Realms of Reality: The dangers of reductionism

Reductionism: An attempt or tendency to explain a complex set of facts, entities, phenomena, or structures by another, simpler set.

Along the path to knowledge there comes a point at which the individual determines that there are certain underlying Truths that support the complex array of truths that comprise material and immaterial existence. The years and decades of study and exploration of the Realms of Reality cascade into a rushing stream of information, all of the disparate bubbles and currents of complex datum coalesce and achieve a form of unity and cohesion through which deeper, more abiding trends of Truth can be discerned. The tendency in this instance is toward reducing the infinitely complex to the infinitely simple, examples of which might include:

1) We are One
2) As Above, so Below
3) The System is Evil
4) We are born to die

All of these generalizations, on their face, are true to the extent that they describe general trends conditioned upon the nature of material reality and the individual and collective perception and response to such. The problem comes, when, in the course of living, these truisms are adapted and applied to the variegated issues, problems, trials and tribulations of life to the extent that direct action is scorned in favor of the cynical attitudes of incessant intellectual dissection, non-action and non-participation. When emotionally colored, these strategies also include scorn, sarcasm, irony, egoistic densification and personal identification with alternative viewpoints guaranteed to create division and disharmony when tendered amidst diverse groupings of otherwise tolerant and forward-thinking individuals.

The tendency of reductionist thought to seek ever the simplest explanation of complex phenomenon results in a glossing over of important considerations that span the gamut of human existence and expression. Reducing expression to its utmost basal components minimizes and trivializes the trends, mores and paradigms that the multitudes of humanity live and die by daily. While for those of an inherently spiritualized bent, doing so serves their personal evolution, by proselytizing reductionism and coloring it by emotional linguistic tropes the higher state of being implicit within the spiritual search is apparently absent, resulting in the inevitable conclusion that those utilizing such strategies are instead bent upon denying the ultimate validity of all human aspiration in favor of a studied attitude of non-action and non-participation.

The transparency of such strategies is absolute. The act of hijacking a conversation by engaging in reductionist polemics is a tactic of disinformation-oriented shills and those seeking to apply their understanding of the nature of reality to the exclusion of all others. The ploys and stratagems utilized by such are ingenious to the extent that they stifle discussion and mute participation through an appeal to an incontrivertible “Greater Truth” that, on its face, invalidates the “lesser truth” being discussed, thereby indemnifying those supporting said truth in favor of non-action and non-participation. When employed within a group format of individuals mired within the diverse paradigms of spiritual or political polemics reductionist strategies discount all considered and proven modalities grounded in direct action.

As an example, the unity of creation is proven through the revelations of quantum physics. The unity of consciousness is the state of greater humanity, and yet, it cannot be denied that there are differences in the qualitative expression of human wants and needs at the planetary level. Individuals and groups have different wants and needs that necessitate different strategies in order to satisfy. Levels of consciousness contribute to the expression of these wants and needs at the individual and collective levels. At the level of mass humanity, all of these wants and needs are valid as expressions of the underlying totality and the drive toward infinite manifestation of all potentiality. The Earth as a realm of diversity reflects this underlying, reductionist Truth. From the most heinous evil to the most transcendent good all are valid, all deserve expression; all require manifestation in some form or another.

Language, as the primary mode of human expression, is limited in its ability to encompass and express the totality of Truth as it is related to the truths that bound our perceptive realities. Therefore, it becomes necessary, for those who seek to communicate to the broadest array of individuals and groups possible, to moderate their expression of truth in full awareness of these limitations, allowing for differences of opinion and subjective understandings. This moderation must occur primarily in the realm of emotivity, as the expression of such reveals the egoistic underpinnings of discursive intent. Argumentation, petty sarcasm, boorish solidarity and condescending intellectualism point to communicative limitations that contribute to even greater discord and ideological differentiation.

