Bruce Charlton's Notions

For Christians; living in fear is wrong, and sinful when accepted or embraced; but how we deal with fear is important - since some apparently-effective ways of dealing with fear are also sinful (such as prideful anger fuelled by resentment).

Yes, this is not a complex problem, it does not require abstraction, difficult analysis, nor any kind of theological 'balancing act' - the proper answers are simple, and clear as nuts and bolts. 

Jesus's idea was that people should follow him because of love, not from fear. Jesus deserves to be followed when we desire what he offers (resurrected life everlasting), and because we regard him as the Good Shepherd; because we love Him and have faith in his love for us. 

This does entail that we believe Jesus has the unique/ supernatural/ cosmic power to 'deliver' what he offers, but we ought not to follow Jesus because of our awe and fear of His power. 

That would be a wrong, negative, sinful - hence a self-defeating motivation; because Heaven has no place for such motivations. 

Therefore, when we fear (and who can avoid fear in this mortal life?) we need to recognize it as wrong, repent it; and fight-our-fears by reflection on what Jesus offers and the always-presence of Jesus in this world and our lives (as the Holy Ghost). 

We are never alone, nor bereft of help. 

The Good Shepherd will lead us to salvation; if only we follow Him; and to follow Him requires no more than this belief in His motives, and His capability. 

Therefore we can fight fear with strengthened faith; and our faith can be strengthened by something as simple and clear as a parable. 

Over at The Notion Club Papers blog; I review the 1981 BBC Radio The Lord of the Rings, which is something I have listened to many times. 

Although the production is a bit patchy, and limited by the medium; I give this version a definite thumbs-up as a warm-hearted piece of work, frequently enjoyable - and sometimes powerful and moving. 

Furthermore, for one who knows the original text; the dramatic presentation offers the listener the possibility of increased insight into Tolkien's characters and their relationships. 

Ever since I began to consider the matter seriously; I have found the ways that sin and forgiveness are discussed to be incoherent. They just don't seem to add up, or hold together. 

What I think I was sensing, was a clash between the temporary and the eternal, the individual and the social -- resulting from changes in human consciousness and the concept of 'Christianity' since the time of Jesus. 

I think it likely that, when Christianity was developed as an institutional, then a state, religion; it became bound-up with the prescription and enforcement of good, pro-social, 'Christian behaviour' - and this became regarded as the pre-requisite to salvation. 

So we get the idea of 'sin' as transgression of laws, and 'forgiveness' as some mixture of punishments, penances, and wiping the slate clean of past transgressions. In practice, 'sin' was externally, socially, defined. 

Thus laws and other rules of conduct were societally developed, validated and imposed; the individual was the sinner (law-breaker); and some representative of society decided what ought to be done about it.

This pragmatic system relating to social behaviour (primarily) was then harnessed to the 'cosmic' aspects of Christianity; i.e. the fact of Jesus Christ having change created reality - made possible a new Heaven of eternal resurrected life etc. 

This was the - to me - peculiar picture from Christianity; of a reality made up of moral laws/ legal codes and the system for developing and enforcing them; which was strangely linked with a narrative of the history of everything. 

It seemed hard to grasp how - in creating - God had built-in objective morality of this social kind... I just couldn't picture how this might work. 

When I spent a year or so, reading and re-reading the Fourth Gospel ("John") - I gradually became aware of a very different way in which sin was being conceptualized. 

The IV Gospel (overall) saw sin as ultimately death; and milder sins as including sickness and others kinds of dysfunction, corruption (away from proper purpose and function), wrong attitudes towards God, expounding of false realities, and so forth. 

I gathered that Jesus's work in taking-away sin, was to take-away death; in other words to offer Men the possibility of resurrection into life everlasting. 

Miracles of healing were perhaps Jesus taking-away lesser 'sins' of disease and disability. 

'Forgiveness' is not mentioned as such in the Fourth Gospel; but in some parables and miracles, Jesus seems to be declaring something about a change of mind or heart, or a reorientation, on the part of the one who is healed - this (here-and-now) commitment to Jesus is the 'faith' that has made the miracle possible. 

But this is not necessarily an eternal transformation of behaviour. I don't think we are meant to assume that one who has had faith, and received a miracle, would 'never sin again' in the sense of never again breaking any of the Laws of morality. 

The transformation of those who encountered Jesus was not a permanent change of their behaviour; but a here-and-now change of heart, of desire, of attitude. 

It seems possible that Jesus was talking about repentance or forgiveness in terms of a person turning to Jesus as Saviour, as Good Shepherd - as recognizing that only by 'loving' and following Jesus can we have eternal resurrected life. 

This can only be guaranteed as a temporary state of affairs in this mortal life - because somebody might at first decide to follow Jesus, and then later change his mind. As a sheep might begin following the Shepherd to safety; but change his mind, stray, and fall off a precipice to his death (i.e. to choose damnation). 

Thus, concepts such as 'repentance' and more generally 'faith' may best be understood as referring to the here-and-now; to the current situation in mortal life. 

These concepts are also, at root, personal and not institutional - at least to us modern men. 

Personal and institutional were, indeed, de facto inseparable in earlier stages of Man's development of consciousness, including the time of Christ and the centuries that followed. 

It was only from the late medieval era that Western Men began mentally to distinguish the individual group his group, more and more fully, and then to experience as a fact of reality. 

