Caustic Ramblings

This is semi-copypasta from somewhere else. I cleaned up the formatting a bit and added in some clarifications.

1. Be aware that when someone accuses you of a thought-crime like racism, sexism, ___phobia, ect., they are trying to silence you with fear. They know deep down that without bullying tactics and other underhanded methods, their insane cult-like ideology has no legs to stand on. Thus they must drum up fear and whip people into a frenzy to distract from the obvious (that their ideas are awful and stupid).

2. Team up. When you're accused of thought crimes, the intention is to ruin you, so "share the risk." When someone you know is falsely accused of thought crimes, and really -- all accusations of thought crimes are false -- get their back. Cowardice only enables and emboldens the mob.

3. Do not give in, do not back down. When you know the allegations against you are unfounded, yet they keep coming, stay strong and refuse to capitulate. Make your attacker work much harder than they are willing to. Once the bar for entry in the 'Cancellation Olympics' is raised, the canceling coward slinks away and moved onto an easier target.

The cancel mobs have become increasingly called out as more and more people become hip to what cancel culture is. And those on the receiving end of these endless, bizarre, and unclear accusations, in service to social justice ideology (neo-Marxism), will not stand for it anymore.

***Yes, yet another 'listicle'***

The following is a basic concept I've been working on in my head, the working title as this moment is:

"The Six Gateways to Spiritual Practice"

1. Mind Cultivation - cultivation of insight via contemplation and meditation methodologies.
2. Knowledge Acquisition - Scholarly study of various Natural Law sciences, doctrines, scriptures, teachings, ect.
3. Good Works - Selflessly putting spiritual knowledge and insights to practice in the material world, for the benefit of the community, and sentient beings in general.
4. Devotion - Veneration of higher beings, and the taking of vows, precepts, and/or initiation.
5. Wellness and Purification - On the mundane level, this is the various methods of conditioning of the physical body for optimum fitness, and on the higher levels, this is the various methods of energetic purification of the subtle bodies and its energy centers.
6. Austerity and Renunciation - The process and methodology of withdrawing oneself from the hustle and bustle of worldly life. At the more rudimentary level, this is simply the various practices of moderation in daily living and the cessation of bad habits.

My basic thesis here is that any well-rounded tradition is going to include at promote all of the above approaches, at least to some degree. And that 'unbalanced traditions' can said to be those which overemphasize just one or two of these approaches, almost always at the expense of the others, via neglect or outright denigration.

And that when popular religions degrade over time, they tend to do just this; they become too fixated on just one or two of these, and the worst sink into what I call 'monolatry' which is the single-minded, myopic fixation on just one of the methods. I suspect that in many cases, overspecialization happens when religions become dominated by specialists who have mastered just one or two of the approaches and through their tunnel vision, see the other approaches as either irrelevant or even a hostile distraction from their own approach. We see the same phenomenon at play within modern-day secular institutions, particularly in academia, whereby entrenched specialists promote the idea that each field should operate as a fiefdom unto itself, and thus multi-disciplinarians who commit the grave sin of connecting the dots between different fields (and thus apprehending the forbidden big picture!), are seen as grave threat#1. Broadly speaking, when the Divine Hierarchy of Perennial Metaphysics is decapitated then all we're left with in the institutions is a technocratic anarcho-tyranny of arrogant and myopic specialists.

I'll likely be following up on this concept in subsequent posts.

(This is an adaptation of I list I came across somewhere on the interwebs)

The telltale signs of a mind corrupted by leftism:

1. Never admits own fault and never shows humility.
2. Assumes every modern comfort and convenience as their birthright.
3. Is rarely ever grateful for anything done for them.
4. Runs their mouth much faster than their brain.
5. Points fingers at external things like established institutions and cultural norms; but does very little or nothing to improve themselves.
6. Avoids doing their duties; worse, they never admit them.
7. Will co-opt and appropriate the language of liberalism, yet is quite Illiberal when it comes to other's thoughts, particularly the thoughts of those who disagree with them.
8. In action, is destroyer and never a builder; They are all about agitating the masses to create a chaos and destruction, and of course will never offer any suggestions about actual solutions to the problems they are constantly whining about.
9. Always chanting the terms 'oppressed' and 'marginalized' but never doing anything to personally aid or assist real people belonging to the purportedly-downtrodden groups they pretend to speak on behalf of.
10. Usually college/university-educated, but not a genuine knowledge-seeker; harbors a seething hatred of proven traditional wisdom.
11. Fancies themselves as being logical and on the side of "facts" and "science" but their behavior is usually the exact opposite of rationality.
12. Extreme selfishness; almost never willing to put their money where their mouth is.
13. Hates religions and the values taught in them, but will cherry pick bits and pieces of religious rhetoric for the sake of political advantage.

