Old Struggles on a New Earth
This article first appeared in Conscious Choice.
Although my book on prophecy and the Mayan Calendar is behind me, I am still approached all the time by people in search of the meaning of the encroaching end date of December 21, 2012. "Is it the end of the world?" reporters ask me on television. In emails, I am begged for advice on matters ranging from shamanic ritual to retirement funds, from dealing with extraterrestrials to seeking a safe place to hide out from polar shifts, earthquakes and super storms. Meanwhile, academics and self-taught experts send me their pet theories on tribal prophecies, astrological conjunctions, UFOs, Egyptian gods, quantum consciousness, Illuminati conspiracies, free energy technologies and much more.
My view is that "2012" is useful as a meme if it helps us to catalyze a shift in global culture and consciousness. Rather than fretting about what may or may not happen on that date, we should concentrate on the work that needs to be done now, on an inner as well as outer level. My recent focus has been the outer level, studying social theory and political philosophy. If we were to have an opportunity to transform society, what could that transformation look like in a practical sense? How could it be carried out? I have been reviewing the ideas of thinkers like Macchiavelli, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Jefferson, Karl Marx and Hannah Arendt, seeking insight into the nature of politics and power.
How do we bring awareness gained through shamanic practice or yogic discipline back into the gritty realities of political struggle and the fight against global inequity of wealth and resources? It seems there is still a lot of denial among Western mystics and "New Agers," as well as elitism and spiritual materialism. Whether someone does a flawless series of asanas, drinks ayahuasca with 20 different shamans or visits hidden monasteries in Bhutan has no value as a sign of spiritual attainment. How they live day by day, what they do with the psychic energy and time available to them and how their work helps to liberate others is what matters.
I see this tendency to ignore the social and political struggle in the works of wildly popular writers such as Eckhart Tolle, who has repackaged Vedanta for the masses. In Tolle's recent book, A New Earth, he writes: "We are coming to the end not only of mythologies but also of ideologies and belief systems." According to Tolle, the creation of the "new earth" needs no change in social practices as long as you make "the present moment... the focal point of your life." Tolle exhorts his audience to "enjoy what you are doing already, instead of waiting for some change so that you can start enjoying what you do." Whether you are an artist, teacher, Fox News executive or currency speculator doesn't matter: "The new earth arises as more and more people discover that their main purpose in life is to bring the light of consciousness into this world and so use whatever they do as a vehicle for consciousness." For Tolle, the effort to change our society's inequitable and unsustainable practices has no particular value compared to the paradise of presence.
The popularity of this message is unsurprising. Some political thinkers argue that the adoption of Eastern thought in the West has given people a way to accept capitalism, and "Empire," by finding detachment from it. For the critic Slavoj Zizek, Western Buddhism and Hinduism "enables you to fully participate in the frantic pace of the capitalist game, while sustaining the perception that you are not really in it, that you are well aware how worthless this spectacle really is – what really matters to you is the peace of the inner self to which you know you can always withdraw..." Zizek goes so far as to propose, "the onslaught of New Age ‘Asiatic' thought... is establishing itself as the hegemonic ideology of global capitalism."
The shift of "2012" could mean that Eastern mysticism, the earth-based shamanism of tribal people and the West's pursuit of philosophical and scientific knowledge about the world come together to create a new form of consciousness. I suspect the West still has to realize its spiritual destiny – its dharma – in the transformation of matter and the creation of a truly equitable and sustainable world. As the design scientist Buckminster Fuller wrote, "No human chromosomes say make the world work for everybody – only mind can tell you that." We may not need "ideology" any more, as Tolle says, but we still need good ideas about how we reinvent our society and its institutions to become ethically transparent and sustainable. Rather than escaping from society's problems by embracing pure presence, we can use the awareness gained from spiritual practice to become more effective agents of social change.
Image by spike55151, used courtesy of a Creative Commons License.
- 3-7-08
- Daniel Pinchbeck's blog
- Login or register to post comments
ShareThis- Printer-friendly version
Comments
Dear Mr. Pinchbeck
After becoming conscious of the 2012 date sometime in 2006 I have seen an increase of synchronicity about such date, no question due to our unitive knowledge and universal consciousness. So I have subsequently since then been traversing my spiritual pathway, finding the likes of Capra, Huxley, Baba Ram Dass, Lao Tzu, and the practice of Tai Chi Chuan to be guides in this journey. So not but a week or so ago did my partner give me your book on the topic of our coming global consciousness shift, and I have been very deeply touched by its message. Prior to receiving your book I had stumbled onto a man by the name of Lee Carrol, who has since 1989 been the channel for "Kryon" and entity from the other side of the veil who gives him "thought packets" or downloads as you described them in regard to Terrance McKenna's channelled messages. The reason I am contacting you is to give you the free-will to look at what Kryon says through his channel Lee Carrol, it directly coincides with the message of a vibratory shift that is apparent in your book. I was just reading today, thinking to myself, I wish there was some way I could contact Daniel Pinchbeck to let him know that this channeler out there is speaking the same message perhaps they could learn something from one another. So there it is, I found a way to contact you and the message is given. Synchronicity has lovely ways of working does it not? Thank you for your service to humanity by raising our awareness and adding information to the universal consciousness. Namasté.
