Black Sins and Red Sins

 

Hi Everyone.  This is Leo Volont with Part One of my two part Series “Black Sins and Red Sins”.

 

1   A few years back I dreamed two Angels came and instructed me on the Subject of the Two types of Sin.  They even came with Chalkboard and pointers. The way I remember it is, as the dream began, I was waiting in a train station.  At the time it hadn’t crossed my mind whether I was planning to go somewhere or just waiting for somebody.   But when the train arrived, I was met at the swing door by the Two Angels getting off.  They intercepted me, and asked me to join them.  Well, Okay.  Maybe that’s what I was waiting for.   They were dressed in Clerical Black but somehow I knew they were Angels.  They asked me to follow them and they led me to a corner in the Terminal Waiting Area and commenced their Lecture.  The train had been an old style train, and the inside of the Terminal looked like 19^th Century unpainted wood, but the glass windows were clean and I saw the green of the trees and the blue of the sky outside.  Well, That’s important because the color intensity shows it to have been an important Dream.

 

2    So, as I learned, it turns out there’s two distinct categories of Sin.  First there’s that kind of  Sin that damns one to Hell,  and then there’s the other kind of Sin that attaches only to the body and dies away when the body dies.   These two types of Sin are called, respectively, "Black Sin" and "Red Sin". 

 

 

3   The Black Sins are the ones that destine one for Hell and they’re the premeditated Evils – Evil done in cold blood, Evil done for profit, the Evil of Rugged Individuality that preys on Society like Wolves feeding on Sheep.  All such intentional and deliberate Evils that victimize and exploit others are the Black Sins.    Black Sins, as I learned,  are the cancer that can kill a Civilization.

 

4    The Red Sins, on the other hand, are crimes of passion and appetite.  Red Sins are the sins of the flesh.  As Humanity trudges the slow evolutionary process between base animality and noble spirituality, well, the Red Sins are perhaps like small residual monkey tails that while suggesting our animal origins don’t negate what Humanity we have thus far attained.   

 

5   Then there’s the conditionality of the Red Sins to consider, that even while we can still lament that our animal urges are engaged, the impulses to sin are coming unsought, with our Second Order Thinking being far more Godly than our First Order thinking, that is, wishing that we didn’t want to do these things.  Every Red Sin is somewhat akin to that of a poor hungry man stealing a loaf of bread, a deed that’s never done without mixed feelings.    

 

6   We live, after all, in a Material World and the Body insists on its own imperatives.   If only the appetites could be removed, then so also would be any impulse to commit such Red Sins.  And this is exactly what happens when the body passes away.  Death brings a final liberation from the Red Sins… or it should.  What actually happens in many cases was then explained.    

 

7   The worst that might happen in regards to these Red Sins is that we may become habituated to and identified with our purely animal appetites – as in the case of a man who makes a hobby of sex or gluttony, and takes pride in such things, to the point where such inclinations and behaviors become integral to his self-image.  As such a Soul transitions towards a spiritual existence it’ll feel lost if all its priorities and sense of identity have become aligned around what are only material incumbrances that really have no nesting place in the higher more ethereal Spiritual Realms.   

 

8    Clinging to the old habits and conditionings, the Soul will find itself too dense and too opaque to tolerate the Light of Heaven.  Remember that light streaking through a vacuum traces no beam.  Light shows itself only in collision with Matter, reflecting all that’s not absorbed.  And Light absorbed into Matter becomes heat and past a certain point heat burns and burning hurts.

 

9   Oh, please allow me here to mention an incidental fact that relates to the Truth that ‘Light not reflected is absorbed and becomes Heat’.  I had a dream in which I was in Elijah’s Dark Cave of Prayer (I mentioned this Cave in my Video Series “The Virgin Mary and a Love Story”)… In the Dream, as Elijah was telling me “Behold, the Principalities of the Sky vie for thy Soul”, well, the ceiling and walls of the cave vanished leaving me a view of a clear blue sky where I saw dozens of Flying Dragons circling around in aerial combat.  Well, I couldn’t tell who was winning or even whom I was supposed to be rooting for.  So Elijah, seeing he needed to explain, told me that the Angels of Goodness glow with their own Light generated from within, while the Demons deceive by wearing bright armor and so shine only by reflected Light.   Yeah, there might be a lot of Pretense in that Armor, but I think there’s more to it than that.  It’s probably also intended to reflect off Light that’s bright enough to burn them.

 

10   So, to the Pure Clear Soul that has risen above the Material, the Light of Heaven is a joy, a thrill, a splendid ambiance.  The most intense light can pass straight through, sensed by Ethereal Spirit but not absorbed,  registering as a pleasure, not as a pain. But that can’t be said of the Coarse and the Worldly Souls where the Light becomes a blinding burning pain.  But that’s not to say that there’s no hope.  This is one of those cases where a Curse comes packing a Blessing.   You see, In Burning, the Impurities are consumed. 

 

11   The Angels explained that this is the very point of Purgatory where the suffering comes not from the Fires of Hell but from the Light of Heaven.   You see, there’s no fixed boundaries between Purgatory and Heaven, but that the Absolute Light of God is fixed in the Center, where the White Light is a Liquid Fire,.. but with distance it diminishes in intensity until at the outer reaches of Purgatory the Light is only the lightest of pinpricks to those still retaining Animalistic Contaminations.  The Angels emphasized that if I remember anything from their lecture and pass it on it should be this:  To Go Towards The Light, even when it hurts.  The closer you can get to It, and the more pain you can endure, the shorter will be your time of Suffering.  

 

12   But many souls doom themselves for near eternities in a barely endurable twilight, fearing the pain that brings them closer to Perfection.  If only they could push themselves to rush onwards, to charge into the Blistering Beautiful Light with open smoking flaming arms.  After all, it is not like it could kill them, right?  And don’t they say that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?  But in this case, we’d say “Purer” or “Clearer”.