Quick list outline:

Upper section (Cosmopolitan): Universal Ideals, philosophy, any ideas really that can be applied to humans, planet earth and even the cosmos as a whole. In it's pure for, the upper section lends itself toward the development of cosmopolitan doctrines; and here I mean cosmopolitan in the true sense of the word, i.e. citizen of the cosmos.

Lower section (Telluric): Fixed land-based attributes, i.e. aspects of a religious tradition that derive from a specific geographic location and all the various characteristics associated with that location. This section includes any and all folklore based on this land/place-based criteria.

Left section (Personal): Individual spiritual and religious practices, generally used for the purposes of self-development, initiation, knowledge-acquisition, personal wellness and other forms of spiritual attainment.

Right-section (Communal): Group spiritual and religious practices; generally anything involving prayer and worship in a group setting; also group rituals and communal holiday observances; family and religious congregation activities are included in this category.

***

As we can see, some religions surviving to this day tend to overemphasize one or more of these sections, and likewise neglect some of the others.

Generally, religions which are all about group conformity, behavioral compliance, following an exhaustive list of seemingly-arbitrary rules, excess ritualism, ect., tend to leave the Personal section out in the cold and skew too far toward the Communal. This sort of dynamic creates an imbalanced system and more often than not, retards people's personal spiritual development and attainment. Usually this imbalance persists in service of maintaining and perpetuating a religious/ideological power structure that would surely lose its ideological monopoly if the religion in question were to allow too much of a variety of different teachings, interpretations and practices to exist under its umbrella.

And then of course, there are systems of spiritual practice which are almost wholly within the Personal section and thus are only useful for an individual's spiritual and ethical development. These systems usually manifest as very exclusive groups of spiritual seekers and thus are rather useless to laypersons and the untrained in general. Such systems are incapable of serving larger groups or communities. A good example of this in the modern age would be various occult and esoteric groups existing in the Western world; most have teachings and practices that are far divorced from the everyday affairs and experiences of the average Westerner. Another example might be the various forms of Eastern practices which have become trendy among some spiritual seekers in the West. In this case, it's the Lower section (i.e. folklore and place-based attributes) which are quite alien to Western experience and thus require a steep learning curve for the Western practitioner to properly apprehend. In this sense, a Westerner can never fully become a Hindu, but they can surely incorporate the philosophical and practical teachings of the Hindu tradition into their own spiritual worldview. And of course, Western-friendly Telluric themes (i.e. Hellenic or Norse godforms, as an example) could easily accessorize such teachings.

Neglect of the Telluric section can become quite problematic. We see this the most with religions that have become wholly scripture-based and thus portable. We see traditions that were once firmly rooted in a specific place become spread wide and far and exported to new locales far remove from the religion's core mythos. People convert to this new "foreign" religion and as a result become quite alienated from the folklore traditions of their own culture-place of upbringing. This is essentially how people become cut off from the land, so to speak. When Europeans adopted en mass a Semitic ideology rooted in a warm and arid environment, the fissure between the Telluric section and the three others first begun. And perhaps it was this kind of rift which set us Westerners off on the path to materialism in the first place. When religion becomes little more than abstract ideas and principles and countless pages of dead letters, there is no longer local-experiential "magic" to any of it. To the average person, they are just going through the motions every day partaking in dry/lifeless rituals and utterances cut off from their own intuitive impressions.

Many tribal religions can be said to be rather lacking in the Cosmopolitan section. Few, if any universal ideas are expounded upon; the whole tradition is simply the carrying on of an old torch, just because that's how things have been done since time immemorial. We could perhaps say that the "Neopagan" revival efforts in the West tend to eschew the Cosmopolitan section and can even be downright hostile toward philosophy and the very notion that firm ethical principles should have a solid home in one's religious practice. Such an endeavor in this era is often little more than a fetishization of what its practitioners imagine (quite inaccurately, in all likelihood) to be an ancient folklore tradition; there becomes too much of a focus on mythic and aesthetic elements, and a neglect of abstract principles and ideals.

