that the inhabiting-mind be simplified-down to the same level as the virtual world, and this simplification itself must be concealed... This is achieved by impairing the inhabiting-mind. 

The lesson is that if you want to make someone believe he really is dwelling in a virtual world; you must first impair his mind. One that is achieved, then he will live inside a simplified and incoherent model of reality without 'noticing' its simplification or incoherence; he will accept the model as reality.  

All of us now inhabit a virtual world, not reality. If minds were unimpaired, this would be obvious because the virtual world is grossly incoherent when measured against the reality of which the human mind is an exemplar. 

But in practice people inhabit this virtual world without realizing the fact, because they are mentally impaired. When, as inevitably happens, discrepancies are noticed - and the difference between virtuality and reality becomes evident; then these give-aways are rapidly ignored, denied or forgotten. 

In any case of disagreement: virtuality is regarded as primary. 

We can regard the socio-cultural changes of the past few generations as building upon the core deficit of atheism (or so feeble and superficial a religious conviction as to be de facto atheism) an incremental and multi-facteted mental impairment. 

The religions and churches integration into The System was necessary for this to work - and this integration happened incrementally, progressively, and very fully; so that by 2020 the churches served to reinforce, not contradict, the virtuality.  

This was apparently a demonic-strategy for preparing the world population to inhabit a fake, and evil, virtual world - without noticing the fact, and accepting the virtuality as reality. 

So, if we imagine ourselves to be collectively in the position of Ragle Gumm in Philip K Dick's novel Time out of Joint, or Truman in The Truman Show movie. But whereas Ragle and Truman had the mental capacity to take notice of the discrepancies and gross simplifications of their virtual worlds; Man in 2020-1 is too mentally impaired to suffer more than fleeting doubts and recognitions.

Every day, everybody is experiencing multiple moments when he sees-through holes in the virtuality; when the virtual world peels-back to reveal the real, when the real world pokes-itself-through the illusion. 

But because modern Man has no root outside the virtuality (and neither do any of the institutions to which he might look for external guidance - not even the Christian churches); Man has therefore no power of discernment. 

The multiple, frequent give-aways of fakery are experienced as just meaningless 'noise'; as evidence merely of the 'randomness' of a Godless universe without purpose. 

Thus, nearly the whole world is being deceived into self-damnation by an astonishingly crude, grossly incoherent, fake-reality!

"Suffering? I'll show you suffering!" - and the leftist impulse

Insofar as it has any positive program (and in fact this is a double-negative, not a positive) the alleviation of suffering could be regarded as the focus of leftism - arising at its early roots in abolition, pacifism, socialism, feminism etc. 

My Glasgow friend, the writer Frank Kuppner, used to intone the phrase "Suffering? I'll show you suffering!" whenever some leftist, feminist journalist (invariably upper class, public school, Oxbridge educated; then straight into a prestigious and high profile newspaper job) embarked on yet-another account of the abuses, adversity and prejudices of her hellish life...

For modern people the problem of suffering in the world; and the socio-political intent to eliminate or reduce suffering (or, at least, the suffering of particular groups such as workers, women, or blacks), has come to seem The Primary problem of Life - the primary objective of life. 

Yet, suffering cannot coherently be made the centre of a moral system. And indeed 'suffering' itself is an incoherent abstraction of billions (at least) of individual responses to billions of different - labile, fluctuating and often utterly specific - situations. 

As so often, there is a colossal but unacknowledged and denied assumption at work here - that all these billions of adverse feelings to billions of specific instances and circumstances - can, should and ought to be considered together; and dealt-with by one or a few generalized socio-political solutions of the type that constitute leftist politics and ideology. 

And, even give that all these assumptions were true and reflected reality; the resulting ethic of diminishing suffering is one that has many consequences which would be considered self-contradictory if clearly apprehended and comprehended. 

Because when reducing the suffering in this-life becomes the priority, it trumps life-itself; as with the mainstream acceptance and advocacy of abortion; where the priority is to reduce the suffering of the mother and or the child - even at the cost of killing the child. 

It is quite normal to express the ethic that it is better not to be born, than to be born to suffer; not to live, than to live in (presumed) great suffering - and this also justifies the grossly sub-replacement reproductive rates that characterize the entire developed world.   

It is quite normal to envisage a massive (but suffering-free!) reduction in global human population ("giga-death") as a mechanism for reducing global suffering due to some imputed cause or another; or even to save the 'suffering planet'. 

There is no great mystery to all this. Suffering (like pain, fear, humiliation or any other of its subtypes) is a consequence of many possible causes of many types; and furthermore is not a fixed quantitative result but varies according to attitude, explanation and treatments. 

A person can be - often is - made to suffer by evoking resentment against real or imagined persecution for supposedly class, race or sex (etc.) reasons. And then more people can be made to suffer 'vicariously' by empathic identification with (alleged, often fictional) supposed-instances of such suffering! 

The left has developed an 'economy' of suffering. Suffering can be imputed to some groups while others are blamed for that suffering; suffering can even be imputed to the planet, biosphere, ecosystem or environment. 

After a couple of centuries of expanding and permeating leftism, and especially since the explicit emergence of a leftist world government last year; Suffering is now Big Business.

Indeed, suffering is now the biggest of all world enterprises! With multiple and linked agencies and bureaucracies engaged in the identification/ creation/'raising awareness', validation, and allocation of suffering on one side...While on the other side is a vast and ramifying state-media-charitable-corporate apparatus for (allegedly) preventing and alleviating suffering. 

Leftism has become a global machine for creating, amplifying, and spreading suffering; even as it claims to be alleviating - or, at its transhumanist extreme actually abolishing - suffering. 

Modern Leftism is - insofar as it has any positive content - a meta-ideology of suffering. 

We can regard this 'meta-ideology of suffering' as an almost inevitable consequence of abolishing God, the spiritual and the after-life. 

If this mortal life really is our only experience - then its rationale can only be related to our current state of experience. 

The ideology of suffering has therefore been made public and socially-manipulative by the bridging concept of altruism; so that ethical persons are supposed-to-be concerned primarily to alleviate the sufferings of as many others as possible. (i.e. the philosophical system termed Utilitarianism.) 

But when the transcendental and spiritual have been wholly removed from public discourse and life (ignored, excluded, denied, forgotten); now we can observe an accelerating centripetal tendency towards short-termist certainty rather than long-term strategy; and a focus on the experienced-self rather than the inferred and alleged suffering of others. 

Therefore the terminus of the leftist ideology of altruistic is selfish negative impulsive hedonism. 

And the only way to be sure of avoiding suffering is to die (either immediately or as soon as suffering is too great) - die painlessly and quickly. 

Hence my prediction of a (imminent) mass epidemic of fear-motivated, resentful-spirited and despairing suicide. 

And this leads to damnation - not because it is suicide as such; but because such attempted self-annihilation was motivated by the sins of fear, resentment and despair; which amount to rejection or  denial of the reality and Goodness of our loving God the creator. 

Living in the End Times - recognizing the reality, understanding the implications

I have been solidly convinced that these are the End Times for about a decade; but since the global coup of early last year - and with its continued invisibility - this is an everyday reality.