 

13    But, no, we don’t need to wait until we’re dead.  The ties, attachments and the pull of the Red Sins can be addressed all while we’re still alive.  Mostly we need to etherealize our interests.   Replacing often works better than Renouncing.   Simply pulling ourselves away from our cravings would leave a vacuum that would suck us back in, wouldn’t it?  But if we move into Newer and Higher Interests first then we wouldn’t have the same time and attention left over for the Old and the Lower, would we? 

 

14   But, then again, Life must be lived and we do in fact have appetites that tell us as much about what we need as what we only want, and so we shouldn’t deny ourselves necessities to which we’re honestly entitled, and Charity was never intended to be a weapon by which we commit suicide.    

 

15   Of course, when it comes to Etherealizing our appetites, Youth is as much a Curse as it is a Blessing, and Old Age as much a Blessing as it is a Curse.  The Young and Inexperienced  haven’t the insight that “there can be too much of a Good Thing”, you know, that excessive drinking leads to hang-overs and occasional weekends in jail, that prolonged sex is like a forced march where our heart’s real deepest yearning would be for a rest break and a beer, and that the most beautiful women are often super high maintenance with exorbitantly expensive tastes, and often they’re the nastiest nags.  

 

16   And the same kind of complaints can cover the full span of our desires, so we should all become familiar with the concept of ‘Engineering Compromise’, where, for example, The Greatest Speed may be the Ideal for a Race Car, but then there would be scarce provisions for Comfort, Noise Reduction, Air Conditioning, Gas Mileage, Fuel Tank Range and Affordability.  If Life In The Fast Lane has taught me anything it’s that the Fastest Cars, Airplanes and Motorcycles are Budget Breaking Torture Racks!  So, yes, maybe the Lesson of “Moderation In All Things” can come only with Real Life Experience, and, yeah, if you’ve never gotten tired of partying, then you probably haven’t partied enough.    

 

17   Yes, it is also a common observation noted by the Worldly Wise that we only need to get what we wish for in order to break the spell of wanting it at all.    For instance, I once had a real laugh when a friend of mine told me that the two of the happiest moments of his life were, First, when he got the boat he had always dreamed of, and then, Second, when he was finally able to sell his boat.  But can’t we infer that had he never gotten the boat then he would’ve continued on wanting it?  So, yeah, it may be the case that those most spiritually twisted up by carnal and material desires are those who experienced fulfilling them the least, going to their graves still yearning for the Beautiful Women, Fast Cars and everything else they never had. 

 

18    But does that mean it’s only the Sated and Fulfilled that can go peacefully to the Great Beyond?  Well, it shouldn’t and so the ideal we should aim for is to die leaving our appetites behind with a sense of Relief and not with Regret, looking Up and not looking Back.  But, the way it might actually play out for us is, well, we might still be caught up in our Worldly Desires up until the time we realize it’s really too late, and that our “the Boat has Sailed”,  and that we had our Day in the Sun and now we’re in the Twilight of our years.   And this is how I think that Old Age becomes a Blessing, because it brings us to the point where we no longer wish for anything more than simply to be content contemplating our Sunset.

 

Well, this is it for Part One and now onto the Second and Final Part.  Thanks everybody!        

 

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Hi Everyone.  This is Leo Volont with Part Two of my Two Part Series “Black Sins and Red Sins” 

 

19   Part One was about the Red Sins but the Black Sins are a different story altogether.     

 

What makes the Black Sins so much more terrible?  Well, there’s their inherently predatory nature, a morbid Individualism that sets Self against the Herd.   All Humans are of the same Species and shouldn’t be preying on each other, right?   To calculate one’s own gain at the expense of another’s loss, well, that’s Spiritual Cannibalism, isn’t it? 

 

20   Okay, but where’s this Evil come from?  Yes, I’ve discussed in previous Blogs the origins of Human Evil, but what of Evil in the Spiritual Realms?  For that let’s refer to the Ancient Traditions that tell us of the actual or allegorical War in Heaven.  But for that to make sense, well, first we need to define what Heaven is, that is, the Spiritual Realm, just one step below the Highest Realm that belongs to the Transcendental God of Oneness.   Heaven was where Dualism first set its Fork in the Road creating the distinction between Good and Evil, a distinction that the Transcendental God in his Realm of Oneness was too high and mighty to make, and therefore He She or It left it up to the Angels, both Good and Evil, to fight things out between themselves.    

 

21   Michael, called Mithra by the original Persians who first told this Story, was the Chief Angel of Goodness and Light, and he assumed the Scepter of Divine Authority.  Lucifer, the Bad Guy, lead the Rebellion.  It’s significant that the Ancient Epics tell us that the split between the Good and Evil Angels was not Half and Half, not 50-50,  but Two Thirds Good and One Third Evil.   What we need to understand about that is that while the Numbers of Angels divided unevenly, the Quantity of the Effective Power between the Good and Evil stayed at parity.  That means that one Angel of Darkness is worth two of the Light.  Evil has always had an edge over Good.  Why?  Well, Evil is Tooth and Claw, it thrives on Action, enjoys the Hunt, has no Inhibitions, shows no Mercy, and It’s quick to Anger and so first to strike.   And then how do we explain the relative weakness of the Good?  Well, the Morality of Goodness is like carrying excess baggage while Evil travels light.   “Nice guys finish last” because they take on a heavier load.   The Cross we all bear is Morality.  

 

22   But don’t the Traditions tell us that the Angels of Light won the War?  So why all this talk about the Prowess of Evil?  Well, the Truth the Two Lecturing Angels made me privy to, but which has rarely been revealed to Men before, is that before the Angels of Light Won the War, well, they were losing all the Battles.  The first engagement ended in a rout.  But just as soon as Evil thought that Victory was theirs, then… their own Weakness was revealed..  Can you guess what that was?  Well, think about it:  Would those who wouldn’t serve God be happier serving the Devil?  Well, not too likely, huh?