"This is It and I am It and You are It and so is That and He is It And She is It and It is It and That is That." Alan Watts
Yes and...
I do agree that to look at 2012 as a marker of a consciousness shifting meme is helpful. Things are transforming no doubt, but life has always been in flux. None more so then human consciousness. The great prophesies always speak of tendencies that will shift in relationship to the present moment. It is always up to the individual/collective to decide what the ending of the "story" will be.
I also agree that "New Age" thinking over the last 20 years has mostly been a immature narcissistic exercise to cover up the messiness of unacknowledged shadow. The New Age movement became a watered down version of the Human Potential movement of the late 50's and early 60's. The thinking at the time by thinkers like Michael Murphy and company was to synthesize all available world knowledge to bring in a new renaissance of human consciousness; the union of body,mind,spirit, economical and environmental. The "New Age" later became water down in mass media (hmmm... a social trend watered down by mass media, how unusual) as a movement of crystal wearing bliss bunnies. But even old school New Age'rs like Steve Bhaerman, (aka Swami Beyondananda) are writing about the grittier realities of today.
My boarder view is that after the tumultuous 60/70's groups of people needed to go within and bring worth something deeper to effect change. Beyond the knee jerk reaction of saying fuck off to the 60's thinking, there was/is a collective need to expand and deepen the vision of social,economic and ecological transformation. I feel that the biggest mistake that the social movements of the 60's/70's were that people looked at what was happening from a narrow point of view of having of have the change NOW, as appose to looking at the bigger picture of the Great Movement of the cosmos. As Jackson Brown once said about the dissolution of the 60's "...Were they only the fitful dreams of some greater awakening."
I do believe that people could read into Eckhart Tolle's work as a way to avoid life. But that is not what he is talking about. His point is that true transformation can only occur from taking action from a place of presence, or stillness. Any other way will always lead to more suffering. He fully writes about the collective nightmare of our modern life. He also talks about a new conscious consciousness that is emerging either out of deep pain or non-ego based awakenings. He writes that one should only act from that still point of the Now. That acting from presence will provide one with a deeper connection to source, and that the results will then be more effective.
He is using the same ideas of being a Samurai, act with out thinking. All the great mystics revolutionaries from Jesus,Moses, Mohammed to Gandhi, Malcom X, Marley etc. brought worth their greatest achievements only after they had a ego shattering experience. Or should I say their small "i" became connected and of service of the greater "I". Your points are well taken Daniel, but let us not throw out the baby with the bath water...so to speak.
Keep up the good work. Peace
Lucifer's dream-
Hi Daniel,
I’m always surprised at how much of the world remains stuck in an either/or bind. You can go to an activist bookstore (as I did earlier today) and meet well-meaning and willing to fight people who are dead set against religion, but can’t seem to see in what ways their materialism is yet another fundamentalist ideology- and then you can have dinner with wonderfully open-minded people who lack the judgment to see that ‘The Secret’ is no different from Joel Osteen’s feel good Church in Texas- just another entertainment culture distraction from living a meaningful and involved life.
I think that the 2012 horizon is an opportunity to ask some serious questions and make a conscious decision about whether one wants to remain in an either/or structure of consciousness or not before that worldview reaches its logical conclusion- self-atomization. Frankly, the ways out are available and have been for some time, you point to many useful authors in your books. But a popular audience raised in Disney’s world is far more likely to “follow their bliss” than they are to pick up Teilhard de Chardin and grapple with the real complexities and ambiguities of consciousness philosophy.
If spirit-seekers continue to throw out the baby with the bathwater regarding western philosophy, including the underpinnings of a rich spiritual movement appropriated by the Roman Empire for its own authoritarian gains, then they will dissolve their individual identities in philosophies that are not oriented to their structure of consciousness. Krishna, Buddha and Christ are not lifestyle choices in a post-modern bookstore, but qualitatively different entities with their own mythologies and specific relevance to phases of an evolution of consciousness.
The end of religion calls for a complex integration of esoteric traditions rather than a totalizing of feel good philosophies. While Zizek might be taking it to far with the notion of Eastern philosophy as the ‘hegemonic ideology of global capitalism,’ he makes a good point about the way in which some people rationalize their behavior with high minded spiritual ideas. The Bhagavad Gita is a wonderfully rich and complex text and has been used to rationalize both violence and non-violence. After all, Krishna basic message to Arjuna was not to doubt his Dharmic role and to get in there and fight to the bloody end.