In the end, and beyond the material realms of incarnation, this experience of diverse incarnative potentiality is designed to reveal the limitations of materiality and points the way to a greater harmonic resonance and unity with the ultimate source of Creation. But within the holographic matrix of this reality, as individuals and soul groups of differing purpose and expression, these experiential modalities are indicative of the beauty and perfection of life and the living process, revealed to be the crucible of purification upon which we are all transfixed, awaiting our own moment of gnosis.

But until then, perhaps it is wiser to be tolerant and understanding, rather than intolerant, base or crass. Rather than reducing our understandings ever to their basest components, perhaps there is validity in broadening our understandings in order to encompass the perspectives of those who have not yet achieved a deeper knowledge of the nature of the world and what lies beyond. The compassionate resonation of a truly spiritual viewpoint is more sympathetic in nature and not overtly disparaging to the extent that all other viewpoints are considered meaningless and pointless. Everything has a point. Everything has meaning.

Our synchronistic interactions are multidimensional and expressive of causative factors beyond our limited ability to understand. There are no coincidences or accidents, the cacaphonic and tumultuous symphony of life – in all of its chaotic simplicity – is perfectly aligned with our highest intent but can also be, simultaneously, in line with our lowest, most emotional desires. Engaging and embracing each other with this understanding can result in the inculcation of greater understanding and lead the way through the mental morass to that higher destiny shared by all who enter this Vale of Tears, intent upon consciously achieving reunification with Source.

The Twin Flame Maitreya in the Age of Aquarius

An holistic and multi-dimensional understanding of reality must include recognition of the potentiality that phenomenon considered singular in nature might have some relation  to other phenomenon. Also, that at different levels of understanding, phenomenon considered singular in nature might actually have  multiple forms of expression. The individual’s journey through the depths of his or her soul is but a microcosmic example of the greater interrelation of galaxies and solar systems, of multiverses and universes. A person’s soul can be part of a group-soul and group-souls can make up Higher Selves, Avatars or Names of God, depending upon terminology and perspective.  Finding relationships between disparate phenomenon of a higher ethereal nature cannot occur independent of that phenomenon’s expression on the material plane of existence. With these understandings, we can examine certain ideas and determine whether there are relationships of note to be highlighted and expounded upon.

The Maitreya is the Buddhist equivalent of the Second Coming of Jesus the Christ, the Jewish equivalent is known as the Mashiach and the Islamic equivalent is the Mahdi. All of these savior figures were fortold as coming to the Earth in a time of great tribulation and evil. While there are questions and arguments – both for and against – as to the conceptual viability surrounding the original conception of each one of these messianic figures in the historical record as well as within the sect-based traditions themselves, the broad-based belief in these figures speaks to some underlying need within the human collective unconscious for a supernatural avatar to redeem the world, and those residing within it, from sin. An unbalanced equation requires conciliation of all involved variables in order to find a new balance and order.

While Buddhism is not necessarily considered to be a proselytizing religion the zeal with which some of its proponents profess their faith and engage non-believers in the Dharma certainly possesses some missionary-like fervor. As the primary representative of eastern spiritual thought in western countries, Buddhism has experienced a broad-based acceptance as both a philosophy and a religion. Therefore it is embraced by both believers and non-believers alike. Being outside of the judeo-christian complex of belief systems, and therefore less familiar to many in the West,
the Maitreya avataric conception is not subject to the same cultural preconceptions as the Jesus avatar. Being so unencumbered, it stands to reason that it’s formulation, when adapted from it’s original Buddhist format and combined with the avataric conceptions of the Messiah, the Mashiach and the Mahdi, has the best chance of being representative of some greater truth while not falling prey to the institutionalized limitations that bind the judeo-christian avataric figures to an historic panorama of forced proselytization, warfare and patriarchial repression.

