"I of my own knowledge…"

This article came to me in an email some time ago, and surfaced tonight, so perhaps it is time to pass it on. I am not (the guys are not) totally in agreement with everything he says about the background of incarnation, but I am fully on board with his objections to the way New Age “thinkers” over-simplify the causes of suffering — and in the process often diminish their own empathy. I have had many an unsuccessful argument to that effect!

DOES EVERYONE REALLY CREATE THEIR OWN REALITY?

William Bloom ‑ Cygnus Magazine

Over the years it has been an honor for me to advance and defend new age and holistic spirituality. I love its open‑mindedness, its embrace of metaphysics and the way it combines spiritual work with healthcare. But I have also despaired at times about its apparent lack of morality and compassion when faced with the realities of people’s suffering.

This coldness is often explained away with half‑baked ideas about how energies, karma and the laws of attraction work. This often reach a peak of disturbing smugness when a new age ‘philosopher’ faced with cruel suffering says authoritatively: ‘People create their own reality’ or ‘Their soul chose it ‑ its their karma’ or ‘Everything is perfect in God’s Plan ‑ you just need to perceive it differently’. People who say such things seem to have no idea how smug and nasty they sound. Nor of the hurt they cause. (more…)

A further excerpt from an altered-state session with the guys upstairs, Rita Warren asking the questions, on February 26, 2005:

R: …. Well, I ordinarily think of both Frank and myself as being very tolerant of ambiguity with others who are very dissatisfied with that state. However, one of the things that has arisen for Frank a few times is my asking a question through him and his finding no answer. That seems to bother him because the structure seems to collapse on itself – the possibility that it will collapse on itself. So in that case, it seems to me, he isn’t very tolerant of ambiguity. He really needs to have some very clear sign that you are there to answer questions.

F: Well, you’re actually perceiving the external sign of an internal civil war, because bear in mind, one of his predominant characteristics is to doubt, and this doesn’t lead him to doubt others any more than it does himself. You see? (more…)

From an altered-state session with the guys upstairs, Rita Warren asking the questions, on February 26, 2005: 

R: All right, now the practical implications of what we’ve been talking about. When I’m asking questions of you through Frank, is there some stance he can take that will make it easier for him to feel like he’s not getting a blank from you and therefore is just speaking from his own limited perspective. Is there some way he can think about this that will enable him to make those distinctions.

F: Sure, and that’s happening now. It is a matter of changing –

 Let’s look at it this way. It is a form of changing self-definition to say – and we’re not describing these in the order that they occurred, or in the order that they necessarily need to occur, but just one after another: (more…)

August 3, 2001. I was in the Monroe Institute’s black box, in a mildly altered state talking to the unembodied beings that I call the Guys Upstairs, Skip Atwater in the control booth conducting the session (keeping me from drifting too far, for one thing). Note that when he tries to get me to ask guidance to describe the experience directly, what we get is a dictated passage very unlike my normal cadence.

I have posted this session in its entirety, in several parts, under Black Box session 08-03-01, but as things tend to get lost when the entire transcript is given, I thought I’d pull this segment out.

All right my friends, it’s your show, it’s – we’ll go where you want to go. [pause]

Immediate sense of a vast night sky, and I immediately want to say, in the tropics. [long pause]  

A sense of lying in the sand, how one would scoop out places for shoulders and hips and stuff, and just lying on my back in the sand that’s been shaped to fit me. [pause]

With a – I want to say a blanket, but I don’t think it’s a blanket. It’s some kind of covering, because I guess in the desert the night must be cool. [pause] It’s more like a reed kind of a thing; that doesn’t make sense. It’s almost like somebody spread a hammock out on top of me, rather than under me. [pause] (more…)

 The following is from Hank Wesselman’s October column in The Meta Arts magazine (www.themetaarts.com) titled The Life Game. As Hank points out, religion may be a matter of externals but it may not…

Fortunately, there was, and is, another, quite different element to the Religion Game, and it is here, precisely here, that we may find salvation.

For the full argument, go to his column at www.themetaarts.com.