As it’s the Easter season maybe I should get back to my real life’s work for a moment and deal with a spiritual matter brought up by a querent. My conferees were often confronted with the either/or nonsense, such as "If you aren't with us then you're against us." And often it was difficult to see round that in the context in which it was presented.
I would just say, " I have no interest in baseball. I am therefore not a supporter of the Cubs. That doesn't mean I'm against them since I support no other team either." That often seemed to help. There is always a third option; though sometimes it is unthinkable.
Many people are trapped by the totally flawed either/or of religion and science, particularly where evolution is concerned. My querent was from a family where there was only evolution. You either were on the side of evolution as an atheist or you were a fool.
This is a modified extract of my answer then to someone who was brought up in the religion of atheism and whose parent always dealt with religious and metaphysical queries by pointing out that the answer was evolution, and the silly beliefs of the ignorant faithful were nonsense.
The querent, who was psychic, had problems with either accepting or rejecting evolution since it was presented as a dogma, to be believed as the final answer to all questions. Psychics often experience things that cannot currently be explained by science or religion. The 'only two options' system doesn't work. Here is my modified reply, which I hope may help someone in the same or a similar boat.
It isn't a matter of either/or. Evolution is a fact. There are various theories about how it occurred and that’s what many people squabble over. BUT what has evolved is the complexity of the nervous systems of various bodies. Only at the present point in physical evolution on Earth is the human brain and nervous system developed enough to enable the consciousness of being conscious, the ability to witness the mind and thought instead of traveling down efficient, survival oriented reflex paths, like a squirrel.
Your dog, cat and local fauna are all conscious. Apparently they are not conscious of being conscious. They live very efficiently from instinct and reflex and can learn from experience. Your parent who said,“Big Bang. Evolution.” as the answer to all your questions about metaphysical phenomena was right at one level, but there was much more than that simple statement involved.
Atheism seems to be a definite step on the spiritual ladder. I was an atheist for years after being brought up in several different Christian fundamentalist households. I could see that they were unintelligent, ignorant and uninformed people, no matter how kind or well intentioned, and the easiest way to cut the traces was not to believe in anything they believed in.
One of my foster parents was a lay preacher of the Plymouth Brethren. His rebuttal to the whole concept of evolution satisfied him and astonished me. He said, “If evolution is true why aren’t the gorillas in the zoo turning into men.” With such invincible ignorance and absolute certainty there could be no debate. I remember the day I said "THERE IS NO GOD, IT’S ALL BULLSHIT!" The relief was palpable. I felt a backpack of rocks fall off. I was free.
Later on I realized I still hadn't got the whole picture. All the gods I disagreed with were invented entities worshiped by dogma and with the help of power hungry priests who stood between the ignorant masses and the divinity, if there was one.
Then I read dozens of Indian scriptures and investigated thoroughly the life of Jesus as portrayed in the New Testament in 32 translations and several languages. I realized that I, like the fundamentalists and the atheists, had thrown out several babies with the bath water. The 1945 finding of the Nag Hammadi gospels that the Church had tried to destroy made many things clear about the teachings of Jesus that the Church had hidden, distorted or destroyed, in order to keep power over the people.
Many of the most spiritually elevated scriptures I have ever encountered never mentioned the words god, goddess or faith even once. They were all about getting control of the mind and how things looked after doing that. Seeing the world without ANY of the programming from parents or peers about what was there.
One of the really great ones, who achieved this state, loved and honored by all was the Lord Buddha. There is no god in his teachings, only the discovery that life is suffering, what causes it and how to remove it. When monks came to him and asked if he was a god he said that he wasn’t. Then they asked if he was a man and he said he wasn’t.
That covered all their options. So they asked him in exasperation, “What are you then?” He replied, “I am awake.” That is the meaning of Buddha. One who has awakened out of his private dreams and out of the publicaly shared dream of what is real and what isn’t. One who sees things as they are without interference from mental programming.
And all the ...isms and .....ists are a cause of suffering. People who talk about their angels with a smug smile drive me nuts. It shouldn't bother me, and one day it won’t. Maybe it’s the smile of superiority that reminds me of the fundamentalists. But at the moment mea maxima culpa. I know it's the current rung on the ladder for them, and it's a human thing to feel that your latest revelation is the last one there is, particularly if it was life changing, and you have no concept of reincarnation.