For that reason, entering into the Age of Aquarius, the ancient Hermetic conception, As Above, So Below - which I employ perhaps to distraction in many of my writings – resonates as an appropriate phrasology in this instance as well. The Maitreya energetic construction as a combination and reconception of the savior-complex that typifies the universalizing religions and unity-consciousness templating currently invigorating world populations exemplifies a demi-urgic group soul imperative manifesting during the current phases of human spiritual evolution. It is important to realize as well that the current entry of the Earth into galactic space correlated with the beginning of the Age of Aquarius and also coinciding with Earth’s ascension above the galactic plane and entry into the densest and highest energetic region of the galaxy. While there is much confusion surrounding the astronomical aspect regarding Sol-System’s current position in regards to the galatic plane, the increase in cosmic energetic bombardment of the Earth and the increase in meteoric and cometary appearances in the space surrounding our planet may be indications that it is occuring.

The Aquarian Age is similarly fuzzy when seeking to define parameters. There are varying ideas regarding when it begins and when the Piscean Age ends, with most falling into the current range of decades corresponding to the present era. Entry into this Age, as with all that come and go across the span of time, occurs only through the ending of the previous Age, which often occurs with the fall of old civilizations and the rise of new civilizations. High technology, more sustainable environmental and economic systems, intergenerational, racial and sexual equity and increased  spiritual awareness are shared traits that span the gamut of expressions regarding the nature of the Aquarian Age.

Since the Piscean Age was typified by the repression of the Divine Feminine through the institutions of societies across the world the new energetic configurations resulting from cosmic bombardment and the evolution of human consciousness have generated an avataric formulation of the perfection of this inequality in the form of the Twin Flame alignment of souls. Although the hype surrounding the idea of Twin Flames is similarly confusing, it can be said generally that Twin Flames are two people who come together and share an energetic and incarnational alignment. What this means is that they are naturally and magnetically drawn to one another, they share many things in common, they compliment each other very well and their views regarding life are eerily similar to the extent that the confluence of all of these similarities marks the union as exceptional.

Being differentiated from the Soul Mate conception by its exclusivity, the Twin Flame energy is commonly believed to be unique to only two souls who may come together in an incarnation or not. However, the societal and cultural infractions that pervert all spiritual traditions as they become institutionalized and bent to the desires of those who define them have similarly resulted in the corruption of the Twin Flame ideal. Through the synthesis of definition and a focus upon primary intent, the Soul Mate conception can be said to relate to any individual with whom innate soul recognition is shared and with whom previous incarnational resonances can be felt during the currently lifetime. Each person, therefore, has many soulmates that they continue to incarnate with and interact with in lifetime after lifetime. Twin Flame energy, contrary to popular belief, is not a binding of two souls that may or may not meet during a lifetime, but instead a resonance based upon current vibrational frequency that shifts as an individual grows into greater spiritual awareness.

This resonance can only occur once an individual has realized the fallacy of romantic, chivalric love and the associated paradigmatic mainstays(emotional, pheremonic attraction, monogamy, marriage, etc.) that have developed in response to survival needs and inter-sex agreements regarding the disposition and care of the aged, women, children, land and other culture-based institutions. The universality of love as the electromagnetic resonance factor in tune with the base-vibrational qualities of Creation itself subsume the pheremone and emotion-based ephemeris passing as love, awakening the urge to find oppositional expression within another upon the material plane by incarnational time-line interplay through quantum-jumping and manifesting directed intentions at both the conscious and sub-conscious levels. Through the personal melding of oppositional energies an outer expression of same can be found.

In other words, a necessary prerequisite to finding a Twin Flame in the world is for each individual to reconcile the male and female aspects of themselves. The spiritual work necessary to do this can only arise through the process of deep introspection, recapitulation of a lifetime and a delving through and past cultural preconceptions and patriarchial myths designed to uphold current power structures based upon inequality and the suppression of the Divine Feminine. One must dissolve the inner-structures that support the outer institutional expressions of this repression and either consciously or through dream-state work merge potential time-lines within the personal field of the incarnational span with the realization that time is an illusion and all incarnations truly occur simultaneously and are accessible through the directed use of intention and imagination and the lense of a clear and unencumbered mind.