So, my confusion about 'sin' (and the confusion of Christian teaching, from which my confusion derived) was - in part - a consequence of trying to combine concepts from different stages of Man's consciousness.  

My conclusion is that we have now arrived at a very different point from where Christianity arrived at after the ascension of Jesus and the rapid development of first the Church, and then the Christian State. We are, indeed, now returned to a situation much closer to that described in the Fourth Gospel, during the life of Jesus. 

'Faith' is now something-like a here-and-now determination to follow Jesus to eternal life; and 'sin' is... anything else, i.e. any other commitment or purpose than that of following Jesus to resurrection-specifically. 

'Repentance' (the word itself isn't used in the Fourth Gospel) is (perhaps) simply the renewed commitment to following Jesus; whereas 'apostasy' is, like Judas Iscariot, referring to one who once had faith, later changing his mind and deciding Not to believe or follow Jesus. 

(And then, of course, apostasy may be repented.) 

So 'sin' is ultimately choosing death - meaning not-resurrection; but choosing instead some other fate for our post-mortal soul.

Thus 'damnation' may entail something like loss of personhood, loss of agency, loss of consciousness... Or refusing to leave this mortal world, and remaining bound to the domination of entropy and death. Damnation may be many or several possibilities, because it is anything-but resurrection. 

And, from this, 'sin' is used more generally to refer to mortal life and its innate nature - this world, dominated by entropic change: corruption, disease, decay, degeneration... 

In other words: 'sin' is all of that from-which we are rescued by resurrection into eternal life. 

How to reform [fill-in the Western social system] are all a waste of time, a distraction, and make matters worse -- by implying that the economy/ science/ the legal system/ health care/ education or whatever actually Can be reformed. 

But they cannot be reformed. 

They cannot be reformed because there are No people of sufficient power, wealth and influence that want to reform them; nor is there a sufficient constituency of 'the masses' who are motivated actively to desire genuine reform (i.e. at the cost of that immediate physical suffering which is the inevitable price of genuine reform in a corrupted system).

Ultimately nothing specific can be reformed because The System itself is corrupt - all its leadership class and controlling institutions are either activists for evil or evil-compliant. 

Purposive evil is written-into the minds and rules by which our civilization operates. 

And the leaders cannot cease from their evil because they are atheist materialists; whose world view (metaphysical assumptions) exclude even the possibility of purpose, meaning, the divine and real values (truth, beauty, virtue - and coherence).

Nothing significantly positive and good can be done at the Systemic level in our civilization until after we have changed our beliefs concerning the basic nature of reality - because our beliefs concerning the basic nature of reality exclude all that is positive and good.  

Nothing can be reformed in this world, until we have a perspective that stands-outside this world, and therefore includes this world.  

Only then can we know and strive for coherence of goodness; only then will change be good. 

Until such a time; all efforts to Do Good in this-world will be subverted, corrupted, and inverted to evil purposes.

Until such a time; we can and must work on our-selves, at the personal level, and by spiritual means. 

Note: Therefore, if we wait for a lead coming from an external initiative from some powerful person or institution, if we wait to follow-a-leader or join-a-group, or we insist on creating-a-group before acting -- then we will wait until the day of our doom without knowing, thinking or acting. 

Since there seem to be some new regular readers of this blog, I will repeat an offer that I have made a few times before - which is to answer questions from commenters (one question from each!). 

Because the daily blog has been running for nearly 13 years and has over 8000 posts; I may well be able to point at some previous thing that has already addressed the question. 

Or else, if the question is relevant, and I have something to say on the subject, I may be able to provide some kind of new response.

Anyway - that's the invitation. 

It's over three years since the birdemic first wave was imposed on the UK, but at present there has been very little enforcement (in most parts) for considerably more than a year. There is at present far more emphasis on the Fire Nation and Climate than on the birdemic. 

Yet, there is a substantial minority of the UK population who will not let-go of the birdemic mindset; who continue to wear masks, 'test' themselves, self-isolate and avoid (on the basis of these pseudo-tests), accumulate pecks in the face of multiple 'test'-confirmed recurrences, and so forth. 

What seems to have happened is that three years ago, and again two years ago when the peck was being pushed; these people opened their minds to the daily conduit of propaganda about the birdemic, and filled-up on... whatever fluctuating and incoherent nonsense was being piped-in. 

Then closed their minds on it. 

And now they Will Not let go of this stuff. 

It's as if their minds have become valves for evil: with inward-facing flaps that open to allow evil in, but then close-upon evil - preventing it from escape. 

Their minds are a one-way street for evil, with no exit. 

So that once some item of evil propaganda has been allowed into the mind - then it is held-onto tenaciously, and in the face of even colossal quantities of contradicting later information...

Even when those later contradictions come from the exact same official sources that they uncritically believed in the first place!

What I seem to be observing, over the past several years; is that in general most people believe... whatever is currently being pushed by the mainstream media. 

This means that, in most respects, minds are wide-open in both directions: by believing today's narrative, people can easily change, and reverse, their ideas - and believe stark contradictions.  

But there is a large segment of the masses - particularly (I think) among Nice people of many kinds... Among the middle-managerial, public-sector, and professional classes, the young-retired ('boomers'), and women. 

...I mean those who selectively and tenaciously believe... whichever is most spiritually-harmful among the daily-input. 

What I envisage is a mind-set that is passively orientated to evil. 