It isn't ever the last revelation. I taught rune magick for years and many of my students met the Norse gods, previously unknown to them, in their meditations and journeys into the Rune Realms and expected congratulations. My reply always was “Find the gods of the gods. Who did Odin worship? Who or what was behind Odin?”
Your evolution of Consciousness never ends. The enlightened people in the world today are the novices in the next non-human stage of the continuing evolution of Consciousness. The universe is a mental construct; pools of energy translated by the black box in the brain to appear as the material world.
Only the Self is Real. And that is your awareness of being, which never changes. All the other gods and non-gods and theories are steps on the way. Everybody is programmed to defend their current step as the final word, and religious wars have started because of the words used to define different perspectives of the same thing.
There is a Zen proverb that says “When you get to the top, keep climbing.” That’s what I’m talking about. When you get to the level of a Jesus, Joel Goldsmith, Swedenborg, William Blake, Walt Whitman or a Buddha you are then at or near the top of the human ladder with, or as, the Hermit on top of the world on Tarot Trump 9. But you are also at the bottom of the novice god or goddess first ladder. Evolution never stops. Think about what the gods of your current gods would have to be like. You are moving in that direction.
If you are meditating and becoming more conscious you are doing fine. There will be days when the old, not quite deleted stuff comes up in moments of unmindfullness. Don’t follow it or think about it, just look at it and say “Next please!’ or “Sorry, wrong number, we don't do that now.” Or use Vernon Howard’s system and say, “I can think of something higher.” AND have something available in your memory banks that is higher and say it immediately. The negative then ALWAYS triggers the positive and eventually the negative energy is drained away and you see what IS more and more clearly.
The Self that is the witness of your mind initiated ALL the religions and -isms and -ists because it energizes the myriads of minds, all of which have been programmed in different ways by parents, peers and teachers and therefore appear to live in different worlds. That's the divine game of hide and go seek that the divine consciousness plays with itself. The East Indians call it leela, God’s Play, the Play of Consciousness.
You are playing it well and can only continue to progress if you realize that from a human viewpoint EVERYBODY is right, for their level, and that someone at the next level CANNOT be understood by someone who isn't at that level. The lower level consciousness almost always describes the higher level consciousness in negative terms.
The literalists think that the enlightened are talking blasphemy. The story of Jesus is an example. The left brained psychiatrists who cannot see the subtler worlds just know that those who can are hallucinating and need to be cured. The chrysalis cannot understand the language of the butterfly. Remember that if you dream of butterflies. A new language and way of describing your life is being presented to you.
But all the thought stuff is irrelevant when you realize that there is only one Consciousness in the universe and you are it, watching a life unfold from a human perspective as you have watched it unfold from the perspective of a dinosaur, a bird, and a tree, over the eons.
You, as the One Consciousness taught the birds to sing. You trained the cats in their gracefulness. You taught the dogs to interpret their worlds through their noses. You have viewed and lived life through every kind of lens and now you are at the stage where your vehicle, the space suit called the human body, is complex enough for you to be aware of your own consciousness and thoughts. But between thoughts you are connected with the ALL.
Some people are still sensitive to the consciousness of lower animals such as dogs, cats and horses, and have what seems to be an uncanny knack of communicating with them. Old skill, still in the DNA memory.
To become established in that witness consciousness any religion or none will do as a start, as long as you eventually go beyond it. As the Lord Buddha said, “It is good to use a raft to cross a river. It is folly to pick it up and carry it once you have crossed the river.”
All the religions were human constructs to answer questions occurring to the evolving mind. The truth is in the non-verbal space between thoughts. Anything that can be described clearly in words isn’t at the level of the truth available to you, which is beyond all words.
The sentences created by religions were not answers to fundamental questions. The answer to a fundamental question is an experience, not a sentence. It will be totally beyond the power of words to convey to someone who has not shared the experience.
And words will not be necessary to those who have. They will immediately recognize your attainment.
Blessings, and Happy Trails,
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