 

23   Yes, their Leader was Lucifer, the “Morning Star”, under the sign of the Planet Venus.   The Rebellion was his idea and, yeah, he ordered the Attacks, but it was the Mars, the Dark Red Angel of War, that actually lead the Charges.  So what did Mars need Lucifer for?  Did Mars conquer Heaven just to hand it over to Lucifer?  Hell No!  

 

24   Oh, by the way, Lucifer was known as the Most Beautiful Angel, but what did Mars care about Beauty.  He wanted Power, not hugs and kisses!  So Mars plotted and conspired and so again there was the same kind of uneven split as before:  Mars took the hardiest, meanest most robust One Third of Realms of Darkness and Evil, and left Lucifer with the namby-pamby leftovers.  Remember, then as now, that in dividing the Spoils of Conquest, the fewer the Victors there are, the More each Victor gets, and the more Losers you have to pillage, the more there is to take.  

 

25   It was only during the Battle of the Dark Angels against Themselves that the combined forces of Good swept down and were able to recapture Heaven.  Yes, The Angels of Light, never wavering from Michael’s command, stayed organized even in retreat, and then, still stinging from Defeat, when the Battle recommenced, well, this time they fought without hesitation or mercy.   So it turned out to be the War of All’s Well that Ends Well.  Yeah, Goodness and Light did always have the Numbers on their side, but it could have gone either way except that Evil became it’s own enemy.  

 

26   And the Angels of Light have been able to hold the Higher Ground ever since.  The Dark Angels were never able to regroup after having broken trust among themselves.  The same dynamic applies to Evil Men, that the impulse that leads them to Fight the Good also goads them to Fight each other.   They fight not for Principle, whatever they may tell you, but for Power, and to be under the Power of another, even one of their own, is a Humiliation that the Pride of Evil can’t bear. 

 

27   Yes, it’s no secret that Freedom is their Highest Ideal, but isn’t it true that only He who has power over all others, holding them in constraints, can ever be certain of being Free?   And so it is that the Freedom of Some depends upon the Subjugation of others.  So how could such Demons ever fight side by side without stabbing each other in the backs, always trying to get the Upper Hand?  There is no honor among all those Freedom Loving Thieves. 

 

28   So, certainly those Predators of the Black Sins wouldn’t be fit company for decent souls, would they?   And so their “Hell”, whatever it be, only requires that it have no overlap with our Heaven.  The Paradise for us Sheep can’t include any of those Wolves, can it?   

 

29   So it is that the Anti-Social Black Sin Beings are spun out from and repelled by polar forces away from Spiritual Society, away from our Heaven.   The denser and heavier ‘vibrations’ of greed and selfishness, with their “rugged individualism”-oriented egos, giving them each the weight of a separate Universe, well, these predators would resolve into lower levels and more distant orbits, like the work of a centrifuge that keeps the purer lighter fluids at center while spinning off the contaminants.    

 

30   It reminds me of the difference between Song Birds and the birds that have grating and ugly voices.   The Birds that cheerfully Sing and whistle enjoy a diet of seeds, fruits, and bugs, but the harsher-voiced birds feed on the eggs and the young of the other birds.   So, yeah, isn’t it a remarkable coincidence that in the Nature of things  that the character of birds are reflected in the calls they’ve been given.  If you’ve ever been in an Early Morning Meadow and paid much attention then you’d know what I’m talking about.   

 

31    The Song Birds all respect each other’s nests and territories irrespective of species – they consider each other friends and neighbors, and in the early morning meadows one can hear each Songbird take its own turn, never interrupting another, as the songs go round and round in ordered sequence, and the tone and generalized happiness in the process lets everybody know that all is at Peace. 

 

32   But the predatory egg-eating birds with their ugly calls: the Crows, Jays, Jackdaws, and Magpies, well, they sound the alarm against even themselves – their Voices expressive of the Evil of their intent.  Their arrival brings an abrupt stop to the Happy Morning Meadow’s Song Fest.  Taking turns with their Songs ceases and the Panic is piped out in crowded chorus.  The Imitative Song Birds scream out their warnings… while the sweet flutes of the Whistlers become shrill trumpets sounding out their alarm far into the next field and forest.   And so it is that we find that even Nature divides itself between Good and Evil.   

 

33    The difference between our Spiritual Realm and the Morning Meadow is that, as a rule, in our Spirituality the Low Vibes can’t intrude upon the Higher.  Low is low and high is high.  But, well, I can think of one exception.  Often enough when first going Out of Body, you know, when Astrally Projecting, our starting point is at ‘base material’ and we have yet to rise up to our natural spiritual altitude, so then we might find ourselves starting from a twilight darkness and meet up with some surly wise-guy low-life earth spirits who can be quite rude.  But typically you only need to pay them no mind and gather your self and then your vibrations will automatically step up and you’ll notice that your ambient scene brightens, the colors intensify, and then if there is anything left of the “Wise Guys”, if they are at all able to follow you up into your Spiritual Light of Day, well, their manners will undergo distinct improvements.   

 

34    This brings us to the discussion of what Hell must really be like.  The predatory souls would have to be contained in something like a Metaphysical Jungle which could only be a ‘Paradise’ for the most powerful and dominant of Predators, right?   In Hell only the most imposing and intimidating can have any margin for ease or comfort.   But, yes, from our Cultural Mythologies and Religious Legends we hear that there must be some Chief of Hell, a Satan, a Lucifer, some Lion King; not because of any special Dispensation from God… No!  God would never give Satan the reward of a Throne for being some Paragon of Evil… that would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it?  So, no, it would be by Satan’s own prowess, abilities and cunning, in a realm totally cut off from God, whereby he could come to capture control of the Crown of Hell.  Then of course it would follow that Satan would make existence a “living Hell” for every other less endowed Predator, and justice would then follow in that they’d all finally be served the same way they served us. 