This is not an active or originative mindset, it lacks evil-intent; but it is instead a mind that implicitly desires to serve evil.  

Such an orientation to evil appears to be unconscious, and would certainly be denied; but by their revealed-preferences it can be seen that such people - who are servile by nature - strive to place their minds and efforts at the disposal of whatever is most evil among the mass of conflicting and fluctuating mainstream ideology. 

My point is that such people (and there are a lot of them!) are not neutral with respect to propaganda. Among the vast avalanche of fake news and dishonest information; such minds display a definite bias towards attending to that 'information' which is most long-term evil in its potential, and once they have absorbed such information - they will not let it go! 

They will selectively grab-and-hold-onto stuff relating to the birdemic-peck, climate, antiracism etc. - in other words the Litmus Test issues, by means of which the global establishment impose their totalitarian agenda. 

Such agendas are internalized - and will then be followed permanently, even in the absence of encouragement, even in the face of discouragement... 

Beyond this, they gravitate towards whatever are likely to be the most destructive policies and theories - those which would (if pursued) destroy whatever is loving, true, beautiful and/or virtuous. 

And they will do this, and continue to do it; even when current official information changes, and contradicts it.    

This mind-set is therefore one of the primary manifestations of evil-affiliation in our time - but, because it operates passively and unconsciously - is usually overlooked, and generally denied. Yet if we understand evil to be a chosen allegiance to the side of evil in the spiritual war of this world; then these bureaucrats of the devil are among the most numerous and dangerous agents of evil in The West today. 

It is my impression that many who have communicated their philosophy of life, have been more or less seriously impaired in this work by a kind of embarrassment: a fear of damaging their social status and self esteem because of saying or doing something.

This embarrassment leads to an attitude of guardedness, defensiveness - the embarrassed Man develops a continual self-filtering of communications to try and avoid spontaneously revealing something that might be used against him, or might lead to him being rejected. 

Such embarrassment can blend with attempts to impress others - with pretentiousness; but it can also be found in an almost purely negative form by a sense of inhibition. 

This is so common as to be normal - yet when it comes to the communication of matters of the greatest depth, embarrassment can provide a formidable barrier to generating what ought to be as clear and comprehensible as possible - or else it probably will not be understood.

When I consider some of the influencers and 'mentors' who led to my Romantic Christian perspective; I can see that William Blake was a Man who was free from embarrassment, and who communicated in a spontaneous and bold fashion - apparently without caution against being misunderstood, or mocked.

Another of this ilk was William Arkle; who seems unconcerned about making an impression, who seems unguarded in his attitude - and whose communications appear to flow without going-through a filter of caution. 

A third 'William' of this type, is Bill Ryan of Project Avalon; who is unembarrassed about revealing and discussing his strange experiences with ETs - and many other unusual subjects - without regard for how such comments will strike other people. 

Bill Ryan (although not a Romantic Christian) is helpful in understanding this, because I knew him some forty-seven years ago; and can therefore recognize that his candid spontaneity seems to have been characterological, innate - a gift of nature. Yet a gift he still retains at the age of seventy. 

And I think the same applies to Blake and Arkle - they were 'made this way', from childhood, presumably from birth - yet also they 'stayed this way', throughout the stresses and temptations of their long lives. 

Therefore; the achievement of the Three Williams has the quality of retaining that which was, in origin, a natural confident unguardedness.

There are far more examples of writers whose work is hampered by - greater or lesser - degrees of embarrassment. 

One is CG Jung; who was mostly a confident and bold thinker; but who would (again and again, as he approached his conclusions) back-away-from the direction of his reasoning and the implications of his thinking; exactly as if he had suddenly become embarrassed, and feared the effect of his words. 

For Jung; this negative tendency to take away with one hand what had just been given by the other, was exacerbated by a positive desire to impress people, a pretentiousness. He would back-away from clarity and honesty, partly so as to impress others, and gain the rewards of higher status. 

But embarrassment can impair communication even among those who are wholly lacking in any pretentiousness; such as Owen Barfield. 

By all accounts, and confirmed in his writings, Owen Barfield was a very modest man - although with a great inner strength that was generated by intellectual mastery, deep thought, and inner confidence. 

Yet I find that Barfield's ability to communicate clearly is impaired by what seems like embarrassment - a diffidence at expressing anything that might seem like boasting, a reluctance to speak simply about the deepest matters of his understandings - such as the nature of God, God's nature and purposes. 

Just as Barfield approaches his conclusions, again and again he veers off into defensive abstraction - or excessive brevity - so that his argument is set out with meticulous clarity, but the final 'answer' is ambiguous, unclear, difficult to understand.  

The writer Charles Williams was someone who was remarkably unembarrassed in all social situations - even when mixing with the rich, prestigious, and famous; but also one who pretentiously desired to impress people. 

His life and work were both impaired by this pretentiousness: because it led to a strong element of play-acting, and indeed dishonesty, in his social relationships.

While in Williams's poetry, theology and novels there is a strong element of deliberate obfuscation and obscurity - a striving to appear profound.

Well, we are what we are - at least to begin with; and only a few of us have been blessed with unselfconsciousness. 

But character is a beginning only - and innate disposition can either be corrupted by choices made and habits developed; or it can (to some extent) be overcome by effort and practice. 

