Bruce Charlton's Notions

A couple of days ago I listed what I consider to be the three Satanic Litmus Test issues that are dominant in 2020: these are the birdemic, antiracism and global warming. 

I think it is worth reiterating that what these Tests do is detect and identify those who are objectively on the side of Satan in the current spiritual war. 

The question of whether you are (overall) a nice person, or what is regarded as a 'good' person is irrelevant; whether you are a pious and observant church member is a separate issue; whether you live by Christian ethics to a higher degree than many or most people makes no difference at all. 

If you fail the litmus tests you are working-for Satan's triumph in this world, you are aiding his agenda - know it or not, like it or not, deny it or not. 

This ought to be very obvious to you, since the evidence is truly collosal and indeed overwhelming - and the fact that it is not obvious to you shows the depth of your unrepented sin. 

And it is unrepented sin that is decisive - as Christians ought to know.  

Note: Failing one (and if one, usually all) of these tests identifies a person as actively against God; but passing the test does Not (of course!) mean that one is a real Christian. To be a real Christian is a positive and voluntary committment; one must want and decide to follow Jesus to resurrected eternal life. Being a Christian doesn't happen (nowadays) without you knowing it (although it could happen after death).

...Are simply an endorsement of today's comment by WmJas Tychonievich (who, unlike me, is American by family, birth and upbringing).  

Still, although it is none of my business; as we know, since Vietnam and up to this anti-fa/racist summer - every small thing that happens, or is (dishonestly) alleged to have happened, anywhere in the USA - is the immediate and mandatory business of every person in this world. Hence my right and duty, ignorantly and impotently to comment.

Last night I was trying to write in my notebook; but couldn't stop myself from falling asleep for multiple brief micro-sleeps - with a longer period embedded. Meanwhile, I was writing notes! 

The record of the experience is nearly illegible; but it seems that I had a chunk of dream about my having-written a novel and submitted it to a publisher - to an editor who was some kind of friend. I did not remember having written the novel or why (when I know for sure, even in the dream, that I am incapable of doing so...). 

I got the novel typescript back in a large envelope which I opened, and I saw there were some detailed handwritten comments from the editor on the top-sheet. However, I was embarrassed about the whole thing, and unwilling to read exactly why this story (which I couldn't even remember having written or sent) had been rejected - so I put the thing onto my bedside table. 

At that point I woke; and decided to take a look at the comments after all, and rolled-over to find a notebook on my knees, and nothing on my bedside table - and after a second or so, I realised it had been a dream. 

So I started to write this into the notebook - but periodically kept on 'dropping' back into the same dream... rejoining it at various further points; having - in the dream world - forgotten how matters had reached this point, but recalling enough when I awoke to recognise some link. 

Periodically; I would wake, for a few tens of seconds, start writing (scrawling, rather) as the memories ebbed-away - and then drop off to sleep again. 

The dream was not really going anywhere specifically, but was meandering-along by some kind of free-associative process; all the while my memory was fading 'behind-me' so that I was continually puzzled and struggling about how I had gotten-into the current situation, although I knew that I used-to know. 

(This mood is what the old time psychiatrists called 'perplexity' and is characteristic of many pychoses.)

Anyway, not to labour the point; this is another of many confirmations I have had over the years that I seem to be dreaming all of the time; and by falling asleep I am able to 'sample' the ongoing dream. It is like dipping-into a fast running stream-of-consciousness that runs below my wake state. 

The ongoing dream crams a great deal more into clock time than does the awake state - something like a hundred times more stuff happens in a minute of sleep, than a minute of being awake. 

The dreaming mind has a very poor memory - it apparently has a working memory of some tens of seconds, but after that period, everything rapidly fades-away (like walking along a road that is always crumbling-away a couple of hundred yards behind, so that I cannot look-back any further than that) - in much the fashion seen with people suffering dementia or in a delirium. 

And the awake and dreaming states are kept apart by some kind of 'software incompatibility'; such that a dream may seem clear and comprehensible immediately upon awakening; but cannot be recalled, transcribed or 'translated'... There are exceptions, when I do remember chunks of a dream well, but these exceptions are exceptional - and may happen when my sleep is shallowest - as when I am at the end of the night's sleep and ready to wake fully. 

It is interesting to me that there is an unconscious dream life running through all of my waking life (and maybe also in deep sleep?); and further that this dream narrative crams in far more detail, emotion, and incident than does the waking state. 

In this sense; I have much more dream-experience in my life than I do waking experience - but this experience is not available to the waking mind. 

However, I think that it is available to the dreaming mind. In other words, while in a dream I seem to remember my other dreams - there seems to be a separate 'dream memory' store, inaccessible to my wakening mind. 

For instance, there are dream places that I inhabit, and recall, only in dreams; dream incidents; indeed I probably have a 'parallel but distinct' dream nature or personality, who has different aptitudes and has led (is leading) a different life. 

And - presumably, since it happens; this stuff is significant and important - in some unknown way.