Unfortunately, it takes someone as baroque and esoteric as Rudolf Steiner to deal with these complexities. There is a reason that he gave that bizarre lecture regarding Christian Rosenkreutz sending the Buddha to Mars. The sacrificial deed performed by the Buddha in the sphere of Mars is, according to Steiner, what allows an individuated self to develop Buddhist compassion ‘without’ dropping out and forgoing one’s duties in the modern world.
I, too, am struggling more with political questions now and reading more about economics and sociology than I had before. I don’t doubt that a time will come when a spiritual, philosophical, aesthetic and sociological education will be needed to aid in decision making amidst dire ecological and political nightmares. That is not to put off one’s responsibility to a distant future, but to act now through education rather than entertainment. And more and more, I come to the realization that there is no ‘answer’ out there, but rather that in this age of chaos, the individual must make their own moral distinctions from an educated, but improvisational intuition- like a jazz musician choosing the right note at the right time.
Sorry for the length here, I did not intend it at the outset. I’ll end with one of Steiner’s warnings about the dangers of Luciferic influences from the East, that is, if left unmediated by individual responsibility. I think this is applicable to the feel good New Ager issue- The Secret, Osteen etc.:
“Lucifer desires goodness, spirituality, for mankind, but he wants to make us into automatons with no free will. Human beings are to be made clairvoyant according to perfectly good principles, but in an automatic way; the luciferic spirits want to deprive human beings of their free will, the possibility of doing evil.”
Great points...
It is up to those who are aware to help others on the road to go deeper. Follow your Bliss is not a feel good notion because along the Hero's journey, as described by Cambell, one will find the darkest demons of their soul. True Bliss is a ego destroyer. The Secret does work because it is culled from the magickal traditions of the ages. It is not the end all, just the spark to ignite the journey.
Anyone who has done the work, is responsible to support the ones coming up the path, as the ones ahead have helped us. More...More...More
"When the power of love overcomes the love of power,the world will know peace." Jimi Hendrix
i donno i never met a feel good philosophy
Options
Great stuff!
Daniel, I didn't care much for your two first books, but I really like the direction your enquiry is taking. I too have witnessed "a lot of denial among Western mystics and "New Agers", as well as elitism and spiritual materialism", as you wrote.
I feel that integrity has much to do with engaging in the world and the communities we live in and doing what we feel needs to be done, humbly but fearlessly and with compassion.
The issue with the New Age for me, at the moment, seems to be that it has been largely hijacked by various retrogressive and conservative forces, both politically and spiritually.
As McKenna pointed out the New Age became a kind of flight away from the psychedelic experience. We have not yet managed, outside maybe a handful of small closed circles, to evolve ways of using psychedelics to their fullest effect, and in many cases some of the deeper knots and conditioning are left uncovered.
As a result of this, many do not really transcend the false metaphysical foundations of the way they relate to self, other and mystery. And so, a lot of the New Age becomes a repackaging of Judaism & Christianity. This isn't a forward movement.
There's a lot of talk about "saving" or "changing" "the world", common among politicians, salvationists and New Agers. This talk indicates, I suggest, unexamined beliefs turned into emotion-rousing slogans. They belie simplistic, naive (lack of) thinking and self-reflection.
Others speak of "change yourself/change the world", "you create your OWN reality", etc. In fact, neither them nor anybody else knows what they're talking about, especially when it comes to words like "the world", "self", "reality". Many who have had profound immersions in consciousness will probably agree that our understanding of these concepts is childishly superficial.
The rose-tinted spectacles syndrome is well known, but what I call "displaced apocalypse" may not be so obvious. This places the apocalypse at some point in the imminent future, to distract us from the fact that the world has already ended, and is always ending. It is in fact alternately collapsing and expanding at an exremely high speed.
World government is already established and pretty much complete social control is in place. What we experience daily in the media is an elaborate theatre to distract us from the situation. We are already inhabiting a VR world, in which there is no escape from apocalypse. The planet is planted with nuclear weapons and radiactive waste that pretty much guarantee extinction. GAME OVER will not fail to appear on the screen at some point in the near future. This is the name of the game.
Many people , especially after 9/11, began to realise that despite all those enlightening experiences and visions of universal consciousness expansion, the rest of the planet has been rapidly deteriorating, while we were happily snug in our rainbow bubbles or busily cleansing our auras. Perhaps such time was not in vain, but "God is Pressure", Gurdjeff said, and many now (who are not sleepwalking) feel a pressing need to move on.
It is increasingly clear that the new war is a war for minds and bodies, and this began right after WW2. Pretty much everyone (at least in Europe) knows that there are always hidden machinations and forces operating behind the scenes in human affairs. Politicans lying in our faces, and strings being pulled, is not news to anyone. More specifically, operations like MKULTRA and other kinds of public brainwashing and counter-subversion are well known.
In this context, it would be naive to believe the New Age movement has not been used for the purpose of pacifying and misleading the restless youth, by whatever powers would deem that suitable .