For myself; I had an original disposition somewhat the opposite of Owen Barfield and more like that of Charles Williams; in that I did not suffer much from embarrassment (i.e. negatively, I did not much care about how other people might react in a negative sense); but I tended towards pretentiousness - (i.e. I positively wanted to impress people - or, at least, some people). 

This was an obstacle to communication - because anything is an obstacle to communication that interferes with the primary desire to communicate. 

On the one hand, we cannot help the way we are; but on the other hand we are here (in this mortal life) to learn. Part of this is learning about ourselves. 

Often, our strengths are the obverse of weaknesses; but by recognition and striving we can move in the right direction. 

Conversely, by failing to recognize and acknowledge our defects; the modern world has a strong and pervasive tendency to corrupt people, to encourage people to ignore their deficits and instead regard them as strengths. 

Thus (as we sadly observe among family, colleagues, acquaintances and friends), however they start-out, most people get worse.

And these applies even to those who are innately and naturally Good. 

Thus the originally confident and unembarrassed child becomes a self-conscious and peer-group dominated adolescent - and never goes beyond this... 

While the 'show-off' child becomes the pretentious adult; more concerned about the impression created and rewards obtained than making actual achievements.   

These are among the lessons of life that we need to learn - and we can learn them from our own experience, and also by sympathetic yet honest understanding and critique of the lives of others.

Most people believe - from personal experience - that telepathy is a real thing, that it can sometimes happen. But not many people think much further about what this might mean. 

Telepathy is therefore an example of the way that our personal experiences interact - or rather, do not interact - with our metaphysical assumptions. 

Belief in telepathy (for modern people) is therefore encapsulated: it is a free-spinning cog, a belief unintegrated-with and separated-from our basic understanding of the world.  

A belief in telepathy therefore does not affect the basic materialism - and disbelief in 'the spiritual' - that is characteristic (indeed mandatory) in public discourse in our Western civilization. 

Unless there is a transformation of our basic (metaphysical) assumptions concerning the nature of reality; telepathy cannot be understood and integrated with life-in-general - even when it is believed. 

Yet, if people started-with their already-existing belief in telepathy; and took it seriously; then honestly, and rigorously followed-through its implications - then the thread might well lead to metaphysical transformation. 

...And the same applies to other 'paranormal' (or 'supernatural') phenomena such as synchronicity, near-death-experiences, seeing ghosts - and the like; all of which seem to be highly prevalent experiences among ordinary people in the modern West. 

Each of these is, potentially, a clew - the loose-end of a thread which, if grasped and followed, could potentially lead to a revolutionary reappraisal of how life is understood. 

With telepathy, following the clew might initially lead to a recognition that one's experience of telepathy was not one of language, not a hearing of words nor a seeing of images; but instead just knowing some-thing. 

While hearing words or seeing visions might at first seem to imply that telepathy worked by some means akin to radio or television transmission; on further consideration - if telepathy works without the senses, this seems to imply something more like a sharing of knowledge - which implies that different people have access to other minds, or to some other common source. 

This seems to suggests that two people may be thinking the same thoughts, simultaneously; and perhaps by some means that does not involve back and forth communication - but through simultaneously accessing an underlying shared-world. 

Since the underlying shared world does not seem to be material - and is not, apparently, detectable or measurable - then it might be recognized as a spiritual world. 

Therefore, such a line of rigorously following-up the experience of telepathy - or some other analogous experience; might lead to telepathy being regarded as a possible manifestation of some common (maybe universal) spiritual reality, that can simultaneously be tuned-into by many people - but which continually exists whether or not it is being tuned-into. 

This 'common spiritual reality' might then form an hypothesis, which could be tested against other past and future personal experiences; to see whether such an understanding cohered with our own life.  

Yet this kind of reasoning very seldom happens; and instead most people believe this, that, and the-other - each as encapsulated assertions - without any attempt to relate them to each-other or to a coherent overview of reality. 

In fact, such encapsulation of beliefs (of all kinds) turns-out to be vital to the continued (albeit short-term) existence of our current - deeply dishonest and corrupted, value-inverted - society. 

Our lives, our actual experiences, are full of clews to a larger, meaningful, coherent and much-better world - if only we weren't so adept at ignoring them!

I think that most people, including most Christians, short-change themselves in terms of what they hope-for from God. 

Since God is the creator, and regards us each as His most ideally-beloved child, He surely wants for us whatever is Best for us - and 'best' over the timescale of that eternal life which has been made possible by Jesus Christ. 

Therefore, we can measure our aspirations against possibilities by rigorously and honestly attempting a thought experiment - an imaginative fantasy, if you like - in order to understand what kind of life would be the best imaginable over an eternal timescale. 

And do this on the basis that surely God (the loving creator) would, in principle, be able to create some such situation. 

(Whether the imagined situation would be good-for-us, or for others, is a consideration we can leave until later - at first, the experiment is to consider only our personal gratification - but through an everlasting lifespan.) 

The problem and pitfall with this kind of thought experiment is that there is a tendency to look only one step ahead from our current situation, and therefore see no further than a situation that is better than now. 

Eternal life is then seen as nothing more than an 'improvement' on our present life. 

This is easy to do; but such improvement may entail no more than a relief from present suffering, a relief from boredom, or indulgence in some favourite pleasure.

But if we stick to the task, and imagine an eternal timescale, we will soon see that very few such 'improved' situations will satisfy us for very long. 

