"Poor little me!" "I need to join a gang!" - Induction of a craving for groupism is (nowadays) a demonic strategy

I think that it has been a deliberate and long-term demonic strategy to encourage people of The West to crave the kind of "groupism" or group-identity that was normal (and indeed unavoidable) in past eras - but is now impossible. 

The fact is that modern Western people aren't (as a strong generalization) capable of groupism: we cannot immerse in the group mind (except very briefly and superficially, as when the member of an audience). 

We are, in other words, individualized, "alienated" - but this also means that we are (like it or not) free - much free-er, much more autonomous as agents, than past generations. 

The faithful Christian response to this fact would be to assume that - since it is a fact - then our task in this mortal life is to deal with it, learn from it, consciously choose to operate from the state of agency and freedom that we find ourselves inhabiting. 

The demonic strategy, however, is to make this fact into a disaster - in various ways.

One way is to induce people to adopt a "poor little me" attitude: to feel sorry for their own isolation (an isolation induced by denial of God, the spirit, the living universe etc) -- such that the lack of people of the kind we feel a right to, lack of the immersive and spontaneous consciousness of childhood; lack of a group and to whom we can virtuously subordinate our will, is felt as an existential disaster. 

The futile and harmful response is then to seek, indeed insist upon, a group to join, to obey, to which we  subordinate our values. A group that we will choose to regard as "our infallible conscience". 

This often bound-up with a felt-need for protection. People want to feel part of a "gang" that - in response for obedient service - will protect us against what is certainly a Big Bad World. 

Such protection is more of a delusion than a fact; because of course the power of the totalitarian world we inhabit is so unprecedentedly vast and pervasive, that no subgroup could, even in principle, protect us against it.   

But this demonically-encouraged craving for protection is turned against the Christian by the fact that all groups powerful enough to provide any psychologically-plausible protection (i.e. all large, resource-rich, organized churches), are here-and-now actually part of the System of totalitarian evil. 

The lesson I draw from all this is to beware of any grouping, any person, any source; that is trying to induce that "poor little me" feeling of helplessness and desire for protection. 

This is an indirect soft-sell of materialism. Because, insofar as it is indeed true that we are (whether as isolated individuals, or obedient group-members) helpless "atoms" in a materialistic sense - the lesson we ought to learn from this fact is a lesson of faith. 

In a spiritual domain, we are completely "safe" in the deepest existential sense - because we are free agents in God's creation; backed with the secure promise of salvation to all those who follow Jesus Christ.  

We have no need for anything else beyond what we actually can get by our free choices and capacity to learn; and should beware being manipulated into believing that we are helpless, miserable, worthless creatures when we are without a gang, church or any other grouping. 

"They" Want Us Dead - but dead too-late, too soon, and dying in fear and/or despair

The subject of death is becoming mainstream in modern materialistic culture - but, of course, death is framed by our evil-motivated Leadership class in ways that (if the frames are accepted) with induce us to choose damnation instead of salvation, and such as to corrupt as as much as possible. 

There are many aspects to death. One is that, in this entropic world, we will die. Another is that we dwell in God's continuing-creation, and God therefore can influence the way we die. And then there is our own freedom. 

I therefore assume that God (by his creative work) engineers the best "time to die" for us; within the constraints of entropy and the freedom of other beings (including, but not only, human beings). The best death is when - from our freedom, we willingly agree that this is the time to die - at which point, the process of death (which happens in time) will begin. 

But this best way to die is precisely what the weight of modern culture attempts (on the whole very successfully) to thwart - by two main means (although there are many others). 

The first is to induce us all to cling to life, for as long as possible - so that we will not consent to die when it is "our time" (and God will do everything possible to ensure that we - and those we love - know it is time). Hence the clichés such as "stay with me" that present dying as always a failure of will, a giving-up in despair. 

A good deal of modern health services are built on exactly this assumption - that everybody ought to want to stay alive, at whatever cost, for as long as possible -  hence the truly vast expenditure of health and social care in sustaining human life far beyond its biological span. 

But the vital thing to remember is that this artificial sustaining of life is only possible because that is what so many modern people are choosing. It is not difficult to die, and people will die when they are ready - when, at the deepest level, they have chosen to die. 

The other corruption is to regard death as something that ought to be done with the minimum of suffering, and therefore - to be on the safe side - we need to arrange to be murdered (assisted dying) before there is "too much" suffering. 

This discourse is rooted in extreme and chronic (existential) fear - the fear of what might happen to us...

Combined with such an extremity of fear of suffering that even a few minutes of pain (such as might result from actual suicide) is intolerable to contemplate... 

Ancient Romans used (apparently calmly) to kill themselves with a sword or knife - but modern Man demands (literally demands, as a human right) painlessly to be murdered by someone else, with legal approval, by some technological contrivance that is claimed to eliminate suffering. 

In the materialist culture of the mainstream West, there can be no conceptualization of faith and trust in God; not even trust that God will ameliorate our subjective experience of suffering at the time of death (as seems to happen in so many animals). 

Neither do we trust God to know when it is our "time to die" and will provide us with that knowledge when the time comes. 

Consequently there seem to be a lot of "bad deaths". One is the death of someone who is clinging to life for every last moment until overwhelmed by entropy - and total body failure supervenes - and whose soul is, presumably, dragged "kicking and screaming" into the after-life state. Which seems like a very bed preparation for the choices to be made at that phase of our lives. 

Another bad death is one who mistrusts God, or more the reality of God, and dies in a despair so profound that he cannot summon the courage to anticipate enduring even a few moments or minutes of suffering en route to the after-life.  

Another bad death is suicide; which is death too early - before the "time to die" - which happens when suicide is motivated by sin - sins such as fear, despair, or resentment ("that will show them!") 

A common things seems to be the death of those who have rejected their "time to die" and who have chosen to live on in a state of what must therefore be unrepented, hence probably cumulative, sin. In other words, who have (for weeks, month, perhaps many years) been progressively corrupted in soul by their embracing of fear and despair; such that when they eventually die they are significantly worse people than if they had died when God believed that they should best die. 

If such a corrupted soul accepts salvations in the after-life - which opportunity is, of course, open to all - they they will take much less of themselves through resurrection to eternal life. 

What I mean is that we can only take-forward what is good in us, and must leave-behind what is not-good. So those who die later will need to repent more and therefore shall take-forward less than if they had accepted death when God chose was the best time. 

(In other words; if there is a best time to die; then dying later than that time will be worse; when best and worse are judged by post-mortal and Heavenly standards.)

If we accept this idea of there being, for each person and spiritually-speaking, a time to die - and that this time is known by God; then it is indeed obvious that there is vast current propaganda otherwise. 

A denial of there being a time to die. 

And the colossal cultural effort to persuade people that their time of dying is an event to be decided by anything-other-than God: e.g. by "individual choice" of mortals who have accepted/ chosen annihilation after death (i.e. choice in context of materialist metaphysics); or chosen and administered by The System in some combination of Global Establishment/ State/ Law/ Media/ and Health (or Death) Services. 

The virtual-reality, echo-chamber bubble within-which the Western Leadership dwell, is only a more concentrated version of the mind-set of the Western masses

The dissident internet is altogether too keen on the "I'm a victim, others are to blame", resentment-fuelled, attitude of the mainstream Western civilization. 

One version is to describe (accurately enough) the us-and-them, insulated-from-reality nature of the Western leadership class; without mentioning that this is just a more exaggerated version of what is the normal, standard, prevalent attitude and life of the Western masses. 

An instance is the mass media, and the journalists who inhabit (infest?) it. The mass media are widely recognized - at least at the level of lip-service - to be shallow, selfish, sensation-seeking, completely irresponsible, and utterly untruthful...

What is left-out is that the Western masses are both helplessly and willingly addicted to exactly this mass media (often absorbed indirectly, via the even-worse amplification systems of social media). 

The Godless materialism and selfish short-termism of the Western "elites" is well-described and much bemoaned - yet the Western masses are subject to exactly the same un-repented sins - albeit at a quantitatively lower level. 

The fire-hose of lying pseudo-compassion from public figures, masking lust for pleasure for themselves, terrified grasping at safety, and a spitefully-motivated destruction for those they dislike or fear - is common to both leaders and led in The West.  