The barrier between genuine spiritual work/awareness and being active socially and politically is a false and possibly deliberately created dichotomy. I suggest this has to do with the high probability of most the New Age being either a fake or a superficial, and not truly integral, work - yet another product and service in the marketplace. To put it in a crude manner, charlatans are not interested in losing their clients. They are interested in the customer coming back for more.
Spoonfeeding people with the sugar-coated words of unconditional love may be soothing and even healing for souls in pain -and whose isn't?- but for some it takes a lot more than being held in the bosom of Mother to realise our true potential in this continuum , and the ever-changing world we are embodied in.
There are real powerful techniques hidden on the edges of various esoteric traditions, Tantric Yoga being one. But you have to look carefully to find these in the hidden shelves of New Age, if at all.
I feel the real work facing many in this scene is "shadow work", or really getting into the nitty gritty of "Evil", or, in yogic terms, that kundalini serpent coiled at the root chacra.
A large part of the conditioning people in judeo-christian culture have been exposed to has created a block on the sex (2nd) chacra , which results in first chacra issues (fear, survival, security) being prominent . Yet another block is on the 4th (heart) chacra , resulting in all sorts of issues with the 3rd chacra (ego, social status, power).
Within the christian reality, we have been told that we know good from evil and that we have free will, but this is patently not the case.
By turning the myth around once more, we see that we have only just begun to eat from the tree of knowledge and come to know good and evil.
In my understanding we are only really working when the inner and outer work are one and the same. Appreciating the cosmic joke, developing a humble but strong and grounded centre, and the ability to stand firm but relaxed in the eye of the hurricane; these may enable us to engage with the merciless and duplicitous world of human affairs, as they are now, and do whatever work/play we are truly called to do here without becoming martyrs or victims...
I need to go to bed!
http://www.tranceparents.org/
HONEST action
price for events
hi shesravingmad,
jivamukti has many advantages including its amazing location and our deep friendship with the people who run it. If we had the event for cheaper way out in Queens somewhere, we would have other problems, such as a smaller audience, and many attendees would end up taking cabs anyway. Honestly, $20 is not very much for all the performers and so on. Perhaps you may want to enquire into your own judgmental attitude?
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
I WOULD travel to QUEENS for more authenticity....
you dont know what
authentic experience
its all good in tha hood
let she who is without sin cast the first stone
End of Empire
Excellent post ecolocal. I'm in complete agreement. There seems to be a fair amount of evidence that the creators of the New Age movement, Andrija Puharich springs to mind, were at some stage deeply involved with MKULTRA and COINTELPRO. The UFO seems to be a disinfo project also. I like to keep in mind some words of TS Eliot: "What is going to happen has already happened."
We do indeed need to be prepared to stand firm and calm in the hurricane, and love it too...
This is interesting: http://www.intelligencer.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=918803
and here's the report the above article discusses: http://www.europe2020.org/spip.php?article527&lang=en
We are decadently squandering resources with little or no or even negative returns - example the war in Iraq costs every US household $138 a month! - there are many many analogies with the collapse of the Roman empire. As that Empire fell, the educated elite drifted out to the fringes, to scattered monasteries and villas, where what learning could be preserved was passed on - while the cities were taken over by military commanders and the dark ages began.
I think we are in a similar situation now - poets, scientists, priests, intellectuals, are all moving to the fringes of a mainstream that has gone insane, and is seemingly deaf to their calls, or at least has built up too much inertia to heed them.
perhaps i am just too new agey
and i did see myself as a revolutionary, but when it all came down to it, i realized that the only way through the lookinglass was to go way down inside it. The " new age" was not just some plot hatched in star chambers, it was a spontaneous kind of event horizon that seems to have hatched out of the cosmic crack that perhaps was begun with the detonation of the A bomb.People in the mountains began channeling entities, and the little bird began to flap its wings, and it was like the little train that said it could.But then the technology and shadow of the dying God and the dead Bomb on arrival began its little fake out, because the phony cold war was on, and then on otherside people from different walks of life saw things, had been seeing things, and that also feed into the channelings and mediumships that were always with us, with the added date of Tibet being invaded by China, and the guys in the secret club in black did nothing to stop it.
UFO, unidentified flying object, people have identified the movements of the heavens and have built pyramids and henges, have left symbols of incredable complexity and grace to leave a trace of what this human equation once was able to create out of thin air.Empires that fall into dust have only to look at the lines in the stones that stand to see where they have gone terribly wrong. The "new age" was not a brainstorm by some CIA adviser scientist and his spoon bending buddy, as much as they would like you to believe that, or not.And yes there is a group of vile individuals that have created all sorts of mayhem and fifth column disinformation.And so it goes, and thats how the foul wind blows.IF you believe that it's all a nefarious plot, then you get polarized into a camp of thought that can spin circles of speculation around just how deep the doodoo goes.AS much as my own experience with so-called new age types and occultists has made me wish sometimes i had ridden with Pancho Via and Ambros Bierce, i still see the mountain channelers and little groups of ouija board movers as a real threat to the the powers that bleed.Keep a copy of the Devils Dictionary alone side of your BE Here Now.