On belief and practice:

1. Traditional Gnostic schools of thought posit an original spiritual unity that came to be split into a plurality, through a series of emanations. This doctrine can be conceptualized as either Monism or Panentheism.

2. As a result of this pre-cosmic division, the manifest universe was created. The lower layers of existence, which would include the material universe, were created by beings possessing inferior spiritual powers to that of the Godhead and His highest emanations. Some historical Gnostic doctrines speak of these lesser spiritual beings resembling entities like Jehovah of the Hebrew scriptural canon (The Christian Old Testament), and many of the anthropomorphic deities found in most ancient polytheistic religions. Other doctrines speak of a benign or neutral Demiurge (Artificer) being/spirit (or series of artificer beings) who created the material universe.

3. Differing Gnostic teachings and myths feature both male and female emanations of God (often referred to as either Aeons or Archangels) who were involved in the cosmic creation. Some Gnostic myths organize these emanations into a hierarchy of male-female pairs, somewhat reminiscent of the ancient Egyptian religion.

4. In the cosmos, space and time is imagined as having either a malevolent or constrictive character and may be personified as demonic beings (or simply, capricious forces of nature) separating man from God. In other doctrines, the domains contained within space and time are a part of an illusion or at least a rather distorted or degraded version of the higher realms.

5. For humankind, the material universe is either vast prison or an illusion that ensnares souls. Human beings are enslaved both by the physical laws of nature and by man-made moral laws that are based on worldly-material power dictates (like the Mosaic code, as an example) and other legalistic religious doctrines and creeds that were created by fallible, flawed and corrupted men.

6. Humankind may be personified as Adam (or Anthropos), who lies in the deep sleep of ignorance, his powers of spiritual self-awareness stupefied by materiality. And within the soul of each individual human of this physical world is an "inner man," a fallen spark of the divine substance. Since this exists in each person, we have the possibility of awakening from our stupefaction; a human soul requires many lifetimes (death/rebirth cycles) of cumulative experience on the material plane to reach the point where an awakening is possible.

7. What ultimately ignites the awakening is not obedience, faith, or good works, but knowledge of the divine. However, to attain knowledge of the divine, a seeker must cultivate for himself higher states of consciousness and attaining these higher states requires the cessation of habits, behaviors and activities that turn people down toward the material plane and thus away from divinity. Gnosis-seekers must work hard to purify their souls and attain a state of temperate, benevolent and disciplined conduct. This is accomplished through leading life of performing good works, avoiding destructive lifestyles, engaging in virtuous conduct, and striving to attain an all-around excellence of character.

8. Before the awakening, individual humans often undergo some sort of psychological crisis event; things like: troubled dreams, trials and tribulations in their daily life, loss of a loved one, having a crisis of conscience of some form or another, ect.

9. Man does not attain the knowledge that awakens him from these dreams by cognition (intellectual reasoning and speculation) but through direct revelatory experience, and this knowledge is not conveyable information but a modification of the sensate being.

10. The awakening (i.e., the salvation) of any individual is a cosmic event; upon attaining salvation, the the individual is liberated from the cycle of deaths and rebirths on the material plane; this cycle can be symbolized as either the Wheel of Fate/Karma, or the Ouroboros, i.e. the serpent who eats its own tail.

On Ethics and Modernity:

11. The heartfelt rejection of fallible, man-made moral law codes and ossified religious doctrines asserted by the powers of this world as bring “inerrant divine revelation” is enjoined upon every person of good conscience. Gnosis-seekers must reject the authority of religious dogmas that have been shaped by the dictates of money and politics.

12. Having said that, a Traditional Gnostic is reverent toward time-honored teachings and practices and is thus quite diligent and discerning when it comes to determining which teachings are legitimate and which are fanciful, misleading, incomplete and conceived in error. The Traditional Gnostic must be able to identify and reject false teachers.

13. The Traditional Gnostic must be especially skeptical toward any spiritual, metaphysical or religious ideas that have emerged in the modern era, that is: within the last 500 years of Western cultural development. Most modern doctrines on ethics and the human condition are tainted by the corrupting influences of materialism, hedonism, consumer culture, money, dependence on technological conveniences, erroneous ideas about “progress” occurring in a perfectly linear and material manner, and of course the literalist approach to interpreting ancient religious scriptures.