Once we were used-to a suffering-free existence, or even a used-to static state of blissful well-being; we would surely want to Do something! 

And nearly all of the imaginable pleasures of mortal life (sensual, sensuous etc) lose their enjoyment and eventually become boring upon repetition, especially when that repetition has no end... 

I regard this as a very important, perhaps a vitally important, exercise; as a means of testing whether we really want that which we habitually tell ourselves we want. 

And it is an experiment which each person needs to do for himself. 

Yet, the only near-example I have ever come across of this experiment - and where I got the idea - is William Arkle; firstly in Letter from a Father; and then, more fully, in Equations of Being. In fact, Arkle goes a step beyond what I am suggesting, and takes the stance of God, the Creator, who is trying to design a world that offers the best possible life for his Children (i.e. us). 

Here is the start of the experiment, in Equations of Being: 

We could, for instance, design a scheme, as many of us would, which would be like a continuous, perfect, summer holiday situation. We would all begin our designs with the idea of ease and happiness in mind. We would all find that our schemes did not contain responsibility or difficulty. I think we would find that our plans would take for granted that it was easy to include other people in our perfect world. 

I think we would find that we would make up a perfect and easy world where everyone was like ourselves and where all the things that really mattered to us were simply put into the picture, ready made, as though the reality of them could be programmed into them. All our schemes would contain other people, for none of us would want to be lonely, and all of us would soon begin to realise that other people were an integral part of all that we enjoyed about ourselves. 

We would discover that a sort of mythical ‘deckchair on golden deserted sands’ situation was a trap that we all fell into. A little would be pleasant, but only because it is what we are most short of in our experience of life as it is on Earth. 

Even if we allowed ourselves a companion, or even a family, we would find that there was still a lot wrong. The family who sat about with us would get restless as we would. 

 So we would want to explore a bit, go for a walk, see something new. We may go for a swim. Swimming and short walks, on a perfect beach in perfect weather, with all our loved ones about us; such might be a beginning. But the walks would have to get longer and the swimming would have to include diving. The diving would lead to exploring the seabed and the walks would become voyages of discovery. 

We would wish to feel that the family or friends were on the sands for us to come back to, but we would want to feel free to explore, we would want to feel free to experiment with different sorts of walking and swimming, different combinations of walking, swimming and sitting in the sun. 

We would wish to talk to our companions, we would wish to enjoy their company. We would wish to laugh and have a bit of fun. 

We would wish for them to be real in their own right so that the laughter and fun was real and full of surprise and the unexpected. If we had programmed the other people to be like ourselves we would find it very difficult to keep up the pretence of enjoying their company, their fun and their affection. For pretence it would have to be, since we were really entertaining ourself in other guises.

I hope you can see what Arkle is doing here. He first posits the first step of such a fantasy - which is often something like the deckchair on golden deserted sands situation. For anyone who is currently suffering, this is an improvement.  

Then we might realize that 'other people' would be required; and, at first, we might be tempted to put into place companions who were idealized 'automata' - beautiful friends and lovers who would do only exactly what we wished. 

But, on further consideration, this is revealed as merely a reaction to this mortal life, in which we are often at the mercy of other people who wish to exploit or harm us; and that an eternity of living among obedient 'androids' would be without any interest - since we would be doing no more than try to entertain ourselves. 

Therefore, after several more steps, we might eventually realize that (for us) nothing less than a world with other 'real people' and a life of both solid family love and open-ended creativity and new friendships would suffice.

And we could continue to explore and test such a world, probe its constraints and possibilities; and so the thought experiment might proceed. 

Each individual would have a different first-step or starting point, and a different path through the later options - and maybe (or maybe not) a different final resting point when our idea of 'Heaven' seems to have stabilized and taken some clear and comprehensible form.  

But maybe not - maybe, for Christians, we would find that our ideals converge upon a single kind of 'ideal world' - which could be the real Heaven - and which all Christians might aspire to share. 

At this point we might examine our idea of eternal Heaven; and consider whether this is compatible with the hopes and ideals of our loving creator God for his children. And, if our idea of Heaven does conform to such ideals - how such a situation might be achieved? 

Then, whatever we conclude, we would surely want to seek spiritual guidance about whether or not all this was true. 

We would seek confirmation from our deepest and most sustained intuition; from contact with the Holy Ghost; and from whatever external sources (scriptures, persons etc.) we intuitively regard as most authoritative, understandable, and reliable. 

This is a path of discovery, an individual quest and a spiritual adventure; and if we don't do it for ourselves - it will not be done. 

But if fully achieved; we will have the great advantage of a clear and comprehensible - therefore motivating - understanding of Heaven. 

Looking back, we will then know know if we had-been settling for less - perhaps much less - in our life-aspirations, than God has made it possible to achieve. 

The problem of human cooperation only became 'a problem' through history; because (it seems) in early human societies Men regarded themselves as primarily part of the family and community within-which they were born.

But now, insofar as Men introspect, we experience ourselves as cut-off, alienated - and we presume others are the same. How to get individuals to cooperate is one problem, and another is that the group is understood (and, often, experienced) as intrinsically hostile to the individual. 

Me versus the world, and the world versus me...

Which means that groupishness is, must be, imposed upon individuals - even when this is for the long-term benefit of the individual, this still opens-up an ideal that 'everybody else' should work for the group while we our-selves (covertly...) selfishly exploit the situation. 

