[YoungBlade]

Ooh, now I'm being compared to Nero.

Not my favorite emperor, but I'll take it.

[sterling_archer]

(05-12-2018 12:34 PM)debeguiled Wrote:  

(05-11-2018 04:02 AM)sterling_archer Wrote:  

But why would God care about Wicca or meaningless flings with women? What makes you think that you heard God's voice and not for example of your higher self? God is Supreme Reality, origin of existence and hardware on which existence runs (software) and not some being that concerns himself/herself (no gender here really) with the matters of mortals.

These two guys were sharing personal experiences, and you are issuing global statements that are designed to invalidate those experiences.

No I am not invalidating anything but I am curious for the explanation of their reasoning.

Quote:

I could turn your question around and ask, why is it so important to you to tell them that God didn't speak to them because if there is a God, he has better things to do?

I have found that when the conversation turns to magick or the esoteric, despite the avowal of objectivity among the practitioners, there is a clear tendency to degrade, diminish, and explain away any traditional experiences of a traditional god.

Now why do you think that is?

To take your question at face value though, there is a spiritual gift/charism/quality that is very well known to Christians no matter the denomination called discernment.

Some have the gift of discernment and some don't, and some, through hard work and patience over the years learn to cultivate it. Some people just get flashes of it when they need it.

Discernment is a kind of spiritual knowing that allows people to be able to identify whether or not they are hearing their own voice, or the voice of God, or the voice of some other spiritual entity.

An earthly equivalent might be good threat detection and situational awareness. As in, two guys might be walking along and come across some strangers in the street. They deal with them and move on, and afterward, one of the two is relieved, because he had to engage in some quick verbal judo to keep the strangers from attacking them. The other, is completely oblivious to threat, and felt nothing during the entire tense moment.

If you have explored one of the more traditional religions, you know that when you pray, it is very hard to discern whether or not God has answered, or whether you are just following your own inclinations and calling it God, or whether you are in the presence of some other less than positive spiritual entity.

It takes a kind of internal puzzling which may even take hours or days to figure this all out.

(Luke 2:19: But Mary kept all these words, pondering them in her heart. )

Long story short: You can feel the difference.

Usually, but not always, when it is God, it goes against your preferences and inclinations, and when it is something spiritually negative, you get a kind of a warning chill that you can either listen to or hamster away. If you have taken the time to know yourself, you can usually tell when it is your own voice telling yourself what you want to hear.

It goes without say that this sort of spiritual learning is a world away from the occult which focuses on the will and the world.

As to your question about why would God care. Why would a parent care about their children? Why not just let them do their own thing no matter how dire the consequences?

If you can even ask that question, you are pretty far away from the spiritual reality that is God. You are in a world focused in an entirely different way.

It has been my experience, despite so much propaganda to the contrary, that it is in fact the followers of magick and the esoteric who seem to have a vested interest in running down the traditional conception of a deity.

Why would that be the case if magick is just objective self help?

Your post and my original post are both examples of Thinker/Prover mechanism.

That being said, contrary to what you might believe about me, I am not an atheist and I fully acknowledge the existence and concept of God. But my beliefs or insights differ from Christian ones in the regard of what I consider to be a "god" or where he might be or what does he do.

For example, I cannot ever believe that God created this universe and that it rules over it. I have a belief that is similar to gnostic ones and that is if it is ever proved that a powerful being created universe, it would not be God from Bible, but a being you might call Satan. That belief is considered heretical by Christians, Muslims and Jews but there were throughout history various groups which had the same belief. Why I believe that is not the point here, that is too long to discuss and completely off topic. Since my belief is that, I cannot consider possibility that God from Bible speaks to you just like that. At the same time, I don't believe it is Satan who speaks to you, just to be clear. When you read about example of a saint in the West or a yogi in the East, you can see that these people had a complete change of life and have given themselves completely into God. Something which purified their souls and made them a diamond through which God's grace can shine. Bit differ than what people commonly think "I prayed and heard God", "God spoke to me and said that I should stop indulging myself". Here Eastern beliefs claim that in order to reach God, you must work hard and you might at the end not manage to reach Him. A stark contrast from what monotheistic religions teach us.