14. The most recent modern ethical doctrines tend to: overwhelmingly emphasize rights (legally sanctioned protections and entitlements) over duties, assert material pleasure as being the highest good, and encourage the pitting of the sexes and racial/ethnic and subcultural lifestyle groups against one another in the name of things like “progress” and “social justice,” thus dividing and destabilizing communities and nations. Very little emphasis is placed on the individual's collaborative role within their family and community, and their obligations and responsibilities toward their social surroundings in general. The Traditional Gnostic must be able to balance their state-granted rights as an individual with their responsibilities to society.

15. Modern ethical doctrines tend to tie their concept of “progress” directly to the advancement of material science and technology, with almost no attention given to spiritual goals and perspectives on the matter. This set of assumptions tends to imply an eventual material-utopian “end of history” event whereby humanity will be “saved” by some sort of technological singularity. In contrast, the Traditional Gnostic must be able to differentiate spiritual progress from the advancement of material knowledge and innovation, and recognize that technology is merely a tool (which can be used to bring about both good and bad outcomes), and not an end in itself. First and foremost, the Traditional Gnostic must prioritize a spiritual worldview over a material one.

16. Many groups and people today claiming to be “Gnostic” actually prioritize these aforementioned modern ethical doctrines over genuine Traditional Gnostic teachings and a spiritual worldview in general, probably owing more to a lack of awareness on the matter, as opposed to a willing ideological orientation. As a result, they will cheery pick fragments of Gnostic teachings and shoehorn them into a modern or postmodernist worldview that is defined by many of the traits outlined above. The is tantamount to the material tail wagging the spiritual dog. To alleviate this cognitive dissonance, the Traditional Gnostic must be able to frame ancient Gnostic teachings within the proper historical context and resist the urge to confuse or conflate such teachings with modern ethical speculations.

17. The Traditional Gnostic must envision ethics as the means for individuals to improve themselves first and foremost, rather than being the act of forcing some set of lofty-sounding abstract ideals onto the world around them. The latter endeavor usually involves flawed people trying to “save the world” before first addressing their own character flaws and bad habits. The result of this is more often than not, a rather predictable drama whereby people project their own demons onto the world and end up doing more harm than good, despite originally having good intentions.

18. The Traditional Gnostic will be able to differentiate genuine Gnostic teachings from literal interpretations of Gnostic-themed myths which have the potential of promoting a cosmic victim mentality for human beings. In other words, when the constrictive and inconvenient aspects of manifested nature are excessively anthropomorphized, human beings may be seen as helpless victims of all-powerful supernatural comic book villain characters and thus things like adolescent-rebellious attitudes toward existence and world-denying escapism are encouraged. When in actuality, according to various Wisdom teachings, humans are more often than not the victims of their own vices and short-sighted worldly endeavors. In other words, the so-called “archons” are alive and well within our own psyches and we certainly have it within our power to battle them. In summary, the Traditional Gnostic will aspire to be a hero rather than a victim.

19. Having said that, people have often indeed been victims of circumstance and collective ignorance over the many many centuries of human history. Victims are ultimately people bereft of agency (willpower) and self-awareness and thus strewn about by chaotic forces. Thus, Gnostics must be ever compassionate and forgiving toward people in the grip of ignorance and flawed modes of living and conceptualizing the world. Of course this doesn't mean accepting their flawed worldviews, but rather recognizing the root causes of error and thus cultivating the awareness and ability required to isolate oneself from the corrupting influences of error.

20. And finally, the Traditional Gnostic must resist the urge to harbor hatred in their heart toward various historical forces, movements, ideologies and institutions which have oppressed, suppressed and mercilessly attacked Gnostic thinkers, visionaries, sects and movements throughout the last 2,000 years or so of history. The Gnostic may recognize that such oppressive and evil-spirited movements have been first and foremost political projects and not genuine religious or spiritual endeavors. The Traditional Gnostic must resit the urge to employ a boogeyman or scapegoat to pin all of humanity's problems onto. Understanding error does not mean the need to conjure up a storm of negative emotions. In the end, a negative mental or emotional state means a negative spiritual state. Such a state inhibits spiritual growth and makes liberation/salvation impossible until this antagonistic state is dissolved into the aether.