 

35   But what about Satan? Is the Devil himself to go without torment?  Well, again, as mentioned before, it’s Evil’s Nature to Rebel even against Itself.   Just as we have Extremists, Radicals, Anarchists, Terrorists, and Rioters here among us now, shouldn’t we expect the same kind of Revolutions in Hell –  Evil demanding the Government it deserves – where the Envious Weaklings and the Grasping Powerful and all the fractious factions in between would attack each other and grind each other down, all while trying to impose their Will upon the Others by installing their own Leader that would serve only themselves, you know, like the way it works in Democracy.   Really, maybe “Satan” might not even be an Individual after all but a … Title or an Office that the Demons continuously fight over, you know, the same way we fight over who’s President.  And what President hasn’t been tormented and at times wished his Job on the Devil?  So, yes, Satan is tormented too.  

 

36    Okay, so where does that get us?  The Angels just gave me the info but didn’t tell me what to think about it.  But, yes, if left up to me I’d say we need to respect each other’s Humanity, and live at Peace under the Authority of a Civilization made Holy by its Social Moral Ideals.  And then that would create a Unity strong enough to repel any Host of Predators that could threaten us.   And then whatever Red Sins we pick up from taking Life too seriously, well, they would soon be processed through and left behind, and we’d find ourselves once again at that Train Station, this time with those Swing Doors open and unblocked, so we could finally catch that Express Ride to Paradise.  

 

Thanks everybody, that’s it. I appreciate you all stopping by.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Material Mechanics of Spirituality

 

Hi Everybody.  This is Leo Volont with Part One of my four  Part Series “The Material Mechanics of Spirituality”.  

(1)I was re-reading that Classic on Spirituality, “Varieties of Religious Experience”, by William James (1842-1910), who had been a Harvard Professor at the turn of the 20^th Century.  The Book represents the first and the last time that Science has carefully looked at Religious Spiritual Phenomena.   I developed a few new insights and would like to share them with you. 

 

(2)Firstly, let’s understand what kind of experiences we’ll be talking about here.  

full blown Mystical Experiences including:     Enlightenment   God-Realization   Transcendental  One-with-All-Things kind of things      Kundalini Awakening   Satori   Nirvana    Samadhi   you might even say Psychotic .

So, yeah, that’s what we’re going to be talking about.   But I already know that some people will feel left out.  In both the Traditional Religious and the New Age Communities, we have, depending on how you want to say it,  “True Believers or Born Againers with Faith”  AND , on the New Age side, “those who feel that Enlightenment is an Attitude or just being in compliance with the New Age consensus on what they wish were True”.  Well, that’s not what we’re going to be talking about here.  Yes, if I were to take on a Blog such as that, well, I think I would first have to do a Public Survey asking the question “Do you believe there is a difference between Being a Thing and Claiming to Be a Thing?”, and see what kind of answers I’d get back from the Christian and New Age Communities. 

 

(3)We may think of these Real Deal Enlightenment experiences as being entirely Religious or Spiritual, but well, that’s not exactly their functional purpose according to James.  The inner psychological intent for so effectively impacting and changing the Personality is that the Body’s own Innate Wisdom fears that if left to follow its present course that the Body would die because of it.  So this sense of impending danger triggers some Survival Mechanism that stops any further destructive forward momentum.  Of course, we need to keep in mind two things, first, that our Innate Wisdom is more generally an Animal instinctual intelligence than Higher Human, and, secondly, that Human Beings evolved to live in Groups.  So our Innate Wisdom would consider Life and Death issues to be both threats to the person as well as serious threats to one’s social standing.   Yes, keep in mind that in Primitive times to be banished from the Group would have been tantamount to a death sentence.  I suppose that’s the reason why people can seem so “disproportionately” distraught if all that happens is that they’re not invited to some party.  Social “slights” really aren’t that slight…not that I’m complaining.    

 

(4)What the Survival Mechanism does is it triggers the secretion of a very large dose of some kind of neurochemical cocktail, which is probably heavy on Dopamine, the Happiness Hormone.  Well, THAT causes a complete “nervous breakdown” which effectively washes away the dysfunctional personality; and of course that must be followed by a rebuild of the Personality intended to make it much better adapted for surviving in the given circumstances.  Here we need to keep in mind that Survival Adaptation can go in one of three ways:  one can change the Environment to make it more accommodating, or one can change one’s own cognitive appraisal to make the environment SEEM more subjectively acceptable, or one can simply leave and find a more hospitable Environment somewhere else.  Yes, it’s either Fix It, beFriend It, or Flee from it.    

 

(5)So, yeah, when we do encounter people in the aftermath of their “Breakdowns”, we might prime ourselves to expect that they might react in any combination of those three ways.  The “Fixing it” option will present us with an energized Personality confident in his or her own ability to control people and events, and while their actual performance may be hit and miss, you can at least rely upon them to stay on the job because it’s kind of a hardwired obsession with them now. And it isn’t about money with these people, unless of course it’s money they’re focusing on.  But generally, if they obsess about some legitimate ‘calling’, they’re the sort that will accomplish a lot and still die broke, investing, investing, investing out of their own pockets and never thinking to cash out for the Pay Day.  The best model for this Adaptation Pattern, that I can think of, is Madame Blavatsky (1831-1891), the dynamic powerhouse that got the New Age Movement going, and the narrative quality of her writings have yet to be surpassed… you know, I honestly don’t know how they can sell ‘new’ New Age Books when you can get Madame Blavatsky’s practically for free since they are all in the Public Domain now.   But, yeah, when she died, with projects she developed going on on 3 Continents, well, they were hard pressed to find the money to bury her.          

