Wrong Spirituality
One of my current weakenesess is that I still get angry at superficial spirituality … of which there is plenty. My own life experience has, with much hardship, patience and reflection, taught to me to value that within me which is life … an unrelenting, subtle light which insists on shining forth despite anything I may throw at it. At first I lived in ignorance of its existence, then in violent denial of it, then it came to the surface. It is an amazingly powerful and persistent force. Yet I often myself thiking and describing it as a fragile thing, a delicate force that can easily be trampled back into darkness.
Spiritual inquiry, I believe, is an indication that this light-of-life, present in us all, is surfacing and is looking to penetrate into conscious awareness. To me this is a holy event. It indicates a very-near potential for precious transformation of consciousness. This is when people often seek, reach out and too often encounter to so called spiritual-teachers (Yoga included). When these new-age spiritual teachers deliver their new-age-feel-good advice … too often that advice turns out to be bullshit (<-see) wrong.
This seems to lead many people in one of two directions: (1) disappointment and desertion of spiritual pursuit or (2) entrenchment in their newly acquired beliefs and denial of reality to the point of blindness. In either case the light of awareness is burried under a new pile of rubble-consciousness which will need to be patiently uncovered for it to shine forth again.
I seem to have erred in assuming that this is a bad thing. I am starting to think that this assumption is wrong. Life-light is not a fragile thing (though meeting it may be a fragile experience). A child’s curiosity may cause her to burn her hand in a fire, but in time she will learn to live with it properly, to be warmed by it, to cook with it, to glare into it’s beauty. It may take a long time … the more intense a burn-injury the longer it may takes to heal in body and (even longer in) mind.
Learning takes place within life experiences … an ongoing journey of trial and error. Every meeting with wrong spirituality is an event of learning (even if there isn’t an awareness of learning). Spirituality is hard-wired into us and will continue to burn inside throughout life. Light will come to the surface and stay when there is maturity and readiness for it.
Yes, it’s still wrong spirituality (as in “the Earth is not flat” wrong) … but it seems that’s what some (many?) people need (can handle?) … short and tempered encounters (in preparation for more extensive and demanding future encounters?).
Wrong Money
These thoughts originated as I continued my reading of Charle’s Eisenstein’s Sacred Economy. He speaks of inherent dysfunctions and limitations of our debt-based money system (the money story in which we live). Simply put we are living in a system where all money is lent into existence, bearing interest which isn’t lent into existence. This creates a debt system in which, aggregately, debt cannot be repaid … there is never enough money. He quotes Herman Daly who writes about the views of Frederick Soddy, a Nobel laureate and pioneer of nuclear chemistry:
“The idea that people can live off the interest of their mutual indebtedness … is just another perpetual motion scheme – a vulgar delusion on a grand scale.”
And this, from the Wikipedia page on Frederick Soddy’s book |Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt|:
“Debts are subject to the laws of mathematics rather than physics. Unlike wealth, which is subject to the laws of thermodynamics, debts do not rot with old age and are not consumed in the process of living. On the contrary, they grow at so much per cent per annum, by the well-known mathematical laws of simple and compound interest … It is this underlying confusion between wealth and debt which has made such a tragedy of the scientific era.”
Soddy was a celebrated member of society and “light on money” shone through his consciousness over 80 years ago. It took 80+ years of ignorance and many additional voices for it to eventuall reach me through Charles Eisenstein.
I’ve suspected something is wrong for a long time. As I write these words I recall my first encounter with a bank. At the age of 16 I was excited (ahum!) to open my own bank account. I deposited 100 shekels into it and, following the wisdom handed to me by my father, deposited that money into a short-term-low-risk financial-tool offered by the bank. I immediately found myself in the red to the amount of the cost of of the transaction itself.I was surprised and I felt tricked. I had no idea how tricked I really was.
I feel as if I am and we are collectively witnessing a phenomenal evolution taking place. We had to really work ourselves into a deep and dark hole to appreciate wisdom that has been readily available to us for a very long time. Maybe the depth of the hole was as critical for us to notice and take action as was the wisdom on how to get out of it. Maybe this time the light will surface and stay long enough for us to see a better path forward.
Wrongs
I ended up fiddling with the title of this post way too long … I found myself contemplating AGAIN if there is such a thing as wrong?
My answer remains Yes. It was right to think the Earth was flat until it became evident that it was actually round. Then it became wrong to think the Earth was flat. While “Right” may be a dynamic and personal experience (who knows, we may yet discover that the earth is “quantum mechanically flat” but it sure as hell isn’t going to go back to being geometrically flat) within any given view/context (personal. social. cultural, spiritual …) there are clear and agreed wrongs … and those that cling to wrongs are idiots.
We do wrong things, we make mistakes, the fact that we may learn from our wrong-doings and grow past them does not make them right … they continue to be wrong.