It is a plank of the post-modern mood that values are a product of System; and that there are no values outside of System. 

If someone asserts values that are not part of System, then these are essentially private, delusional, psychotic - an arbitrary, personal and unshared morality; and such an individual is, of course, potentially dangerous to those who participate in the System morality (dangerous to the extent he or she has power). 

And values also include the standards of truth and beauty; so that System defines what is beautiful or ugly, what is fact or lie.  

All valuations, in other words, come from System. 

This is true; but what is disputable is that there is only one System; and that is the one System of mortal human society in this world - including its cultural and technological elaborations. 

The mainstream assertion that governs life in the modern world is that life is material (there is no 'spiritual' domain, no soul, no god/s, nothing 'supernatural'); and that life is (therefore) bounded by biological conception-birth at one end and by death at the other end. 

A more recent development of the concept of System is that the cultural and technological elaborations are more real, more objective - because more powerful and widely-known, potentially more stable and longer-lasting, than the human beings of the world.  

Thus System has become abstract: impersonal, and indeed increasingly anti-personal. 

Because values derive-from System, and the worldly-System is increasingly abstract and with increasing not-human elements (computers, technologies, statistics...); the System can and does generate values that benefit the System considered as an abstract-whole, but not the human beings. 

Thus the modern world; in which we increasingly relate to the System only via bureaucracy (systemised humans) and electronic mass-social media. The question of whether this is good for humans does not even arise; because values come from the System, and only one worldly System is acknowledged.

It is either the System or psychosis - and therefore neutralisation, hospital or prison. There can be no exile, no independence; because nowhere is outside or beyond the System. 

And, because non-System values are dangerous to the System; anyone with values outside is necessarily selfish and mad - thus will be sought, labelled, and their threat eliminated. 

And Yet - the worldly System is arbitrary. It does not have purpose, it does not have meaning: it Just Is. 

Thus, modern reality is a mandatory morality, a compulsory and inescapable system of values - that is, at the same time, arbitrary; without foundation, going-nowhere, and meaning-nothing. 

Our choice is mandatory meaninglessness or de facto death. 

This reality is dawning upon more and more people, because the compulsory System is changing so rapidly, is so obviously incoherent, is so increasingly either indifferent or hostile to actual human happiness or suffering. 

Yet, if the System assumptions are accepted - and they mostly are accepted (whether unconsciously or consciously); then There Is No Alternative. 

Modern life = slavery to the arbitrary System, with no hope of anything else; becuase there Is nothing else.

All this follows with apparent inevitability, until it is recognised that there is a System beyond 'the System', and which includes and transcends the worldly system. 

We then recognise that the wordly System has been and is made by exclusions; especially of God the Creator - and we recognise that there is a transcendent world beyond and containing the material.

We recognise that the supposedly monopolistic worldly System is actually within, and subordinate to, the Divine System.

Once that larger Divine System is recognised; all the above crumbles to dust. 

Once we recognise that life extends back before conception and forward beyond biological death...

Once we recognise that this material reality was made by God, from spirit...

Once we recognise that this worldly System is a part of Creation; and may be judged by the values of Creation...

Once we recognise that there is an escape from this worldly System into God's greater reality of Creation - and that most of our lives lies beyond biological death...

...Then we are free.  

Currently, as of 2020, the ideological-religious Litmus Tests - i.e. the three major planks of acute, 'emergency' Leftism - are, in order: 

1. To believe in the deadliness of the birdemic and the need for societal lock-down-social-conditioning-masking-etc; which schema justified the Leftist totalitarian global coup, and the consequent near-annihilation of Church Christianity, across all denominations.

2. To assert the antiracist ('MLB') agenda. Indeed, not explicitly to repudiate this ideology is (in practice) sufficient evidence of Leftism.

3. To believe the Anthropogenic Global Warming/ Climate change ideology - which is the basis of the UN Agenda 2030 and the 'Great Reset'. These are intended to lock-into-place the New Normal.

If you support any of all of these; you are objectively on-the-side of mainstream, global, totalitarian Leftist Establishment: which is the side of Satan and against God. And obviously, therefore, you are anti-Christian - despite whatever you may believe or assert. 

See also This follow-up. 

Note added: William Wildblood has very helpfully expanded on the spiritual meaning of these Litmus Tests in a blog post that I would recommend reading. 

I have recently re-read JD Salinger's Raise high the roof beam, carpenters (1955), and a long, mostly oral, biography by Shields and Salerno (2013)*. Raise High is confirmed in my estimation as just about my favourite short story/ novella ever - only rivaled by the same author's Zooey (1957). 

JD Salinger (1919-2010) is famous for having spent the last 50-plus years of his long life in near total seclusion and privacy - and for not having published anything at all after 1965. At present several books are apparently being prepared for posthumous publication, although nothing much is known about their content. 

To say that Salinger's late stories are long-awaited and eagerly-anticipated by his fans, would therefore be a massive understatement! Many apparently hope for some more work along the lines of the novel Catcher in the Rye; or, at least some more short stories as good as For Esme, with love and squalor (1950) or Franny (1955).