My understanding of the End Times is that it references the time when evil dominates the world, and when further decline becomes inevitable. The self-correcting possibilities of negative feedback (e.g. the 'pendulum swings' of history) has failed; and positive feedback (whereby each adverse change creates further adverse changes) has set-in. 

The evils of the world have become irreversible mainly because they are invisible to the mass of people and the totality of the Establishment. The incrementally-increasing value inversion of recent decades in The West has reached such a degree and compass that a world of evil rampant is regarded as a beneficial development. 

The System built on Big Lies and elaborated from a web of dishonesty and propaganda-manipulation, has a totalizing quality such that all worldly considerations are encompassed. Every apparent this-worldly (i.e. social-political-psychological) 'dissent' or 'escape' turns-out to be a loop-back into The System. 

All apparent 'conflict' (between capital and province, political parties, media, nations...) turns-out to be stage-managed; with both sides operating as part of The System. 

For a Christian who recognizes the reality that The System is a machine for evil; there is no way of engaging with those inside The System. 

The modern world is materialist (denying the reality of God and the spirit); and The System identifies, interprets and explains all material things. Those who accept the material assumptions, cannot get outside of The System - not even in imagination; they cannot escape - even in principle. 

In these End Times there is only the material, and The System is the material; and therefore The System includes all minds, all thinking - as well as all action. 

So, any thinking outside The System is simply incomprehensible: stupid, insane and/ or evil.  

And this is how a material system ends-up by controlling the spirit: how a material-system can become (in effect) a spiritual-process leading to damnation.   

Nearly all self-identified Christians are inside The System - and their 'Christianity' operates in The System - because all institutions, organizations, corporations are (they Just Are) parts of The System because they must be in order to function. 

All actually-existing churches are System Churches; because they are a part of the economy, receive subsidies and pay taxes, have legal identities, are employers, deploy Public Relations and interact with the media, are part of the education system... Nearly-all churches sustain one, several or all of the current strategic socio-political agendas (e.g. birdemic, climate, antiracism, sexual revolution).

Thus All actual churches are components of The System. 

Therefore all 'Christians' who are 'spiritually' led-by churches are in The System; are part of System-evil; hence on the opposite side than God the creator and Jesus Christ.  

And this situation is (by now) irreversible - because invisible, because denied (even as a possibility). 

Millions upon million of ex-Christians have-been, are-being, led into The System by their churches; each endorsed by the dogma that resistance is futile, because there is no alternative because we must be part-of a System (church) and Now there is Only One System. 

This is what happens in the End Times. The principle of value inversion means that what was Good becomes evil; the churches - which were once sole-agents of Christianity, have become agents of Antichrist. 

Unless, that is... we live from a spiritual source outside of The System (including The Churches). 

The System is, in fact, a tiny and self-circumscribed part of the real world. Outside The System there is God and creation, spiritual beings, living and conscious nature; and there is each Man in his divine self.

...Man's divine self in the direct, intuitive knowing of heart-thinking.

Yet all of these are individually-known; all requires conscious knowledge of reality; all require free agency and acting by-choice; deliberately, explicitly, from the-self. 

To live this way, rooted outside The System and in the divine, is very simple. It is within the capacity of anybody who wants to do it...

But of course, hardly anybody wants to do it - and indeed most Christians regard it as evil, and Anti-Christian, to do it...

This is the nature of the End Times; and what makes them the End. 

Lies are asserted as mandatory Truth; that which is obvious is invisible; that which is Good becomes regarded as evil - and evil is the only existent 'good'. 

That which must be done to affirm God and Jesus Christ becomes regarded as self-evidently (without need for proof or refutation) crazy, dumb, nonsensical. Thus what must be done becomes regarded as precisely that which cannot and should-not be done. 

The answer to the End Time lies in our own hands, requires nobody else's permission, cannot be stopped by any power, and may be commenced immediately...

But because these are indeed the End Times: what is necessary and do-able is exactly that which will not be done. 

Life as an active, positive spiritual quest - implications

I am considerably taken with the idea of self-consciously regarding my life as a spiritual quest - I mean, that this could be the first thing I think about when I wake, and again throughout the day. It could provide a significant impetus and organizing-principle both immediately, and over the long term.  

In a world where evil is ruling, triumphant, everywhere; it seems of great value to have an active, positive attitude to life based upon spiritual quest - rather than falling into a defensive siege posture with respect to the world (which seems like the usual for serious Christians - and opponents of the Left, generally - over the past couple of centuries). 

This siege-mentality seems to be both unhealthy and weak - because survival is the best it can hope for. There can be no victory, but only not-defeat. We can only lose or not-lose - but nothing better.

Under such conditions, spirituality too easily loses inner-drive and hardens into a mirror image of the prevalent and strongest type of evil - which is, in our case, by adopting the characteristic materialism and dogmatism of the modern bureaucracy. 

In sum; because in this physical worldly life there can be no positive triumphs, no joy, no real victories; therefore I find the need consciously to regard (this life) as a spiritual quest. To adopt an approach to spiritual life that goes beyond the business of daily, hourly, survival against the unending attacks of evil; and is instead inner-motivated and strategic. 

For me; a spiritual quest must include open-ended elements; in other words, the spiritual quest must also be able to become a spiritual adventure if that is where the quest leads. 

This is Not to seek adventure as a goal, which is both paradoxical and a foolish snare. 

The quest must be spiritual, and the adventure something that may, or may not, arise in pursuit of the quest. But the adventure should not be shirked but made-the-best-of if it eventuates. 

A central element of my spiritual quest is the desire to attain a way of thinking that assumes 'an animistic universe' - a reality consisting of living, conscious, purposive Beings. 

This way of experiencing the world is very difficult for me to attain, because I am fighting a life of socialization, character, training and - thus - ingrained habit of regarding the (non-human) reality as 'dead' and truly/ fully-described by the physical sciences.

Included in this quest is a wish to experience the reality of the spirits which throng this world. Past Men (and, to an extent, modern Man when children) would perceive and interact with spirits of the dead, angelic spirits, and the spirits of remote persons. Modern Man has lost this ability in the course of the development of modern consciousness.

I have concluded that it is both wrong and futile to attempt to recapture this ancient, spontaneous, largely unconscious and animistic way of perceiving reality. Thus I cannot (and should not) try simply to Be in the animistic world.

Instead I believe that we should seek to know the spiritual world in our thinking (i.e. in the active heart-thinking of our real-and-divine selves). And this process must and ought to be conscious and purposive - some-thing we deliberately do. 

Yet I find there is nothing more paradoxically difficult than trying to think in a 'higher' way! It often seems to happen that such striving leads downwards, rather than upwards. It often amounts to just thinking-about rather than actually thinking: for instance; telling myself - with inner language - that that I should be thinking in such a way - but not actually doing it!).

Thus my quest has reached a difficult obstacle. I am trying to find a way over it by means of deliberate imagination; as a bridge towards the direct (and wordless) intuition I hope-for. Thus, when I 'want to be' animistic; I may create my side of an inner dialogue by which I address the Being with questions or comments - and then (rather than waiting for a wordless impression upon my stream-of-thinking - which is idea but very difficult to do) I imagine a possible response from that Being while trying to hold my mind open to any real such response. 

