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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

 

Reincarnation On Trial

There are some that preach, “Those who want to be done with this world are very immature and selfish. They should have more love in their hearts and want to come back to help people grow spiritually.”

 

 

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There are so many things wrong with the above proposition that it’s difficult to know where to begin. But, with brevity, let us count the ways.

 

 

Summary Statement:

There are two kinds of “helping.”

One of these addresses the periphery of life. At times, at one’s discretion, we might help someone by loaning money; or we might lend a hand in a certain work project; or we might provide aid and comfort in sickness. All of these are examples of humanitarian service, and it’s right and good to do this, as opportunity allows.

However, there is another kind of “helping” which is impossible to give. We cannot “help” another human being to open his or her eyes; we cannot elevate another’s level of consciousness; we cannot make someone else a better person.

This latter form of “helping” becomes a de facto “salvation theory.” But no one -- none, other than one’s own self, one’s true self -- can advance or evolve one’s own soul.

 

 

(1) You cannot directly help people to grow spiritually. That’s not possible. See Pastor Dr. Leslie Weatherhead’s analysis of the gospel writings: Jesus changed his mind regarding the emphasis of his Earthly mission. At the end he realized that most “help” for others devolves toward co-dependency, stultifying hero-worship, and cultish servility. This is why Jesus, as he was leaving, as his students were begging him to stay, said, “You’ll be better off when I leave.” He couldn’t help them directly. Each person, to embrace real change, must enter the “long dark night of the soul” individually, and no one can hold your hand.

(2) Those who lobby for the above masthead-proposition believe more in “doing” than “being.” They might deny this charge but actions speak louder than words. See my four articles on “Spirituality” for the essence of what it means to become a good person. Good works, per se, without more, will not take you to where you want to go.

(3) “But isn’t advice and counsel a good thing? Isn’t this very writing in that category? Are not others benefitted by a good teacher?”

Good advice, at best, is but a sign-post toward the truth. You cannot directly give “the truth” to another. They have to get it for themselves, find it within themselves.

“But isn’t a teacher’s sign-post valuable?” It’s valuable, it's fine, but not vital, not critically important. Here’s the deal: There’s nothing that’s really important that God will not teach you directly, once you open your heart and spirit. This is what the apostle John said: “It’s the ‘anointing,’ stupid!” (The Becker Living Translation).

John’s term “anointing” is a metaphor of receipt of “the holy spirit,” that is, “the purified consciousness.” Only an elevated level of awareness will change people. You can't do that for them. No one can. When you're dealing with creatures with free-will, not even God can make it right. You have to wait for the person to be ready to grow and change.

To force "the cake to bake faster" will just ruin things. When it comes to "helping" human beings, we have to speak of the (self-imposed) powerlessness of God.

(4) Those who preach that we should love reincarnation, that we should magnanimously welcome, and ever return to, the vice, oppression, and mosh-pit insanity of this world, do not know their own minds. As some of the ancient Spirit Guides say, you have to have something really wrong with you to want to come back to this hell-hole sewer-pit. If coming back could really help others, then maybe we’d have to talk about it, but, as a return lacks any value for all parties concerned, only masochists and self-loathers would try to re-enlist.

(5) Pathological “doers” like to talk, a little too much, about service and love. “But aren’t service and love so very important?” They are very important, and all advanced persons are engaged in charitable effort. But this is not the purpose and meaning of life. It’s not “what we stay alive for.” We discussed this concept thoroughly in “Prometheus,” and you may want to review the discussion there.

Pathological “do-gooders” sometimes virtually hide behind a façade of “service and love” and are glad, and proud, to tell you of their works. And why, if we’re not careful, might "doing good" be a synonym for dysfunction? It all goes wrong when the “false self,” the Little Me, attempts to substitute “doing” for “being.” "Being," increased levels of consciousness, is where the action is. It's a whole lot easier to grandstand one’s (ego-based) good works, which become a proxy for "see what a good person I am, see how spiritual I am," than to quietly enter the “long dark night of the soul,” where the real work of change takes place.