The act of creation and ruling the universe is something that has been given great attention to in the East and people consider it important. Where it differs from the monotheistic religions is in WHO. So, who can create and rule the universe? Answer is a bit simple. Anyone who has the means to do that. Since I acknowledge the possibility of existence of powerful beings, which people call "gods", I also think there is a possibility that a bit evil one managed to get hold of the tools and create this universe.
Jesus speaks of Satan as a ruler of this world, but what if he meant that literally? So, Jesus as the son of God, was put here, in Satan's dominion in order to defeat him? Something which I consider very interesting.

[debeguiled]

@sterling_archer

Thank you for the thoughtful response.

[sterling_archer]

Just something to add, one yogi from around here claims that Jesus dying on the cross that day was not for our sins but for the destruction of Satan. Since the Satan broke the laws by allowing death of a God incarnate in his domain, he was killed because of that. According to the yogi, that mission was successful but here is the catch. These non material structures created long ago that effectively bound people to collective trance like behavior ("sheeple", "zombies", "machines", various names for that throughout history) are pretty much intact, even with Satan being dead.
In this case, we could say that "intelligence" that Satan is/was (better term than to regard these beings in sort of anthropomorphical sense) exists through these structures. Meaning, we are still screwed daily...

[loremipsum]

Anyone following the Q-research might want to check out Kabamur Tayeta's twitter.
He claims to be one of the pleiadians who according to him helped Trump win and are preparing the public for disclosure.
Nut job or a real entity? Probably the former. Regardless there are some interesting tweets regarding satanic occult rituals and so on on his tweets.

[sterling_archer]

Capitalizing each word in a sentence = tell tale sign of being Pleaidian

Just checked it out, seems very weird and new agey.

[loremipsum]

(05-14-2018 08:19 AM)sterling_archer Wrote:  

Capitalizing each word in a sentence = tell tale sign of being Pleaidian

Just checked it out, seems very weird and new agey.

Yeah it seems to be based on very much the same terminology one would read on the controversial Ra Material , about which I am not quite yet sure what to think of.

[sterling_archer]

I can just say in short what is it about all these new sources of "information". It is just a rehashing of what has been already discussed at least hundred years ago. What is reality, entities, rituals, incoming changes, etc.; all that has been talked in great length by for example 19th century English occultists, some Indian mystics hundreds of years ago and such. Pretty much most of which is important is old stuff.

What you get now is some people wanting to put this old stuff into new clothes so we got Pleaidians (correct spelling???), time travellers, 1960s mystics, etc. In a lot of cases there is a strong psyops/manipulation agenda behind these new movements.

[FilipSRB]

(05-13-2018 11:28 AM)sterling_archer Wrote:  

Just something to add, one yogi from around here claims that Jesus dying on the cross that day was not for our sins but for the destruction of Satan. Since the Satan broke the laws by allowing death of a God incarnate in his domain, he was killed because of that. According to the yogi, that mission was successful but here is the catch. These non material structures created long ago that effectively bound people to collective trance like behavior ("sheeple", "zombies", "machines", various names for that throughout history) are pretty much intact, even with Satan being dead.
In this case, we could say that "intelligence" that Satan is/was (better term than to regard these beings in sort of anthropomorphical sense) exists through these structures. Meaning, we are still screwed daily...

That view is close to the Christus Victor Atonement Theory which was the dominant theory before the schism (and still is in Orthodox Christianity).

[dtpilgrim]

You will only ever get what you expect you can get. You will only ever experience, what you experience. Since consciousness is non-deterministic, but has a free-will component, you are the constant ultimate author of your own reality. The majority of people are just trolling themselves by self-casting mediocrity on themselves. The "hypnosis" or "sheeple" or "zombie" experience people are under, is ultimately, allowed for by themselves. The powerful of this (material) slice of reality are constantly casting these kind of spells or "memes" to keep people in their vice. Try viewing Mark Passio's work through this lens. NLP is actually a form of spellcasting - PUA is in a sense a gnostic cult, a small group of people taking advantage of (occultic) hidden knowledge. It's no surprise ex-PUA's end up interested in conservativism, religion, magick, metaphysics - they are literal wizards.