But I am personally confident that there will be no good unpublished work by Salinger. Why am I confident? Because Salinger only published his best work for a very short period between Esme in 1950 and Zooey in 1957. His earlier short stories are often fine, but nothing special; being either clunky or contrived - and lacking depth. 

And, much as a love Zooey, its ending doesn't work, and is evidence of the beginning of a decline. This was confirmed by Seymour: An Introduction - which was published in 1959. And Salinger's final publication - Hapworth 16, 1924 is really, truly, appallingly bad - embarrassing, unreadable.    

So on the graph of decline, there are three data points; and the decline was steepening such that Salinger went from fascinating but very difficult and barely coherent with Seymour in 1959, to horribly terrible by 1965.

Given the brevity of Salinger's period of genuine excellence, and the mediocrity of work outside that period; I hold-out no hopes at all, that work written after 1965 will be any good. 

Indeed, I doubt if they will be worth reading, except for documentary purposes. 

*Note: The Shields and Salerno book is well worth reading for the significant new evidence they uncover, many good interviews and memoirs printed, and photographs. But the text by Shields and Salerno - their opinions, interpretations, lit crit - is really dreadful; especially that by David Shields. As so often with modern biographers, they dislike their subject and lose no opportunity to snipe and denigrate. As so often with modern people, they regard religion (any religion - in this case mainly Vedanta Hinduism) as evidence of psychopathology. The perspective from which the book is written is mainstream journalistic wokeness - and therefore the quality of thought is inevitably incoherent, materialistic, anti-spiritual, politically-correct (in a nutshell: actively evil). 

I am finding the self-exhortation, or rather self-reminder, to Trust in God - to be of extraordinary value just at present. In a sense, it is the single 'thing' I most-often find myself reaching-for. 

Probably this is because I have come to regard all plans, schemes, strategies, blueprints, procedures, manuals and guide-books to be intrinsically evil: intrinsically on the side of Satan. Probably this was not always the case, probably at some times and places such things were valuable: but not here, not now. And when I set such ways of thinking aside; what replaces them is Trust in God...

But I have become sharply aware that when other people say Trust in God, they often mean to suggest that God will fix problems in this mortal life, or with respect to particular institutions (such as churches) or civilizations; whereas my trust in God is that he will seek my personal best situation in the long-term of post-mortal, resurrected, eternal life. 

To me, it seems obvious that all things of this mortal earthly world are temporary. They are indeed of infinite value, but their value is cashed-out only after biological death, in Heaven. 

Therefore, I think that people are misunderstanding if they Trust in God to save their life, their families, their church, Western Civilization, life on this planet or indeed the planet itself. All these things are destined to perish - and before they perish will surely undergo change, corruption, decay... such is the nature of mortal life. 

Ultimately, this life is a time of learning; and this applies to every-thing at every level of organisation and consciousness. We should not be supposing that God is primarily concerned with any mortal thing. Neither is God indifferent to this life and world. 

Rather, God loves this life and world for what they contribute to eternal life. 

And that is where are trust can/ should/ must be placed. 

The special teaching of Jesus is that sin is inevitable and unavoidable, and the key to salvation is therefore repentance. By repentance we recognise sin, and that we have sinned; and we take the side of God and creation, which we affirm as Good.

We live in a world where the totalitarian global bureaucracy is evil: that is, it takes the side of Satan against God and creation. To be an institution here-and-now (in 2020) entails engagement with The System; therefore all institutions (of every kind, including Christian churches) are operating on the side of evil. 

The same applies to individual persons, but individuals can repent. As an individual who, like every other individual, engages in sin every hour of every day - we can/ should/ must acknowledge the fact of sin and repent.

If not, we have embraced damnation. 

Repentance is sufficient for salvation, but it is also necessary. 

Thus if we personally lie (and every middle and upper class person lies for a living, on a daily if not hourly basis), then we can and should acknowledge that we lie, and that lying is a sin.  

To be honest is thus to repent one's (inevitable) dishonesty.

Individuals can do this; but institutions cannot repent - or rather, they can do it, but (here, now, 2020) it would be the last thing they did before ceasing to be an institution. Because repentance of an institution must be 'official', explicit, recorded in the organisation's 'minutes'; made public, made clear.  And this is not tolerated. 

(Some lies are mandatory, and to repent them is punished with the full severity of the Establishment.)

Because 'official', explicit, recorded, announced... is how institutions 'think'. Qua institution (or rather, a modern institution), knowledge must be clear and explicit, or else it does not count as knowledge. 

Therefore, institutional repentance must be clear and explicit or it is not real. And if institutional repentance - e.g. for lying, accepting known lies, propagating lies - is clear and explicit - then here, now, in 2020 that institution will be destroyed. 

An honest church would be destroyed, therefore all actually-existing churches are dishonest; all actually-existing churches are unrepentant sinners; and the same applies to all actually-existing social institutions. 