(6) Calling others “immature” and “selfish” is just that – name calling. It’s what fifth-grade bullies do on the playground when they have no hope of winning an argument on the merits of the case. It's what you do when you have no substance to offer. Attempting to bedazzle listeners with empty emotive language, claims of superior “love in my heart” is a tactic Big Religion uses all the time, in their cultish Machiavellian ways, to make you feel no good. See my article on “Clear Thinking” and you’ll find that the masthead-proposition, in very short compass, breaks several rules of logic and honest debate.

Those who think they have to come back to the Earth to supervise things need to resign as General Manager Of The Universe. It's above their pay-grade.

you cannot directly help people to grow spiritually

Let’s look more closely at point #1 above. This is the heart of the matter.

Have you ever tried to help someone? No, I mean really help, not just give them money or some band-aid, and then send them back to their unsuccessful ways to make the same mistakes again, but really help them to change their lives? It wasn't so easy, was it.

How about helping someone stop smoking? There’s not a person on the planet who doesn’t know that smoking is bad for you. Even teens who start smoking know this. This isn’t about lack of information. So why do they start? Well, they don’t feel good about themselves, so they want to “add something” to themselves, some image of “tough guy,” or being “grown up,” or “cool.” The inner neediness of “I am not enough” is more important to them than threats of cancer some years in the future.

And so, here you come, you want to “help.” You try the “education” approach, how this will be bad for one’s health. Or, you might even try the “judgmental” approach, suggesting that those who smoke are just pawns of the establishment, not too aware or even very bright, are spending hard-earned cash uselessly; we could go on. But now the smoker you’d hoped to “help” feels threatened, angry at your “do-gooder-ism,” and ends up hunkering down and smokes more in the aftermath of your speech.

Have you tried to “help” someone leave a church, a religion, that you know is just a money-sucking leach on society, just a Dear Leader’s grab for power-and-control? Did you argue about “the truth” of your friend’s “infallible doctrines,” attempting to explain how true-believer-like they were? Did you tell her how she’s been corrupted by the so-called church’s anti-humanistic views?

Well, your little chat worked out so well for you, didn’t it? Your friend ended up feeling condemned, very angry with you, and, in the process, retreated further into the self-imposed prison of group-insanity -- for her protection – protection from “do-gooders” like yourself.

Or, here’s a popular one. The person you’re trying to “help” is caught in a bad marriage or bad relationship. She’s miserable. She's an empty shell of her former vivacious self. She’s lost the spark of life in her eyes and that happy tone in her voice that you knew in earlier days. You hardly know her now. And so you tell her that she must leave the abusive marriage, that it’s a sham, that it’s just plain wrong to live under that kind of oppression, that she’s wasting her life, that she still has a chance for real happiness, and many similar indictments. And your friend might even agree with you; but, she will respond – at least she was chosen by someone, at least she was wanted by someone, at least she has a purpose in her life, and at least she’s “doing God’s will” by running the clock out and “honoring the sacrament of marriage.” Her own self-respect and well-being seem to mean nothing to her in all this. And your “do-gooder-ism” falls flat to the ground.

the Spirit Guides who work as missionaries in the Dark Realms are wise enough to know that you can’t help people directly

The most miserable people in the universe populate the Dark Realms. More than any other creature, they could use some help – forget about coming back to the Earth to express “do-gooder-ism,” as the most pressing needs are in “the rat cellar”!

But the Guides know full well that you cannot help anyone directly. Unless a person is of a mind to help him or herself, you’re just wasting your time. Instead, the Guides monitor these hapless, are on the look-out, for one of the wretched who’s decided to better him or herself. When that happens, the Guides offer direct aid, but not before.

in this world or the next, you can't talk someone out of their fears and into a sane frame of mind

Some Guides do talk to the despairing ones in Dark Places, but not to offer a hard "sales pitch"; in so doing, they hope to discover those who might be wavering on the line, those who might be ready, or close to ready, to leave their suffering and torment.

those who preach a doctrine of “return to Earth to help others” reveal a most shallow understanding of human nature

You cannot change people by any external means. It has to come from within, or, in the attempt to engineer a change in personhood, you'll destroy the essential humanity of the one you're trying to help; they'll no longer be "persons," in any meaningful sense, if you remove the element of choice, if you ram it through and violate free-will. No one can be a “savior of the world.” It doesn't work that way, not with autonomous-by-nature human beings, and only cult-religion would suggest otherwise. See Pastor Weatherhead’s writing above.