 

(6)Those who Adapt by Fleeing the scene will  run away and you might never see them again.  But those who go the Way of the Cognitive Shift, well, the only thing that changes is their minds.  Their original dysfunction could’ve been with their inability to accept the ways of Society, or they never felt as though they belonged.  But the Cognitive Shift turns all that around. If you think that a “leopard can’t change their spots”, well, these Leopards are Cats of a different stripe.  The New Personality won’t think the Old Situation and even their Old Enemies quite so bad anymore and will probably even positively like everything and everybody now.  No, they’re not pretending.  Even if they still don’t fit in, they’ll no longer pick up on rejection cues the way they did before, and it’ll be even harder to make them go away.  It might be like you gotta friend whether you want one or not and, and since they seem so harmless now, well, most people will do as much boundary setting as they can and live with it.  Yes, their new cognitive shift “Rose Colored Glasses” will turn this old thorn patch into a Rose Garden, and they’ll be looking at us all like we’re all dressed in lace and silver buckles, being pushed on tree swings, up against a back drop of blue skies and fluffy white clouds, with ribbons rapped in our hair flapping in the breeze. Yeah, it’s crazy, because that’s clearly not who we are, or it’s Unconditional Love being taken to an uncomfortably irrational extreme, but it’s better than what they were before, right?  Yeah, getting past our own feelings and thinking empathetically towards them, we can only wonder at the depths of the depression and despair that had previously enveloped them and be glad for their new found happiness, keeping in mind that our own annoyance with their super sweet cloyingness is trivial by comparison. But also we need to keep in mind that their Delusionality and lack of True Discernment should prevent us from ever entrusting them with any real responsibilities; you know, Put them on the Decorations Committee.  Yeah, it does seem paradoxical but their being “Enlightened” may block them from seeing how the Real World works.   

Well, that’s it for Part One and now on to Part Two of our Series.

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Hi Everybody, This is Leo Volont with part Two of my four part series “The Material Mechanics of Spirituality”

(7) In Part One we introduced the idea of seeing the Spiritual Enlightenment Experience more in the worldly terms of being like a One-Two Combination Punch of Breakdown followed by Adaptive Rebuild, and we focused largely on the Adaptive Determiners and the three main Orientations for Adaptive Response… you remember: ‘The Three F’s”: Fix It, Befriend it, or Flee from it.  But now let’s take a closer look at the initial Breakdown experience.  Of course, high-minded hard-core Spiritualists might have a problem with the starkly materialistic terminology we’re using.  Well, remember that when William James, the Harvard Psychologist, uses the word “breakdown”, well, that’s him insisting on using his own clinical jargon, his “Shop Talk”, and, yeah, it’s not the word we would’ve used.  We would’ve wanted to say ‘Meaning of Life Crisis’ or something like that.   But the word “Breakdown” does fit the Bio-Psycho Model we are discussing so let’s not waste time trying to think up a euphemism just to smooth down our ruffled feathers.  Let’s just lean into it and get used to the word “breakdown”. 

 

(8)Yeah, we hear of people having “nervous breakdowns” but most of what we personally know about these ‘breakdowns’ probably isn’t all that much, and might just be limited to the events that lead up to the breakdowns, that is, the extreme crisis plot line that precipitates the Breakdown and not the Breakdown Experience itself.  If we do hear of anything about the actual Breakdown Phase, well, obviously they are very cathartic and we hear of these people being described as going into fetal positions and sucking on their thumbs, or whatever, and we think, well, that’s not OUR Spirituality, where we would imagine ourselves attaining Enlightenment in a dignified ramrod-straight Lotus Position with our fingers twisted into exactly the precisely correct ‘enlightenment’ mudras and intoning Om the whole time.   But keep in mind that those broken down “Normal People” may not actually feel all that broken or all that ‘down’.  In the same way as a ‘good cry’ might actually feel good, well, a tremendously profound “cry” might feel all that much better, right?  Probably shot through with Dopamine, right?   And then remember what happens to us during our blissfully ecstatic rapturous experiences, you know, with drugs or whatever, and, yes, our rigorous sense of decorum might also take a slip towards the Wild Side and we’d probably also be sprawled on the floor in a fetal position with our thumbs stuck in our mouths.  It wouldn’t be that much fun if we weren’t, right?  

 

I can think of an example.  Do a search for Bernini’s “The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa” and look where the arrow’s pointing.  Look how she’s slumped.  Look at her  Face.  Peggy Wren, a beautiful Blond Girl, an older student who mentored me back in College, well, when I told her I was getting into Spirituality she showed me an Art Book Quality Photo of a Painting based on Bernini’s Sculpture and said “Yeah, Go For It! Looks like fun to me.”  I suppose she was making the point that I should remain grounded and not Idealize the process, whatever it would turn out to be.  And I never knew Peggy to be wrong about anything.  So, yes, Normal People and Spiritual People are the same People, aren’t they?   And so are the Experiences we have. They just go by different names, depending on whether you’re an Insider or an Outsider.   

 

(9)Oh, we also see these Breakdowns for apparently other reasons than that the person is living a dangerously unhealthy lifestyle or having a disastrously abysmal social life.  It might just be the product of severe depression, mental conflicts, thoughts of guilt or shame, or some, yeah, Meaning of Life crisis.  What I think is happening with these is that the body’s Innate Wisdom is sharp enough to discern when the Self is on the brink of suicide.  For instance, Leo Tolstoy (1828 - 1910) had such a transformative experience.  He had fallen into an almost debilitating depression, which they called ‘melancholia’ back then… and this was after he had finished his book “War and Peace” (published 1869).  Yeah, it’s understandable that there can be a sense of emptiness after achieving a much sought after goal, you know, the “what am I supposed to do now?” feeling.  But anyway, I think Tolstoy’s Innate Animal Wisdom stepped in before he could harm himself.