The West is a civilization that has, again and again for many generations, made the wrong strategic decisions at every level. Again and again we have chosen the superficial over the profound, the immediately gratifying over the purposive; the material over the spiritual.

And perhaps most importantly of all: chosen untruth above truth: For many decades, more and more, faster and faster - we have made purposive and systemic dishonesty into Our World.  

By now we are very deep in a mire of our own choosing - and we continue to choose it. 

This is much worse than a (mere) "failure to act" - it is a failure to understand, to think, and to desire what is Good - and this is compounded by the failure even to want to do the right things. 

Our situation is not one that can be "fixed" by common sense and pragmatism; because CS and P are operating on the basis of cumulative evil decisions; and will only lead us deeper into the mire of superficial materialism that is killing us - by past and continuing choices.  

Such are the realities - and such is unsayable; because we have become so spiritually-weak and faithless that we cannot face reality without despairing - reality cannot be faced by the ruling classes, and it cannot be faced by the masses, and it cannot be faced by most of those who call themselves Christian. 

(Who are so lacking in faith that they routinely muffle their ears and shriek "Help! That nasty man is blackpilling me!" Such is their dependence on optimistic materialism, the feebleness of their spiritual hope, that they can do no other than denigrate the messenger and deny the message.)

So we get multiple and sustained hysterical outbursts of facile and counterproductive this-world optimism: clutching at fake straws has become an intellectual industry - including among even the serious advocates of traditional church Christianity.     

Yet matters really are very simple - and hope-full. We find ourselves painted into a corner, everything mainstream, traditional and publicly validated merely adds to the surrounding paint... 

We cannot escape without first understanding properly the situation: recognizing the extent and depth of our predicament.  

But then we can personally and spiritually escape the predicament - which is the only real and possible escape.

And then? 

Well, then, who knows what? 

God's loving relationship is primarily with each of us, and salvation is likewise an individual business first and foremost. 

A truly-better society (insofar as this is possible) is not (and never has been) planned and imposed top-down; but is emergent from better people - starting with ourselves.  

No matter our many weaknesses; faith in God the creator and our loving Father; tells us clearly that we are each fully equipped, by God, for the task ahead in the times in which we find-ourselves. 

That's all we need to know. 

 

What's going-on about the obsession with 2030? Black magic numerology...

We have all heard "by 2030" so many times that the oddness of that date does not surprise us as it should. 

The main focus comes from United Nations Agenda 2030 - originated, endorsed and publicised by the World Economic Foundation gang - which is the plan to bring the world under totalitarian omni-surveillance and micro-control. 

But why that date - or rather, why that number? Because this is about numerology - the magic of numbers.

And I mean literal magic, as with Black Magical ceremonies, designed to make contacts with demons, and thereby to mobilize and serve demonic powers. 

Be clear - numerology is not what I believe is possible or real, but what They believe is possible and real: the kind of things that They do. They believe in the power of numbers, and work in accordance with numbers. 

And 2030? Well, ritually speaking 2030 is two thousand years, two-millennia, after the beginning of the three year ministry of Jesus Christ. 

So 2030 to 2033 (i.e. Jesus's ministry to his crucifixion) is significant; because by Their reasoning this is a "dangerous" time for the agenda of evil; and therefore a time when they want everything under control - and a population for whom everything real is "a thing". 

(That is, a world of the masses where the spiritual is ignored, regarded as not-real - when it isn't being ridiculed.) 

"They" do not ignore or ridicule the spiritual, because that includes the demonic; and They know that the demonic is real - because They serve it. But is the The Agenda that everyone not inside the demonic elite should disbelieve the spiritual.

(When people are convinced that only the material is real, then they can be controlled insofar as the material world can be controlled - which, nowadays, when most choose to inhabit a virtuality, is to a very great extent. By contrast, the world of spirit is not easily controlled. For instance, yours and my relationship with the Holy Ghost is beyond Their control.)  

However... The bureaucratic demons of materialism and totalitarian control are rapidly losing ground to the spiteful demons of destruction and chaos. 

So it seems more and more likely that Agenda 2030 is not going to happen on schedule, or ever. Things are moving away from it overall, and this trend is accelerating.

This does not mean they will give up on the Agenda for 2030; but that their efforts will become more frantic, more urgent, more extreme. 

And Christians should bear in mind that 2030-33 is an opportunity. 

Even if (as I believe) the numerology is nonsense, then frantic totalitarianism may (if the opportunity is grasped) create an accidental self-inflicted self-fulfilment about the danger to Them. 

If, but only insofar as, this opportunity is taken. 

     

Should we be "chaotic good"? Laeth opines

From Laeth:

there's no neutral anymore, and good is no longer lawful, so chaotic good is what we must be.

This puts me in mind of an interesting discussion nearly twenty years ago when "Mencius Moldbug" - i.e. Curtis Yarvin - argued that there the only good was lawful good, and that "chaotic good" was not actually good. 

These  terms derived from the early (but not earliest) versions of Dungeons and Dragons; which have orientation categories of good and evil, chaotic and lawful. 

(There is also a "neutral" - neither good nor evil - orientation, which I cannot make any coherent sense of! In practice it seems to mean a short-termist, self-gratifying form of evil.) 

As I understood him; Moldbug went on (in further essays) to argue that a good society must aim to be lawful, as much as possible, and without compromise...

Consequently - and having got close-to, but decisively rejecting, Trad Roman Catholic Christianity - Moldbug went-on to follow his own logic, and become the technocrat totalitarian-servant of evil that he is today. 

Well, here Laeth argues that good Christians ought to become "chaotic" - because the lawful (in The West, implicitly) is now inverted, hence evil: i.e. the laws, regulations, officialdom, mainstream propaganda etc will, if obeyed, serve the agenda of demonic evil. 

From his other writings I infer that Laeth is not really advocating chaotic behaviour as a goal (if such a thing is even possible!) - since creativity is, for him (as for me), a primary value - and creativity is not chaotic.

Law and chaos are not, for a Christian, the only two and exclusive alternatives; and neither is the ideal a half-way compromise between law and chaos, nor an alternation between them.  

However, I think the sharp-point of this aphorism is to shock us into recognizing that good behaviour will nowadays, in The West, be regarded as at best chaotic; because the coherence of good is not recognizable to the "lawful" mind. 

In other words; anyone whose behaviour is genuinely good, here-and-now and in 2024 - will be regarded as exemplifying and advocating chaos.

When totalitarian evil gets to define "lawful" then anyone good will be, whether they like it or not, regarded as outwith the law - for which Their only word is chaotic... at best; that is when Christian-good is not being regarded as simple evil.   

In truth, the Good Man in 2024 is pursuing good as best he may in the context of a value-inverted world-order - therefore necessarily un-systematically (i.e. un-lawfully), in a spirit of loving creativity. From a mainstream perspective; this will look chaotic, but it ain't! 

(From the long and wordy nature of my unpacking of one sentence, even if I've inferred correctly what Laeth is saying, can be seen the advantages of writing aphoristically!)

The male and female principle in Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene

For an idea of what I intend by the "male and female principles", see this book review and the quotations from Owen Barfield and DE (Doris Eveline) Faulkner Jones. A terse summary of their argument is provided by Faulkner Jones:

One might call the special gift of women 'creative receptivity', and it should be used in close co-operation with the 'creative activity' of men... An example of the harmonious working-together of the male and female principles in social life is medicine in the nineteenth century. New discoveries were revolutionising medical work when there emerged in Florence Nightingale a woman powerful enough to feel deeply, and comprehend fully, the importance of these discoveries and of medical work in general. It was through her work in founding and organising nursing as a profession for women that the new medical ideas, generated through the male creative intellect, could be applied beneficently and systematically, on a wide basis, to all the classes of the community. Without the steady, loving, systematised, daily and hourly attention of trained nurses, the most brilliant surgical or medical treatment would fail.

Of course I am here comparing the cosmically great reality of Jesus and Mary, with the micro-cosmically specific instance of the male founders of modern medicine and Florence Nightingale and her nurses. 

But I would like to suggest that Jesus was - inevitably - specifically a man, hence male - and therefore essentially engaged in "creative activity"; therefore in need of a woman and the female principle of "creative receptivity" in order fully to fulfil the potential of his work. 