Thus we get the actuality of totalitarianism; whereby groupishness is imposed, top-down and by a mixture of coercion and propaganda - yet the rationale for such imposition is merely expedient (i.e. because the alternative as a chaos of each against all, in which civilization collapses instantly). 

The choice is between coerced order and chaos - and the choice is made on selfish grounds (i.e. an evaluation and choice of that circumstance in which I am most likely, personally, to do best)

In other words; the implication of modern experience and explanations at the individual level is that ideally each person should be a hypocritical psychopath - hypocritically expounding altruism and groupishness for other-people, while (covertly) selfishly exploiting this situation for oneself. 

...In other words; exactly the hypocritical behaviour of the typical modern leader - whether in politics, the mass media, corporations, or any institution such as a charity, a school/ hospital/ army/ or whatever. 

...A superficial ideology of altruism and public-good covering a core ruthless and exploitative careerism and hedonism. 

This is our situation: i.e. a cynical, arbitrary, purposeless and meaningless totalitarianism.. Top-down and coercive arbitrary order is imposed on individuals at every level and scale - because there is (believed to be) no other possible basis for groupishness. 

And the analysis is self-fulfilling over time; because all actual human groups become subverted by this understanding; such that all actual institutions are indeed assimilated to the totalitarian whole, and behave as such. 

Yet, while our consciousness - and all the modern explanatory schemes - regard humanity as a collection of individuals; there is also a suspicion of, or hope for, some kind of spontaneous (not imposed) groupishness - although its basis is typically unclear; and the available explanations tend to be unconvincing hence weakly motivating. 

We 'know' that there really is a groupishness among Men; but we cannot explain it - at least not in a way that convinces both ourselves, and others. 

Traditional Christian explanations - such as that all Men are children of God, and have a shared divinity - have lost their power to motivate. 

Indeed the churches use these groups explanations to justify totalitarian goals! As when the parable of The Good Shepherd is said to support mass immigration, "the feeding of the five thousand" to justify bureaucratic communism, and the interests of the people of God are said to mean obedience to "the church" and its current-actual leadership.

The answer is twofold: 

To understand groupishness from an individual perspective - intuitively from-within, where that understanding cannot be touched by worldly totalitarian imperatives. 

And to understand groupishness spiritually such that the material corruption of this world cannot corrupt or otherwise affect it. 

This is a very extreme stance, by world historical standards - but it is exactly the corruption of the world that leads to the need for it. 

It regards our cut-off individualism as a fact; but moves beyond the negative aspects that have led to totalitarianism in the public sphere. 

Since we really-are cut-off in the public sphere - this means we can and should disregard the public sphere in our explanations and understandings. 

On the one hand, totalitarian groupishness is merely external, because it cannot (exactly because we are cut-off in consciousness) penetrate to our inner self-experience. On the other hand; from this state of inner cut-offness, we can strive to discover an understanding of our groupishness that we find to be real and true. 

Even as we are inwardly cut-off from the old spontaneous groupishness; we are also cut-off from the new totalitarian groupishness. 

We can revel in our absolute independence from the imposed evils of physical control and psychological manipulation! 

That which makes us alone, also makes us free. 

Thus one individual person can stand, if he chooses, with-God and against The World: silently indomitable. 

One thing that Western Christians find it hard to grasp - and typically deny - is that they are surrounded on all sides by enemies...

Together with an admixture of those who are either indifferent or too feebly-motivated to intervene when it is in any way inexpedient. 

The reason I say that Christians find this hard to grasp, is twofold:

1. The insatiable appetite, on a daily or hourly basis, for outraging over over Yet Further Evidence that Christians (and indeed anyone capable of common sense and learning from personal experience) are surrounded by enemies. 

People never seem to tire of seeking and experiencing this kind of outrage, without ever getting any further or drawing general conclusions about the nature of reality, the nature of the world: and the motivations of those who control our world. 

Outrage and outrage, yet without realizing that Of Course such things happen All The Time! Happen quite naturally and inevitably; because the entirety of the major cultural institutions are now (and for many years have been) net corrupted; they have adopted significant value-inversion: they have taken the side of evil in the spiritual war of this mortal world... 

Which is presumably why outrage-generating events are produced and publicized in such abundance. 

2. The tireless search for harbingers of positive change among the mainstream leadership class of politicians, journalists, Chief Executives and the like. 

There is clearly a deep-rooted expectation that the trend towards evil will - some time, soon - be turned-around by Someone from among those with power, wealth and high status. 

So - the words and actions of the rich/ famous and influential are fine-tooth-combed for any slightest evidence of common sense, realism, decency, honesty - and, when any such is found, hopes of an Establishment Saviour well-up yet again, for the hundredth, the thousandth time...  

The expectation of the return pendulum swing, the tidal reverse, the reaction against excess, the first signs of awakening from hypnotic sleep... 

It is astonishing how difficult it is for people to recognize the obvious: 

(Apart from a few family, and maybe a handful of personal friends - if we are lucky...)

We are surrounded on all sides by evil-motivated and evil-obedient enemies. 

There are just so many ways in which modern culture is actively subversive, inverting values and corrupting behaviour - that to focus upon any in particular is to invite failure. 

Special attention paid to a specific response to a specific problem (which will usually result in the need to do something quite complex and effortful) - opens us up to a weakened and distracted response to the many other simultaneous problems. 