 

(10) Oh, by the way, for those who think that Enlightenment might make a difference with our objectively appraised performance levels, you know, actually BEING GOOD FOR SOMETHING, well, just refer to Leo Tolstoy where we have very good Before and After references: “War and Peace” for Before, and the novel “Anna Karenina” [An-uh Kr-i-nuh-nuh] (published 1878) for the After.  Yeah, some critics think that “Anna Karenina”  is the greatest novel ever written. 

 

(11)Oh, wait, before finishing up on this Part, we need to understand that James himself recognized that there were some “Religious Conversion” experiences that could not be accounted for using his Nervous Breakdown Model.  Well, that gives me an opening to bring up my favorite pet idea, the Collective Consciousness, and That brings to mind my favorite YouTube Kundalini mentor, “Susu Ro”, a beautiful young Spanish Woman, now working as an Artist, who had made, among her other videos, a short video a few years back, which she took down, and I’ve been unable to talk her into putting it back up, maybe because she can’t prove any of it, but it presented a beautifully intriguing idea that each individual on Earth is a Hologram of the World.  To understand that you need to understand how Holograms work, you know, that if you have a big Holographic Glass Plate that contains a picture and then smash it into thousands of pieces, well, each shard of that broken glass would contain the WHOLE COMPLETE ORIGINAL holographic image, but in miniature.  So in Susu’s Vision  we all have that Holographic relationship to the World, that each of us is a microcosm, in exact precise detail, of the Whole.  So, when we think it’s we ourselves who are becoming Enlightened, well, it’s actually the World becoming Enlightened – through us and all around us.

 

(12)So, yeah, THAT could account for the Spontaneous Instances of Enlightenment we hear about, that unless there’s a lot of Synchronicity going on, well, the personal details of one’s life may have nothing to do with becoming Enlightened, but rather that the effective impulse is a kind of Planetary Life Force Eruption and one just happened to be the one who got struck by its Lightening.  Really, we need to think about this, that our believing in our own Personal Destiny  may help us to get out of bed in the Mornings, but may ultimately be delusional and that the World, if it does have its own Consciousness, would consider its own far larger affairs to be almost infinitely more important than anything we’d have going on for ourselves, right?  That’s to say that our becoming Enlightened may not even be about us.   

 

Take the Enlightenment of Joan of Arc for instance.  Joan of Arc (1412-1431) lived during the Hundred Years War (1337-1453).  Impressed with her Mission from God, given to her at the age of 13 (and that’s too ‘early’ to be Early Adult Onset Schizophrenia), well, she effectively saved France and was instrumental in throwing Evil England off the “Continent” and therefore perhaps substantially changing the direction of Human History, saving us from the Devil, but for herself, she ended up being burned at the stake, which can hardly be considered much of a “Survival Mechanism”.  But then, being Burned may have been the most pivotal of her influential contributions, even after she had already set the King of France on his Throne.   You see, France, collectively outraged and priorly divided by Provincial Loyalties, now for the first time united as a Nation and did for martyred Joan’s memory what they wouldn’t do for their King.  They fought!  So, yes, this whole Episode was way bigger than just the angst of a Teenage Peasant Girl.  Now wouldn’t that lead us to believe that Holographic Mother Earth knew all along how this would all play out?      

 

Yes, that’s it for Part Two and now on to Part Three.  Thanks everybody.        

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Hi Everybody.  This is Leo Volont with part Three of my four  part series “The Material Mechanics of Spirituality”

 

(14)The term ‘Enlightenment’ seems to suggest a sense of fullness and completeness which is misleading in this context.  We should remind ourselves that James sees the “Conversion Personalities” as simply being ‘emergency constructs’ and that they’re always simplistic cartoonish caricatures and done in hard outlines.  This is why James recommends NOT being Enlightened because it robs us of our subtlety, deadens our sense for nuance, and would shipwreck us if we should try to navigation through Life’s deep fathoms of Complexities while having made ourselves fit only to be shallow.   Ironically, no Intellectual should ever be “enlightened”.  

 

(15)Yes, in the section of James’ “Varieties…” that discusses Saint Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) we learn that emissaries from the Vatican, rather than locking her up, decided that despite her innovative changes to the traditional Monastic Rules she was actually in full compliance with basic Church doctrine.   And so Teresa was so grateful to her Inquisitors, for their reasonableness, that she offered to take them under her personal tutelage so they could also attain to Mystical Union with God.  Well, they didn’t need more than a moment to contemplate her offer.  They instantly replied “No thank you. God can wait until we’re dead but until then we have our jobs to do.”  I think what they meant was that they needed to stay sharp.  And remember, this wasn’t their first rodeo and she wasn’t the first Saint they ever met. We need to assume that they knew what they were looking at and didn’t want to find themselves in a position where some day they’d be looking at the same thing looking back at them from the mirror, probably with some silly “Enlightened” smirk on their face.    

 

(16)But while the Personality Reconstructions may all be simplistic, that doesn’t mean they’re all the Same, and James’ “Varieties” pops the bubble of delusion that maintains that ‘All Religions Are Basically the Same’.  They’re not.   You see, the Mind’s Randominity admits to no uniformity and so the Restructuring Personality will Rebuild to form the best fit to any troublesome and unique Life Situation.  If there is ever any Uniformity, it must be imposed using strict controls.   Manifestations of Personality Recrystallizations  can cover a frightful range of bizarre Beliefs.   On the evil extreme, both Military and Criminal Organizations use the Breakdown and Buildup Model, probably straight out of James, to train Special Forces, Spies and Assassins.  The first “assassins” were from some crazed Sufi Religious Order that covered its expenses by hiring out very competent and very expendable assassins who went joyfully on their suicide missions expecting to wake up in Paradise.    Then there are the Martial Arts that pretend to be Spiritualized but aren’t they just the Idealization of Belligerent Machismo?  It’s the Rebuild Response of those who grew up dysfunctionally unable to fit into normal peer status hierarchies and therefore saw everybody as “Bullies” (“ohlook!theBullieskeeppickingonmesoI’m thekaratikid”) and so they reoriented their lives making Reactive Violence their Religion.  