It’s a wonderful sentiment to want to help everyone, and we should all want to, but it takes a great deal of wisdom to do this right without causing more damage than you started with. Any attempt to "help" people directly, in terms of real change for that person, before they’re willing to be helped, before they’re of a mind to help themselves, will prove to be a most futile, frustrating, and feckless endeavor.

 

Is Mankind free to choose, invested with true autonomy, able to chart one's own course, and therefore to be held responsible for deeds committed, or are we just broken machines, with faulty programming needing repair by an external agent, mere pawns of another, with no true culpability for what we do?

Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search For Meaning:

“I refer to what is called mysterium iniquitatis, meaning, as I see it, that a crime in the final analysis remains inexplicable inasmuch as it cannot be fully traced back to biological, psychological and/or sociological factors. Totally explaining one’s crime would be tantamount to explaining away his or her guilt and to seeing in him or her not a free and responsible human being but a machine to be repaired. Even criminals themselves abhor this treatment and prefer to be held responsible for their deeds. From a convict serving his sentence in an Illinois penitentiary, I received a letter in which he deplored that the criminal never has a chance to explain himself. He is offered a variety of excuses to choose from. Society is blamed and in many instances the blame is put on the victim."

In Dr. Frankl’s comments, we are confronted with a host of heavyweight concepts, each requiring much thought and discussion. Let us very briefly address some of these.

“helping” another person might quickly devolve to minimization of essential humanity

If people were just broken machines, then we could be taken to the shop for some external fixer to fix us. But we are not Cartesian machines, broken or otherwise; rather, we are individualized consciousness-units, led by what Dr. Sheldrake calls “morphic fields,” which are quantum fields of probability. This means we’re potentially capable of anything, good or bad. No external agent can fix us; we’re not to be fixed but, each for one’s own, must seek for better levels of awareness. We have to self-create, self-direct, self-manage, and become our own “saviors.”

our deeds "cannot be fully traced back to biological, psychological and/or sociological factors"

Do you know what this sounds like? In Newtonian physics we might speak of the “clockwork” deterministic universe. With full knowledge of the forces impacting a particle, we can predict, with great accuracy, its course, where it will be, at any point in the future. And this is quite true. However, materialists insist that humans are merely machines, driven and led by forces of the universe, and, as such, are deterministic in nature, quite predictable, as anything else in the universe.

We expect this kind of talk from materialists, and have much to say about it in the “Evolution” article, but we should be surprised to discover echoes of this metaphysical assumption, concerning the nature of humankind, from religious organizations. On one hand, they might speak of humanistic concepts such as “free will,” “made in the image,” guilt concerning sin, and other precepts relating to humanity’s ability to choose; however, when we examine many of the chief, underlying-bedrock church doctrines, the humanism evaporates, and we’re left with a knock-off brand of materialistic determinism.

Now we’re told that “we were born in sin,” that we’re marred by what Adam did – as if there were an Adam – that, essentially, we’re just broken machines, requiring an Outside Fixer to fix us. The dignity of what it means to be human, in terms of essential responsibility, is taken away. Their "infallible doctrines" report that we’re just pawns in a cosmic stageplay. We can’t chart our own course, we can’t right ourselves, we can’t direct our own lives through the ensuing eternities. We’re just broken machines, with no hope of refurbishing, unless some Outside Fixer does a complete make-over on us.

Editor’s note: But, as we discussed in the “Jesus” article, this doesn’t say much for the poor quality, the slipshod workmanship, regarding the Original Maker’s product. So, in order to avoid embarrassment, the tawdry implications, it’s popular just to blame the victim.