This is one reason why Christians can (here, now) operate only as individuals; and why a Christian cannot allow institutional loyalty and obedience to be his or her bottom-line of values - not even L&O to churches. 

By and large, most people would count loyalty and obedience as virtues - albeit minor virtues; and that it what they are: minor virtues, whose virtuousness is seondary to the end for which they are deployed. 

When, however, loyalty and virtue are deployed for ends that are evil (i.e. ends that take Satan's side in the ongoing spiritual war of this mortal life, the side who are against God and creation), then loyalty and obedience become evil. 

Obviously so - one would suppose. Yet L&O are among the deepest and most spontaneous of minor virtues, being reinforced by evolved instincts to do with Men being 'social animals'. The archetypical situation in which loyalty and obedience are natural and spontaneous are the feeling of offspring towards parents: rightly so. 

Yet, here we can also see the limitations. L&O to loving parents is absolutely right; but when the parents aren't loving, or when caregivers are not parents, then L&O may be an instument of evil. For example, L&O to the surrogate parent Fagin in Oliver Twist is to live in service of evil. 

Also, the parents may change. Parents may begin good and become evil: start by leading their children in the path of salvation but then lead their chidlren towards damnation. Surely we have all seen this? And if loyalty and obedience prevailed, the child would follow the parent into Satanic-affiliation. 

And this is the analogy most appropriate to our current situation. Many of us have begun life with a sense of loyalty and obedience to some social institution that we believed to be net-Good (i.e. overall-Good). For me, as an atheist until middle age, my loyalties (and partial obedience...) was to such institutions as my school, college, 'science', 'medicine' and the universities. These I regarded as essentially good, well-meaning, groups. 

But over the decades all of these changed radically. If these were indeed (as I supposed) net-Good institutions forty-something years ago - they are now (obviously!) in service to the evil agenda of the Global Establishment and its unified bureaucracy. If I had remained loyal and obedient to any or all of them, then I would by now be following the demonic path that all of these institutions support and assert. 

But if I had been a Christian, and my primary loyalty had been to a church, then much the same would have happened if I had retained my L&O to the institution - since the main churches and denominations have all embraced the anti-Christian, leftist totalitarian agenda. 

As I said yesterday, all that is required is a single window for Satan to enter-in and take-over a person: or an institution - and (obviously!) churches are not exempted. 

Over the past few decades the way-into churches has usually been the sexual revolution, in its various aspects. Churches that supported any of the major planks of the sexual revolution (whether abortion, 'no-fault' divorce, feminism, QERTY, trans or whatever was fashionable) have all joined the dark side. 

At present the wedge-issues by which demonic entry is forced are antiracism and the birdemic.  

Unless your church has explicitly, unambiguously and totally rejected the Big Lies and False Assumptions that drive the antiracism and birdemic issues; then your church has already accepted the primacy of the evil agenda. Your church has joined-with the mass-majority, mass-media and Establishment... Your church has joined the anti-God side of the legions of Satan.  

Unless you cease to live as-if loyalty and obedience to your church were the primary virtues, unless you discern; then you will (like so many tens of millions of other ex-Christians before) surely be led down the path to damnation. 

One cannot always be listening to Glenn Gould playing Bach; plus some of his pieces are excessively experimental and don't work over the long term. In the past, I have generally turned to Andras Schiff for a different and/but excellent way of  performing Bach's keyboard works. Schiff has a very smooth and lyrical, light and sensitive way of playing - as well as deeply thought. 

But just yesterday I stumbled upon a modern Chinese pianist called Yuan Sheng who may turn out to be (only time will tell) my back-up Bach pianist. He has a lyricism and delicacy much like Schiff, but a more clearly articulated (stunningly so!) and rhythmically secure basis. There is clearly a deep musical intelligence at work, evident bot hin the phrasing and the architecture.

Early days yet (and YS doesn't seem to have recorded 'The 48' yet) but I thought I would pass his name on, since he does not seem well known. 

Lauri Volpi is one of the acknowledged great operatic tenors of the recording era; but for some reason (that I cannot begin to explain!*) I never knowingly engaged with him until a week or two ago - when I heard him spoken of as The Master in an interview with one of my favourite modern tenors in the lyric Italian style: Alfredo Kraus.  

This is truly one of the most remarkable pieces of singing I have heard in the belcanto style - so beautiful that I get an almost reflex 'tearing-up'! 

The production of tone never seems to cease between notes; as if all the notes were linked by an inexhuastible, inaudible, 'glide' of the voice, which floats from note to note. Hear also the control of breathing, to produce effortless long phrases; and the display of what is termed "mezza di voce" in which the volume of a note is increased or diminished smoothly but without any change in tone quality, vibrato or pitch (this is apparently the single most difficult technique in operatic singing). 

Volpi also had immense power right to the top of the normal tenor range, and slightly above - which he did not unleash in this particular aria; although he easily goes up to what I think is a top C# (above top C, the normal highest note for large-voiced tenors) interpolated in the second verse; with beautiful ringing tone - but not at full voice. Apparently his top notes were, when he chose and in real life, louder and more resonant than any other great singer, ever. 