In the Fourth Gospel (for my understanding and explanation of this scripture, see here) we have a vivid and human portrait of Jesus provided by an eye-witness; and it can be seen that Jesus's character is distinctively that of a man. Jesus is neither androgynous, nor a fusion of man and woman: he is archetypically male. 

By contrast, of the five episodes that feature Mary Magdalene; the first is the marriage feast at Cana, which I believe to be a (later redacted) version of the marriage of Jesus and Mary; but it provides no information as the bride's behaviour or character. 

However, the next four descriptions of Mary Magdalene all mention archetypically female, indeed wifely, behaviour: these are:

1. Mary weeping at Jesus's feet at the resurrection of Lazarus, her brother - expressing direct sadness and empathy for the here-and-now situation;

2. Mary anointing Jesus's feet in Bethany and wiping them with her hair - demonstrating her knowledge of Jesus's divine status, and a focus on the present moment - and "indifferent" to larger and abstract masculine issues such as "the poor". 

3. Mary's presence at the foot of the cross during the crucifixion: being-present, while Jesus dies, i sympathetic participation.

4. Mary's discovery of the empty tomb, and her later first-witnessing of the resurrected Jesus; Mary apparently visited the tomb alone, and with no functional purpose other than - again - to be there, to participate in Jesus's condition. When she meets, and then recognizes, the resurrected Jesus; she desires primarily to touch him - again, an archetypically female response to the situation.   

None of Mary's behaviours are surprising, but in their here-and-now immediacy and care, they do emphasise the contrast with Jesus's own "Big Picture" words and behaviours. 

Mary's behaviours emphasize too that "creative receptivity" which is missing from, and complementary to, and necessary to the completion of, the masculine creative activity of Jesus.

This is one reason why I consider that Mary Magdalene later became one of the dyad that is the Holy Ghost; our guide (masculine active creativity) and comforter (feminine receptive creativity). 

If I were to draw any tentative lessons from this analysis for this, our mortal lives; and for the ideal relationship between a man and a woman towards which we might strive; such lessons would be along the lines of understanding the ultimate and spiritual nature of these male and female characteristics. 

"Behold they son!... Behold thy mother!"

John 19:25-27. Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son! Then saith he to the disciple, Behold thy mother! And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.

For a background summary and supporting argument, see Lazarus Writes: 

This is described by the eye-witness author of the Fourth Gospel - who was the resurrected Lazarus. Present with Lazarus at the foot of the cross stood Jesus's mother and aunt; and Mary Magdalene who was Jesus's wife; and Lazarus himself, brother to Mary M, and who was therefore Jesus's brother-in-law. 

This web-of-relationships explains why Jesus specifically asked his brother-in-law, the author of the Fourth Gospel, to "adopt" Jesus's mother after Jesus's death - Jesus's mother already being mother-in-law to Lazarus's sister. 

Jesus's wife's brother becomes the "son" to Jesus's mother; reciprocally, Jesus's mother became his brother-in-law's "mother".  

Entropy is the god of modernity - purposeless, meaningless, destructive

We begin (as individuals and as a species) as inhabitants of an animistic world; a world in which every-thing - all phenomena - are understood as due to the purposive actions of Beings. 

This, I believe, is true (I mean; we really do live in an animistic world) --- except for entropy. 

Entropy represents primordial chaos, before Creation; and the tendency for this to return. The endemic and pervasive tendency for that which-is-created to return to chaos. 

(Entropy - evident in degeneration, disease, ageing, and biological death) is what is termed "death" in the Fourth Gospel.)

This mortal world is therefore in a dynamic state of flux, in which divine creation continues amidst entropy.  

Entropy is the only phenomenon which is impersonal: 

chaos is "a thing", not a Being.

Modernity has focused upon this phenomenon of entropy, and modernity has made entropy its one and omnipotent god. 

Entropy is a god that is unalive, without purpose, without consciousness, without meaning or values. 

A god of abstract models, of mathematics and geometry, forces and energies, laws and processes...

And modernity has made itself in the image of its god: entropy. 

  

If The System of totalitarian materialism in The West collapses into chaos, it does provide the potential (but only the potential) for a resurgence of individual, innate spirituality

It is my impression that, after the recent US election, many who oppose the secular-left totalitarianism have gone somewhat crazy with a kind of desperate-but-misguided optimism.

They believe that things have turned a corner, because the public have discovered a new and positive motivation for a better society.  

But, I think what we are instead witnessing is an acceleration of the inevitable self-destruction of the attempt to create a global System of Satantically-directed self-chosen damnation, via omni-surveillance and micro-control in a context of societal materialism. 

This is a decline, not a rebirth. 

In a nutshell; the intent of the dominant evil faction in the Establishment, was to regulate the material world, perceptual inputs and concepts; in a public sphere which only recognized material reality - excluding all assumptions of God, divine creation, and the realm of the spiritual. 

The plan was: When people were convinced that only the material counts as real; and the material realm was captured by a totalitarian system - then people could be made to think... almost anything; paving the way for that value-inversion that would lead to the evaluation of evil as good, and a positive embrace of damnation and hell.

But evil feeds upon itself, and is fissile by nature; complex strategic plans will break down when the "actors" tasked to implement them instead increasingly pursue selfish and short-termist goals.

So even as The System reached its zenith in early 2020, coming into the open with Their intentions about the Great Reset and Agenda 2030; it was already demonstrating evidence of being subverted and taken-over by the agents of chaos, with the collapse of control, evident from the antiracist mania of summer 2020.

This has continued, until more and more people have begin to notice... The totalitarian bureaucrats are beginning to panic. 

So the currently visibly accelerating collapse of The System is mostly motivated by evil - by spiteful selfishness and the desire for destruction; therefore not by a resurgence of mass goodness; and this change is not therefore, of itself, a cause for celebration...

Except that the removal of The System does remove a powerful and adverse influence. 

Yet this is only a double-negative - the collapse of "lawful evil" due to even-greater but chaotic evil, does not amount to in increase in actual good. 

Therefore; it seems that The System of evil will not - at least in The West be replaced by a System dedicated to Good - and instead a social collapse into greater physical hardship and suffering seems very likely.

However, this collapse does make space for individuals to break free from the manipulative enchantments of The System; and enables a greater possibility that less-systematically-oppressed individuals may choose to recognize and endorse... whatever of innate and intuitive goodness lies within them. 

So greater hope is, as always, reasonable - so long as we are hoping for the right kind of things; which things are "not of this world" - at least not primarily nor directly. 

(Hope for this-world will happen, if it does happen, only after we are become next-worldly.) 

More jazz flute! The original Mission Impossible theme (1967)

The theme to the first series of Mission Impossible has been covered innumerable times (including one I linked recently) - but the original arrangement and performance is surely the best. 

So much to enjoy! First and foremost is the wildly syncopated riffs above a 10/8 time-signature (not, as oft stated, 5/4 - it is subdivided into 3/8, 3/8, 4/8*).

And secondly is the overblown, shrieking jazz flute solo (regular reader may recall my fondness for jazz flute).

Third is the orchestration itself - starting with that weird percussive noise on triangle/ violins, the uneven bass riff, alternating sections of the band, and ending with a crunching dissonance.  

*This is actually the case for most successful pieces+ in "5/4" time - if you were conducting them, you would want to give the down-beats (in bold italics) as follows: 1 2 3  4 5 6  7 8 9 10 

+ More jazz flute...!

Fuzziness about assumptions and aims used to be okay, but now Christians need to be Clear

This is a thing that I assume; but not the kind of thing that can be proven. It is that in the past it was okay for Christians to have all kinds of wrong ideas, but now there are some particular core aspects of Christianity that it is necessary to become clear about. 

I regard this as a consequence of the development of a distinctively hard-edged modern consciousness. 

Whereas in the past, consciousness was more groupish, hence less personal; there was an inevitable fuzziness about concepts and aims because each individual's awareness was significantly subordinated to the groups in which he participated (his church, his clan, his nation...). Much of Cristian life was a matter of (often unconsciously) going along with group practices. 

Now, as I understand it, we Just Are primarily autonomous and isolated consciousness's. Some people can, temporarily and usually partially, re-immerse in a group mind - but only by some kind of temporary depression of consciousness - such as intoxication, trance states, getting carried-away by some crowd event - which might include a religious ceremony...

Or people blitz their own consciousness, with constant and distracting sensory inputs from social and mass media.    