Imagination opening a conduit for intuition, in effect. 

This imagined dialogue - which is expressed in mental language but operates below that level, by direct-knowing - is then intuitively tested for validity. Does the imagined-interaction seem like wishful-thinking nonsense, or maybe a product of fear and despair; or does it seem like reality and truth? 

Another example: I often/ usually find that I feel spontaneously impelled to read (or re-read) books by or about some particular author. 

Often I resist such urges, because I don't want to go back to someone (or some work) that I have read several or many times before, and feel I ought to be exploring something new... 

But usually I yield and focus on whatever I feel impelled to read - because I am not really motivated to do anything else. It is a question of yielding to this particular urge to read a particular author; or doing nothing. 

Nowadays, I have come to assume that this kind of impulse may be spiritual; may be a form of spiritual interaction with the dead. 

It may represent a kind of sub-quest - of some-thing that I am supposed/ intended to do (at the level of thinking, not action) for the dead author. 

At any rate, I often reach a point of first understanding what that author was really about at a spiritual level; and then I move eventually to some kind of completion, correction, cross-linkage or extension of this authorial intent.  

(It may even be a living author for which this happens - and then this business often feels the same retrospectively). 

Such an activity may take multiple reading over many years - during which I am not conscious of any such 'quest' element. It is simply that I am drawn to return again and again to the same author, the same work. And then, I feel that 'my work is done'; and I no longer feel the need to engage...

Only in looking back can I make a story of what it is I have done, spiritually. 

During (and in deed after) this prolonged engagement, I may have some kind of relationship with the dead author; and this may extend to dreaming about meeting him - often in some kind of indirect manner. 

Dreaming I see as more of a consequence of long-term brooding than a positive contribution; but after a dream of this kind, I may develop a sense of 'really' having known the person - and I now think that feeling may literally be true: I may truly have come to know his living spirit as a result of prolonged sympathetic attention. 

In the above I am just giving some personal examples - but there are as many quests as individuals, as many methods as there are personal dispositions. 

Entropy versus creation here on earth

If entropy is a real thing on this earth; then it is not caused by God but represents the continued reality of primordial chaos. 

This means that not everything that happens is caused by, nor intended by, God. 

Yet this world is a created world, God is continually-create-ing this world. 

I see this world as continually being-created by God; as it is continually being-dismantled by the tendency to revert to primal (meaningless, purposeless) chaos. 

I imagine this to be a matter of God's creative 'energies' always-shaping that which is always-dissipating.

The consequence is that all of this mortal life has a divine meaning and purpose despite that not-everything is caused or intended by God. 

The activities of evil Beings are included in this basic schema. Evil Beings (e.g. demons, sinning humans) are continually doing evil things for evil reasons; and these are continually (in a sense instantly) being-shaped by God in accordance with divine destiny. 

No matter how much evil is at work and being-done; God is always (instantly!) shaping it to situations from-which individual Men may obtain Good: that is, to situations from-which Men may learn that which they most need to learn (would benefit from-learning) for their resurrected life in heaven. 

Therefore, although entropy rules this material, mortally-incarnated world, in the sense that entropy is never absent; divine creation dominates entropy. 

This explains how our life is always (potentially) meaningful and purposive; and why 'there are no accidents' - no luck, chance or randomness.   

Note: It seems to be a necessary consequence of the Christian understanding that Life (this mortal life) does Not have meaning or purpose for those who reject the post-mortal future of resurrected life in Heaven. This world, this Life, was-designed and is continually being-shaped to advance the learning of those who follow Jesus. 

The created world will also be shaped to create situations in which those who do Not follow Jesus can come (repeatedly) to understand what Jesus offers, and the clarity of mind and heart to decide whether or not they want it for themselves. 

But those who have rejected what Jesus offers are doomed to a life without meaning or purpose; because they have rejected the purpose of creation and the purpose of this earth. They have instead decided to inhabit a entropy; a world of inevitable degeneration, disease and death with nothing to follow but annihilation. 

It is always a positive choice to follow Jesus; and every Being, every Man, is free to reject that choice. But - in a created world, shaped by God for God's purposes - that rejection carries the consequence that ultimately Life has nothing lasting to offer but death. 

Is evil stronger than Good?

Duh, yeah! Evil is stronger than Good if you are talking about the trends evident in this mortal life, here on earth; and if you are discerning from a Christian point of view. 

This is what it is like to live in a world where evil rules at the highest level and in all nations; and where every week brings new evil plans and policies, every day brings new evil news and evil interpretations. 

So, at least in the human world; evil is already strongest and evil is winning; especially because this is unrecognized. 

Quantitatively evil is triumphant; and few people seem even to want what Jesus Christ offers. 

Yet this material world is evanescent, subject to 'entropy', degeneration and death; thus each human life is temporary, our human civilization and society is temporary; the existence of the planet and even the sun is temporary. 

Evil, therefore, is triumphant - but in the material, earthly world; which is temporary. 

But the true earthly war is spiritual, not material; and spiritually; evil is damnation - which is at most only a delaying of death.  

Therefore, ultimately Good is still winning; for at least so long as there are any Men still being resurrected and going to enlarge Heaven. 

Only Good is everlasting. So, no matter how much evil may triumph in the short term, no matter how much evil destroys and how many souls choose evil - there already is eternal Good that cannot be destroyed and will endure forever. 

And this eternal good is being added to, and is growing; and itself has the property of creation so will continue to grow - eternally. 

In this sense Good has already won, and its victory can only get larger. 

Of course, evil is real, and its ill effects are real. Self-damned souls are committed to evil and are lost from what might have been a larger Heaven; what those unique souls would have brought to Heavenly life has been destroyed. This is why we fight evil in general - and the fact that these damned souls may include those we love, who also are lost to Heaven, is what makes the fight personal and urgent. 

But the basic shape of reality is that evil is (here, now) strongest on this earth, and this is a Bad Ting and needs to be resisted and fought-back against; but since Jesus Christ Good has irrevocably won in an eternal and ultimate sense.  

This earth is a world of entropy. We will all die, and death is a necessary preliminary to resurrection: hence death is (for a Christian) ultimately Good. 

The Big Question is whether you and I (and those we love) want to join-with and partake-of this everlasting Good - or reject it and choose spiritual death. 

Folk song, dance and music - and participation (Romanticism)

Folk song, dance and music are a product of Romanticism, including the Romantic Nationalism which swept Europe in the 19th century. That is, Folk is a modern concept for something that was not previously a distinct category. 

(It being, presumably, whatever ordinary people, however defined; would do, in whatever time and place; in terms of singing, dancing and playing music.) 

But it was of great potency because - by means of Folk - a modern person could (for a while, to some extent) feel and experience that deep and Original Participation by which we were vertically rooted-in a spirit of people, and horizontally connected directly with other people. 

This was (originally) spontaneous and unconscious. What was once just a 'part of life' became for modern people something consciously chosen, learned, 'performed'. It still 'worked' (for a while) but must be sought and worked-on.  

But for people like me it was potent; because from adolescence the modern Man feels himself being crushed by the The System - and all meaning, purpose and participation being squeezed out of life. Folk represents a way of re-introducing some of these. 