(Note, LV was apparently at his greatest as a singer in the 20s and 30; later he became much less subtle and more showy - although still with impressive power and control). 

*This may be related to the fact that my impression has been that most people, including most professional music critics, talk sheer nonsense when discussing the excellence or otherwise of singers. I must have read LV praised many times in the past; presumably by people whose judgment was worthless. But such praise from Alfredo Kraus (who singled LV out above all other tenors) is a different matter...

One thing I have learned in 2020 is that there are not many of Us - and nearly everybody is on-the-side-of Them. The ratio of Us/Them turns out to be a very small fraction - and much smaller than I had previously realised. 

In other words, They are the servants of Satan, and almost everybody (and apparently All leaders) is on Their side. 

I can see from the way that people talk and write that this fact is not generally recognised among Us. The reason is a failure to recognise that evil is about Taking Sides. Being evil means being on the wrong side in the spiritual war; being on the side of Satan - and many/ most nice/ altruistic/ kind people have chosen to take Satan's side. 

In particular, many devout Christians (including - almost - every leader of every Christian church and denomination; and all of the big ones, so far as I know them) have already taken Satan's side; and act accordingly. And those who have taken Satan's side include many people who are (let's say) 95% or more Good Christians in what they profess and practice. 

It turns-out that being 95% Christian, obedient to the rules, and devout in practice doesn't matter a jot! Because these people have-joined-with Satan's side. They see what Satan wants them to see, ignore and deny what Satan wants them to deny; think the way Satan wants them to think; make the key talking-points and express the core affiliations that Satan wants. Their positive personal attributes (e.g. intelligence, kindness, obedience, loyalty, hard-work...) are all turned to the aid of evil; all are joining the alliance that is making war on God.  

Satan - it seems - needs only a tiny window to find his way into the heart of a Christian and claim his allegiance. The window might be (and usually is) any type of Leftism; such as socialism, feminism, antiracism, pacifism, the sexual revolution... It might (more rarely) be nationalism, Nietzschean hedonism or power seeking. 

It may simply be careerism or the desire for social acceptance. The particular evil-theme may be driven by individual fear, resentment, pride, despair - or any other sin which regards itself as virtue and thereby feeds-upon itself.

Of course, at any moment, an ex-Christian might repent and undo all the evil work! This is the gift of Jesus. 

But this will only happen if the particular person discerns that prioritizing their socio-political hobby-horse of psychological desire is a sin that is rotting their soul. The rarity of such repentance suggests that extremely few people are able, or rather willing, to acknowledge the fact of their own previous/ current choice of Satan's alliance (not even when they look around and see what their numerous demonic allies are advocating and celebrating; not even when they learn what They have in store for the world). 

As usual, it is all terribly simple. There are just two sides: Us with God, and Them against God. And all that we have to do is choose one; and nobody can prevent that choice being For God.

In 2020 the choice is binary and mandatory; and the two sides are easier to tell-apart than ever before. It should be easy! Except for the disturbing fact that (nearly) everybody, including (nearly) all self-identified Christians (and their churches) - has made the wrong choice: and is doubling-down on it. 

The way that some people describe the Christian life, it seems futile... What is (apparently) being offered is a life of hard work, self-absorbed struggle, yet inevitable failure to make progress: for example when the great Saints declare they are also the greatest sinners. It seems like being a Christian is the best way to waste your life, a matter of embracing inevitable (and miserable) failure...

On the other side; there is the kind of smug, worldly complacency of self-identified Christians whose faith has made no discernable difference to our estimate of them. They seem no better as people than non-Christians (or than themselves before they were Christians); just, maybe, cannier at justifying whatever they happen to do by using Christian language and logic. 

Such people let themselves off-the-hook alogether too easily. And their faith seems like a a mere 'form of words'; just a different kind of waste of time to no-faith-at-all: because why become and remain a Christian if it makes no discernible, progressive improvement in a person's actual nature?

But if our continued mortal life on earth is properly understood, it is seen as mainly a matter of learning: learning in preparation for our resurrected life in Heaven. 

Repentance is a word for this learning, because repentance should be understood as learning the proper perspective in-which to understand some-thing. When we repent a sin, this is knowing that it was and is a sin. 

But repentance is also positive and creative; because whenever we 'notice' an instance of life as God's living creation, whenever we feel the presence of the Holy Ghost, or remember with gratitude and joy Jesus's gift of resurrected life - we are-repenting, we are seeing truly; and we have-learned something...

We have-learned some-thing different and new - because life never repeats, and each instance of learning is never exactly the same as any that went before. And all such learning-events are worthwhile. 

This learning in our mortal life is real and robust and each new thing learned is progress.

But on the other hand, the learning never stops: we never run-out-of things to learn: we never get anywhere near to learning everything that would benefit us...