 

(17)Yes, for training programs based on the Breakdown Rebuild Model of Personality Restructuring,  the Rebuild Phase must be strictly controlled.   But what about spontaneous breakdowns, you know, if it should happen to you or I while living our ordinary lives outside of any kind of cognitive structuring?   Well, the results could end up being really strange.  The way I would imagine it working is that during the Meltdown Phase the sense of “normal” would go into reset and all the old rules and safeguards would go into flux or hang in suspension.   Then as a new ‘Better Adjusted’ personality crystalizes, well, I think it would be a very delicate time where even just passing thoughts and impressions could be imprinted with the weight of Divine Imperatives.  

 

(18)One example in “Varieties” illustrates this point well: a young man had just emerged from his Breakdown State of Bliss and he was regaining the use of his faculties and so he reached for his pack of cigarettes and lit one up when his sister barked  “I thought I told you to quit that nasty habit”, and so that’s what he immediately did… never touching another cigarette for the rest of his life, which, of course, we’d think is a good thing, but it seemed insanely disproportionate that he spent as much time then onwards in preaching against tobacco as for the Kingdom of God.  Imagine what might have happened if he had scratched himself instead of reaching for a Smoke! Those would have been some pretty interesting Sermons, huh?    

 

(19)I myself ran across an example of radically extreme bizarreness:  I saw a book being promoted and its title was “Screw Everything”, but the author used the F word.  Yes, the author tells a story of having had a complete nervous breakdown in the course of which he gets a Quasi-Divine Revelation.  This Vision would be the basis of his New World Order.  We would only have to sneer at whatever we had previously considered important, and then in all future actions be dismissive and not care in the least whether we meet our objectives or not.  Then Utopia would automatically roll out before us, shining in all its splendor and glory, which of course we shouldn’t care a Fig about, as, yeah, I think this is from his stupid book:  “Caring is just Worrying wearing a Pretty Lace Veil”.  Really!?   But, yes, it’s easy to see the footprints of his own personal Innate Wisdom in all that.  His new disdainfully amoral Personal Ethos absolves him of all responsibilities, relieves him of performance anxieties and makes a virtue of his naturally sour and hateful disposition.  Yeah, let me write a book.  I’ll call it “Screw Him!” but I’ll use the F word.   

 

(20)But, anyway, many of us in the Spiritual Community have been zealously striving for Enlightenment for years or even decades.  We’ve been Meditating, doing Yoga, intoning Mantras or being Devoted to whatever the last book we read said we needed to be Devoted to.  We’ve been chasing Gurus, signing up for Seminars, using our precious Vacation Time to go on Pilgrimages to foreign 3^rd World hell holes, and following really stupid dress codes. And for What!?   We find out what really works best is just to go into a spinning nose dive and hitting ‘Rock Bottom’!?  Learning that Enlightenment isn’t some Noble Quest after all but just some visceral response to really rotten luck!?  …… Yeap, that’s about the size of it.  Unfortunately, if we can cope with our life situations, then Enlightenment is not only unnecessary but functionally unattainable.  

 

(21)The real qualifier for Enlightenment is to FAIL, and to fail BIG.  Yes, the Books talk of finding Enlightenment by RENOUNCING the World.   Well, first, we need to understand that if it’s a ‘Guru’ telling you to ‘renounce the World’, well, generally the Guru wants to be the recipient of all your renounced goods, and then with nothing of your own left to live on, well then your last refuge would be the Guru’s Cult, right?   All very convenient for the Guru, isn’t it?   He’ll be saying “Caught That Fish”.  But if it’s a Book telling you to Renounce the World, well, yeah, that would really work, wouldn’t it?  But not the way we’d intuitively think.  Renouncing the World is effectively Planning to Fail and inviting the Crisis that will precipitate our Breakdown.   Think about it for a moment:  you quit your job, ditch your smart phone, give away all your money, change your name and walk away from all the friends and family that could save you from yourself, and, then, where would you find yourself?  Well, you can’t get any more “rock bottom” than that, can you?  First one’s health would go into decline because of malnutrition and the stresses of homelessness, and then the psychological snap! would soon follow.

 

(22) But, then  remember the Adaptive Second Step to the Enlightenment Experience.  These Enlightened Individuals, the Followers of the Path of Renunciation, well, if the Pre-Breakdown Crisis doesn’t kill them, then they rise up and become, for the sake of survival and as an exact and precise adaptive response,  well, they become quintessentially the most skilled and adept Beggars on the face of the Earth.  Just look at India… at the most acclaimed Super Star Gurus.  Aren’t they just Super Specialized World Class Major League Beggars?  Yeah, instead of bowing at their feet we should just toss a dollar on the floor and say “Hey Swami, how ‘bout a little Song and Dance”.  That’s basically what we get from them anyway, right?   

 

Well, that’s it for Part Three.  Now on to the final Part… Part Four.    Thanks everybody.  See ya later. 

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Hi Everybody.  This is Leo Volont with Part Four, the final part, of my series “The Material Mechanics of Spirituality” 

 

(23) When I first read James’ “Varieties of Religious Experience” back in College, well, the materialistic analysis of the schema stunned me. It probably took me decades to thoroughly work through the denial and digest what I’d read.   I suppose one of my first insights in this regards occurred to me when I came across a Buddhist Monastery in the Far East during my earliest stint of World Travels.  I found that in the whole establishment there wasn’t a single monk who had himself voluntarily enrolled into the Monastery.  They had all been there since infancy, having either been left on the doorstep in a basket or been endowed for life and then walked away from.  You see, they were largely illegitimate children born to girls who had committed youthful indiscretions, and if the resultant babies could be taken off their hands then perhaps they could once again pass for virgins, marry, and enjoy a normal life.  But, anyway, essentially these Monasteries were, in functional terms, warehouses for people who had no place in the larger society.  