Look into the poetic, not the rational, to find the magick inherent in everything. (Rational) A chair is a chair, belonging to the category of furniture, with many types of construction material. (Poetic) A chair is the facilitator of familial bonding at dinner; the erotic pillar on which the lapdance stands or falls; the Atlas separating asses from gravity. Computers are wands... *poof* enough entertainment to last a lifetime, *poof* endless stores of knowledge, *poof* another micro-universe to explore for the next 40 hours on Steam...

There is a force of enslavement and tyranny in this (material) slice of reality. The Gnostics call them archons. Christians might call them demons. The basic material pillars of survival have all been completely co-opted by a super-elite. Housing: either you're paying rent to the private owners of a housing corporation or you're paying loans to the private owners of a bank. Food: can be cheap or expensive, but whatever you choose you can never choose healthy, organic, un-processed for a healthy temple (the body) and clear mind. Knowledge: educational systems are meme factories to prepare you for wage slavery, the media are mind control towers, each with their own version of a Hegelian Dialectic. From the moment you're born, every economic choice you make means one person wins and another one loses (zero sum).

And so we succumb to our sins and vices. All men are hurt, form ego's, rationalize the pain of their Origin Story (pride) to be unvirtuous themselves. Each man according himself the knowledge of (what is) Good and Evil. An ethical core remains, but a bleak physical reality implies a nihilistic Might is Right reality... and so men wager... should I choose Self over Good, or choose virtue and risk losing out? Arch Demons are the egregore of collective human arch-vices, and no man serves no God (That which is the highest orientation of the self).

Amidst all this chaos and deception, we lose the ability to speak clearly, think clearly and feel clearly. Confused, Lost, Broken. The occult practitioners of Magick offer a nihilistic path to Be Your Own God. But the hardest path, is the choice to Be Good.

You know in your heart the truth of this reality.

[sterling_archer]

(05-16-2018 12:49 PM)FilipSRB Wrote:  

That view is close to the Christus Victor Atonement Theory which was the dominant theory before the schism (and still is in Orthodox Christianity).

This is interesting, didn't know about his before. So, the Serbian Orthodox Church has views similar to this?

[sterling_archer]

(05-17-2018 05:24 PM)dtpilgrim Wrote:  

You know in your heart the truth of this reality.

I always felt that this world is apart from the God and in recent times I came to believe God barely can shine here because of how this place was designed.
Spiritual experiences of many people suggest that when they experience "over there", (for example during NDE/drugs) they feel that this world here is the fake one, a mere shadow and what they feel in that other reality is the true world.

[FilipSRB]

(05-18-2018 04:48 AM)sterling_archer Wrote:  

(05-16-2018 12:49 PM)FilipSRB Wrote:  

That view is close to the Christus Victor Atonement Theory which was the dominant theory before the schism (and still is in Orthodox Christianity).

This is interesting, didn't know about his before. So, the Serbian Orthodox Church has views similar to this?

The main point of Christus Victor Theory is that the rule of Powers and Principalities (which includes Satan) over Humanity was proven to be unjust because they condemned Jesus to death even though He lived a Sinless life. Therefore their claim over humanity that they had since the Fall was removed. So yeah, Satan did broke the laws, but he was not killed for it.

If you're interested in further reading:

http://christianthinktank.com/victor.pdf

Here are several relevant quotes from the pdf (that I already shared in another thread):

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with
Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was
against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. 15 And having disarmed
the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. (Col 2.13-15)

Augustine: “And where the devil could do something, there he met with defeat on every side. While from
the cross he received the power to slay the Lord's body outwardly, it was also from the cross that the inward
power, by which he held us fast, was put to death. For it came to pass that the chains of many sins in many
deaths were broken by the one death of the One who himself had no previous sin that would merit death.
And, therefore, for our sake the Lord paid the tribute to death which was not his due, in order that the death
which was due might not injure us. For he was not stripped of the flesh by any obligation to any power
whatsoever, but he willed his own death, for he who could not die unless he willed doubtless died because
he willed; and therefore he openly exposed the principalities and the powers, confidently triumphing over
them in himself”. ON THE TRINITY 4-13-17-57