But most of the time we are awake and aware, we experience consciousness as isolated, alienated from the world, and our-selves. 

This being fundamentally "on our own" is, I think, why we now need to be clear about the truth of things, and about our purposes in living. 

This is why, when we are wrong about essential matters; it seems to make a much greater difference than it used to. 

Apparently; we cannot help but follow-through our own ideas to conclusions and outcomes, that necessarily affect us. 

Errors will lead to further errors, lies and other forms of untruthfulness will propagate into consequences. 

There is (in a loose but necessary sense) a "karma" of our choices.   

That, at least, is how I see it. And it is is a very different business from the old theocratic way of defining a single permissible truth and way-of-living - and enforcing this upon the population at large. 

Now, the process of assumptions and consequences plays itself out in a multitude of individual consciousnesses.

Whereas in the past Christianity was a matter of externally mediated and inflicted threats and rewards; nowadays "the game of consequences" happens inside each person - and operates with a kind of determinism.  

In the past each group-immersed person was not fully responsible for his spiritual convictions, therefore neither was he fully responsible for the consequences; but now that responsibility is unavoidable. 

Understanding the spiritual corruption that is Fear

I have written a good deal, over the past years, on the subject of "fear as a sin". Some commenters have reacted immediately against this idea, pouring scorn on the idea; yet without (it seems to me) properly trying to understand the argument. 

That fear is a sin was not immediately obvious to me - I needed to think the matter through before becoming convinced. 

Francis Berger has added to the spiritual discussion of fear in a post today, taking a new angle and making several important points that had not occurred to me. 

Considering that fear is a besetting sin of the modern West -- such that public expressions of existential terror in relation to a variety of socially-approved subjects, are not just acceptable, but attract positive moral approbation -- I strongly recommend reading the whole thing. 

And thinking about it. 

Whatever happened to Poland? - 1980s poster child of a resurgent Roman Catholic Church

Just an observation. Those who can remember the 1980s might also recall that Poland seemed, very obviously, the poster child for the courage, vigour, relevance and positive qualities of the Roman Catholic Church. 

This was the era when there was a popular Polish Pope, active against communism; and involved spiritually with Lech Walesa and the explicitly Christian (and very trendy!) "Solidarity" movement within Poland. 

Then came the collapse of the Soviet Bloc from 1989; and I think most people assumed that Poland would go on to exemplify a tremendous and lasting resurgence of Roman Catholic Christianity. 

It didn't happen - and instead Poland became thoroughly Western-orientated, secularized, leftist, and a mass exporter of its most active young people as economic migrants. 

Indeed, most recently, the Polish Establishment has become actively determined to engineer national annihilation as the disposable tool of an evil cause; apparently determined to model the fate of Poland on that of its depopulated and nearly-destroyed southern neighbour. 

What a turn-around in the space of just three decades? From a distinctive and life-embracing Catholicism; all around to mainstream Western self-loathing, suicidal atheist-leftism.

By contrast, the Eastern Bloc communist nations that had been historically Eastern Orthodox, experienced a massive (and still lasting, at least in the case of the Fire Nation) emergence and growth of their national churches, and of Christian influence. Secularism and leftism was significantly held-back, and indeed rolled-back to some extent. 

What are the lessons of such contrasting trajectories? Well, there are too many interacting aspects to pick on any particular one. But for Western Roman Catholics in particular - such a reversal is something deserving of honest, serious consideration. 

The god of fear, who demands sacrifice, propitiation, worship, obedience - actually Implies a Good and Loving Creator God

There is that within human beings which believes-in a god of fear - a god who, in some sense "rules" the human world, and who demands sacrifice, propitiation, worship and absolute obedience... 

I mean that god who is a characteristic underpinning and default of much monotheism, including that of many Christians (of many kinds) throughout history. 

Because this is indeed a god of fear; people are afraid to give up their habitual attitude of sacrifice, propitiation, worship, obedience. 

Such fear as The ruling passion is very evident when interacting with many Christians - whatever lip-service they pay to God being our loving Father. 

Such Christians do not really trust God, because they are afraid of God; and they are afraid of God because their mental image of God - their understanding of God - is of an all powerful, all-knowing, yet incomprehensible and ultimately alien entity.  

As I said, this image of a god of fear seems natural and instinctive to humans - but, despite nearly 2000 years of confusion and conflation - this image is not the Christian Creator God as revealed by Jesus Christ. 

The God revealed by Jesus does Not demand sacrifice, propitiation, worship, or obedience; but instead "love" - or rather, Christ's God does not "demand" love, but is the God for those who recognize His love, and who love Him, and Fellow Men.

Such is the revelation - yet we need not depend on revelation to know the Good and Loving Christian God - because this loving creator God is implied by reality. 

For there to be creation, there must be love. (If you really think about it...!) Only a loving God would create. 

And we (you and me, as individuals) could only know this, if that loving God loved us (you and me, as individuals). 

To put it the other way around - the god of fear is a real god - which is why he is universally recognized and responded to. But he is not the creator God; he is not the primary god. 

The primary god (call him "God") must be the creator, and the creator must be loving, else he would not create - and must love us as individuals, else we could not know anything. 

The god of fear is a secondary god; one who hates creation, who uses creation for self-gratification instead of love, who inverts creation against itself.  

Therefore the reality of that god of fear implies the god of love as primary creator. 

But this argument that the god of fear implies that the God of Love is creator is not a logical entailment; it is an argument about persons. 

To accept my argument entails that we already, personally, value love above all. If we do not already value love as primary, as our highest aspiration; then we can just as easily accept the inversions of the god of fear. 

So, you can see how much of being a Christian hinges upon the fact that god is Not incomprehensible*. 

Knowing about God is not the same as knowing God - just as knowing-about some human being is not the same as knowing-him. 

Or, properly expressed, how vital it is to being-Christian that we each know God! - and know God as we might know other people such as close family or a deep friend - experiential knowing of an individual. 

Unless we know God we cannot love God; and this means we must be capable of such love. 

And if we do know God: when we are-knowing God, we know His love for us, and ours for Him - and then we will Not fear Him.  

(Although; in this mortal life we cannot always be in this state of knowing, nor even most of the time - and then we must be faithful to our memory of knowing. Thus the need for faith.) 

*Note added: To clarify. If God is allowed (by metaphysical assumption) to be incomprehensible, and if it is allowed for us to assume that God had no personal motivation for creation (because God is assumed to be an entity "without passions" an entity that therefore cannot be motivated); then the reality of a god of fear doesn't imply a primary loving creator God. In other words, if the creator god is assumed to be incomprehensible in His motivations, then we cannot exclude that the god of fear is the primary god. This is why those Christians whose faith is shaped by a core belief in god's incomprehensibility, posit a god whose characteristics seem to be essentially the same as those of god as understood and described by the pure monotheisms.  

Motivation is vital - but what is it?

I've been harping-on about the vital importance of "motivation" since I began daily blogging in 2010 - and repeating that this, our age is characterized by extremely (historically) low levels of motivation. So it's maybe about time I clarified what I mean, and what I do not mean, by "motivation"...

Motivation needs to be distinguished from power; indeed motivation is revealed when power is lacking; when there are stresses and adversity working against it; and over the course of time. when weak motivations inevitably fail.

Motivation is long-term; and continues despite lack of external encouragement or reward - and in the face of active dis-couragement and negative sanctions. 

Be clear that high motivation is not sufficient to good: it depends on what that motivation aims at, and someone might be highly-motivated towards evil. 

However, motivation is necessary to good; because without motivation, people merely conform to external incentives and pressures. 

Therefore motivation underpins long-term courage; and motivation is an aspect of "freedom" or "agency". 

Motivation is inner, ultimately; therefore needs to be distinguished from what people actually do in their lives; because actions are subject to external control. In an extreme case, a slave's actions may be almost wholly controlled (on pain of death), yet that slave can be motivated to good. 

Or, more commonly, a person may be prevented from "actioning" his motivations by many adversities such as inborn deficits or damage, sickness or accident, or a character that is weak-willed. 

Because will-power is not motivation. indeed, most people with exceptionally high levels of will-power - I have known several - use this to pursue socially-valued behaviours. Their will is thus subject to somebody-else's externally-supplied motivation. Such a life-strategy does not need real (i.e. inner) motivation. 