(applause)
Daniel, I also love the direction you are heading. I think more people need to hear your voice. I'll help if there's a way to.
"The revolution is quiet, my friends, like the clicking of bullets into a pistol's empty chamber."
True Spiritual Attainment
Amen my Brotha
Fits and starts like sneezes, earthquakes, zits and levies breaking. The aha moment is not on page 365, although I have found that reading enough contradictory information helps collapse the mind under its own weight which is usually pretty fun.
From St. Augustine to Bill Wilson, I have noticed a pattern of deep spiritual suffering before the flash to a higher understanding. Le petite mort of the soul. I don't think there are any shortcuts. When it happens it happens.
The spiritual tension on earth is palpable and necessary. Accepting present reality is not complacency by any means. We will witness the collective reults of our actions. It will hurt, but we will be ok. Even if it hurts a lot.
Fly or fall faster.
When your heart bleeds pain you wake up
Alas...
I think you're trying too hard and missing the boat with your take on Tolle by turning his teaching into a concept -- exactly what it isn't, right? :-) I'm a little surprised, especially after all your exploration into spirit and the nature of consciousness.
www.farrfeed.com
I may be exaggerating
I may be exaggerating slightly to make a point. But I do feel there is a strain in these writers (Tolle, Chopra, etc) that supports complacency and acceptance in regards to social and political struggles. There's almost a kind of psychic mood or ambience created by Tolle's work. Tolle and Chopra would not have reached mass middle-class popularity if they proposed that spiritual liberation required sacrifice of material gain in order to serve the planet. I also see these texts serving a particular function in which they replace the types of Christian homilies that provided a moral ideology for Americans and Europeans to support colonialism in the 19th Century. At the same time, I do see a lot of value in these authors, and consider everything to be part of an evolutionary process, perhaps moving toward a deeper awareness.
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
agreed
Rilke
and the poet/writer art of grand exalted exaggeration.Will we ever be done with the "will to transformation"?
or as i call it simply, "the will to art"
Nietzsche's "will to power" can be understood by adding the other part to the formula, "the eternal return of the same"
is revolution and evolution mutual?
or does one exclude the other?
i think Mark Twain should be kept in mind.
"The radical of one century is the conservative of the next.The radical invents the views.When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them." Notebook 1898
maybe Walden Pond is getting smaller as we speak.
keep the fire in the belly, keep the watchlights ablaze!!!
and please enjoy the bliss balls they have very special exotic ingredients....(*
WE need more tried and true concepts
Laughter
its perhaps a release from laughter so laughter may be liberated
believe me, when i write it is channeled, or more to the point i practice pure psychic automatism, and in some sense i really am attempting to visualise how consciousness rose in the days before the creation myths were old hat.I don't know if the word or the bird came first.
it seemes to me that the Buddha or those guys that were around in the early days that might have been spoken of as a golden age, or what came before even that; the buddha story of how he became enlightened contains many wonderful images that perhaps were partialy taken from earlier accounts of meditating beings,I was reading about how the I-Ching came before the Dao De Ching, and so on. Something to do with the back of a turtle.And that makes me think about and wonder if they saw down the time lines and saw that turtles and other creachers were going to become endangered onto extinction.Because of the bottom of the kali yuga, or what the Hopi prophecy tells of.But i wonder what is becoming of meditation? is it
just now a new age word? Or will the mythical bird drop some magic on our noggins? as far as the crown chakra, there are suppose to be several chakras above that even.Our bird is going to be very busy.Our bird of paradise, our phoenix, our parrot of parody.Our Raven, clever crow, and black birds in a row, our peacock of the many eyed feathers.But since the dodo is extinct, we shall call on Big Bird to the rescue.
the bird or the word, bird is the word, oh dove oh canary in a coal mine.
WHY HAS A POST OF MINE TO REALITYSANDWICH BEEN CENSORED AGAIN !!
I don't believe there was
I don't believe there was any tampering - i have had posts lost as well. There must be a little bug in the system. My suggestion is if it is a long and meaningful post, write it in a text document so you don't lose it then check to make sure it goes up. We haven't censored anything yet.
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
Missing Posts?
Hi Zezt,
I can guarantee you that we haven't deleted any of your posts -- or those of anyone else so far, for that matter (other than spam attacks, which we need to get better about deleting more quickly...). All I can suggest is that you save a copy of your post on the hard drive, and make sure that it actually appears on the web page where it's intended to go -- after you click the submit button. Sometimes folks hit "preview" rather than "submit" and think the comment was posted, when it actually wasn't. Webpages can also be quirky, and not respond to requests the way we want because of a glitch in Net traffic. But believe me, there's no censoring going on here. Of course, there is a line we expect community members not to cross in their posting -- but no one has crossed that line yet. And if/when this does happen, believe me we'll let that person know.