As such, Folk had great importance to me in the mid teens of my life. It was a dream, but it could be a living-dream. 

Some of my best memories of those days are myself playing and singing folk music (often for myself, also performing a little), attending folk clubs and concerts, and especially dancing in Barn Dances/ Ceilidhs. Actually doing these dances could create a feeling of being a part of something bigger and more deeply rooted than normal life. 

These gave me a taste of participation - I felt (for a while, to some extent) a part of the world, a part of 'a people'. 

Yet I get a distinct impression that such feelings are both weaker and less common since the millennium transition (which seems to have been a further stage in the evolution of consciousness away-from the possibility of spontaneous and unconscious participation). 

Folk is now both less widespread, and more professional - hence more Ahrimanic and more a part of The System. 

Folk music always had politically-motivated nationalists and communists who tried to politicize it by equating 'the folk' with (for example) the Irish 'struggle' for 'freedom' or the Marxist 'proletariat'. As with all institutions; this surface and social aspect spread with the New Left victimology of women, races, sexuality etc. 

The consequent politics of resentment goes exactly counter to the Romantic participation which was originally sought from this music; it reduces the magic to the mundane. 

But what were we, what was I, supposed to do with Romantic Folk experiences? 

What actually happened was either that people tried and failed to return 'society' (as a whole) to the Folk-type, to an 'organic community', to Medieval-style villages or idealistic self-sufficient communes... To a neo-pagan inspired (intended to be) unconscious and spontaneous 'original' participation in living nature. 

This was the failed aspect of the post-war counter-culture - the deepest aspirations of both 'beats' and 'hippies' which got left-behind as all their agenda items were stripped of Romance, filleted into bureaucratic bullet-points, and embodied into managed systems.  

I think what we were supposed to do is to bring the Romantic Folk experience into conscious spiritual thinking; that is, retaining its Romantic power (based on the assumption that all of nature (including human society) is alive and a makes a continuum of direct knowing from-which we gradually separated-out, but to which we may return in our thinking. 

Nowadays this may not involve current experience of Folk singing, music or dancing - because such phenomena have been dwindling in power and popularity - even before in 2020 they were all suppressed and forbidden (for lying, 'healthist' fake-reasons).

Any (legal) future for such Folk activity seems to be one in which these activities are all closely-monitored and tightly-regulated as fully-assimilated System manifestations. 

So, what is required is that we each do for our-selves what we previously relied-upon live and communal singing, music and dance to do for us. 

The Romantic moves from the public and social realm to the private and conscious realm - and Folk (as part of the Romantic) likewise.

We are called-upon to be actively-creative in our own thinking - getting what assistance where and how we may; but ultimately engaging in a direct participation with creation. Any memories of past Folk experiences (or the Romantic essence thereof) can seamlessly be integrated into this spiritual activity.  

Instead of aiming to embody these Folk ideals into this mortal and transitory world, we should refocus on preparing our-selves for the immortal and permanent inclusion of the essence of Folk into the post-mortal and Heavenly world. 

"No one is told any story but their own." The Horse and his Boy by C.S. Lewis

The Horse and his Boy - which is the fifth book in the Narnia Chronicles by publication - and chronologically a 'plot loop' insert within The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, happening while the children are grown-up Kings and Queens of Narnia - is probably the most sheerly-enjoyable, fluid, coherent and well-structured of all the series. 

And this, despite that it could easily be omitted without significantly affecting the understanding of the other six volumes. THAHB is essentially just a great story, on several levels; wonderfully told. 

And yet it was the last Narnia book I read; because I was put-off by the Middle Eastern setting. The illustrations by Pauline Baynes are (as usual) very good; but I did not much like the 'exotic' subject matter...

Therefore, my enjoyment has been greatest when hearing the book, rather than actually reading it. 

My introduction was via the superb 1990s Brian Sibley dramatizations for BBC Radio. After listening to this a few times, I moved onto the Audiobook version - which was perfectly performed by Alex Jennings.  

(In Michael Ward's Planet Narnia scheme - this book is ruled by Mercury; and this is reflected in various subliminal ways by plot, character and symbolism.) 

All the Narnia volumes have some particular Christian moral aspects - and in this the striking one is that Aslan make some direct interventions into the lives of characters; which he then explains to them. I take it that Lewis is telling us that we can each understand the specific workings of divine providence in the details of our lives - assuming was are sufficiently aligned with Christ/ Aslan (presumably through prayer) and ask the right questions. 

But equally importantly, when the characters ask about how divine providence has operated in the lives of other people; they are informed by Aslan that "No one is told any story but their own." 

So, on the one hand - we can understand why bad things happen to us; but on the other hand, we cannot know why bad things happen to other people. 

This is a lesson that modern people (including non-Christians) would do well to reflect upon; since moderns (influenced by the arts and media) are always trying to discover 'why' some large and general Bad Thing happened to other people. 

To make things worse - these events are often remote in space and time, and known only secondhand by unreliable accounts. Such are the status of ill-formed questions such as 'But why did a supposedly-loving God allow'... some particular war, genocide or plague - or disasters generally? Then, when a brief and wholly-satisfactory answer is not immediately forthcoming; this exchange is taken to have refuted Christianity...

  

At the level of atmosphere, this book is congenial to me in that it begins in the parched deserts, and the characters yearn for the green and pleasant 'North' of Archenland and Narnia. 

When the two main characters - who have never known anything but a Middle Eastern climate and vegetation - approach and experience the recognizably European- then British-type landscapes from the burning South; I experience a renewed appreciation for the effects of rainy places!

This is an excellent example of the capacity for 'refreshment' found in good Fantasy literature; which Tolkien describes in his essay On Fairy Stories. 

St George's Day - Hmm...

Great music from the Albion Country Band, but leftist-contaminated lyrics...

Up until a couple of years ago I would honour and (to an extent) celebrate St George's Day. For instance, when I was at school I home-made a St George's flag with paper and a pin, and wore it on my lapel. A few years back, I purchased a small steel badge of the flag to wear on this day. 

But as the nation of England - including all of its institutions - has become more and more corrupt and net-evil; this kind of patriotism became more of a hope than a belief. And as of 2021, it ceased to be even that. 

Now, I do not see any Good in any national thing as-is, here-and-now; nor do I have any optimism for any such. My affection for England and Englishness is directed at the past, not the future. 

I remain devoted to the land itself, the place and its spirit - hills, trees, skies, woodland, rocks, rivers and coasts; and to old buildings, stones, tracks and earthworks... but not to the people. 

The people of England are by now unworthy; merely 'inhabitants': zombies, traitors and aliens. Their attitude to England is a mixture of indifference and hostility. All those organizations that are supposedly 'devoted' to our 'heritage' and 'environment' have embraced its sequestration and shabby subversion, if not obliteration, in the name of whatever Leftist value-inversion is current. 

Furthermore, and especially over the past year; all the once-net-Good national groupings (even of an more informal nature) have been co-opted or suppressed. 

There is no Good England any more, at the societal level; and the evil-England is now - Very Obviously - just a regional office of the totalitarian Anti-Christ-ian World Government. 

And patriotism for England as-is has become just a part of The System - controlled-opposition; a snare for the unawakened. 