If we take a single-issue approach to dealing with our sins, in a world where there are So Many sins, we will end-up chasing our tails. Even if we weed-out one form of sin by great effort, meanwhile the others will have grown unchecked*. 

What is required is that values we live-by, be rooted in some source of real and true values that is autonomous from the mainstream culture. 

In other words; when Western civilization is become an ocean of corruption in which we must swim - because its corruption has invaded all institutions; we can no longer lead a Good life by the double-negative strategy of avoiding evil; but only by the positive strategy of pursuing Good. 

And to do this requires living in accordance with a source of Good that is independent-of, and uncorrupted by, our civilization.  

Then it does not matter what that culture is - past, present or future; nor what is does to us - because so long as we are rooted in reality and truth, we can recognize and repent whatever is corrupting, subversive or value-inverting. 

The traditional way for this to happen, was that the individual would obey the guidance of a religious group (typically a church) that was autonomous and Good. 

But now there are no churches or other religious groupings that are both big-enough and autonomous from the subversions of culture nowadays - and which can be relied-upon to remain autonomous for as long as we may need them. 

To be rooted-in a church, is therefore merely to be rooted in a variant of the mainstream corrupt-culture. 

The other way is for each individual to 'obey' the guidance of some internal source which is both Good and autonomous. 

Is this possible? Is there a source within-Man that is sufficiently autonomous of the evils of culture, and also Good? 

For me, the answer is Yes - because this is a matter of metaphysical Christian theology. 

In other words; my fundamental beliefs concerning the nature of God and divine creation assume that God is Good, and we are God's children - and therefore we each have within us that which makes God Good.

In other words we each have in us (because we are God's children) a True and Uncorrupted Self which is in harmony with divine creation, and from-which we can be guided towards that which is Good.  

If one believes-in a real-divine self, and that this True Self can be 'consulted' for guidance; then that potentially solves the problem of living in a corrupting civilization where that corruption includes the churches. 

Furthermore, in principle, each of us can deal with problems of corruption on an individual, case-by-case basis; rather than by - as with traditional religions - seeking generic solutions to particular classes of problem, or following general guidelines such as laws or prescribed practices. 

It all seems to depend, in the first instance, on whether one believes this source of inner guidance is real/ true/ possible.

*It is possible that a person may be dominated by a particular besetting sin, which needs to be weeded-out before anything else can be done - alcohol or drug addiction is an example. But we should not pretend that dealing with a single sin makes someone overall a better person - assuming that the sin was already repented. 

I mean that what is vital with a besetting sin is repentance. Reform of a sin is good, in and of itself; but only Good overall when it is indeed Good overall! 

Reform may, or may not, be possible in a particular instance; but it is at best is preparation for a subsequent change in overall attitude to life.

People like to believe that it is A Good Thing to destroy evil; but this is only true when the motivation to destroy evil is positive. 

That is, when the motivation to destroy evil is Good. 

(As your mother told you: Two wrongs don't make a right! - they really don't.)

If some-thing evil is eliminated - but there is not a motivating Good reason for doing it; then there will be a bad motivation; and there will be net harm in the world.

(One way or another.)

You cannot get good out of evil intent; and the desire for destruction as such, on its own is an evil.

Only when the desire for destruction is a means to the end of Good (that is, in harmony with God's creative intent) can destruction be justified. 

Consider the example of hatred of some evil thing - lets say an evil organization or government or dictator. Something really evil. 

It is right to hate evil - therefore (surely? one might assume) it would be A Good Thing to destroy it?

But not necessarily so. 

There are (think about it...) many, many examples from history when an evil institution or person has been destroyed - by revolution, conquest, assassination -  and what came after was worse. Sometimes much worse. 

Indeed, this is usual. 

The reason that such outcomes are usual is that Good motivations - and I mean real Good motivations - not pretend Good motivations that are just disguises for resentment or malice - are rare. 

I think you would find that good outcomes from destruction occur only when the destruction is a means to a genuinely Good end. 

This is important because nowadays there are - at least so I believe - no genuinely Good motivations in public discourse or politics in the West. 

I mean that none (not one) of the institutions, parties or persons who are engaged in the public realm, and have power to destroy, have genuinely Good motivations. 

Therefore, necessarily, destroying things in The West will turn-out badly, one way or another... 

(There are many, many such possibilities for how things will - whether predictably or not - go wrong.) 

This is yet another example of: Be careful what you wish for! 

The phrase, the karma of untruthfulness, is taken from a series of lectures by Rudolf Steiner, and it can be understood to mean that untruthfulness - lying, dishonesty, deliberate misleading - carries a 'karma'. 

This I mean in a Christian sense (and one different, in several important respects, from that implied by several of Steiner's metaphysical and empirical assumptions):

Sin necessarily carries a cost; and untruthfulness without repentance is a sin; and un-repented sin is the prime path of a soul, to self-chosen damnation. 

The karma of untruthfulness operates at the level of our Western civilization, at regional and national levels, for social institutions of all sizes; and, most importantly, for individual human beings. 

We already, and increasingly, live-by untruthfulness: untruthfulness structures the main aspects of our public life, policy, and discourse; and (ever-more-so) our private discourse - even within marriages, families, and among close friends.

And, at its core; untruthfulness structures the basic reality assumptions (metaphysics) and thinking of many or most Western people.  

