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1.) Universal evolution of consciousness toward greater love and compassion
"This is certainly false if applied to the human collectivity or the material universe. The receptivity of incarnate time-conditioned consciousness to Divine Reality waxes and wanes in a cyclical manner, and human receptivity to God on the collective level is now in a steep and irreversible decline."
"The truth here veiled is that the destiny of the individual soul on the spiritual path is to 'evolve' in the sense of 'unwinding what has been wound up', dissolving the hard kernel of egotism and self-will. This 'evolution' certainly includes the development of compassion, but (and here the principle is deceptive because incomplete) this 'evolution' also results in the development of true, objective knowledge."
2.) In the context of universal evolution of consciousness, we can be guided both by beings who are more 'evolved' than us, and by parts of ourselves which are themselves evolving.
"It is certainly true that some persons such as the Sufi guide Khidr (peace be upon him)... can in certain rare conditions sometimes be delegated by God to guide us, -as long as we, and they, understand that ultimately God is the only guide."
"But to believe that this rare possibility makes it unnecessary for us to connect ourselves to a revealed tradition, and place ourselves (God willing) under the guidance of a fully-empowered human representative of that tradition, presuming one is available, is false. And to believe that conscious, ongoing contact with a discarnate 'guide' is normal - for anyone but a sorcerer, that is, in communion with his familiar spirit - and that such contact is not an open door to demonic possession, is profoundly deluded."
"Furthermore, to say we can be guided by our 'higher self' which is also evolving, is false; to try to spiritually orient oneself to something which is still in the realm of becoming [such as our 'higher self'] is to reduce the meaning of 'spiritual orientation' to zero."
"If there is any meaning to the term 'higher self', it can only refer, not to the individual soul but to the level of Spirit (rûh) within us that Eckhart indicated when he said 'there is Something within the soul which is uncreated and uncreatable.' The atman (or Divine Self or rûh) does not guide us in the sense that we can hold a conversation with it."
"Psychic reflections of the rûh (Spirit), may certainly appear in dreams or visions. These reflections will be deceptive, ambiguous, or a vehicle of God's Grace, depending upon God's will for that person and his or her state."
3./4.) The earth is at a critical point in its development; we are witnessing a major shift in values, lifestyles, spiritual orientation, we are moving into greater spiritual maturity, the earth is to undergo a purification of values and social organization; there will be earth-changes such as earth quakes.
"It is true that the earth is at a critical point, but the shift in values, lifestyles, spiritual orientation and social organization is not toward greater spiritual maturity, but toward chaos and dissolution. It is true that there will be, and already are, earth changes, as were predicted by Jesus for the end of the age, and true that there will be a purification. But the purification will be apocalyptic, not progressive, and will represent the end of the present humanity. The 'new heaven and the new earth' will be for another humanity."
5.) Guides are now appearing to help us through this transition to an age of peace, new energies of higher frequency will cause minor disturbances in behavior.
"It is false that we are transitioning to a time of peace, unless it be a false and temporary peace; therefore the 'guides' who claim to be helping us through this transition are deceptive. Nor are the present disturbances in behavior minor, to say the least. It is true, in a sense, that we are encountering 'higher energies', but this is because our own level of integration is sinking to the point where the ever-present Grace of God can only be experienced, on the collective level, as wrath, since we are not receptive to it. The 'energy', or ontological level, of the parousia so far surpasses what the world can receive that it will shatter the world, making way for 'a new heaven and a new earth'. (parousia: wrath of God)"
6.) The human being is one part of a multi-dimensional soul or god-self, we are much more than we think we are.
"True and false. As Jesus said, 'ye are all gods, and sons of the Most High.' But he balanced this by saying, 'Why callest thou me good? None is good, save one, that is, God.'"
"It is true that humanity exists simultaneously in higher worlds than the material, namely the psychic and the Spiritual. But we do not simply ascend to these worlds, or enter them for the first time when we die, because the Great Chain of Being represents the 'ray' whereby God created us, and maintains us in existence, instant-by-instant. If we turn against these higher worlds, however - by giving our allegiance to our ego instead of God - then they will - become our Hell: the psyche, an anguished chaos; the Spirit within us, a cutting, blinding Light which forces us away from the radiant Center of Being."
"The central question is this: are these higher aspects of our being claimed by the ego, as if we were self-created, or are they seen as God's gift to us of our very being, which we cannot claim as our own even in material terms?"
"New Age believers like the idea that we exist simultaneously in higher worlds; what they have greater difficulty dealing with is that 'he who tries to preserve his life will lose it, but he who loses his life, for My sake, will find it'. This is because they want to claim these higher worlds for the ego; they teach that we can enter and 'explore' these worlds as a kind of leisure-time activity, by a simple, incremental expansion of our 'human potential', without piety, without sacrifice, without fear of God. Their doctrine is essentially Promethean; they choose to forget that 'twice born needs once dead.'"
7.) We create our own experience on all levels; there are no victims; we create our own suffering as a learning experience.
"It is false to say that we create our own experience if the 'we' in question is the individual psyche, because the psyche does not create itself, being wholly contingent on the Spirit of God, and because other individual psyches exist; the solipsism [i.e. obtaining knowledge only by own sense-perception] here implied is thus refuted both 'vertically'and 'horizontally'."