As long as we are alive, in this God-created world - child of a God who loves us personally, and who placed us here with our consent; and who spins-out creation to make the best kind of learning situations we personally most need - so long as we live mortally, we are able to learn. And also there is always something more to learn. 

In this sense the Christian life is cumulative because we we have-learned; but there is always more to-learn - more we need to learn and would benefit from learning. 

So, in one way we have-improved by being Christian - albiet that real learning has been spiritual and not material; designed for eternity not mortal life; and the learning is everlasting and not susceptible to the changes and corruptions of human memory or understanding. 

But in another way we never get anywhere further in life! Because we are always starting-again from the same place. Of all that we might learn, we have so-far learned only an infinitesimally small, insignificant, proportion... 

We have learning in-the-bank; but compared to what we can (and ideally should) learn; we are always "at square one".  

I would not want life to be something finite; where I might run-out-of important things to do. On the other hand, I don't want my life to be a treadmill: the hard work should be taking me somewhere. 

This actual mortal life (mine and yours) seems to be perfectly designed to achieve what God wants; and therefore it is also perfectly designed for what Christians who align with God's purposes also want. 

But to appreciate this, the nature and purpose of mortal life must be understood; and one must be a Christian.

This is my best guess for how things are currently working. We still pay people just the same or almost as much, but we get less or nothing for that money. Almost the same amount of virtual-money is circulating, but people are getting much less for it*. 

The cost is experienced in the fact of a massively reduced standard of living: people are still 'buying' (whether directly in fees, or through subscriptions, or via taxes) almost as much as they used to; but people simply can't do much. Often they are locked-in, to a greater or lesser degree; but even if they are not (not yet); still almost everything is either closed or very restricted; and everything that is not closed or restricted is much lower in quality.

While people are paying the same, they are getting much less. 

People continue to pay-out; but don't get-back. 

The function of the birdemic scam (and the climate change scam) is to reduce expectations, make people feel 'grateful' for any little thing they get-back (more accurately, for anything they are allowed) - and thereby to 'bridge the gap' between same output, but reduced input.

(Fear of being-allowed nothing-at-all, makes people grateful to pay more for... something - anything...)

Can it go-on? I don't know. Maybe. Probably - given the cowardly materialism of the masses, and the Satanic affiliations of all our ruling Establishment. 

It's a PSYOPS strategy, essentially; and enforcement success feeds-upon itself. 

When people are compulsorily confined to their rooms and unable to meet other humans (for obviously fake reasons, imposed arbitrarily and without appeal) - there is (or soon will be) no 'Real Life'. 

The virtuality becomes the only available option. 

Then people can be fed the necessary data and interpretations to sustain the New Normal via the (censored and controlled) social and mass media that are their only means of survival.   

*Note: What I find needs explaining is that previous significant economic depressions have been associated either with inflation - money rapidly losing value, unpredictably, with rising prices and wages; or else the opposite of de-flation - with mass unemployment, dropping wages and falling prices. Here we have not very much of either and (de facto) negative interest rates - which have been enforced by the near abolition of cash (so that - for the first time - people are compelled to pay banks for holding their money).

 The status of this law, after its previous revision was:  

Any organisation not explicitly built upon God will, sooner or later, become anti-God.

After a couple of years more observation of the continuing corruption of our civilization, watching one after another institution crossing to the side of The Enemy; this can now be simplified to:

Any organisation will, sooner or later, become anti-God.

In other words again: All organisations are evil - if not already evil, then they soon will be. 

This is the lesson that our times are trying to teach us. Or rather, it is a sub-lesson of the fact that abstraction and system are by now so infected with evil as to have become un-usable for Good. 

But the implications are so very far reaching that it is apparently almost impossible for people to learn the lesson, no matter how often reiterated. Certainly, I find it very hard to hold, even as I found it hard to grasp in the first place. 

The habit of placing one's trust - one's hopes - in organisations, systems, abstractions... is something that is very difficult to break (after so many centuries of cultural assimilation). 

 Maybe my least successful book (although there is a lot of competition!) was Not Even Trying published in 2012; which was about the decline and (de facto) extinction of real science. From an author's perspective nonethless, I was pleased with the book, regarding it as about as well-written as I can manage - and with a great title...

Not even trying seems to be the defining characteristic of modern institutions, organisations, corporations - and groups in general. So-called 'Science' is neither trying trying to discover, nor to communicate, the truth about the world - instead 'scientists' are merely pursuing bureaucratic careers in funded (hence externally-controlled) 'research'. 

And the same applies everywhere else - often even more strongly. Nobody with power, influence, status or wealth (from the Prime Minister/ CEO or President on upwards); is even attempting to do what they are supposed to be doing. No-body.

Given how difficult it is is accomplish anything in this world; if you aren't even trying, then you certainly will not succeed. 

This means that The Problem is not a shortage of ability, or poor technique, or wrong systems... or anything else like that. The Problem is nobody, anywhere, is trying to Do The Right Thing.  