The usefulness of the term karma is in its unavoidability; the idea that the costs are intrinsic. 

This is not a matter of costs coming if people 'don't get away with' their lies. It is that our 'world' of untruthfulness brings its own punishment immediately and necessarily - as well as cumulatively through time. 

A world in which people choose to believe and live-by that which is false is already a world that is self-damned; and self-damnation manifests at every level; because it is a choice of negation, of hostility to divine creation - a choice of meaninglessness, purposelessness, and chaos.  

Here and now - truthfulness is of supreme importance; a truthfulness that needs to extend down to the roots of our understanding of the world itself, as well as to the minutiae of everyday living. 

The idea that everything is All One - and that meditation reveals that underlying reality is this one - and is timeless, nameless, stillness, peace... and entails a loss of self-awareness and indeed all thinking and consciousness...

This is an occult attack directed-against God, creation and all of life - against all Beings, including Jesus Christ, all Men, and all hope of resurrection to Heaven.

This, because oneness is another word for primordial chaos, the chaos of purposeless-meaninglessness before divine creation, before any-thing. 

To desire oneness is therefore to desire nothing: to desire that God, creation, purpose, meaning and all that is beautiful true or virtuous... be rendered to nothing. 

To seek oneness is to seek that which is as low as may be conceived; and yet to call this the highest wisdom!

Such inversion of real-values is the hallmark of Satan. 

This is a sort-of footnote to the preceding post: 

There is a distinctive and WEIRD Leftist ideology dominant among the globalist, totalitarian rulers and their managerial and propaganda minions; by which WEIRD stands for Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic. 

What makes the name WEIRD appropriate is that the WEIRD belief are contrary to common sense and to personal, lived experience

While the political aspects of WEIRD are what has attracted attention (such as the bizarre inversions of feminism, antiracism, and the transagenda) - spiritual and religious WEIRD-ness has been neglected; probably because most of those who invented and use the WEIRD term (in a derogatory sense) are themselves WEIRD in this respect. 

Those whose sense of morality purports to be in the common-sense understandings of humanity-in-general; should realize that the wisdom of the ages includes the reality of some god or gods, that this world and universe are created, the primacy of the spiritual realm over the material, the survival of the soul beyond death... and many other 'supernatural' (and 'paranormal') convictions that strike most modern people as 'obviously' untrue. 

In brief: Atheism is WEIRD. 

Just as those who oppose the lefter-forms of leftism - but are not religious - are actually just less-left types of Leftist; and those who oppose mainstream WEIRD-ness but are themselves atheists are just another species of WEIRD...

Analogously; they are mistaken who assume that the mainstream mundane world will inevitably, sooner-or-later, impose real-true-reality on the consciousness of those who WEIRDLY deny God/s and the world of Spirit.  

We need to understand that common-sense no longer happens spontaneously, and no longer carries natural and irresistible authority. 

In other words, we modern Men are all WEIRD as our baseline state; and it is up to each individual to reject his pre-existent WEIRDNESS and instead commit himself to true reality: which includes the recognition that we all dwell in a divine creation. 

A lot of modern people who pride themselves on 'realism', harbour the delusion that - sooner or later - reality will force itself upon people. 

But this is not true. 

Unless reality is consciously sought and chosen; then people (both individually, as in masses or as institutions) will never awaken from falsehood to reality; but will instead merely move from one false understanding to another. 

Men of earlier eras who tried to live in a virtual world of falsity used to revert to reality. 

This happened because (in pre-modern times; to varying degrees in different ties and places) Man's consciousness used to live inside-of reality. 

Like it or not; that is how we were made and organized. Consciousness was not (as now) fully-separated from the environment. 

Men were immersed-in their environment; therefore the (real) environment had direct power to impose itself upon our awareness, spontaneously.

In pre-modern times, reality would become conscious spontaneously; and it took effort and choice to reject reality; and therefore there was a tendency for Men living in falsehood to revert to reality. 

However, nowadays, modern Man's consciousness is cut-off from reality. 

Modern Man is alienated. 

And it is exactly this cut-off-ness of consciousness that enables Men of the modern world to live - for decade after decade - in falsehood, in illusion, in a virtual reality.  

Ironically, modern self-described 'realists' often exemplify this cut-off-ness of modern consciousness from reality; by the fact that they reject the divine, the spiritual, the soul, life beyond death etc - all of which used to be spontaneously known - and quite obviously real! - to Men of pre-modern eras. 

These modern (self-styled) 'realists' - like the rest of us - lack the ancient spontaneous and passive realism of consciousness; and mistake their unawareness of phenomena for the absence of phenomena.  

It is our consciousness that provides all the meanings and explanations for the stimuli and perceptions - which makes conscious-sense of the world around us.

All the meaning of which we are aware is therefore separated from reality; therefore (in modern Man) reality has no way of imposing itself upon consciousness.

So long as our consciousness is passive - reality cannot get at it. 

We can only know reality by consciously choosing it; by an active process.

Nowadays, we all consciously choose the reality that we believe, and in-which we dwell. 

The difference lies in whether we choose to discover and believe the one true reality; or one of the innumerable false realities. 

And in this world of now, dominated by evil powers; if we take the path of passivity, and decline to choose; then it is one (or many) of the false realities of which we will become conscious. 

True reality is something each must find for himself; and himself choose.