Nonetheless the idea of England - England as an Archangelic guardian, perhaps? - retains power in the hearts of Anglo-Saxon Englishmen and Norse descendants of the Northern counties*.

*But not the Celts (who mostly define themselves against the English); nor the Norman tyrants ... but they have no hearts, anyway. And another thing - St George has always suffered from being a Norman imposition - the truly English Patron Saint was Edmund. 

  

Note: St George is a character in the traditional Mummers Play - done here by Steeleye Span as an interlude in their music tour of 1974. I saw this at the Colston Hall, Bristol where they were supported by Gryphon - a dream combination for me. 

My absolutely favourite joke

 

Hullo Old Boy!

Oh, hello. 

What's up?

I was clearing out the attic last week and I found an oil painting and an old violin; so I just took them along to Sotheby's to get them valued.

Yes?...

They were a Rembrandt and a Stradivarius.

But that's marvelous!

Well... It turns-out that Rembrandt made terrible violins and Stradivarius was a lousy painter.

... (Collapse of stout party)...

The prepper delusion

This is from last year - but the delusion is getting worse: more common, more deeply deluded. 

This is because prepping is fear and pride based; fearfully aiming to save our mortal skins (for a bit longer...); and smugness at (mistakenly) regarding oneself as able to do so (with a sufficient supply of preserved foods, 'guns and ammo'.

(wrt. 'Guns and ammo'; there is also, very evidently, a covert lustful anticipation of having a 'good excuse' to shoot, maim and kill lots of other people against-whom one harbours a burning resentment.) 

'Prepping' is of value for a limited span of possibilities, and when it comes to the main possibility confronting us here-and-now - which is civilizational Collapse; Prep is essentially irrelevant... If we regard the current world crisis, the totalitarian takeover, the increasingly overt and aggressive civilizational suicide; as essentially a spiritual phenomenon; then it becomes primarily important to think about salvation rather than survival; and about theosis rather than preparedness.

The great and urgent need is for people to deal-with their overpowering (and sinful) emotions and motivations of fear and resentment; and to stop using these as a way of temporarily staving-off incipient despair. 

It is for this fear-less-ness that we should be striving - and not for the delusory goal of a world with nothing to fear. 

The proper answer to fear is simple but not easy. Not easy yet within the capacity of every individual; no matter how physically un-prepared they may be (and for most people, prepping is not even an option due to their age, health, physical condition, environment or other circumstances). 

The answer is Christian faith - and from that faith comes hope - and that hope is directed beyond our inevitable death and at the resurrected life in Heaven which no earthly power can take from us - should we choose to accept the gift. 

The evidence of history, and - if we try it - our own experience; is that Christian faith absolutely abolishes fear - always and everywhere. 

Of course we cannot individually always (or even mostly) be paragons of faith (we are, after all, all sinners); yet when we cannot have faith we can always repent its lack - and that will suffice. 

When we fear or experience resentment, we can always repent it - and that will suffice. 

Even if we despair (which amounts to a total loss of faith in the promises of Jesus Christ); we can always recognize and repent it - and that also will suffice. 

Woven from strands of creation and chaos: The nature of this mortal life

There is not just creation in this mortal world; but there is also chaos interwoven; around us, within us,  everywhere. 

Chaos is what undoes all creation on this earth - it is 'entropy' - the tendency to decay, disease, corruption, death... Every Being, entity, "thing" is always unravelling, dying. 

So, in this world, we are continually choosing either to affiliate with the divine creation, or with chaos. 

There is a divine energy behind creation. In affiliating we creation we (as children of God) give some of our own divine energies to the divine creation. But in affiliating with chaos we are reducing creation to chaos - and some of these creation-energies are released, and taken...

Thus creation is an active participation that enhances the whole; while to affiliate to chaos is to be a parasite (at best!) - destroying the wholeness of creation, and taking the energies of creation for oneself. 

We are here to choose. 

Which do we love? Creation? Do we want to join-with creation and draw-upon the the creative essence in our-selves to add to creation, harmoniously? 

Or, do we intend to use creation for our own goals; do we want to take and redirect the energies released as creation is destroyed? 

Or, do we want divine creation to be controlled, directed and shaped in accordance with our own (totalitarian, this-world, socio-political) ideology? 

Or, perhaps we simply hate creation, resent its very existence; and want to see it destroyed; will even use our own energies to see it destroyed (even whether or not we personally benefit from that destruction). 

But the core choice is binary: Are we for divine creation; or (in some way) against it. 

Because being against creation, one may change one's motivations, as corruption affects a person, as evil gets a grip and attains mastery over a soul.. 

The lust-full hedonist becomes a soul-less bureaucrat becomes one who loathes all that is Good simply because it is Good... 

Such is this mortal life of mine, of yours - woven from strands of creation and chaos. 

Life comes to us; in thought as well as action - like it or not. And we choose between the strands - again and again until the final choice. 

We experience both sides of life; we are intended to learn what these two possibilities entail and imply; we should learn to discern between them - to know them the one from the other. 

So, we live this life; we our-selves are both divine, and also we are always returning to chaos. We are compelled to choose where our affiliation lies... 

We may change sides for a while, but eventually we must pick sides: forever. 

Are we to become a co-creator in the divine work of creating (resurrected life in Heaven)? 

Or are we to become an exploiter-of creation; do we aspire to become a parasite, a tyrant or destroyer of creation? 

Such is our mortal life, such is this dual world of creation and entropy and our life of choosing, our life - ultimately - of making a commitment one way, or the other. To join-with and participate in creation... Or, else to reduce creation towards chaos for our own purposes - whether to vampirically feed-upon creation's energies, to control and direct creation, or reduce creation to chaos from sheer destructive spitefulness. 

Why categorize evil? Why categorize Good?

 A couple of profoundly-clarifying posts by WmJas Tychonievich have led to the following thoughts. 

Good and evil are not symmetrical - not mirror images - because Good is positive divine creation; while evil is 'various ways' of being opposed to divine creation. Thus Good is primary, and evil cannot exist without Good. 

(This is why I habitually capitalize Good, and make evil lower case - subliminally to emphasize their qualitative difference in kind.)

The reason that I have suggested considering evil as Luciferic, Ahrimanic and Sorathic is a matter of expediency - it need not reflect and actual categories or distinction in the real world. It is a (more, or less) useful way of understanding evil. 

The reason for doing it was becuase Ahrimanic evil was not being recognised consciously as evil. I think most people spontaneously feel that Ahrimanic evil is indeed evil - i.e. the modern workplace and mass media makes people feel bad (e.g. afraid, resentful, despairing). 

But they do not consciously recognize it as necessarily evil by nature and motivation because they do not understand that Good is rooted in God and divine creation; and even if Christians have become transfixed by ancient lists and exemplars of Luciferic sins (murder, torture, rape, arson, theft etc) which are not what it at issue in a totalitarian Matrix of omni-surveillance and micro-control. 

OK so much for evil; but why divide and differentiate Good? I think that a categorization of Good ought to reflect actual, natural reality - rather than being merely expedient. 

And this seems especially important in this Ahrimanic age, when we so often categorize to kill: categorize in order to destroy that which is alive, organic, conscious, purposive...