We spend nearly all our time quibbling about the means to an end (as with elections, or party politics, or international affairs generally); while all the time and relentlessly failing even to aim at proper ends.

This is natural in a Godless world (and a world where the churches are as Godless as everyone else); because a world without divine purpose can have no other kind of purpose.

Two related second thoughts - the first on thinking. I've written much about primary thinking and heart thinking. On reflection it strikes me that 'thinking' is not the right word, because what 'it' is, is not much like thinking, and the word may mislead. 

The problem with conscious thinking is 'the will' in the sense of explicit plans, schemes and strategies that gets explicitly articulated; and which we then try to follow and impose on reality. This is a big problem indeed. It affects religious people, it affects Christians, just as badly - and fatally. It is this idea of making a (necessarily simplified) abstract model of reality, then trying to impose that model which lies behind much of the presently world-dominant 'Ahrimanic' and bureaucratic evil. 

It's hard to conceive of a thinking that is not 'will-full' in this bad sense. The man from whom I took much of this, Rudolf Steiner, fell into exactly this snare, I believe; that is, he gave primacy to a will-full and consciously-controlled 'method' of thinking, which he then forcefully applied to whatever subject matter was before him. This led him into a great mass of what I regard as systematized error. 

I have used primary thinking and heart thinking as synonyms for what might otherwise (and better) be termed intuition; but for many people intuition is mixed up with instinct. Yet I regard intuition as being divine (God in us) - hence always right; whereas instinct is animal, hence often wrong (and even more-often inapplicable). 

My idea of Final Participation (which ought to be my aim) is that it is primary and unanalysable - and identical with intuition; but that to be 'final' it needs to be conscious. The will ('thinking' should be subordinated to intuition. My goal is that I am trying to be aware of my intuition. And, if so, I do not need to 'think' it, or to 'think about' it. 

It strikes me that Jesus (in the Gospels) doesn't 'think'. He knows what to say or do, and does it. 

And that this surely ought to be my ideal too? (As best as possible in mortal life, and as an aim; and fully in Heaven.) So maybe all this stuff I've written about the importance of thinking is mistaken?   

I have also written against ideas of one-ness as the idea, of the aimed-at extinction of self or ego (dissolving-into the divine...); and I hold to that rejection - and I also reject the conception of ultimate reality as a static state of time-less-ness, complete joining, and all space as one infinite. Instead what is wanted is the 'dynamic' state of open-ended creation, in-which God and other being may participate. Time is sequential with a before and and after; space is not infinite but instead un-bounded, endlessly expansile. Creation is growing as well as developing.

As young children we were passively immersed-in divine creation; and what we need to aim at as adults (spiritually adults) is to be consciously active in divine creation; but that doesn't need thinking. Our true creativity is natural and spontaneous - and it is Good, as well as true. 

(This has been my experience also in ordinary mortal-life creating; as a scientist, especially.)

So, in successful meditation, we might first become aware of 'Me, Here, Now' - and then of the loving presence of the divine: the Holy Ghost. We don't lose our-selves in this, but ideally enter into a here-and-now loving relationship, aware of our-selves, aware of the Holy Ghost - and aware too of all other men and women who are in this same state of active creating. Love entails beings. Love is impossible with unity/ one-ness. So, since love is primary for Christians; one-ness is ruled-out as a goal.

We are at that time in meditation (usually brief, perhaps just a moment) tuned-into the ongoing work of creation, and we are aware of that creating; and by our relationship with the Holy Ghost we are playing some part in it. We are then participating, actively and consciously; yet (I would now say) without thinking.

It may seem as if consciousness is here acting merely as an observer, but it is something more; it seems that our consciousness is what makes the choice to do this, to enter into this, to contnue to participate in this; consciousness either embodies or brings with it the totality of our being. 

By contrast, as young children, we may be swept-along by divine creation; caught-up in its flux; unconscious of it, and without any need to choose it (and without any way of choosing otherwise). 

In our spiritual adolescence (from which sadly few emerge) we are isolated and cut off from the divine, and from this participation in creation. This is the state of existential alientation. To escape the consequent despair; we need consciously to choose to re-enter participation... To become aware of the workings of God, and the presence (here and now) of the Holy Ghost, and the possibility (the actuality, indeed) of a personal relationship with these: Me, Here, Now.

It seems that my task, in this situation of the world-at-present, is to make these conscious choices, and to have these experiences; so that I can learn from them to make a firm committment to accept Jesus's offer of resurrection into everlasting life; because this is exactly a foretaste of that Heavenly state. 

By knowing it (and with a transcendental and eternal 'knowing' - not by means of mortal memory, doomed to fade and die), I then know that I want it. 

And this seems necessary given all the false reasons and instinctual manipulations of Satan triumphant - that would probably otherwise seduce me into rejecting the call to follow Christ.

Assuming, as I do, that I was placed into my situation by God - and am sustained in my daily life by God; then (to a sufficient degree of exactness) the present circumstances of Me, Here, Now include exactly what I most need to learn. 