The type of clarity invoked must be of the type cultivated by a mind under control and emotions that have been brought to bear in service of the self rather than in control of the body as is generally the case with most people who have not engaged in personal spiritual work of this nature. Directed energy and healing work, meditation and supplication to allied powers and principalities are among the methods available to individuals to gain the necessary mind control to arrive at a space within their lives where a Twin Flame union becomes a potential expression of life goals and higher potentialities. The Twin Flame template accepts two souls within its intertwined matrix, but it is not necessarily the same two souls all the time. A person can meet someone who expresses the Twin Flame energies and seems to be their perfect mate, but if one continues to grow into the union and the other fails to do so, that soul can exit the template and another can rise to take his or her place. The energetic resonance is the key, not necessarily the Soul Mate who may or may not have stepped up at a particular time to fit the lock.

In drawing the different threads of this article together, the Age of Aquarius proceeds upon the ushering in of the potential of the Maitreya energies realized first individually, through the personal spiritual evolutionary process, then through partners and the male/female union and then collectively as greater soul-groups find themselves surpassing the 100th monkey effect and the cascading imprints of the Twin Flame and Maitreya templates achieve avataric expression and inevitable material manifestation. The rise of the Divine Feminine in relation to the onset of the New Age supports the higher energetic resonance of those already attuned to spiritual growth life-patterns within the current incarnational matrix. More individuals will therefore find themselves engaged in Twin Flame unions as they each do the hard inner work of reconciling their own oppositional natures. The full flowering of the Age of Aquarius, then, must inevitably result in a more tolerant and loving world, as the collective energetic vibration rises due to the influx of cosmic energy, more people engage in soul work and more couples express the Twin Flame template. As that spiritually-aware group coalesces, a simultaneous focusing of energy and intent will result in the concentration of the Maitreya avatar within a twin-flame pairing or an individual. Avatars must exist and spread their teachings for and within each Age.

There are many intellectual and intuitive formulations that fall prey to misunderstanding and misinterpretation. That is the nature of words. The nature of knowledge. That they are interpreted through the lense of prior understanding. As understanding increases, more information is processed and a greater synthesis and multi-dimensional envisioning becomes possible, a truer and more accurate picture of the energetic interconnectivity occurs. Twin Flames are a byproduct of the individual perfection of the soul. It is not a prize, nor is it a higher form of dating or marriage. It is an energetic construction that is designed to increase the vibrational level in the immediate space of its manifestation as well as the frequency of the world as a whole. The Twin Flame template is not an invitation to lose one’s self in the exploration of another to the detriment of the world. Rather, it is an expression of a greater imperative to unite and represent the culmination of the Divine Union of Opposites, the melding of male and female energies within the individual, then the couple and then, the world.

* Article as realized through the process of Bioenergetic Holism™ with Shannon Fry and Jennifer Templeman.

Trust: Changing your codes – Part II

Trust: Changing your codes – Part I

Hosea 8-7: For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind; it hath no stalk: the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up.

In the first installment of this series, I examined the issue of trust and how it can affect friendships, making the point that trust is something that has to be offered to the Multiverse and to Life itself, rather than to individuals. Trust cannot be taken, trust cannot be given. Trust can only be offered forth as a gift, as an acknowledgment of love, of solidarity, of belief in a larger, connected conception of Reality that goes beyond the individualized conception of self-protection and selfishness that seems to be the natural human condition. 

In explanation of that last controversial statement, let me explain further. Many might argue that trust is a natural part of the human condition; that children – when they are very young – are very trusting and that, as they grow older, life presents them with trials and tribulations that lessen their trust in people, in society and in life in general. Bad experiences, untrustworthy individuals and the experience of pain and suffering combine to create the masks that we wear to fit occasions where the exposure of our true faces might result in some type of social or physical pain or rejection. I would argue, to this point, simply that life itself is natural, so distrust, being a condition of the experience of life, is also natural.