Lists of virtues, laws of behaviour... these Now (however it was in the past) function to short-circuit thinking from our real and divine self - and to make us bureaucratic functionaries, being instructed by checklists and flow-charts. 

All language, and all concepts, are merely 'models' of real-reality; but we should only be categorizing Good in so far as this is really based-on the categories of real-reality. 

Good is rooted in divine creation, which is rooted in love - so Good is ultimately a unity of motivation. For a Christian Love is Good and it is the single Good.  

Indeed, the purpose of Jesus making possible our resurrection to eternal life is that we may each become able to contribute, each in our unique way - from our unite nature, to the single harmony of many unique goods - to help-make a creation that is always (but always differently and changing) Good. 

But WmJas reminds me that (as we both know, from our acceptance of Joseph Smith's Mormon revelations) behind the integrated harmony of divine loving creation are Two divine beings: our Heavenly Father and Mother. 

God is a dyad, and the single harmony of creating comes from the love of our Heavenly Parents; who are therefore, two qualitatively-different kinds of being that is Good. 

In a sense Heavenly Father and Mother can each be understood (i.e. can be abstractly modelled in language) as what Wm terms Ahuric /Seeking-Good  and Devic Avoiding-evil; or active versus passive* Good - or (as I now think of them) man-good and woman-good.  

Mormon theology has it that sexual difference (male and female) is an essential characteristic of individual pre-mortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose. God the Father is not a self-sufficient 'monad' of Goodness. Instead - God is two kinds of Goodness. 

Instead "God" is a dyad of Heavenly parents, a man and a woman. It is their love (and love is always between Beings) that is the cause of creation: thus all creation is loving-creation. 

(I will now modify, summarize and expand on some comments from Wm Jas.) 

This implies that there are two complementary types of good. No being, no person (not even Jesus) can fully embody both. And, as Wm says, Jesus was indeed an exemplar of positive, active Good - but not so for the negative, passive* kinds of Good (which are instead represented in Catholic Christianity by the figure of Mary his mother). 

Since sexual difference is an essential pre-mortal characteristic. This difference comes before observable chromosomes, hormones, genitalia, motivations, abilities and behaviours. Sexual difference therefore reflects a fundamental division of primordial Human Beings - into promordial men, who are (insofar as they individually are Good) are orientated towards positive Good; and women who are orientated towards the avoidance of evil.

And that causal primary division of ultimate nature is usually reflected, or approximated, in the 'sexual dimorphism' of anatomy, physiology and behaviour of mortal incarnate humans. 

(...Remembering that this mortal life is individually tailored for our unique personal learning requirements - so no specific generalizations apply universally.) 

In sum: it is legitimate to state that really there are two qualitatively different kinds of Good - and that these are the two characteristic Goods of our Heavenly Parents. These are reflected in their Heavenly Children as we observe them - mortal men and women; and will be reflected in Heaven. 

That is the reality - and we can then summarize, model, and in general try to capture these reality-differences in language - but these linguistic descriptions will never be more that partial and distorted representations. 

The reality is in the distinction between the two persons of our Heavenly Father and Mother.

*Passive and negative are wrong terms - for reasons described in the comments. In truth, I think the distinctive complementary qualities of good in a man compared with a woman are irreducible; because this sexual difference of human Beings is primary (hence irreducible). 

Understanding the progression from Luciferic, through Ahrimanic, to Sorathic evil: superbly encapsulated by WmJas Tychonievich

William James Tychonievich has produced what looks like the best-ever exposition of the Luciferic, Ahrimanic, Sorathic classification of evil; of which I have made such use in recent months. 

The essay includes not just description; but also analysis of why it is and how that individuals and cultures go-through this evolutionary sequence - clarifying why civilizational evil needs to develop in this order. 

WmJas's piece is of fundamental importance to understanding and responding-to the world as we know it - but especially since 2020. 

I urge you to READ THE WHOLE THING 

Bach BWV 530 transcribed by The Herschel Trio

 

Bach Trio Sonata for treble recorder, treble viol and harpsichord, played by The Herschel* Trio. This piece begins at 48:17. 

This is a transcription of one of my absolute favourite pieces of music - the Vivace (first movement) from JS Bach's G Major Trio Sonata for Organ BWV 530. The whole thing is pure delight - but the three extended descending sequences are so absolutely delicious as to bring tears to the eyes. (The first of these begins at 49:09).

In the first version of this sequence the recorder does rapid semi-quavers while the viol does triplet quavers in syncopated support with the bass note coming on the first beat. The second sequence switches the lines with triplets in the recorder and semi-quavers on the viol. And the third sequence has both recorder and viol playing semi-quavers in mirror movement, with the bass note coming on the third ('off') beat.  

If you want to take a look at how the music 'works' - then the first part of this scrolling version of the original organ piece is very useful. 

If you want to watch the music being played (especially the bass line - articulated in beige socks...) then try this one:

*William Herschel started as a musician (composer, conducter, violinist) and for a while led the Durham militia band and Charles Avison's Newcastle Orchestra in my part of England. He then switched his efforts towards astronomy where he managed to discover Uranus, infrared, various planetary moons and much other stuff; to become the third most influential astronomer in history (ranked after Galileo and Kepler - according to Charles Murray's Human Accomplishment). Talented chap... 

Procreator or creator? God or deity? Father or mathematician?

From the ancient Greeks we have inherited the idea of God as a mathematician/ geometer deity; thus the idea that - ultimately - creation is abstract. This goes with the implicit understanding that apparently 'living Beings' on earth, are more truly seen in terms of abstract, spiritual, eternal and unchanging entities.  

This contrasts with the much older and more universal (but including Ancient Hebrew) idea of God as Parent/s; and a person or persons - the idea that ultimately creation is pro-creation. This goes with an 'animistic' creation, composed of Beings that are alive and conscious. 

One could consider both of these as metaphors, or as partial truths. And there are intermediate, or mixed states. Many Christians seem to believe a composite or half-way house between the Greek and Hebrew concepts - where God is a person but also an omnipotent deity defined in terms of abstract attributes; and creation is partly procreation (e.g. Men as God's children) - yet a procreation abstractly conceptualized. 

It was a conceptual breakthrough of the Mormon Restoration that - at least in theology - God became more fully parental, and creation became (more) fully procreative. 

Yet the Mormon Restoration did not take procreation through to a fully procreative understanding of creation; because Mormonism did not extend to an 'animistic' metaphysics of all creation (including the 'mineral' world) as living and conscious, purposive Beings.  

Because Christians regard Love as primary; we can see that the concept of Love must be very different in terms of the degree to which God is understood as a person versus an abstract deity. Both views of Love can be seen in the modern world: Love as something like a universal force/ energy/ vibrational-frequency or 'filed'; or Love as a personal relationship between Beings - where beings include all of creation.

And - in terms of the original, primary creation - Love can be seen as a quasi-mathematical state of eternalness - like a field-of-order including all-that-is; or as something relational that is-happening between specific living, conscious Beings.  

We've already got Ahrimanic transhumanism - how about Sorathic superpower war?

In October 2019 I posted a video of Terry Boardman in which he prognosticates about three major civilizational threats - war, transhumanism and envirnmental damage. 