This applies, also, to the general social circumstances. In spite of the many evil choices made by so many people (including myself); this actual life is continually being 'turned' by God such that its experiences (its 'lessons') are well-suited to teach us what we (collectively and individually) most need to learn. 

We don't have to have an explicit (nor an expressed) explanation of these circumstances, nor do we need advanced knowledge of what we are supposed to learn. Instead, we are repeatedly being engineered into micro-situations that present just the sort of choices we most need to make: choices and situations which tend to elicit from-us what we most need to think, say, or do. 

It is primarily a matter of individual discernment and situational awareness; and the first step towards that is to acknowledge the need for discernment, and that the needful discernment must be individual. 

No mystery At All. 

The birdemic is a respiratory virus, therefore its spread cannot be stopped (only, perhaps, a little delayed). 

So everybody will be exposed to it sooner or later, until herd immunity is established and a sufficient proportion of people are immune so that the virus will (essentially) die-out*. 

So exposure of healthy and young people (young = children, adolescents, young adults and the middle aged - none of whom are significantly at risk) is A Good Thing.

It is a Good Thing (and necessary) that the majority of young/ middle aged/ healthy people are exposed to the birdemic, and either get the birdemic; or (and this is the large majority) either become immune without being seriously ill, or else are already immune to it (presumably from cross-immunity with a previous similar infection). 

And the longer that exposure to the birdemic by the mass majority is delayed; the more among the elderly/already-sick people will be exposed, and will die.  

Nothing strange, nothing mysterious, nothing specially serious to see here: move along...

(But of course It's Not About The Birdemic; it is about the response; which Just Happens to be the exact same 'Great Reset' response recommended to prevent Global Warming and cure Systemic Racism (and QWERTY-phobia, natch): ie. Nearly everybody Needs to stay indoors, in a room, preferably alone, essentially all of the time, forever.)   

*This is how every single pandemic in the history of mankind has died-out and ceased to be a pandemic. The birdemic is just a normal respiratory virus like flu, with normal levels of mortality (c.1:2000 population, everywhere with comparable data collection and population structure) and morbidity (levels of sickness) among the usual kinds of people (i.e. nearly all the deaths are among the very old, especially those beyond the biological lifespan; and those already chronically and seriously ill).

These lyrics start well enough with the flowers, begin to lose touch with reality when fireflies are introduced among the insects; and spin-off into transatlantic parochial fantasy with the birds. 

In the spirit of Rodgers version of Englishness, I suggest the following additional verse:

How many animals wander to and fro

In an English Country Garden?

I'll tell you now of some that I know

And those I miss you'll surely pardon:

Bobcats, Lynx and Mountain Lions

Grizzly Bears and Wolver-ines

Chipmunks, Racoons and Porcupines

There is joy every day

When the Skunks begin to spray

In an English Country Garden.

Note: Jimmie R tells us "Don't forget The Robin" - I, of course, agree; but what he means by 'robin' is not what we English mean by our favourite national bird: the Ruddock or Redbreast (to use its older names) is a different species altogether...

I was watching the above video in which John Butler is asked whether Enlightenment is something achieved immediately and effortlessly (or not at all); or whether it is a matter of many years of regular and strenuous discipline? And whether there is one true path to 'the peak of the mountain', or many routes? 

(One true religion only; or instead that all religions are one ultimately?)

This made me think about how I might answer this question...

I would first have to say that this question presupposes that a solid, 'permanent' state of Enlightenment is (or should be) the aim of life; whereas I would emphasise that mortal life is not about achieving a state of Enlightenment. Instead the purpose is about learning from the experiences of mortal life, with learned-lessons redeemed after death in resurrected eternal life. 

What people term Enlightenment is truly therefore the (temporary) feeling we get when we have learned something important. It could be regarded as a sign of such learning. But it is not meant to be a continuous and permanent state. When we have had one Enlightenment, have learned one particular lesson - then we are meant to go on to learning more, and further, lessons; and maybe have further Enlightenment experiences. 

I would therefore suggest that neither of the suggested possibilities of immediate/ total or long-term/ incremental Enlightenment are correct; because this mortal life is not the end. For Christians, this mortal life between conception and death is vitally important - yet ultimately it looks towards the life to come. The proper, ideal perspective for regarding our mortal life is therefore eternity. 

In a sense it is obvious that all lives (no matter how Enlightened) will end in death; and that corruption, decay, disease and degeneration are all intrinsic to this 'entropic' world. 

Therefore, it is a plain error to think in terms of Enlightenment - at least it is for a Christian. For other religions, it may be different - for example, Enlightenment may be what is required to escape the endless wheel of reincarnation... It may be that Enlightenment allows someone to die finally. 

So - all religions are not one; nor do all religions lead to the same destination. We either follow Jesus through death to resurrection - or we don't. (There are probably several or many other possibilities; including Hell.)

But for a Christian; I think Enlightenment means something like an insight; properly speaking, a valid and significant insight of permanent relevance to life everlasting in Heaven.