The Buddhists believe that the Four Noble Truths - the first three of which state simply that life is desire, desire causes suffering, so life, therefore, is suffering - encapsulate the drama experienced by all people in all times and all places. The fourth of the Noble Truths states the solution to this conundrum succinctly: in order to end suffering, one must cease to desire. Trust is, many times, confused with the desire to be intimate with another. So when that faux-trust is broken, we feel betrayed.

Who hasn’t been in a social situation where someone you’ve trusted acts in an untrustworthy manner? A family member has betrayed you by taking the side of another family member, or does something that is directly counter to your interests, maybe stealing something from you, or lying to you.Children, in their experiences with their parents, siblings and society in general, get their trust betrayed every day.

Just the simple experience of having a parent tell them they can have or do something and then change their mind about it, for whatever reason, is a betrayal of trust that begins the process of qualifying unconditional trust; of creating barriers, separation between that child and his or her family, friends and the world. This process of mask creation forms the social face that becomes necessary as a wall between our true st, inner selves and the world as we age and begin to interact more and more with external society. Many of us as adults still have an Inner Child that is in need of healing, of love and understanding, as an acknowledgement that we exist and that our existence is meaningful. Learning to trust should be a large part of that healing process. 

So how do these issues of trust affect people at a wider scale? Individual questions of trust, family, friends, our personalized degrees of interactions, mirror the relationship of individuals to society, and the relationships between different societies as they interact at the regional and global scale.There is an old adage from the Christian religion that states, as above, so below. In the most abstract sense, this means that the experiences that we have as individuals are akin to the experiences that groups have when interacting with other groups and with the world at large.

For example, my relationship with a sibling may be discordant in some manner or another. I may fight with my brother incessantly, over trivial and serious matters alike. Likewise, Christians may fight against Muslims incessantly, over trivial and serious matters alike. Texans may fight with Californians over the size and importance of their states. The Flemish may fight with the Walloons over language differences and the superiority of French over Dutch culture. The examples are voluminous.

Many years ago, the social sciences (Geography, Anthropology, Sociology, Political Science, etc.) believed in this theory known as Environmental Determinism (ED). The theory itself was very simple. Humans who evolved in hot climates (Africa, the Americas, etc.) were inferior to and less industrious than humans who evolved in cold climates (Europe, E. Asia, etc.), because people in cold weather climates were driven to create technologies based upon their diligent resistance to the cold environment, whereas, those in the hot weather lands had no incentive to do anything but have Siestas, party, pick and eat fruit off of the trees, run around naked and have sex all of the time.

The not-so-underlying resentment that infuses the previous perceptions continues to fuel, even today, racist beliefs about people based upon illogical and historically inaccurate environmental assumptions. The misperception of ease, and of these brown, red and black people being held in the bosom of Gaia, the Earth Mother, was internalized by Europeans used to hard, cold lives and reflected back at the Sun-blessed Peoples in a paroxysm of violence and bloodshed that lasted for centuries and that may still have not yet ended.

Ostensibly based upon Darwins theory of Evolution, philosophies such as ED became known as theories of Social Darwinism, in which the world was a battle for survival, and only the fittest survived. Disciplines such as Geography and Political Science (then known as Geopolitics), used Environmental Determinism in order to philosophically and scientifically justify racism and colonial expansion across the world.

During that same period of time, Robert Malthus proposed that the world only had a limited amount of resources, and that overpopulation would soon drive the worlds poor to the shores of the richest countries in the world, seeking solace from the sheer bleakness of their plights. Today, his followers are called Neo-Malthusians. 

Other scholars, such as  Garrett Hardin, came up with corresponding theoretical exemplars such as the idea of Lifeboat Ethics, whereas the rich countries are afloat upon an ocean of despair with all of their amenities, and the poor and unwashed masses of the world are swimming toward the lifeboat, wanting to get on, giving rise to the questions: Can the Western lifeboats carry all of the world’s populations? Is there room on the lifeboat for everyone? 