“In biblical cosmology the king must first seek reconciliation and demonstrate that the stewards
are unrepentant or he can be accused of being selfish and arbitrary. He sends servants, who are
mistreated. He sends his son, who is tried by the vassals’ court, found guilty, and punished by
death. The case is appealed to the supreme court in heaven. There the judgment of the lower
court is found to be unjust, so the verdict is overturned. Moreover, the court itself is found to
be evil, so it is removed from power and sentenced to punishment. The central issue, then, is
not one of power, but of legitimacy…Given this imagery it is clear why the cross, not the
resurrection, is the supreme victory, for there Satan and his supporters are shown to be evil. In the
resurrection God overturns the judgment of the Jewish and Roman courts and frees the innocent
victim. When the case was overturned, Satan had no more legitimate authority in heaven or on
earth. He was therefore cast out.” (Anthropological Reflections on Missiological Issues, Paul G. Hiebert, Baker:1994.)

[Fortis]

(05-17-2018 05:24 PM)dtpilgrim Wrote:  

snip

I really liked that post, man. How did you come to these conclusions? Any suggested readings?

[sterling_archer]

This is a must watch. I am very curios how will they portray the characters in here. Parsons was a very interesting man and his life fits perfectly into the "occult is connected with science and those two don't oppose each other" story. His death was a very interesting one also.

[Neo]

Seems like an interesting movie. Just read the Wiki page on Parson's. Heard of him before, but didn't know too many details of his life.

One thing that has stood out to me is that people who get too involved into these practices seem to descend into living lives of deeply immoral behavior. They also seem to lose their sense rationality.

It can be seen following the trajectory of this man's life or many Hollywood celebrities. You have sex cults and other strange things going on. This leads me to believe that many of these people have been deceived to darkness.

I'm not sure if it's because some of these systems are inherently evil or if they are just setup to be completely opposite to Christian values.

Obviously I can't generalize as there are moral and immoral people in every spiritual movement.

It could also partly be the case of sensationalism, as on Parson's Wiki page it states that the FBI investigated several claims of crimes at their lodge and apparently found no evidence of illegal activity.

[debeguiled]

@Neo

Good post. A lot of the occult systems are pretty much bait and switch operations. They hook you in with supposed rationality or human potential arguments, and don't really reveal what it is all about until you are in too deep to back out.

[sterling_archer]

(05-19-2018 11:51 AM)debeguiled Wrote:  

@Neo

Good post. A lot of the occult systems are pretty much bait and switch operations. They hook you in with supposed rationality or human potential arguments, and don't really reveal what it is all about until you are in too deep to back out.

Just look at the scientology. Believe it or not, this system is based on reality. Hubbard had pretty good info on magick and occult (and his techniques really work) and he basically just stripped down what he considered over burdening for the common man and presented the world his cult (it's a cult not a religion).
But at the same time, there are connections between Crowleyism, CIA and Hubbard. You always get this things. Occult, science and espionage are deeply interwoven.

[sterling_archer]

(05-19-2018 11:14 AM)Neo Wrote:  

Seems like an interesting movie. Just read the Wiki page on Parson's. Heard of him before, but didn't know too many details of his life.

One thing that has stood out to me is that people who get too involved into these practices seem to descend into living lives of deeply immoral behavior. They also seem to lose their sense rationality.

It can be seen following the trajectory of this man's life or many Hollywood celebrities. You have sex cults and other strange things going on. This leads me to believe that many of these people have been deceived to darkness.

I'm not sure if it's because some of these systems are inherently evil or if they are just setup to be completely opposite to Christian values.

Obviously I can't generalize as there are moral and immoral people in every spiritual movement.

It could also partly be the case of sensationalism, as on Parson's Wiki page it states that the FBI investigated several claims of crimes at their lodge and apparently found no evidence of illegal activity.

It is a TV show actually. Can't wait to see how it will turn out.