But a highly motivated person might we thwarted by his own deficiencies from achieving anything significant, or observable - and these deficiencies may include lack of "will power".  Such an individual's "aim is true", but his ability to action that aim is feeble.  

 

A highly-motivated person is one who sticks to his inner goal, his destiny (as he has chosen it); even when he is unfitted, or for any reason unable, to achieve that destiny - even when he acknowledges that he has failed.

High motivation is therefore indomitable: it cannot be beaten in this mortal life. 

And when motivation is aligned with God and divine creation, when motivation seeks salvation by following Jesus Christ - then we get the needful Christian combination. 

We get someone who will achieve resurrection to eternal life whatever happens or does not happen in the external world. 

And that is the vital importance of motivation. 

**

Note: The next question is perhaps: How then do I become a highly-motivated, indomitable Christian? That is a task in its own right; and one that involves meeting one's own innate and most-intuitive aims with a long-term and solid apprehension of the Goodness and love of God the Creator. Second-hand information and advice do not suffice. External influences and pressures are more likely to be deceptive than helpful. It is a personal quest. But one who recognizes the absolute need for inner Christian motivation, is guaranteed timely success - exactly because God is the Creator, is good, and loves us each individually.   

Next-worldly, but not world-renouncing - not ascetic but loving (Christian life)

I think it is a mistake when Christians present the faith as ascetic, world renouncing, world-rejecting; as if this mortal life was merely a matter of (whether patiently, or not!) waiting for death and resurrection.

This makes no sense to me, because if mortal life is about rejecting this world, then we would die as soon as possible - or indeed, not live mortally at all but would go straight to Heaven. 

I think the error ultimately derives from double-negative theology - of seeing life in this sin-full world as a matter of avoiding as many sins as completely as possible. The modern world is more this-worldly and materialistic than any society ever before, so the "natural" reaction is often to aspire to reject everything, all material things, all attachments... But that lands us in Buddhism or Hinduism - not Christianity. 

What about the example of Jesus's own life. Well, it depends on which source you regard as primary. If, like me, you regard the Fourth Gospel "John") as broadly authoritative, then there is no sanction for asceticism; since Jesus is depicted as living very socially, even feasting; and having very personal and loving attachments to family and friends. In this Jesus is contrasted with John the Baptist, who is depicted as much more of a world renouncing ascetic.

On the other hand, most people prefer to take the Synoptic Gospels, especially Matthew and Luke, as their primary sources - and these describe Jesus retreating into the desert for forty days and nights. Very ascetic. Either this actually happened as Matthew and Luke said, or it didn't as positively implied and negatively omitted by "John" (who could hardly have chosen leave -out such a major event!). 

The truth is not complicated; it is simply that we are supposed neither to be worldly materialists nor unworldly hermits (both red herrings, a false dichotomy); but to love during mortal life. That seems pretty clear, pretty straightforward.

Loving not rejecting. 

And to love means to love persons, beings, the living world; which is why we remain alive in this mortal life - and why we are not supposed to be trying to make mortal life into a second-rate version of being dead already.   

To love; is to love material things as well as spiritual things (except that there are no "things", not really - creation is alive). 

Of course love is a dynamic thing, and is two-way; which is why we never stop needing to learn about it. That is what we are supposed to be doing while we are alive; and we shouldn't be hankering after the next life when there is important work to be done in this life. 

But love is something we must do while living - although love is the purpose, it is not a purpose that can be aimed-at of itself. 

We must love while living - while doing all the material mortal things we need to do... 

Which, presumably, is why we are alive. 

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be - Past Times 1986-2012 (or, The ebbing of the Intellectual Soul)

The UK retail company (shops, and later a mail order web site) called Past Times, was very much a phenomenon of the 1990s and early 2000s. 

It was a kind of gift shop that specialized in nostalgia; and it did a pretty good job of both fuelling and supplying it; with modestly priced reprints and facsilimlies of old books, pictures and prints, replicas of old toys, artefacts, jewellery and the like. 

Around the millennium it was a prime browsing place to get presents (including for oneself), and seemed like a permanent fixture in the high rent zones of the city high street. 

Yet in 2012 Past Times went bust and was wound up altogether the year later. What's more it was not replaced. Nostalgia stores became a thing of the past...

 

As always there are multiple potential explanations; but my spiritual interpretation is that Past Times was the last gasp of Original Participation - of the ancient and early childhood experience of spontaneous immersion in the world - of belonging; which has gradually dwindled down almost to nothing through the centuries, and especially in the modern era. 

In its commercial way, the shop was providing a secular equivalent of the robes, rituals, music and poetic words of the churches; providing a kind-of "system" of symbols; via which individuals could relate to reality - as had happened so effectively at the peak of the middle ages.  

This medieval consciousness is termed the Intellectual Soul; and it worked by the individual learning (or being socialized-into) and then assimilating; the correspondences of a symbol system to particular aspects of the spiritual life. After which, the symbol will reliably, and powerfully, "trigger" the appropriate spiritual response.

Well nostalgia-systems, such as that provided by Past Times, did something analogous with the childhood memories of an earlier (and childhood) world where life had automatic purpose and meaning, where there was an almost unconscious sense of security and stability.  

Nostalgia continued to be effective for a while after the effectiveness of religious symbol systems had become a tiny-minority phenomenon; on the basis of common childhood experience having changed less, and more slowly, than the adult world. 

But childhood changed, people changed, consciousness changed - and nostalgia lost its instant-magic. Also, the Establishment stepped-up its subversion and suppression of nostalgia; to the point that now the past is assumed to be evil. 

In the mass media and among the ubiquitous bureaucracies of this era; "the past" is at-best apologized-for (e.g. those disclaimers before broadcasting old films, about the attitudes they embody being "worng now, and wrong then!"). In the mainstream; the past is edited, invented, and rewritten for "modern sensibilities.

And increasingly the past is hidden and destroyed. 

Symbol systems are weaker, little wanted, and are disappearing, everywhere you look: in religion, and in the social institutions generally. 

The "medieval-type" Intellectual Soul consciousness is almost extinct in The West: we are all alienated now. 

The Past Times era was therefore a particular phase in the development of human consciousness, and of Western secular materialism - the final ebbing of the medieval mind-set. 

It could not last, and it did not last; and enjoyment of past times has now become a secret and guilty niche pleasure - or a defiant act of socio-political resistance. 

NOTE ADDED: Lest I be misunderstood; I am not saying that the Intellectual Soul is utterly obsolete, nor that symbol systems ought to be eschewed; but instead that we cannot (therefore should not) expect too much from them. Symbol systems are much weaker than in the past, and also modern Man is far more aware that the medieval consciousness was always a compromise, a half-way house and transitional, and entailing considerable residual alienation. It is unideal, after all, for Men to relate to ultimate realities only and always via intermediaries. And especially when the intermediate symbol system is regarded as the sole and mandatory way to relate to ultimate reality; as with medieval churches. This never was true, although it was a good approximation in some times and places. But now, it is clearly false, and assertions to the contrary are incoherent and (ultimately) made in bad faith. In sum; I see Intellectual Soul symbol systems of various kinds as retaining a potentially helpful role in the Christian life - few can dispense with them, and certainly I can't! But going back to medieval consciousness cannot be the way forward from here; any more than the (sixties counter-cultural) attempt to return to the the un-conscious spontaneous and immersive spirituality (Original Participation) of tribal hunter gatherers.  

Building imaginary castles in the air, from fake straws

A while ago, I wrote a post about the determined optimists of "the Right" (especially people who still, falsely, believe there is such a thing as "the Right") - who busily build their optimism from "fake straws" they have clutched from the maelstrom of a collapsing civilization. 

Following the US election results, I can hardly believe the extent to which people are using fake straws to build grandiose but wholly imaginary castle in the air; that are supposed to represent their hopes of the kind of society that they want.

(Straw castles are bad enough, daydream castles are bad enough - but to daydream a castle made of fake straws! Well...)

Meanwhile... nothing has happened except words and emotions and speculations; and, by now, we ought to realize that (as of 2024) these do not amount to any good thing. nothing is cheaper than "words" in the West, in 2024 - being the most untruthful/ anti-truthful society in the history of the world. 

It should, however, be remembered that thoughts are real, even air castles made of straw - but not necessarily real in the ways intended; and certainly not necessarily real in A Good Way. 