So frustrating!
There's nothing more frustrating than to have an electronic piece of writing disappear before your eyes! As a rule of thumb, before I click "submit" on any important email or post, I key-command copy the text just in case my connection drops or hangs up. This has saved me numerous times! I also see the wisdom in saving a hard copy as a Word document.
-st
Empathy IS Action
At the end of the day, I suggest we simply have to achieve our own personal gnosis, and take it from there. Social concerns CAN be a way to facilitate this gnosis, but they are more often a means to avoid it. Who among you is without sin, cast the first stone. Personal effort to "change the world" stems from arrogance, hubris based on judgment (stone-casting), the belief that the world is sinful and oneself is pure and wise enough to fix it. Better to sort out one's own back yard before meddling in the neighbors' business.
The "problems" in the world are there PRIMARILY to reflect back at us the areas of blockage in our own psyches which we need to attend to. To Buddha, all beings are Buddha. All we need do is to align ourselves with the macrocosmic order, get our orders, and carry them out. The problem with New Ageism and religion is not (in my opinion) that it shirks social responsibility, but that it encourages individuals to focus on externals, and/or to make only the most superficial inner examinations (i.e., go to church and confess and you get to heaven, or simplistic interpretations of Eastern wisdom like karma and past lives, and magikal truths like “we create your own reality”).
Everything that happens on Earth happens according to Macrocosmic design, and this includes "social injustice," pollution, etc. Who are we to question it? This is not to demean the power of compassion, empathy for the suffering of others: but I suggest that this empathy itself is sufficient to provide relief and healing, without any direct intervention, which unless asked for, is always likely to be interference anyway, based on ego. Those who feel true empathy do not interfere, those who interfere do so because they are incapable of feeling empathy. (It may be that both modes are valid, however.)
Question is: At what point do we cease to regard our fallen state (Promethean knowledge of good and evil) as a curse and begin to experience it as the means to seize our sovereignty? The existence of error PROVES the reality of “free will,” but ONLY when we turn away from error. Lucifer’s fall was preordained, his voluntary obedience – redemption - will be an act of pure volition based on EXPERIENCE.
(PS. the steiner quotes suggests a confusion in RS's teachings, or at the very least a conundrum that requires reconciling, sincce Steiner also wrote that Lucifer gave humanity free will by blinding it to the presence of spiritual hierarchies.)
www.aeoluskephas.blogspot.com
Threefolding
"I’ll end with one of Steiner’s warnings about the dangers of Luciferic influences from the East, that is, if left unmediated by individual responsibility."
Yes, a conundrum indeed. It is the reconciliation of this paradox that leads to human freedom, at least within Steiner's system anyhow. But he is only one of many philosophers who saw early on humanity's need to emerge from dualistic thinking. His mythological threefolding of Lucifer- Christ- Ahriman is an image of structural shift from duality to polarity. Lucifer is the light-bearer and catalyst for the ego, Ahriman is the demon of fragmentation, abstraction and materialism- to be extremely brief about it. Christ in this schema, becomes the crossroads of incarnation between the universal and the particular, and is also the representative of man in the sense that a man who does not heed to external religious authority or to pure reason will require some creative internal mediation of the polar influences.
It can be very easy to get lost in Steiner's mystical language, but one only need to read a bit of Nietzsche and Schiller to see his philosophical inspiration for this system. Schiller's Aesthetic Letters provide a prototype of the threefolding in his proposition that 'play' allows for creative mediation between reason(Ahriman) and man's sensuos nature(Lucifer).
And Nietzsche exchanges absolutes in religion and science for a radical perspectivism in which all external horizons become blurred to the point at which truth and wholeness can only come about amidst the chaos of individual freedom- again like the organic emergence of music during an improvisational jazz performance.
To understand the dualism that we are emerging from, one needs to look both to the development of monotheism amongst the Semitic people's as well as abstract science- from the Greeks through the schools in northern Africa and then through the scholastics and into the Renaissance. Individual ego development is intimately bound with abstraction and monotheism, which is why the eastern cultures are predominantly collectivist and we are not. The organizing principle that we use to apprehend sense data is fundamentally different then that of someone raised in pre-modern China. This is why eastern philosophies should not be taken as they are but integrated by someone who has a deep inderstanding of the evolution of consciousness, such as Jean Gebser or Rudolf Steiner or Sri Auronindo. If you read them closely, they are all saying the same thing: dualistic thinking ran it's course around the time of the French Revolution and dutifully served the purpose of abstracting an individual ego from an undifferentiated state of being. But now, this structure is deficient and those who attempt to sustain its validity are doing so for their own ends- for power.
To sum up- yes, Lucifer is your friend, but as an individual, you must always retain control. It is the same with Ahrimanic technologies. To 'fear' them would be to succumb to Ahriman's influence. Rather, you must be the master. So as I said in the first post, there is no 'answer,' no clear cut path that Lucifer or Ahriman is good or evil, but by contemplating these entities as living processes rather than dead concepts and exercising your ability to mediate between them, you can, and indeed must, carve out your own individual path. to avoid such a reponsibilty is to subsume your identity into a collective or to mistake arbitrariness for freedom.