Yes, you are a bit generalizing here, but you are not far away from truth. My interest in occult has been for the 95% of time purely academical so I hadn't been tempted into anything non decent, but I am also aware of the potential dangers that lurk in this area. Contrary to popular belief (mostly Christian), nothing will happen to you when you read about this stuff and you will not draw any negative attention from outer realms. But what can happen if you go practicing is that you can fall into temptation of gaining information from some entities (which may or may not be evil) or influencing events around yourself for your own personal gain. In these two cases, a trained and calm individual could greatly prosper, because he/she knows what he/she is dealing with so it can act accordingly with challenges that are presented on the way.
But on the other hand, imagine typical wannabe wizard that got his hands on some proper literature and just like a kid with short attention span, skips necessary prerequisite exercises* and goes directly on the "awesome stuff". Everyone knows what happens next. Maybe it sounds a bit weird, but you can get messed up, this is the reality all people on the path of Wisdom must be aware.

* - one of the best books with exercises requires practicing first couple of exercises for a long time before Adept can get progress further. In many cases, these two/three exercises could require even a year. One year! Imagine just doing special breathing and concentrating on some thought for a year. This is what separates wheat from the chaff.

[dtpilgrim]

(05-18-2018 06:43 AM)Fortis Wrote:  

(05-17-2018 05:24 PM)dtpilgrim Wrote:  

snip

I really liked that post, man. How did you come to these conclusions? Any suggested readings?

Tell me where are you at in your spiritual journey, and how did you get there, and what did you read or learn to make you think this way?

[sterling_archer]

According to this author, Necronimicon was/is a real book and Lovecraft didn't invent it for his Ctulhu mythos.

[Neo]

(05-19-2018 11:51 AM)debeguiled Wrote:  

@Neo

Good post. A lot of the occult systems are pretty much bait and switch operations. They hook you in with supposed rationality or human potential arguments, and don't really reveal what it is all about until you are in too deep to back out.

Exactly. The fact that so many of these stories seem to descend into immorality tells me people should be very wary of actual practice.

(05-19-2018 12:09 PM)sterling_archer Wrote:  

* - one of the best books with exercises requires practicing first couple of exercises for a long time before Adept can get progress further. In many cases, these two/three exercises could require even a year. One year! Imagine just doing special breathing and concentrating on some thought for a year. This is what separates wheat from the chaff.

A lot of these mechanisms must be very poorly understood. We have stories and anecdotal evidence from nearly every culture about apparent supernatural powers of certain people. Some developed them through some type of esoteric practice and others were given them through the grace of God.

In Catholicism we have saints who can read minds, bi-locate, and all sorts of other strange phenomena. There is no evidence of this however and we still haven't caught anything on video. Certain demons could also do similar things. Again no real evidence.

In Buddhism and Hinduism there are the Siddhi's which are supernatural powers that occur once someone has reached certain deeper states of meditation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siddhi Some of these supernatural powers overlap with other traditions.

What I believe is that there is definitely something that we do not understand about the brain and in the future science may be able to replicate some of these effects. Today though all the magicians, skeptics, and scientists have not been able to document one real case.

Another issue is that some saintly people or monks with high spiritual attainments either don't want to or are forbidden from speaking of these things.

If you speak to priests or other holy men, you will notice that it isn't until they get to know you rather well that they will speak of certain experiences they could not explain. One of my former priests told me that during an exorcism he was one of 4 men trying to hold down a 110 lbs 18 year girl who had superhuman strength. He's about 6'1 and well over 200 lbs. They positioned one person per limb to hold her down and I guess she was still able to throw some of them off.

There's also this account which I'm not sure has been posted on the forum.

http://www.wnd.com/2008/03/58835/

Interesting read, but again wish there was more documentation.

[sterling_archer]

Remember what it says in the Prometheus Rising? Those who want to disprove it, will disprove it and vice versa.
I don't agree with you that mechanism have been understood poorly. On contrary, we know very much, especially seasoned practitioners like mentioned saints, yogis and sorcerers. It is not about just the brain.
Science deals with materialism and as I said before is complementary with occult, but it doesn't have prerequisites necessary to experience and document occult. That requires thinking outside the box which is firmly set by materialist and atheist beliefs which ultimately don't enable for scientist to experience things outside science.