Since then we have had the world government totalitarian coup of early 2020; which has used the birdemic to impose much of the transhumanist agenda - building on the work of the trans-agenda which had imposed reality-denial, insanity and destructive abuse of children at the highest levels. 

But what about superpower (US/ NATO, Russia, China) war - which TB regarded as the most imminent threat? 

Certainly this looks increasingly plausible. US military capability and dominance is being been deliberately demolished with extraordinary rapidity (removing decades of superiority); meanwhile it is clear that there are powerful influences operating in the US that both make and take every possible opportunity to provoke war with either or both of the superpowers. 

If a superpower war is being sought; then we would be foolish to regard it as being driven by 'national interests' - because there is no such thing, anymore. We have a single world government. National interests are just something to be manipulated - just 'office politics' - in this era of the single, linked-bureaucracy. 

What we are seeing is the demonic agenda continuing to morph from Ahrimanic to Sorathic; from the strategic objective of a global System of omni-surveillance and micro-control, to the short-termist, spite-driven evil of sheer destruction. 

When destruction of God's creation and all that is Good becomes the goal, it is hard to better a global superpower war; especially when the contenders are fairly evenly matched. 

Of course; many of the Ahrimanic controllers will initially try to resist such a war, because it would destroy The System. Last summer the controllers managed to channel the Sorathic outburst of violent antiracism into 'yet more bureaucracy' - but the fact is that it is easier to destroy than to build. 

Evil bureaucrats (who are currently the most powerful among the wicked or the world) may quite easily corruptible (by their own dominant fear and resentment) into a spiteful, vengeful, despairing destructiveness. 

The extreme vulnerability arises because the global Ahrimanic System is built-upon Leftist resentments that have been created and encouraged between classes (originally), sexes, 'sexualities', races, ethnicities, religions etc - and such resentments need only be one-sided to be effective. 

So we already have a System built in deliberately provoked resentments; all that is needed is for self-seeking resentment to be transformed to other-destroying spite - and then we have war: war at multiple locations and levels; from the superpowers down to the inter-personal.  

This transformation from resentment to spite is already happening; and is likely to increase (because this is being encouraged from the highest levels). It may suddenly increase very quickly, in a positive-feedback spiral. 

...Including the powerful/ wealthy/ famous/ influential evil bureaucrats turning-on each other, and on everybody else. 

Such a war may be perceived (by those with most influence, or who believe it is in their grasp) as offering massive immediate possibilities for grabbing power, wealth, sex or whatever They personally most want most. 

When time horizons shorten even further than already - then functional and sustaining structures will look like opportunities for parasitic looting and 'rape' of The System (in both general and specific meanings). An attitude of carpe diem among the evil Establishment would soon cause collapse of the already eroded social functionality; and when functional social structures collapse (in such an inter-dependent world as this) one failure will bring-down several others systems - spreading and accelerating.   

My point is therefore that some of the Establishment are clearly trying to trigger a superpower war; and that pressure is increasing; and if it does break-through it could soon become unstoppable and irreversible. 

But (again) we should not suppose that this is about old-fashioned national/ ethnic/ political self-interest - such an interpretation would grossly underestimate the evil of its real motivations.

When the world government is dominated by supernatural demonic powers; then merely human motivations are a false guide to action; and create wrong predictions. 

And when the dominant demonic influences become Sorathic, we can observe the unedifying scenario of the very-evil being overcome by the even-more-evil. 

When/ if this happens; the transhumanist 'controllers' who are trying to preserve their System of Damnation, will then superficially appear like the 'good side'! In comparison with the 'pure', destruction-seeking evil of the baddies who shape resentment into spite; to provoke, sustain and amplify a terminal superpower war. 

What can we do? The first and most important things are to understand correctly the primarily spiritual nature of what is happening in the world. Such an understanding (in individual persons) itself has a positive and creative influence. 

And this positive influence does not depend upon material systems of communications, but potentially works by spiritual means, by the direct and intuitive knowing between persons (and other beings) on the side of God, The Good and Divine Creation. 

The more we recognize the spiritual nature of phenomena, and discern clear the side of Good; the more powerfully beneficial will be the influence. 

God works to improve the spiritual state of the world through those who love him; but God can work only through those themselves meet him part-way. When we consciously discern and choose Good, all kinds of invisible but pervasive positive influences are made possible. 

More on Christian Zen (and John Butler) - how it differs from what I want from life, and after-life

I am posting another talk from the delightful John Butler, which he discusses his books, his life, and his spirituality - which I have previously called Christian Zen. 

I call it this because it uses Christian language to describe an 'Eastern' spiritual way that neither wants nor aims at the resurrected life eternal with God, Jesus, and other sons and daughters of God, dwelling in Heaven - that Jesus made possible for those who followed him. 

Instead, JB's desire is for self/ego-less, body-less, peace, stillness, oneness and unity with God and every-thing - which I will tern Nirvana. 

What is instructive about this video is that it seems to make clear why John Butler wants this. He mentions the core problem of life as 'How do you cope with the world' - and the impossibility of escaping from the world due to the constraints of the body. Clearly the hope permanently to be rid of the body is not the same as the hope of resurrection. 

JB also mentions his aim of 'less me, more God' (not my will but God's will) - which equates closeness to God with dissolution of 'me', the self, the distinct ego. 

The great hope is for total and perfect unity - in which whatever makes us distinct and unique is removed. This is holiness. He suggests the special virtues of losing the individual in the community (family, village, nation); absence of criticism between Men; and patient, forbearance and waiting - which he (from experience) regards as better lived in Russia. 

Butler describes his books on Russia (which I have read, and recommend) as describing How spirit may strengthen to bear an unbearable world. 

This phrase is, I think, a great clue to this Christian Zen perspective. It describes the basic stance that 'the world' is intrinsically unbearable, that this un-bearability comes from the detached and observing conscious self; and therefore implies that the best and only hope is to escape the un-bearability by dissolving consciousness (and the underlying self) - so that we will just-be. 

   

By his own account John Butler has had (until recently) an 'unbearable' life of misery, loneliness and depression - alleviated only by the discipline of (oneness-type, 'transcendental') meditation. Some fifty years of meditation practice have enabled him to cope with the world, while he awaits death.

But why did JB experience life as unbearable? Well, his biography shows that this came from within; it came from the way he was and from what he wanted. And the Christian will, naturally, focus on the matter of love - because love is the principle of God's creation. 

Now, for Christians, love ought to be between persons - on earth and in Heaven (because God and Jesus Christ are also persons). But John Butler's aspirational idea of love is not between persons, but a blissful the loss of personhood into oneness. 

In this video; JB describes the great 'love' event of his life. This was a time when he and a woman friend (not his wife) were meditating together, and he experienced a vivid and compelling vision of their two souls leaving their bodies and joining into a single spiritual unity. This led to nothing relational between the two; but triggered JB to leave his wife and led to several years of a life wandering alone and miserable. 

So, the experience of 'love' drove JB further away from the world; because (I would say) this was not relational-love between persons, but was the 'annihilational'-love a loss of self (a microcosm of the hoped-for dissolution into the divine). 

From what I have gathered of John Butler's life (from the several books of his I have read) his only experience of relational love (Christian love) was with his mother; and this was warm, constant and long-lasting. 