Also, just to be clear- traditional Christian Theology is dualism par excellence. God is good, Satan is bad. No matter how you embellish Satan's mythology, the structure is the same. Steiner's system is a way to exercise polarity and emerge from dualism without intellectualizing it. The contemplation of the difference between Ahriman and Lucifer serves that very purpose.
Thanks
yoga and war
What IS Matter (revisited?)
OK, I believes ya. I will save this copy ;))
We should realize the urgency of our situation, and now be very responsible in both trying to work out the whys and wherfores it has all gone so wrong, and continues to, and how we may resolve this crisis. Without becoming overwhelmed. As in "oh..oh...I must save the world!"
Didn't someone say "Think local"?
What the rulers do is try and break individuals spirit. I recommend you check out the pages of John Taylor Gatto, who reveals how the so-called 'education' system came about, by who, and what it is designed for. Well to summarize for now, it is designed to keep things as they are.
It is designed so as we have no feelings self power, and power of community to see what the ruling class are doing, and to challenge and STOP their self-destructive greed and madness which is bringing all to ruin.
Things are so very serious now, the gloves are off. A good sign you are on the right track is when one of their henchmen come after you with a taser--kind of thing. Because willy nilly they are toolin' up. And soon they will be microwaving any protesters on the streets, ,,,,etc etc. Last I heard, they're 'trying out' their 'non lethal' crowd control weapons in Iraq.
But shouldn't we all meditate and go into inner peace, and see that they are you and you are they?..........errr maybe later. Now we need to say NO MORE TO THIS SHIT! Not only for our freedom, but for all species and the generations to come and Planet Earth. But we need to also know what fuels this evil and the apathy which allows this evil to go on and on and on through the generations, maintaining its status quo. It is myth, it is propaganda, it is TV Trickery, it is narrative, it is mindcontrol is what it is, and we need to see it right through. Then we see the fat diseased ridden horrible old emperor naked for sure.
Checkout (not sure if she's published but you can read her online) Druscilla French's The Power of Choice, where she shows how literary narative throughout the generations has had to follow rules that favours the status quo. So when we read these myths, when we read these stories, we are being mindcontrolled, yes we are. So we have to become aware of this, because it works doesn't it?
I really recommend you read Monica Sjoo's book, The Return of the Light Dark Mother, because she exposes the real agenda behind the so-called New Age, which, Daniel, also involves Rudolf Steiner.
What is the real agenda?
It is an Eastern mysticism mashup with Satanism 'and' technology/transhumanism which views reality as something which needs to be made 'better' and manipulated. The seemingly opposite objectivist myth of science also has that aim. It views matter, Nature as being passive, and an object for their manipulations. We need to see through all of this nonesense.
We need to understand our intersubjective relationship with Nature. We need to admit and understand that we cannot understand Nature as an object, and/or believe it is illusion. Nature is far more mysterious than these ideas. But it IS under attack for real!!! That is no illusion. That fact cannot be dodged.
We must demand freedom for psychedelic healing. This is healing of our long long rift with from the Land and animals and community. This is I feel the root meaning of psychedelic experience. If you look at the clues of what the elite do not like or support, we can very much put as central the free spiritual use of psychedelics. This is because they fear their power for helping individuals see through false hierachies and inspiring communion with others and the Land. The elite rather wants us chipped to their big city grid semantic matrix computer. Well no more!!! We have to see this through. There is no other way. Our backs are already up against the wall and the walls are closing in. And looking away will not stop that. So I hope more and more people will express their thoughts and feelings in this thread and thus inspire theirs and others spirits to healing action
School can be a Tragedy
zezt...I've been in communication with the Gatto Organization...they are doing good stuff, spreading the word, cracking open the big box of secrets. Probably his most profound statement was about how we hesitate to loan our cars but don't give it another thought to hand over our children...those great loves of our lives who we hand over with blind faith, to total strangers and a school system infiltrated with deceptive behavior modification theories and ideologies.
There is something amiss in the menu of shaping young lives. I'm a college educated and Certified Child and Youth Councilor whose fate to never work in the field was sealed when my first Family Studies Class began with the statement, "the family is no longer sacred." You know I could have walked away right at the moment, but my curiosity as to why such a fallacious statement was important, to begin one of our main study groups, made me stay the course. My field training occurred in the school system. Believe me, what I saw, heard and witnessed became far more important than anything I could have ever put into my work binders. I prevailed to the end but I knew with all good conscience I could never take part in any institutional stystem that is intentionally frigging around with the developing personality of young kids. I use my credentials for reseach purposes!!!!
it is my feeling that spending one second
talking about satanism and thus by implication "new age" is its own nice little blind alley,
who ever ever read Paradise Lost by Milton? does anyone really read it?
do any of these "new age/satanism / mason/templar/catholic church/ illumanati/ reptile...
theories munchers, read Paradise Lost or Dante's Inferno?
no because, it's easier to read contemporary exposes of all the lumped new age=satanism=new world order, stuff
but are we any the wiser, is there, was there, have there been a time when people were not told nonsense and a heap of nonsense about their irrational God?
perhaps!
god seems pretty rational to
god seems rational, oh really?
i was rather refering to the white man's historical god.
and i stopped eating cherrios , and the sugar and the monsanto milk.