What is apparently real, is that (perhaps) surprisingly large numbers of those who purport to oppose the totalitarian Leftist project; apparently believe (and are saying it) that decades of cumulative civilizational decline can be stopped and reversed by a mainstream election, leading to a new selection of mainstream political figures, being put in charge of an unchanged bureaucracy and media...! 

They are saying that! (Although maybe they don't really believe it.)

What is also apparently real, is the thoroughgoing mundane materialism of what such people want: they want so very, very little - just these politicians instead of those, these laws instead of those... just common sense instead of institutionalized insanity. 

The fake-straw optimists are therefore eminently reasonable - hence they cannot possibly succeed; because if almost-everything stays the same, then we will have the same, or worse.  

They accept geopolitics, but want a different arrangement of nations and distribution of power. They want "business as usual" - but without the weird excesses of the post-millennial era. They want people to be sensible - and "sensible" in a normal, mainstream, hard-headed context.  

They merely want, in other words; a different flavour of Leftism*. 

And Leftism is oppositional and necessarily destructive, because Leftism is fundamentally a-theistic and a-spiritual.  

"The art of the possible" is in actuality asserting the im-possible. 

It will never happen, it can never happen. It ignores and suppresses the need for motivation, and that motivation requires purpose, and that purpose requires the context of a purposive creation. 

And for creation to motivate us, requires that creation be of-God; and for God to motivate us we must have a relationship with God. 

And for our relationship with God to have implications of truth, virtue and beauty; that relationship must be one of Love. 

If we don't have that - we have no positive purpose, and insufficient motivation to do anything Good. 

Which is exactly our situation. 

And election enthusiasm is not merely irrelevant, but actively and powerfully hostile to what is absolutely necessary.  

*Note: there is a Left, but no "Right"; because Leftism is oppositional to religion-in-general, Christianity in particular - and the spiritual and next-worldly nature of Christianity, to be exact (Christianity - not churches, who are all of-the-Left). The only valid options in the West are therefore various flavours of Leftism - or Christianity. 

I'm sorry, Greg, I'm afraid I can't do that." The totalitarian "internet of things" here-and-now, and going-ahead, regardless...

"Greg" is a engineer/ pilot tech vlogger whose aircraft stuff is second to none. He also does things about cars, which I don't usually look-at - but I took a look at this one, about a new Ford Mustang. 

Specifically, it is about the data that the car collects from the vehicle, the driver, and what the driver does in and with the vehicle - including reading and recording his mobile phone. This information is used to enforce certain styles and practices of driving. 

If certain things happen; the car will compel you to leave the road, stop and switch off the engine. If the computer doesn't want you to do something, the car won't do it.  

The logged information is also shared with Ford, law enforcement, and anyone else that the company deems to be a responsible authority (plus, conditions of use are explicitly changeable in an open-ended way, without obligation to inform the owner). 

Your car can (and, soon, presumably will) report you for what it regards as any kind of traffic, or other, offences; and provides "the authorities" with the necessary "objective" information to prove your guilt. 

All of which you have "agreed to" in advance by consenting to the terms of service. Condemned by your own will. 

(The demons insist on it!)

The whole video is relevant, but the main information comes from 4:40. 

This video made quite an impact on me; because it is representative of the top-down, totalitarian agenda of omni-surveillance and micro control.

It is not something that might happen, "the internet of things" is here and it is now, it is the society we live-in; and - although nobody is asking for this stuff - people are nonetheless paying big money to purchase technology with these features. 

You can't get the latest tech without the totalitarian terms of service. And people really want the tech - or else get it forced-upon them by regulations.

As far as I can see, there is only one thing that stands between The West and a society of totalitarian Ahrimanic evil; and that is societal collapse. 

In other words; so long as The System remains, it will be implementing omni-surveillance and total control - to the best of its ability...

But that ability is declining, because The West has purposive self-destruction baked-in; and will sooner or later collapse. Already The System cannot actually implement its own plans (as was evident through 2020). 

There are many, many factors that guarantee that soon The System will enter a positive-feedback failure; when failure in sub-systems will compound, accelerate - and the whole thing will implode (with or without external intervention on top of that). 

(Also - because The System is destroying itself; the later the collapse happens, the more complete it will be.)

 I find it chilling to recognize (yet again!) that we are ruled by an obviously evil-serving ruling-managerial class on the one side - who are determined to impose a materialist nightmare on the masses (and themselves!); and with a short-termist, passively-servile, novelty-and-convenience-addicted mass population on the other - who see no further than to get increments of status, comfort and fun. 

And that's it! Because the "public morality" of the West is a tissue of (thinly-) disguised-wickedness. And those who oppose the officially-leftist Litmus Test ethic - are merely proposing a more efficiently hedonic System, a more nationally-functional totalitarianism.

As I said: it's a race between totalitarianism and collapse - will the one happen before the other supervenes? 

Things are much worse than (almost-) everybody thinks they are! 

What really dismays me is not so much that the die is cast - and there is nothing significant that you or I can materially do to stop and reverse this manic societal self-destructiveness... Because it is rooted in an overwhelming majority a-theistic nihilism; is, therefore, ultimately desired. 

What dismays me is the attitude. The mixture of denial and indifference. The dumb "farmyard ethic" of thinking that prevails. The bland-nice hand-wringing - the attempts to defeat totalitarianism by more regulation, more layers of bureaucracy. The grasping at straws of assuming somebody or another in the leadership class will save us from abuses - and that we can select these goodies through approved mechanisms such as voting, "direct action", pressure groups, whatever.  

All this is avoiding the essential. 

Spiritually we can and must understand - make explicitly conscious - what is happening and that it is evil; and instead of inviting evil into our hearts - inwardly reject (i.e. repent) the evil totalitarianism embodies. 

People must stop being stupid, lazy, and eagerly-distracted. Everyone has the God-given capability to think sufficiently to choose salvation and reject damnation in whatever situation he finds himself - and everyone is responsible for his own thinking.    

Habits and Love - in relation to Christian life and the churches

We cannot develop a habit of "following Jesus", any more than I could develop a habit of loving my wife/ kids/ siblings. Insofar as it is a habit, it isn't love.  

This is because the best analogy/ metaphor for the Christian life (the best, because literally true); is that of family and love. 

Family and love are primary - anything else (including habit) is secondary. 

Habit is indeed an aspect of System, and there are various aspects of System when it comes to family: one habit is rituals. 

(The relevant analogy here is with church rituals - gathering, prayer, sacraments etc.)  

Ritual can certainly have a valuable role in sustaining family love. For example taking meals together, going for walks, family holidays, and celebrating festivals such as Christmas. Such habits can be helpful in service to family love.  

But these rituals are just a potential basis for love, each particular ritual is inessential - and can indeed be counter-productive. Thus; it is vital to subordinate the ritual to the love - ritual must serve love. 

So that Christmas rituals (cards, presents, the meal etc.) must Not (as happens all too often!) become so complicated, rigorous, effortful; that they lead to argument, accusations, resentment... 

The ritual has become counter-productive; the attempt to develop a habit of family love has led to its erosion.

This happens with churches - and indeed with any kind of organization that uses System to pursue higher goals. For instance, when the correct conduct of ritual becomes the primary mode of evaluation of the higher goal, pursuit of that higher goal becomes impaired and may be prevented. 

As when the "objective" behaviour of a church ritual dominates Christian evaluations; meanwhile Christian motivation (being subjective, hidden) is in practice ignored (or mere "lip service" paid).   

To clarify the metaphor: ritual is an aspect of System - and churches develop Systems that are intended (initially) to serve and sustain the Christian life of love: the aim of following Jesus Christ to resurrected eternal Heavenly life...

Church Systems then try to develop "good habits"; but the tendency is for habits to become primary - and this usually whether their in-practice effect on love is helpful, or an obstacle - much like those overcomplicated and intrusive arrangements on Christmas Day actually lead to the opposite of what is hoped-for and intended.  

The fact is that habits in particular, and System in general, are just means to an end; and that end must come first. 

And unless the end of Christian life is made explicit and distinguished from the habit/ System - then it will get squeezed-out; and "Christian" churches will become (have, mostly, already-become) hostile to Christianity.  