Yet, I think this love, because it was with his mother, probably pointed backwards into a lost childhood; rather than forwards into eternity - and (in other of his work) I judge that JB regard all inter-personal and conscious love in terms of a negative attachment to the unbearable world.

He seems to regard Christian love as a narrowly-specific, immature and anthropomorphic perspective on life; something which ought-to-be set-aside in favour of the universal, 'abstract' undifferentiated 'love' of complete unity with the impersonal-and-universal-divine. 

In sum, I believe that (so far as I can tell) John Butler is an example of someone who does not want what Jesus has to offer. He does not, indeed, want to be a Man - because he finds distinct consciousness so unbearable in its suffering, that he would 'hand back the entrance ticket' of becoming a Son of God and return to a situation of pre-creation blissful mere-being. 

I think he regrets being budded-off God, because of the existential loneliness and isolation it engenders (at least in adults); and wishes to lose all awareness of himself as a separate entity - lose all awareness altogether.

From this perspective, this mortal life is nothing but a Vale of Tears; without any essential function or purpose. It is a kind of punishment, or accident; something to be coped-with by learning Not to think. And something from-which death is a deliverance.

For me, none of this is true. I see this incarnated mortal life as having a purpose that is essential to what I most want: which is resurrected life eternal in Heaven with other persons - including at least some of those whom I love from this earthly time. 

I regard this mortal life as made good (albeit intermittently, and temporality) by inter-personal love, I see love of God and Jesus as between me and other persons and living beings; and I see the aim of both earth and Heaven (the thing I most want to 'do') as being creation/ creating from and for this 'web' of loving relationships. 

As I have often said before; it seems apparent that there are some people who are (apparently from young childhood, and perhaps related to the pre-mortal spiritual nature) wanting something very different from the gift that Jesus brought us - and John Butler seems to be one of them. 

Instead of opting-into Heaven, and different from choosing the Hell of opposition to God - these people want to stop being people. 

I regard this as a consequence of the fact that when God (our Heavenly parents) took our primordial and unconscious selves and procreated them into being sons and daughters of God with consciousness and free agency; some regretted the event. 

Among those who regret being sons and daughters of God are those who respond by blaming and hating God and divine creation - these are the demons who work to destroy.

And there is this other group - of whom John Butler (along with perhaps vast numbers of adherents of Eastern religions) is one; who want to return to the state of a primordial and unconscious self. I don't think this is literally possible, because I believe that the sons and daughters of God are eternal.

But God can certainly remove all self-consciousness and all awareness of difference from the sons and daughters of God ; so that after death fully, and to some extent, during mortal life (e.g. in oneness meditation) - Men can blissfully feel and experience themselves as-if they are an impersonal and abstract part of the divine. 

This is not what God most wants for us and from us; but I think it is something he will do for his children who choose to opt-out of Heaven but without being hostile to the Heavenly project. 

    **

Note added. While I believe that all the above applies in an abstract and ideal sense; I think that here-and-now (in these 'end times') it is very difficult for anyone to reject (real) Christianity without damning themselves. 

In other words; as of the conditions in The West in 2021, Christian Zen is mostly in practice anti-Christian. 

When the world is ruled by a demonic cabal - so that all which is mainstream, official, 'approved' is strategically on the side of evil in the spiritual war - then those who reject the gift of Jesus will find it very difficult not to find themselves accepting the assumptions and motivation of those who actively oppose Jesus. 

To put matters differently; because the Christian Zen adherent rejects discernment (i.e. rejects 'judgmentalism') - its becomes all-but impossible for anyone with any kind of engagement with The System (and surely we all depend on The System to keep us alive, and not to kill us) to avoid joining-with the system in pursuit of damnation. 

I would say that discernment of Good from evil has become an absolute necessity in 2021. The default is nowadays to take the side of Satan, and it requires almost an active choice to reject damnation. 

As an example, in another video John Butler demonstrates a belief in the CO2 Global Warming agenda which is deceptive and evil agenda based on several Big Lies; and speaks approvingly of the Extinction Rebellion organization - which is a tool created-by and working-for the goals of the totalitarian world government: the Global Establishment. 

This kind of gross failure of discernment seems almost inevitable when one combines a rejection of judgment with a climate of pervasive authoritarian evil. 

To put it very simply: For most people, most of the time, here-and-now; the choice is binary: Christ or Satan - and those who in other cultures and at other times might genuinely have wanted Nirvana, will sooner or later find themselves wanting Hell. 

What to do about church? (You, yourself, alone.)

Folk need to realize that saying "But I have access to a real Christian church, which has defied the pressures of the birdemic-fake-response and remained open" is Not an answer to the problem of Christians now. 

It certainly is a good thing if you do have such access - but it is not an answer because (as of her and 2021) many Christians do not have access to a real church. 

Either because there are no real Christian churches accessible (or maybe none in a denomination that they would regard as valid). 

Because they do not have access to these churches: maybe too far away; or because the buildings are shut due to lockdowns; the priests/ pastors have stopped work or been stopped; or because the people cannot, or are not allowed to, travel to a real church. 

What the "But I have access to a real church" people are indirectly saying amounts to "You can do nothing by yourself, therefore just wait until some priest (for catholic Christians), or some gathering of devout people (for protestant Christians), sorts-out a church of real Christians that you are able to attend"... 

This is a counsel of passivity, waiting, hoping for better times - but actually doing nothing substantive. Because (according to such Christians) nothing can be done by one Christian, alone. 

Unless you can do it alone, and without permission or help from any other persons; then nowadays, it probably is Not going to be done. 

And if this state-of-affairs (of a church being organized for you) does not happen - well that's tough. 

You can't be a Christian, because (they assert) if you aren't in a church (that I approve of) then you can't be a Christian.

(e.g. Either because you have no access to priests and sacraments, or because you are not gathering.) 

I think we all need to understand that this situation is not an accident. 

On the one hand, Christians have too often (usually) painted themselves into a corner. They have made Christianity a mandatory group religion; such that there is no concept of an unaffiliated, or solo, real Christian: only of church members. ("The church" is primary, specific individual human members are at best secondary, at worst just an Optional Extra.) 

On the other hand, for many Christians in many circumstances church is not an option, being corrupt,  unavailable, inaccessible, or shut without any assurance of ever again opening (or opening only with strict and anti-Christian, anti-human, controls and conditions).    

Church First worked fine in history when there were both real and accessible Christian churches, but cannot work when there are not.  

The double-bind is Must Church... but No Church. 

And the only way out is for individuals to re-examine the assumption Must Church with its sub-implications Must Priest and/or Must Group. 

If it turns-out that - after all - any individual can be a real Christian on his own and without the cooperation of any other person or people, or institutions, or laws - then there is No Fundamental Problem with being a Christian in 2021; or at any other time or in any other circumstance.  

So, if you are one of the Christians who believe they must be part of a church but no church is available; then (while you are waiting for some other people to solve your impasse), you might as well expend some serious time and effort re-examine your assumption that church membership is necessary in order for you to be a Christian. 

And you might start with prayer and meditation on this theme; to see if you can discern what God, Jesus Christ, or the Holy Ghost has to say on the matter.