-
zezt, I'm glad you took the time to re-write it!
Confronting the shadow and bringing the battle to new fronts.
Lovely posts everyone. I can certainly see the passion rising within us and I absolutely love it. Reading VerdarLuz's post and connecting with the window of time we have now when we really can truly make change based on the emotional feelings within made me tear up the other day. Reading these last few posts has empowered me even more.
The task, as it seems, now, which was addressed compellingly by zezt, is "to also know what fuels this evil and the apathy which allows this evil to go on and on and on through the generations, maintaining its status quo. It is myth, it is propaganda, it is TV Trickery, it is narrative, it is mindcontrol is what it is, and we need to see it right through. Then we see the fat diseased ridden horrible old emperor naked for sure."
We not only need to do our own shadow work and determine what is holding us back in our daily lives, but we do need to begin exposing this shadow controlling the minds of so many otherwise wonderful people and we need to begin confronting this control with subtle attacks.
I am reminded of a group of posts a few weeks ago on art, media, and pranks. We need to be pranksters but we need to be brilliant ones. There is truth to all comedy, and we need to expose the truth of the shadows any way we can. Let's bring this world shadow out to light and let these forces be as one and bring us into the consciousness shift we so desire.
I'm still trying to think of ways to go about playing these artistic, transformative, pranks and the best thing I can think of (despite Daniel's common sense about the $20 salon event) is to just go out there and ACT!!! Be goofy, be free, be truthful, be expository. Stop someone in their tracks today and make them THINK. Lead them to the rabbit-hole. All of our changes must happen on an individual basis, but we certainly can help to awaken those around us... we can show them their doors and teach them to be free.
If only Oprah added Nietzsche's Zarathustra to her Eckhart Tolle reading...
All bridges can be rebuilt.
conscious choice
I have to say I'm appalled that I just visited the Conscious Choice magazine site and saw an advertisement for an "enlightenment credit card".
Absolutely ridiculous. All authority is absolutely ridiculous.
All bridges can be rebuilt.
I have to say, doctordewey...
I laughed my little but off the first time I saw it advertised as well. Contribute to our major corporation, earn enough points and we'll give you a holistic spa getaway!
Now looking back, I'm torn. If a certain card is able to encourage people to make better choices for themselves and the environment, shouldn't it be embraced? But at the same time doesn't the very act of getting that card contribute to our current unsustainable financial institutions, have a negative impact on the earth by using plastic, and contribute to the spiritual materialism that Daniel was talking about?
I don't know. Anymore thoughts?
-
I am new to this website but I can't escape the feeling that many of those commenting are just using this article to preach their own thoughts in the hopes of being recognised as wise or enlightened.
I don't mean to offend, it just seems like most of the comments aren't really comments. Although I did notice that the forum is quite empty so I suppose this would be the best place to get your ideas accross...
thinker..
Social Convention
Thinker...social convention would say that a "comment must be a comment" maybe you have misunderstood that this is a fringe site full of freedom and the importance to social network, talk, discuss etc!!!! The importance of this site goes way beyond any need for self-serving importance, revealing your wise or flaunting enlightenment...it actually hurts and is troublesome to understand the world we are all living in.
what a great comment
about comments, but what i want to know is do you have any of your own to add to the stew?
don't bust a blood vessel in your head, thinking too hard about it, just let it all hang out. thankyou
and is that constant comment tea you are drinking?
this one time i was at the
on the tea note
when i spent a year at the University of he Trees, that was a "meditation community" the leader of the U of the Trees was a man from England, so on the late afternoon they had tea time in his house, those english have to have their spot of tea, black tea, that is.Its all proper and civilized, and besides it was a time to relax and discuss affairs of the community.I use to like Irish Breakfast tea, or Earl Gray.But i since heard that drinking too much black tea was not too good, the tea has tanin and it can cause fluorosis.
i don't know if black tea contributes to snobish behavior.
Pip Pip!!
critical
Couldn't give a dead rat's arse about being recognised as wise or enlightened - I'm just here to preach, because I am wise AND enlightened, at least wiser and more enlightened than anybody else in the vicinity.
I do mean to offend, it just seems that this website isn't really a website, and it seemed quite empty so I thought i'd get in here quick and tell everyone that I'm farking great! I'm really a lot nicer in real life, btw. Love you all. Donations over $500 welcome.