There is a movie which didn't got much positive reviews but that is probably because its meaning and plot flew over the heads of most people. This movie shows conspiracy by the shadow government but that conspiracy is magick/initiatory in the nature. See the movie and read later Jay Dyer's analysis.

The Box

I am mentioning this example because of science complements occult theme but you can at the same time see what protagonists must go through in order to "get it", which would be impossible to do with hard scientific approach.

[dtpilgrim]

From my spiritual understanding so far, the Catholic Church is the only spiritual institute in the world which has a convincing case against the pantheist cosmology. The Jews ended up with Kabbalah down the road, and the Muslim's were saddled up with Sufi's. But the Catholic Church actually made a concerted effort to repeatedly challenge the Gnostic heresies, over essentially two entire millennia (Valentinianism; Knights Templar; Freemasonry; Catharism, among others). Buddhism and Hinduism are theologically pantheist, as is scientific materialism, if you make the same extrapolation Spinoza did.

There's not really a conclusive answer to which cosmology is accurate. Numerically about half the world does seem to subscribe to monotheism "on paper". Another third seems more or less pantheistic. Gnostics however, are more like 0.00001% of the worlds population. Say what you want about the Catholic Church as a reactionary institute or sociological tool of oppression: but it did succeed at one thing not a single other spiritual organization has been able to do; to create a systematic and organized body of spirituality accessible to every single person willing to follow. Gnosticism is far more elitist, the entire concept of a secret society is rather anti-democratic.

The thing is, in my current understanding I would associate magick most strongly with Gnosticism than any other cosmological system. Though it's by no means imperative to conflate the two. And if you take the principles of Gnosticism in the abstract, i.e. "Natural Law", it's easy to see how the Catholic Church can be fitted into simply a very very large academy for wizards and apprentices. There is no real difference between praying the Rosary and casting a Chaos Magick spell to increase your collective virtuousness, when you think about it. And personal prayer is very similar positive affirmations or mantra meditation. It's powerful magick.

If we turn to Saints, there are indeed the anecdotal stories of their gifts of healing touch, stigmata or simply the incorruptibility of their corpses. What's interesting to remark here is what Chesterton found: the Catholic Saint is an active participant in physical reality; struggling, fighting, living - while the Pantheist Enlightened seem to retreat from the world, turning inwards rather than outwards. Is the ultimate purpose of this creation really to just sit on a rock and retreat?

I don't have an answer. And maybe an answer can never be found. But it's an interesting question to ponder - what is the cosmology of this creation? Is it an endless fractal pattern repeating itself on higher and lower dimensions ("As Above; So Below"), as seems to be implied by the experiences of people on LSD or DMT or Ayahuasca. Or are these experiences and others simply machinations of a fallen Lucifer, looking to trick us into believing we can be our own God, which was the ultimate promise of the Devil from the beginning (; he himself being, what Theosophists and New Agers call, a "Lucifer Consciousness"; a micro-universe breaking free from the oververse; EGO itself)?

The narrative of the Catholic Church really stands or falls on this one essential aspect of their cosmology. Either there is indeed an adversarial intelligence behind all these diversions from Sainthood - or it's all just moral relativism depending on where you stand, Good and Evil are constructs and you can just chillax and enjoy the ride. Pascal's wager: are the stakes high (and real) enough to choose what you'd prefer to be true?

[debeguiled]

There is a fundamental difference between the powers of occult practices and the inexplicable actions of the saints.

The first is a quest for knowledge and power.

The second is a grace, bestowed by God, on someone seeking to know him better.

Very often there is an element of suffering that accompanies the miraculous actions of the saints, like the pain Padre Pio experienced when he received the stigmata.

These powers and signs are not necessarily skills that have been cultivated by the saints, but actions of God through the saints when all they really sought was a closer relationship to their creator.

You could even say that these two paths that lead to unexplained events are even antithetical to each other, because if a person seeks out hidden knowledge and power, he is unlikely to be the sort of person that God chooses to be a mystic or a saint.