"Contacts" seem to be the potential basis of experiential understanding; as well as participation in the world of spirit

For the past couple of years I have been reading considerably about what Dion Fortune and Gareth Knight (and other ritual magicians of their kind) call "contacts" - or sometimes "Masters". The experience is of individual communication, or sharing of consciousness, with a spiritual being. 

The phenomenon seems various in its details, and may occur in a full trance (i.e. when the human becomes unconscious, and speaks or writes without awareness of what is being communicated). Or it may happen in more alert trance states, with awareness of what is going-on. This is apparently broadly the same as "channelling" (i.e. what is channelled, is "a contact"). 

And contacts seem to underlie, and blend-with by degrees, much commoner and more normal phenomena such as an intense fascination, empathy, communion with some not-present personage; who might be alive or dead, real-life or fictional. 

Contact may be sensory (in the form of spoken words or conversation (clairaudience), of visual (clairvoyance - perhaps of visions, symbols, written words); or non-sensory - as what I call "direct knowing". 

What seems to be the essential common factor is experienced person-to-person (or person-to-being) contact. 

Having read quite widely on this subject, it has become clear that (contrary to common claims, and despite that contacts are often sought purposively as a path to knowledge and guidance) such contacts are not necessarily, indeed only seldom, the basis for accurate or valid information. 

This is obvious from the apparent wrongness of much specific (and indeed abstract and generalized) information of this kind; but it must be true from the wide range of contradictory information cited between different (but apparently honest and competent) people; and the same person at different times. 

So I have concluded that contacts ought Not to be regarded as a pathway to factual or conceptual knowledge or true guidance. 

On the other hand; I have concluded that experience of contacts are not only of potentially primary personal significance; but are probably necessary to the development of true knowledge. 

In other words, unless we experience a phenomenon that could be characterized as a contact, we shall never really understand anything. 

I concluded this from examining my own work in science and literature, as well as theology, philosophy, and mystical religious experience. Even from when I was an atheist - from more than a decade before I was a theist, or a Christian; I never really understood the meanings of things until I had had this kind of contact experience. 

For instance, if I was working on theoretical science; it was all just a matter of "comparing models" - an activity that had no end, and brought no sense of validity - until I had reached an empathic contact with those scientists (living or dead) whose work I was critiquing or using; and the same applied when I had developed a theory that I regarded as valid. 

Truth needed to be "checked" by a very inner process, much as I later called heart-thinking; and until a proposition had passed this "test" I was never confident of it. 

True knowing needs to be known in the heart, and no amount of head-knowing (logic and "facts") can replace this requirement.  

Something closely analogous seems to be at work when I am trying to understand a writer. Unless and until I can attain an inward sense of contact and communion with that person; then I never really feel I know what they are saying. 

For instance; it took me about a decade before I "got" Owen Barfield, and felt that I really understood what he was thinking and asserting - and this understanding came as a consequence of getting onto his wavelength by a kind of sympathetic resonance, by thinking "with" him as I read his words or contemplated his writings. 

Much the same applied with William Arkle; I had to immerse into his writings for some years before, quite suddenly, I "contacted" his spirit and had the basis for understanding. 

But with other authors - such as ST Coleridge - I have never attained this sense of contact, therefore I have never (so far) been confident of understanding him: it is all second-hand, hearsay, "models" of what he was doing. 

It is certainly Not the case that contact leads to correct understanding. Contact with Barfield and Arkle was just the basis for understanding them. I needed to study, read, re-read, and think hard. 

So having experienced "contact" should Not be used as a "proof" that one's understanding is correct. 

But without that contact, there never would have been genuine understanding.

Furthermore, once one has attained contact, and followed it with serious study; one can recognize when others have not attained contact; and are merely parroting and playing-with second-hand summaries and models.  

Contact therefore seems to be necessary but not sufficient to knowing. 

Contact is also perhaps one of the commonest and most readily available modes of direct spiritual experience: a kind-of evidence of the reality of the spirit world.  

And this is just how things would be expected, in an animated, living reality - in this created universe ultimately composed of Beings in relationships. 

In sum; I conclude that he ways that contacts are usually regarded, seem to be mistaken. It is usually an error to seek contacts as a source of factual information. 

However, contacts - properly regarded - can be an experience of the living world of spirits, an active participation a world of conscious Beings: recognition of a relational world, in which we are never alone. 

And a way of inhabiting a world where we can truly understand purposes and meanings - at least to the extent of our individual cognitive capacities, biases, defects and particular perspectives.

All this depends on our regarding it as metaphysically possible - that is, our fundamental assumptions need to allow for such potential: we need to realize that this fits how reality is structured and operates. 

Political optimism is an Antichrist phenomenon

Just a reminder, eight years on - referencing the current environment of optimism among the self-styled "based" online - that we live in a totalitarian civilization; and that to desire for its revitalization by the results of an election is the kind of sin implied by the Antichrist phenomenon - to place one's hope in one who is not Christ, but in important and fundamental respects - a this-worldly net-opposite of Christ*. 

Recall too, that this-worldly pessimism Is Not Despair. 

Nor is optimism a Christian virtue; indeed, it may be an evil coping-mechanism. 

With matters as we know they are in The West; we should hope for the best (because we do not know everything) -- yet our hope needs to be not of this world;  but we should expect things to get worse - because that is where we are+, and the trend for generations, with self-destruction baked-in; and "the worst" is what Western people deeply and overwhelmingly want.

*Of which the "queue a-none" PSYOP was a prime instance: its mantra being that we ought-to "trust" [i.e. assume the positive inner motivations of a mainstream politician, and team], "the plan" [i.e. The System - i.e. external and human guidance; and do not take personal responsibility for your value-discernment]. 

+Things are much worse than you think: progressing over more than two centuries, by now the rot goes very deep and very wide. Reset to an earlier phase is impossible - it has never happened, and it never will.   

Welby Watch no more...

Cool threads Bish!...

Separated at birth? The Archbishop of Canterbury (top) and Walter the Softy from the Beano (below)

I see that the egregious Justin Welby - surely the most completely-mediocre and corrupt individual ever to hold the position so far - has been forced to resign as Archbishop of Canterbury*; and this only seven and a half years after his complicity in systematic sexually abusive "training camps" was described in multiple and detailed reports in Anglican Ink dating back to early 2017, as well as the Daily Telegraph.  

Which means, as usual the media reports are deeply misleading; since Welby's role in "covering-up" abuse (as well as his active role as camp counsellor) will have been thoroughly known to the monarch and prime minister for all this time (ie. those responsible for appointing the Archbishop of C). 

They and other senior people have therefore been shielding and protecting Welby, and apparently maintaining him in his job for as long as they could; because he was doing their bidding, following their agenda, and doing what they regard as "a good job" - i.e. destroying the Church of England specifically, and attacking Christianity in general. 

Among Welby's multiple aggressions on Christianity, surely his greatest was during the birdemic; when the Church of England imposed probably the most stringent lockdowns of any British institution. 

This succeeded in its implicit aim of wiping-out approximately an extra quarter of church attendance, over and above the steady decline over which Welby has presided.   

God bye - and good riddance? Well, we shall see what happens next to the docile dope of Lambeth Palace, before deciding whether he has really been punished at all; or just translated to a "higher" sphere. 

Justin's The Fonz impression always gets a laugh

*Note: The position of Archbishop of Canterbury is not quite the joke-job it superficially seems. As well as being the senior bishop of the worldwide Anglican communion - which is the third largest Christian denomination (after the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox); "Cantaur" (the Latin abbreviation of Canterbury) is an integral part of the UK constitution, second in precedence to the King (who appoints the Prime Minister) and required to anoint the legitimate monarch at his coronation. 

Numinous experiences are "objective" - yet also personal

From what I can gather (and assuming other people are telling the truth!) what elicits numinous experiences varies between persons - and in this sense the numinous is subjective. 

Yet for each person there seems to be an "objectivity" - in that particular places and people can sometimes be (more or less, at least for a while) relied upon to evoke the numinous in a repeatable fashion. 

(I am assuming - in all this - that one is, in the first place, open to the experience of the numinous - which, apparently, many people are not!)   

The numinous sensation of some kind of underlying spiritual, religious or divine quality; needs to be distinguished from liking, enjoying, and finding immediately beautiful. I think this must be because the numinous is something implied or behind the surface of things. 