"There is a way, however, in which this is true, but only in a negative sense, since we certainly do create some of our own perceptual limitations. Rather than 'we create our own reality,' it would be better to say "we create our own illusions, which then become our 'reality'".
"Our view of the world is a learned pattern, determined both by culture and by personal experience, if not by a series of choices based on fear and desire."
"To say 'there are no victims' is true if by this we mean that everything, in the ultimate sense, is an act of God, and God is just, even the suffering of the innocent is justified from the point of view which sees cosmic existence itself, while in one sense necessary, as an imbalance in the face of the Absolute."
"In the words of Rabi`a, 'Your existence is a sin with which no other sin can be compared.' The idea that there are no victims is an interpretation of the law of karma (law of action and ongoing results of actions) - but if it is implied in this interpretation that charity toward the suffering is not incumbent upon us, since 'that's just their karma,' or that we can become liberated simply through creating illusions for ourselves and then seeing through them, then it is false."Karma (law of action and ongoing results of action) is not a self-exhausting system; without dharma, (which is) the operative truth which lifts one above the level of karmic cause-and-effect by positing the reality of self-transcendence, karma can never be 'lived out'; without the Mercy of God's Truth, freely given and freely accepted, along with its 'cross', illusion can never be dispelled. Damnation is the proof that not all suffering has the power to enlighten.
8.) Matter follows thought, our physical reality is created, and can be changed, by our beliefs.
"Matter follows God's thought, not ours; to imply otherwise, to say that we are co-creators in our own right, is false. It is true that our experience can be changed by changing our beliefs, but this change cannot be sovereign, or arbitrary."
"We can't simply believe whatever we want and think we're thereby controlling the world, because there really is an objective reality, both within us and outside us, something which is exactly the way it is no matter what we happen to believe."
"A change in belief can change our experience in two ways only: if we conform our beliefs to objective spiritual Truth, we will see the universe as it really is, as both contingent upon that Truth and a manifestation of it, (but) if our beliefs are determined by our ego, which interprets the world around it only on the basis of its own fears and desires, we will perceive and produce only chaos."
"It is true that if we all perfectly conformed our consciousness to objective spiritual Reality, the material world would dissolve and be transformed into Paradise. But this is the farthest thing from the idea that our beliefs create reality out of nothing, given that such perfect conformation - which, of course is impossible in practical terms - could not be a function of belief, which sees 'through a glass, darkly,' but only of true objective knowledge. As I pointed out above, the ego does not create; it only edits."
9.) Although our individual expression demonstrates much diversity, we are all ultimately one.
"True. The only question is, in what sense are we one? If this is meant horizontally, on the social level or in terms of sharing in the same subconscious motivations, then the best that can be said is that, for better or worse, we are related, or only 'relatively one'. Our true unity is vertical, (meaning) by virtue of atman or Divine Self within us; we are all creations, or symbolic manifestations, of the One Divine Self."
"By virtue of this atman (or Divine Self) we are, at the deepest level of our being, both unique and universal. The Self within us is pure, transpersonal, universal Being, without attributes; in another sense, It is even beyond Being. But since God is unique as well as universal, the Self is also the principle of our unique human integrity, according to which we are not simply humanity in the abstract, but actual human beings, commanded by God to be precisely ourselves, no greater, no less, and no other."
"And yet this uniqueness is also universal, since it is shared by all human beings, and in fact by all things. Self as the principle of uniqueness is not other than Self as the principle of pure Being, as when God, speaking to Moses in Exodus, names, Himself 'I Am That I Am' that is to say: My unique Essence is not other than My pure Being; it is My unique Essence to be pure Being. And what God can say of Himself, we can also say, virtually at least," of the Divine Self within us.
10.) That psyche and Spirit are identical.
"As I demonstrate in many places throughout this book, this principle is entirely false."
11.) That spirituality is a personal achievement, an exploit, a tour-deforce.
"As I demonstrate in many places throughout this book, this principle is entirely false."
A counterfeit is worse than a simple error...
"Dr Rama Coomaraswamy, in an article entitled 'The Desacralization of Hinduism for Western Consumption, lists nine New Age principles, which he takes from a book by Dr Catheryn Ridall, Ph.D., representing the essence of todays channeled spirit teaching. Above is a summary of them, in which I attempt to disentangle elements of spiritual truth from the matrix of error which is New Age doctrine."
"A counterfeit is worse than a simple error. These nine principles are full of errors which, however, are precisely designed to obfuscate specific metaphysical truths. And the effect of such counterfeits is that 'you are damned if you do and damned if you don't.' The Devil loves to employ counterfeits, because to accept them is to be led into error, while to reject them without exposing the counterfeit - that is, without bringing forth the true principle which the counterfeit was designed to hide - is to be, maneuvered into rejecting the truth that is being counterfeited. I'll attempt to deconstruct the above 'principles', expose the counterfeits they are made of, and present the traditional principles they veil."
From Living Islam
Related:
- "...since you don't believe you are sick, there can be no cure."
- From Notes on "Spirituality"
- Seeking Ancient Wisdom in the New Age: New Age and NeoGnostic Commentaries on the Gospel of Thomas
- On Psychology, Cosmology and Morality
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