I raise these questions and mention these academic philosophies in light of the question of trust. As should be clear by now, the lack of trust among groups of people has resulted in the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Xenophobia and greed are on the rise and there seems to be no end in sight to the increasing distance growing between the richest one percent of the world’s population and the rest of us. Here, in the United States, national and global forces are working to destroy the middle class and open the borders between countries, creating an indivisible gulf between the classes that will make the American Dream more of an impossibility than it ever has been. Even so, for many Americans, the Dream has alwaysbeen just that, a dream, and no more.

More and more, the idea of biological racial categorization is coming to be seen as an anachronism, although the institutional structures that have resulted in the system of white privilege remain and generations of immigrants benefit from them daily, through no fault of their own.  This, on the other hand, is sociological racial categorization, and it is as real in the lives of Americans and people the world over as is the Sun coming up every day.  And yet, it is possible, these days, for a European-descended man or woman to say with a clear conscience, “I’m not racist, I’ve never said the “N” word or discriminated against a black, brown, red or yellow person once in my life.”  Because of our complete immersion within the culturally-delineated, institutional structures of our daily lives, these individuals are, in large part, unaware of the privileged nature of their experience unless they forcibly encounter “The Other” by way of negative encounters with law enforcement or abrupt changes in economic and social status. 

I’m reminded at this juncture of that South Park episode where Jerome “Chef” McGilroy was irate over the racist South Park flag that showed a black stick figure being lynched by white stick figures. Throughout the episode, he’s arguing civil rights with the Klan, who are clearly racist, and the townspeople, who are more interested in the town’s heritage, while the kids debate both sides of the flag question without ever realizing that race has anything to do with it at all. 

Other scholars say that the need to accumulate material goods, to hoard energy and wealth, is a result of evolutionary and environmental stressors that have shaped the experience of different groups of people. They state that ethnic groupings that have lived for thousands of years in tropical environments are different from ethnic groupings that have lived for thousands of years in maritime or cold environments. Each group has been shaped by their environment to deal with the world in different ways.

Many use the example of the Aryan invasion of India, where the matriarchal and melanated Dravidians were conquered by the patriarchal and pale-skinned Aryans, or, the more recent examples of the Maafa/Triangular Trade, otherwise know as the Slave Trade - a period which lasted approximately 400 years - upon which foundation the wealth of Europe and the Americas was built, as clear examples of the Iceman Inheritance of Europe and European-descended peoples. The need to hoard food, energy and riches against a hard future ahead is the epitome of distrust; not only a distrust of other people, but a distrust of the world itself. An institutionalized and somewhat sublimated cultural distrust whose expression has been proven valid over centuries and millennia of harsh living conditions and warfare between Clans, then Tribes, then Ethnicities, then Nations and then, finally and perhaps even originally, between Races.

As above, so below. As we are pushed toward greater self-understanding, so must we also understand who we are as groups and as nations, and by doing so, understand where we have been, where we currently are and where we are going in our relationships with other groups and with the natural world. While Gaia may shrug, casting diseased humanity into oblivion, she will continue to exist, incorporating our ills within her very structure. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Trust between nations and peoples can only exist as a gift that we collectively choose to give to the Multiverse. There is no other rational course of action.

Strife and discord have been the rule in the relationships between groups and nations, and trust, the exception. Considering the extraordinary selflessness required in the cultivation of trust – to gift trust – it is easy to understand why things are the way that they are right now in the world. Also considering such, it is possible to take on a very negative outlook regarding future prognostications about the fate of the world.

What incentive do aboriginal Americans have to trust whites after being the subject of merciless genocide and land theft? Why should Koreanstrust the Japanese after what happened between them during Japan’s colonial era?  Why should Zionist Jews trust Muslims after every nation inSouthwest Asia rose against them the day they declared themselves a country?  And why should the enslaved ancestors of Africans in theAmericas ever trust an institutionalized system of governance and law that was formed in direct opposition to the very concept of their humanity? 

The desire to trust is beyond the Four Noble Truths and approximates the answer to the human condition, in that true , freely gifted Trust elevates human consciousness to a plane of selflessness that is exemplified by the willingness of an individual to sacrifice of one’s Self. By the ability to give of one’s Self without expecting anything in return. To gift trust, not expecting that trust to be honored.  And, by the even more daunting prospect of self-sacrifice, of freely gifted trust, in the face of death itself.

