I haven't written on this blog for a while. It's been apparently like 4 years. The last blog post I wrote, I think I might have been tripping on some sort of psychedelic substance, because it reads like some sort of early 20th century mad poet.
I think it makes sense, though. The fear that I was talking about... we want to not be afraid anymore. More specifically, we want to feel safe. Safety is the prerequisite factor for all art, science, and culture of any kind. However, in the absence of any more or less absolute sense of safety, it might seem more practical instead to do away with the source of fear, which is ourselves. More specifically, it is our sense of self, and if we can do away with that sense, then we will not experience fear or pain anymore. If we can never be safe, at least we can be relieved of the fear of danger, injury, and death. As someone once said to me, "You need to step out of your own way."
And so it is that more and more people these days, in the growing absence of a God-centered view on transcendent matters, that more people would pray for the removal of that source of fear than the assurance of safety.
Back when I wrote my first blog post, I was steeped in mystical and occult thinking, partially fueled by LSD and other psychedelic drugs, partially by my own desire to find meaning from direct personal experience of the divine through my own efforts, and mainly due to my own ignorance of the limitations that such a cosmic philosophy could possibly have. I had given in, first, to the idea that God was merely a human constructed mythical being expressing man's own intrinsic desire to transcend his own mortality, and secondly to the idea that there was a way by which a man could transcend his own mortality, and that there was a divine nature which could only be attained by years or perhaps lifetimes of diligent effort. Reincarnation plays a large part in the mystical philosophy, and essentially reincarnation is a spiritual evolution theory, by which the essence of what makes us alive is constantly learning lessons and ascending to inhabit more perfected forms.
However, I discovered a flaw in that philosophy which I first encountered in Buddhism and Hinduism... in Hinduism, it is the idea of karma, and the idea that the cosmos is not linear, but rather cyclical in nature. In Buddhism, this is known as the dharma wheel, samsara, or the cycle of rebirth. It didn't dawn upon me how flawed this system was until I experienced, to my horror, a kind of eternal deja vu. I think the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche referred to this phenomenon as the idea of "eternal recurrence"... and it is hinted at in Kurt Vonnegut's novel, Slaughterhouse Five... where the aliens viewing the main character tell him that he was a part of an eternal cycle which always begins and ends the same way, where he is always destined to repeat the same actions because his actions are both pre-determined by the past and necessary for the unfolding of the future. In the East, the answer to this problem is by attainment of moksha, Nirvana, liberation from the neverending cycle of birth and death. However, upon further inspection, both through personal experience and deeper study into Eastern philosophy, this state of liberation is eventually realized to be one and same as samsara. A zen master once declared that Nirvana and Samsara were the same thing. Liberation, then, only implies that one's mind is absorbed into the light of unconsciousness, and the mind/spirit/soul ceases to experience anything whatsoever. It is the state of non-existence. Nothingness.
When first wrestling with this realization, my ignorance of the limitations of such a system and the impossibility of such a system being a self-sustaining absolute was expressed only as an unnamed, unspeakable, all-consuming existential angst. I was crippled by this angst, but at the same time I was convinced that I was at fault for feeling that way, and that more experience and more transcendence of my own self would eventually do away with this feeling, which I believed to be ultimately irrational, due only to my stubborn belief that life had to mean something more than what I was presented with, which was the "ultimate truth" of non-existence and the illusion of all things.
This highly Eastern-influenced mentality was at the same time coupled with the Western mentality, which was the occult, magic, and tribal shamanism... and I had found some temporary relief from that uncreated light in the darkness of esoteric thought. Within that seemingly protected womb of darkness, the entirety of the cosmos seemed to become a sort of giant mysterious playground, full of angels, demons, warlocks and witches, and absolutely any other god or creature that I could find hiding there. Where entire universes could be built in that dark space which was the astral palace of my own mind, and I was the center of an entirely new creation. This seemed to be the only relief, the only shelter, from the crushing angst of the eternal void. I was convinced that this was the only proper course, since God had been proven to be a false concept, and all things in existence now rested entirely within the confines and controls of my own mind, if only I were disciplined and purified enough to wield such wisdom.
Through much destructive folly on my part, and yet only by the power of the intercession of another Being from somewhere outside of my mind and the cosmos as a whole, I slowly began to discern the fact that all I had come to realize, all I had come to believe, everyone I had come to trust along this way, and all I had come to be in the midst of, was part of the most insidious lie that the universe has ever known. Many truths which were once obvious during the time before I became "enlightened" were now obscured by this false light and its even greater darkness, and many falsehoods which I had come to believe as truths had powerfully gripped my mind in a profound and seemingly endless state of delusion, misery, and death. All the cosmos lie at my feet, stinking as a rotten corpse, yet raging and screaming, aflame with furious anger and hatred towards my terrible discovery, this revelation of all that is unholy.
It was the first time since I was a kid, that I began to suspect and yearn for the reality of God Almighty. However... much still stood in the way, and Satan Himself was waiting at the center of the bottomless pit into which I had fallen.
For some people such as myself, it is impossible to believe in the reality of God without first knowing the reality of Satan.
Christ himself, when first filled with the holy spirit, was led into the wilderness... and although he was sent, blessed, and sanctified by God, still even he, the Holy One of The Lord, stood alone in a hostile desert, and was tempted by the evil one...
It was into this very same wilderness I was led, and it was in this wilderness that I finally came to understand the great and terrible spiritual power which lords over the earth, where I met Lucifer himself face to face, and very nearly was overcome... this great power, which like a lion, singles out the weak in their most vulnerable state of helplessness...
In the future, I will elaborate more on the specifics of my realization and encounter with the evil one, and also the spiritual state which this lord of the earth uses to enslave us, sin.