Thus, the numinous feeling seems more associated with yearning than with gratification; it has elements of deep and lasting fascination; such that the numinous stays in the mind and recurs, and each recollection brings the feeling again. 

Furthermore, I have found that (assuming a receptive mood) the numinous is experienced first-time, rather than being a thing that develops with repetition.  

A recent example was driving along the B7009/ 709 beside Ettrick Water in the Scottish Borders (the same trip in which I visited Tam Lin's Well). 

This was only my second time along this road (and over thirty years apart) - and it was again the quietest, most traffic free, road I have ever encountered. 

I find the journey weaving beside the Ettrick Water extremely "numinous". The scenery is indeed somewhat conventionally-attractive, yet far from the most attractive, even in the immediate vicinity. 

Indeed, there aren't many pictures of Ettrickdale online, nor has anybody made a photographic book of the region. But for me this landscape is saturated with covert meaning and significance. I experienced a light magical "trance", while in the area. 

When we passed the watershed of the Ettrick and crossed west into Eskdale, the numinous sensation began to diminish. The scenery was at least as pretty, indeed conventionally better; and yet for me the underlying magical quality reduced.

I wonder if this has to do with a change of geography or geology; or some kind of memory or association... Who knows? But this is the way that such things seem to work. 

Another example is Oxford versus Cambridge. For me (at least until around the millennium, when it diminished quite sharply: a reduction in the spirit of the place) Oxford is a numinous place but Cambridge is not - indeed Cambridge is anti-numinous! (Despite Cambridge being prettier and much less traffic-ravaged.) 

There are historical reasons why this might be so (e.g. Royalist Oxford versus Roundhead Cambridge, Classical Oxford v Mathematical Cambridge), and again the geography is different - albeit in this case I find the west more numinous than the east. 

(Albeit rural East Anglia is numinous; as are Ely and Norwich.) 

But in the end, the numinous is a matter of experience - yet any explanation of the difference comes second and is not-necessarily convincing. Even locally, in my everyday life; I find some particular trees, buildings, streets... numinous; but most others not. But why this should be, I cannot even guess.   

I have found the same, throughout my life, with people. A few people had (when I met them) a numinous quality; while others seemed and remained stubbornly "unromantic"! 

This applied to both men and women, friends and acquaintances. And, like places, the numinous romantic quality could be lost, but was never gained after an initial absence.

And the numinous is attractive - but not necessarily conventionally beautiful or nice, or even necessarily likeable - while, conversely, a person could be attractive and likeable without having anything of the numinous about them.  

  

As I discussed earlier today - what this all means is a different matter from the fact of its reality. However it is, and always has been, important to me. I will go to efforts and inconvenience to experience the numinous, and will continue to puzzle over its implications - without ever getting anywhere in particular. 

I am convinced that something is going on in me, at some level, in these numinous experiences - and that it is of lasting importance...

And so long as I continue feel that, and am able to respond to places and people in this fashion - for so long will I continue to seek experience of the numinous.  

What to make of significant-moments/ peak experiences/ epiphanies/ revelations? ...Because they don't interpret themselves.

I have for decades had a strong interest in those moments of experienced "numinous significance"; those times and places where - either at the time, or in retrospect - we have a conviction that something-has-happened which is of relevance to our life, generally. 

It seems that many people have these "peak experiences" - they vary with age, circumstances, place and company; some people have them a lot, and some (apparently) not at all. 

The actual raw experiences - their emotional and sensory qualities - seem pretty similar and identifiable as such. Yet whether they are significant; and, if so, what is their significance seems to depend on the interpretative scheme that is applied - and a wide range of schemes are applied. 

I think it is Not the intensity of emotion that matters, but the lingering sense of significance - the way an event recurs in memory, and that "something important, and potentially good" happened. 

But understanding what happened, and what are its meaning and implications; is where there are such big differences between people. 

I have read many books and essays by mystical/ spiritual/ esoteric/ occult type people; and it is evident that most of them have these "peak experiences" and regard them as central to - whatever it is they believe. Yet that which they believe varies extremely widely and often in opposite directions! From atheism of an hedonic flavour, right through New Age spirituality to devout adherents of formal and traditional religions -  of many kinds and with perhaps opposite tendencies.  

From this; it seems clear that such experiences are not "evidence" or "proof" of any particular "system" or metaphysical assumptions. This applies even when the experience is one of "theophany" - a vision of God for example. 

Reading the reports from people who believe they have experienced the presence of God, it is clear that the believed experience alone does not really get them anywhere in the longer term; because they need to understand, explain, make sense of their experience - and that requires such larger, perhaps pre-existing, scheme of assumptions. 

There is therefore probably an excessive emphasis on the occurrence of mystical/ spiritual (etc) experiences, and a relative (or complete) neglect of the matter of making sense of such experiences. 

In other words: the significance of unitary, discrete experiences is not self-evident. 

The scheme by which one makes sense of peak experiences, and indeed of all kinds of life-experiences, is a different matter - and apparently a deeper and more significant matter; than even the most significant of moments. 

It is inevitable that churches become part of a totalitarian society - therefore obedience to a church here-and-now = damnation

If you consider the nature of the kind of totalitarian society we inhabit in The West, it can be seen that it is inevitable that churches - including Christian churches - will be parts of The System. 

This to the same extent that these churches exist in the public realm as legal/ economic/ financial/ employing/ educational etc.) entities. 

(The nature of a totalitarian society is that all significant social institutions are necessarily part of the system of surveillance and control - which means, part of the totalitarian strategy.)

Thus, in a totalitarian society, insofar as they are significant social systems; churches will be part of The System - that is, part of the totalitarian system. 

And, totalitarian = evil* 

Therefore (under totalitarianism, in The West here-and-now) churches are evil institutions: evil in overall-effect and by their overall-aim. 

 

The consequence is that (as a strong generalization):

Obedience to churches = obedience to evil.

...Which means a positive choice to reject the salvation of Jesus Christ, and instead to choose damnation. 

This is explainable on the basis that the totalitarianism is manifested materialism, and operates by "brainwashing" people (by multiple means) to regard the external and the material as primary - indeed as the Only Real; and to subordinate, ignore or deny the inner intuitive and the spiritual. 

Churches are readily encompassed into totalitarianism; insofar as they actually function on the basis of quasi-objective laws, rules, regulations, dogmas, written documents with fixed conceptual interpretations, on the one side; and requirements for particular publicly observable behaviours (speech, writing, actions...), on the other. 

Therefore; under totalitarianism, any church that operates on the basis of public obedience to publicly observable and regulate-able behaviours is doing the work of evil: doing evil in terms of training its members to regard "the external" and "the material" as primary and mandatory. 

(What is deadly is the doctrine that salvation depends on the principle of obedience to a church which is so pernicious, rather than the specific content of that obedience.) 

So; (here and now) any church is evil in requiring obedience to itself (which is a social institution) as necessary to avoid damnation - when in reality this obedience is itself, precisely, damnation. 

It can be seen that under totalitarianism; the churches (which are part-of The System) engage in the same institutionally-imposed value-inversion that characterize totalitarian evil. 

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*Totalitarianism is evil because it is a manifestation of that kind of "materialist", anti-life, anti-human evil I have termed Ahrimanic; therefore evil both by its demonic-aim, and also intrinsically - by its nature. 

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NOTE ADDED: I realize that real Christians who are (here and now) members of churches do not obey them (except selectively, and on the basis of intuition and spiritual guidance - which is precisely Not to obey, in a traditional sense). 

However, too many of these people are currently dishonest or self-blinded as to the foundational Christian necessity of their own and personal discernment; which is itself a weakness and/or a sin - doubly-so when they pretend to church obedience as necessary to salvation. 

It is therefore important that such people understand what they are actually-already doing, and why; and are explicit and honest about what they are doing (at least in their own minds, if not publicly).

As we may perceive all around us in everyday life: nobody can be argued or compelled to take personal responsibility for their own choices, nor can they be argued or compelled into becoming conscious of that which they prefer to maintain unconscious. And there is a significant chance that having "bad faith" pointed-out will merely lead to an escalation of the self-distraction and displacement-activity of attacking the messenger.   

It would therefore be much better if the kind of self-identified "obedient" church-first Christians I am talking about would reach a true recognition, each from- and for-himself.