As I state in the very first paragraph of this essay, trust can only be offered forth as a gift, as an acknowledgment of love, of solidarity, of belief in a larger, connected conception of Reality that goes beyond the individualized conception of self-protection and selfishness that seems to be the natural human condition. Individual experiences and beliefs mirror group experiences and beliefs, and our very own personal stories can cast a bright light upon the stories of people through time and across space. The gift of trust is our only salvation. Beyond spirit, soul and religion, selfless trust can be considered a principled promise to our species; faith, if you will, in our proven ability to persevere and survive past all logical conceptions of our continuance.

If we do not, as a species, decide to let go of the past and move forward in trust and solidarity, the karma of the Ages shall continue to cycle remorselessly and we shall, indeed, reap the whirlwind. The sins of the Fathers gather unto infinite generations only find relief when the cycle is broken, when some person, or group, decides to rise above, to go beyond, to go within and trust. If this elemental choice is not made, the continuous cycle of inevitability is virtually guaranteed, and the resulting conflagration of Spirit and Soul might leave the present world bereft of human life, our collective legacy broken and cast, desolate, to the Four Winds.

Evolution and Movement: Are good and evil real?

A discussion with a close friend brought to mind the question of what is Good and what is Evil?

If everything in Creation is necessary, than what is unnecessary? If Creation is perfect, then what is imperfect? If material Creation is split, i.e. expressed as a dichtomy, black/white, him/her, us/them, right/left, then what is good and what is bad? And, when we define good and bad, is it a tacit approval of relative expressions of some abstract moral code, or does it refer to some higher code or law past the level of human agency?

Is the law of society the law of Heaven? Does our karma (result of our actions), as the Hindu and Buddhists hold, depend upon our dharma (moral duty)? Even Jesus said, “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” with the implication being that there was an expression of Divinity within the formation of the State and the trappings – and execution – of earthly power. And so, with that in mind, is the state executioner guilty of murder every time he pulls the lever in the death chamber? Or is he absolved of responsibility since he serves as the instrument of a “Higher Power”, in this case, the State? Does that mean that the depradations of WWII in Hitler’s Germany against the Jews fall under this same law? The Hutus and Tutsis, in their back and forth genocides of the mid-90s? The Serbs against the Bosnians, also in the mid-90s or the Muslims against the Christians in the Sudan of today? Do all state-sponsored deaths (war, criminality, genocide) leave the individuals who participate in them free of moral culpability, if and only if their actions are carried out in fulfillment of their state-sponsored roles, and not as an expression of some personal drive toward emotional satisfaction achieved during the act of murder?

What about religions? Islam? Christianity? Judaism? Hinduism? Do they hold and express the highest truths? Islam’s Jihads and the savage dominance of Africa, the Arabian peninsula and South Asia during it’s first 500 years; Christianity’s unrelenting holy wars against unbelievers, purges and imperial/colonial power mongering; Judaism’s G-d sanctioned wars against heathens and unbelievers in the Old Testament and the Zionism of the 20th and 21st century; Hinduism’s strict social hierarchy expressed by the racism and classism of the Caste System, with the Aryan Brahmins at the top and the Dalit Untouchables at the bottom: all of these systems have spiritual cores which touch upon the eternal truthes that course through the marrow of the world, invigorating the astral lives of countless groups and individuals, but does this make them the truest expressions of Divinity in the world? Imbue them with the capacity to be the ultimate purveyors of Truth, of Right and Wrong?

Or, is individual initative and free will more important? Since the body/mind/soul complex is the Temple, does that make us each Priests, able to determine right and wrong for ourselves? And if that is true, what is to separate the Christian who believes such from the Luciferians and Satanist, whose credo, “Do what thou wilst shall be the whole of the law” (Crowley) states, generally, the same thing? Certainly, the Christians utilize the bible as their instrument of Higher Law, but the bible has been used to murder many millions over the time of its creation, and to marginalize and enslave countless millions more, as well.