Our deeds "cannot be fully traced back to biological, psychological and/or sociological factors" because we're living-walking-breathing quantum fields of probability, enfleshed versions of Heisenberg's "uncertainty principle." We're not deterministic by nature. The "uncertainty principle" doesn't mean that it's really hard to predict but that it's impossible to predict with any accuracy.

the mysterium iniquitatis

This is quite interesting. I hope you’ll take a few minutes to explore it with me.

The Latin term, mysterium iniquitatis, is literally the “mystery of iniquity” or the “mystery of evil.”

Recall, if you will, discussions elsewhere concerning the nature of Big Religion’s doctrines. I’ve said that virtually any of their teachings, upon close inspection, especially the major foundational ones, have been designed to keep you dependent, servile, laden with burdens of fear and guilt. And this charge will suffer no degradation when we look at the mysterium iniquitatis.

It’s an old phrase. And it can mean anything you want it to mean, depending on your view of God and the purpose of life. Dr. Frankl is a humanist. This means he believes in the dignity of human essence and potential. We are responsible, he says, for our own attitudes, for our course in life. We are not victims of what someone else did a long time ago. We are not pawns. We are not machines needing to be taken to the shop. We are endowed with awesome powers of self-creation.

In the hands of Dr. Frankl, the mysterium iniquitatis becomes, to the effect, “The origins of human malfeasance can never be entirely plotted and charted. We’re far too complicated for that kind of reductionism. You can’t reduce us to a formula, or a one-size-fits-all. Our capacity is altogether incredibly too grand for that kind of easy solution.”

This is what the mysterium iniquitatis means to the humanistic Dr. Frankl. But when it’s used by totalitarians, the cultish mindset, ever seeking new ways to enslave and incapacitate you, the mysterium iniquitatis becomes something very different. Now this Latin phrase is pressed into service to signify, to the effect, “Evil is a great mystery. It’s far too complicated for ordinary people to understand. You must allow God’s chosen servants to protect you from evil. And you’ll be doing this by obeying all the church laws and teachings. That’s what’s important.”

Anytime the Church doesn’t want you asking too many questions, they’ll call it a mystery, that it’s all unknowable. We’re reminded of the scathing judgment here by Father Benson:

the empty farrago of words

"The laws that govern the spirit world are not complex laws that none can understand. There are many things in spirit life which we cannot understand yet, just as there are many things upon earth which cannot yet be understood... But [even now, before we understand everything] with all such matters, we can see plainly the reason for some law, or truth, or whatever it may be. We are now treated to a farrago of words that collectively possess not one grain of meaning or sense, only to be told that it is a ‘mystery’, or something that under Divine Providence we are not meant to know."

Granted, the universe is filled with mysteries, and we’ll be exploring them for a very long time to come, but in this admission there is no pious defeatism of “oh, well, it’s a mystery, we’ll never know, and you shouldn’t even bother thinking about it.” This anti-intellectual approach is just bunk and meant to keep you on the plantation.

There’s a certain smell to everything the Church teaches. This is not hard to understand when we realize and admit that the Church is just one of the collective-ego institutions of the world, in business to do what egos do, which is to satisfy the cravings of “I don’t have enough” because “I am not enough.”

Editor’s note: It’s ironic that “mystery” should be applied to the subject of evil. As stated, there are many mysteries in the universe, but the essential nature of evil is not one of them. We know what evil is, all too clearly. See the extensive discussions on the meaning of “Evil.”

 

 

no help, for hundreds or thousands of years

If it were possible to help people directly, then the ancient Spirit Guides would empty the Dark Realms in one day. But it's not possible, and so they can't. And this is why many of the unrepentant find themselves stuck in the "rat cellar" for hundreds or thousands of years. You can't repent for somebody else; there is no "savior" who can do that for another sentient being. The Guides can't help them. No one can help them; not until they're willing to help themselves.

 

 

Editor's last word:

See the article on “the 500 tape-recordings from the other side” for further discussion on this issue of “helping” others.