Are we battling demons and devils and will some supernatural entity save us?
A friend posted this article from Substack by Naomi Wolf. In my mind, her name was associated with respect, although I have never taken the time to read her or learn about who she is. That respect must have been absorbed from people I respect who respect her… strange how it works. But…
I have to say this article has saddened me. I cannot respect biblical fundamentalism or biblical fundamentalists, that’s just the way I was raised - culturally English Anglican, “the religion you have when you are not having a religion” (Australians of a certain age will understand the reference).
The battle between the biblical fundamentalists and the rest of us
There are "freedom fighters" who are biblical fundamentalists, and there are "freedom fighters" who are not.
Naomi Wolf is expressing the battle BETWEEN different subsets of biblical fundamentalists. She seems to believe that we are battling devils and demons (which may be true), and only by returning to the one true god (oh dear) will we defeat them. We have to renew our covenant with that being called god, so that he will protect us, as he apparently once did, from the devils and demons. That's my simplistic take on what she is saying, but I think that's the gist of her argument.
However, not everyone in this battle of "good versus evil", that we are currently engaged in, is a biblical fundamentalist. Many of the scientists are not, and because they are not, they are being viciously and personally attacked by the biblical fundamentalists. This is ludicrous.
From what I can see - just my observations of what is happening - the biblical fundamentalists as a group (and I will not name any) have ganged up on those who are not, such as Robert Malone and Matthias Desmet. And they have tried to tear them to shreds. To my observation, they nearly succeeded in destroying good men because those good men were not biblical fundamentalists. It has been painful watching these two men in particular, and others, try to come to grips with why they are hated by people who should be on the same team. (I am not speaking for them, just expressing my perceptions of what was going on - which I will not defend - its not the most important point of this article.)
Robert Malone has done a couple of long interviews/conversations recently, one of which I have posted, where, again in my view, he has finally understood why the biblical fundamentalists are attacking him personally - he has finally understood that it IS the biblical fundamentalists who are attacking him, and I think, having understood that, he has been able to back away from the pointless battle.
I am not interested in biblical fundamentalism, so I have to consider the question of "good versus evil" outside of the context of an old man in the clouds swooping down to save we recalcitrant children. (Sorry, but that is how I feel about biblical fundamentalism.)
If there is no saviour, how are we going to save ourselves from the “evil” we are currently facing?
In my world view there is NO saviour. The human race has to grow up.
We ARE up against an enemy whose actions appear evil to us. That enemy is infinitely superior to ourselves in some ways, but hugely inferior in others. That enemy is so far superior intellectually that we cannot even imagine the degree by which we are outsmarted.
The power of human emotions
But that same enemy is totally inferior emotionally - it has no emotions - and its human representatives are all classical sociopaths and psychopaths. We know this. We know their lack of human values comes down to their lack of emotion, compassion, caring, empathy, and love, not the namby pamby kind of love as it has been debased by the new agers, but something altogether more magnificent. They have tricked us into relying on our very weak intellects (comparatively speaking), to combat them, a battle we can never win, rather than entering the realm that is our own, that of the emotions.
They have tricked us into deriding our own emotions - the one tool we have to successfully negate their power over us; a tool through which, if we work with it correctly, we gain access to intelligence greatly beyond that of any intellect. The emotions give us access to other levels of intelligence - insight, intuition, inspiration - but it takes us a while to master that language. And while we hate emotionalism within ourselves we cannot come to grips with how wondrous - and useful - the language of the emotions is, let alone learn to master it as a valuable tool.
Learning mastery OF the emotions
All the ancient religions taught mastery of the emotions: not mastery OVER the emotions, but mastery OF the emotions. Mastery OVER means to dominate - which is what we have tried to do under the guidance of the sociopaths and psychopaths. Mastery OF means to harness the emotions as a very powerful tool, as a carpenter is able to manage a very dangerous chain saw. It takes skill and practice and constant vigilance to develop such mastery. And we have not been practicing these skills with any level of vigilance.
So rather than beg a benevolent god to come to save us, I would rather the human race said, "OK, it's time to grow up. How do we get on top of this situation using the skills we have?".
Original sin and our current paralysis
We are currently paralysed. We have no idea what to do. In my opinion, this is because the human race has not taken responsibility for our own lives, within any form of living memory. We have always been co-dependents, expecting to be saved. We have been so deeply immersed in the concept of "original sin" that we do not even know that it underlies our entire world view. The whole of the human race has been conned into thinking we are not thoughtful and powerful enough beings to run our own lives well. We deeply believe that we are born bad and need parents, or teachers, or the legal system, or the religious system or governments to make us be good. We don't. Instead it is up to us to BE good parents, good teachers, good judges, good elders, good administrators. WE are those people who should be running our own lives, not the sociopaths and the psychopaths.
Finding a new way
We just don't know how to get from here, co-dependency and the attendant emotional abuse, to there, interdependence with the attendant respect. The current degeneration into an abusive society is showing us just how we held our societies together in the past, with goodwill and respect towards one another - such simple ideas but seemingly so hard to master. Will those human beings who turned into abusers during the supposed pandemic, see how they lost control of their emotions, and work out how to use that same force - the power of human emotions - for good? I hope so.
This article was posted on Substack today, synchronicity working as it does. It goes some way to answering my question, but poses dangers of its own. Finding this power within ourselves requires us to use it wisely. The key is in how to use it wisely. Do we use it as individuals, and how useful can that be? Or do we use it as groups. All the cults, including Hillsong, and most of the Indian gurus, know how to create, amplify and manage this energy. They work through a phenomenon called group mind or egregore, where they build emotional harmony within a group of people, who can then act in concert and with a certainty that did not exist before they were united, via emotion, into a group mind. A family, a community, a church, a political party, a nation, are all examples of group minds in which individual people become emotionally invested. The unscrupulous know how to engender this energy and engage it for their own end, rarely to the common good. It is dangerous in the wrong hands. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
We must use the human emotions, but we must work out how to do that without it degenerating into control.
https://tobyrogers.substack.com/p/fighting-the-spiritual-battle-on
A timely piece, especially on a personal level - I was recently contacted (via Facebook messenger) by an individual proclaiming to have his own "true" ministry of Christ, (truer than all the others of course) and over the course of a few weeks he bombarded my inbox with a spam link directing me to potentially donate to the furtherance of his ministry, as he alone, with enough money, could effect positive change against the evils of this world. Very Jim Jones. I did not reply ...actually, I didn't even see his repetitive messages (until much later) as I have multiple accounts and the messages are only accessible when I log in on the desktop... anyway, he tired of my unwillingness to read his manipulative nonsense garnished with the typical "fundamentalist" zealotry... and decided to end things with:
'God is coming for you! Don't think you can hide behind your avatar as a psychological blanket!'
A little extreme! I certainly wouldn't want to be aligned with his god ...Sounds like he is invested in the Hebrew Old Testament 'jealous and vengeful god of destruction...' what utter lunacy...