So who has the moral high ground? Is it the State? Is it the Religion? Or is it the Individual? Do the mores of the New Age movement, which emphasizes the individual and personal connection with Divinity make each of us a Law unto ourselves, as long as we ‘connect’ and ‘represent’ Divine Law to the best of our ability? To the best of our ability? Our very human, and limited abilities?

Or is something more required? Is it possible to move past these very human, limited abilities? To encloak ourselves in Divinity, really and truly, past our material and egoic limitations that keep us bound to the known and finite world of our 5 senses? And, if it is possible to move past them, then how do we continue to interact in the world of individuals who have not moved past them? Like the Cathars in Middle Ages France, or the Witches of Salemin the Enlightenment-era Americas, those who represent a spiritual viewpoint that is markedly different from that of the majority population find themselves martyred on the cross of social condemnation and the ultimate repression. Is this the preordained fate of every Seeker after Truth? To be crucified by the bloodthirsty and G-dless masses?

The Judeo-Christian ethic was born in Egypt but probably stems directly from the lineage of the oldest monotheistic culture in the world, that of the Batwa, or Pygmies. Considering the universal nature of spiritual precepts that undergird virtually all of the world’s major religions, the Western, secular viewpoint expressed by such fields as psychology and physics stumble in their materialist tracks when such luminaries as Karl Gustav Jung and Stephen Hawking, two men who bridge the gap between the material and the spiritual, confound pure materialists and spiritualists alike. For most who argue the importance of moral relativity and human initiative as the be-all end-all of material creation, recognizing that – beyond opinion and bordering the trackless wasteland between hypothesis and fact – the greatest Western scientific minds find an all-encompassing consciousness existing outside of the purview of individuated consciousness not only possible but probable, should be an enlightening realization.

So where does this leave us on the questions of Good and Evil? Perhaps, with the realization that in a multiverse where darkness and light are necessary, good and evil are necessary as well. That, as long as material conditions require life to be expressed through dichotomies, we will always have dichotomies. There will always be a day to follow the night. A right to offset left. An up to challenge down. The conditions that we take for granted; the opposites, the disagreements, the challenges and the conflicts that are so necessary in life, all of them, are required for the condition of existence itself. While we rail against evil, we must recognize its existence on a par with good. Like the Yin and Yang symbols of Eastern spiritual and philosophic thought, dark and light exist within the circumference of the All (circle), but the All is whole, indivisible. Each, the dark and the light, possesses a seed of its opposition, existing in harmonic resonance, one with the other.

Our choice is free. We are the Deciders that determine the path that we take during a lifetime and we waste time and effort when we regret, when we dwell, and when we look outside of ourselves for answers to our own deepest questions about who we are, where we are going and what we should be doing. The pathes that we choose should be the most direct expression of our deepest desires and needs. Because we are individual souls representative of spirits outside of the boundaries of space and time, our lifetimes are not concurrent and we progress in the past, future and present equally and simultaneously, some past lives representing higher degrees of consciousness than our present lives, in some cases. A life as a buddhist monk five hundred years ago does not necessarily mean that the life that you’re living right now is as highly or ethically evolved. Time does not constrain the soul’s evolution, since the material world is confined to the three dimensions of space and time, the fourth dimension.  Our choices remain a condition of the lives we are living right now as well as our past lives, but, in each moment, we have the choice to transcend all of that to make a different kind of decision. And this is where personal spiritual or ethical evolution lies.

In the end, it seems that good and evil are really not the point. Movement is.  Progress, evolution over time and through space as the solar systems, universes and overall multiversal expression of Creation continue to become, the infinite variations of life and consciousness adding their experiences to the collective whole, evolving toward some undefineable and unexpressible condition of existence that must be reflective of the holistic qualities that we represent in microcosm during our finite, yet infinitely satisfying, journeys in the flesh.