 

(24)But, yes,  I had read of both Monastic Traditions in Catholic Europe and Monastic Traditions in Asia, where it really had seemed that the pursuit of Religious Enlightenment had been the point of it all.  Was there along the line some change in Mission or a reordering of Purpose? Or are both aspects true in their separate contexts?  Well, yes, I suppose we need to take a closer look.    

 

(25)Okay, first, how do you even run a Monastery?   Even if some of the children are dropped off with endowments, we could expect most to depend upon charity.  Food, clothing and firewood would always come at a cost.   Also, we must wonder about the convenience of the Caregivers.  Yes, children would be easy enough to manage, because if they misbehaved they could literally be handled.  But what about regulating the behaviors of the adults?   Remember that these Monks are not just orphans as children, but orphans for life.   So, no, they couldn’t be allowed to grow into adults full of self will, with their own opinions on how to run everything, arguing, talking back, and even bursting out into angry violent fits of rage in reaction to their lives of tedium, privation and endless frustrations. No!...that kinda stuff’s not permitted.   

 

(26)So the whole system would be impossible if a way couldn’t be found to contain and pacify these inmates.  Remember that back in Ancient Times they didn’t even have Jails or Prisons because of the prohibitive expense of supplying food and maintaining guards.  So they simply killed criminals.  But surely the Ancient World would  draw the line at killing babies, right?  Well, let’s look at it.  We read of “nose pinching” babies that don’t pass their initial Health and Heartiness Inspections and that some cultures would put off birth registration ceremonies  until the seventh day in order to determine whether or not the infants qualified as “keepers”… but what happens to the Non-Keepers, right?   So, yes, the Ancient World was NOT above killing babies.  So these Monastic Babies we’re talking about, being allowed to live and grow to be Adults, well, what made them so different that the Cruel Hard Cold Heart of the Ancient World softened for them?  Well, the way I figured it is the compromised but still beloved Daughters of Good Families would have been outraged if their “babies” had been snuffed out by those “nose-pinches”.  I imagine that these Young Girls would only agree to return to Virtue and play their parts in reflecting well upon the Honor of their Families if their Babies were given a respectable place somewhere in Society, and Religiously oriented Monasteries would fit that bill perfectly, and from that there developed the Religious Monastic Ascetic Ideal.

 

(27)Now think about how convenient the Ascetic part of the Religious Monastic Ascetic Ideal is for the Monastery’s Management. First we have the Vows of Poverty.  Well, poverty’s easily arranged.  Then in regards to boarding, the food budget would be easier to handle if Vegetarianism and periodic Fasting became the norms.  To cover for self will, arguing and talking back, well, there we have the Vows of Obedience and Humility.  Many Religious Orders had Vows of Silence, which is effectively “Shut Up! We don’t wanna hear it”.  Finally we have the Vows of Celibacy.  Of course they couldn’t be allowed to reproduce.  But they needed to be given some excuse to cover for their inevitable sexual frustrations, and so they literally made a Virtue of Necessity.     

 

(28)Now, let’s think about these “Ideals” for a moment.  Imagine if any one of us were to be put into a situation like that, subjected to rules that seemed designed to make our lives utterly miserable, well, how do you think we would cope?  Well, most likely we wouldn’t.  The body’s autonomic nervous system would be dysfunctional if it didn’t click in to provide some kind of an accommodation to make a hell-hole like the typical Monastery seem in some way bearable.  And so, of course, these places are the Source of all of our classically described Religious Spiritual Realizations, our Enlightenments, our Nirvanas and Satori’s.  Monasteries were the Nervous Breakdown Capitals of World.  That they weren’t just veritable Insane Asylums manufacturing their own Insanity is attributable to the care they took to structure the adaptive rebuilds around a respectably ideal Religious Model.   

 

(29) In these Monasteries Religion permeates everything and no other cognitive distractions are permitted.   Prayers are scheduled morning, noon, and night and there are Chapel Services several times a day.  Religious Iconography is all over the place.  So of course when they finally ‘Melt Down’ they’ll naturally pour themselves into the Religious Molds that sit waiting for them.  Yes, in reading of these Saints we are expected to suppose that they were speaking and writing from Divine Revelation, but now we find it much more likely that they only ‘reveal’ what had been echoing in their ears since childhood. 

 

(30)Yes, this Medieval Monastic Model explains a lot.  Decades ago I read a book about Zen Buddhism by D.T. Suzuki (1870 to 1966), and he was talking about a Zen Buddhist Conference that had recently been held in Japan, a big one that convenes only once every Generation, and he remarked that everybody was collectively embarrassed to find that nobody attained Satori Enlightenment this time around.  So, yeah, he wondered what went wrong.  Well, duh! These are modern times and Japan was becoming prosperous with a high standard of living.  There were no longer any Monastic Warehouses with their pressurized Privations and Miseries to react to.   So of course nobody at that swanky resort conference could be expected to have some quasi-spiritual  “nervous breakdown”.  The kind of Satori Experience they wanted could only be accessed through a bio-psychological  Escape Hatch.  And Optimistically forward looking Japan, tracing its upward arc to having the highest standard of living in the World, well, that was Not the Kinda Place anybody would want to escape from…well, not unless they were a live fish flopping around on a table in a Sushi Restaurant. 

 

(31)So, yes, when the Status Quo of Normal Life is already like sailing on pallid blue waters, then isn’t an Obsessive Goal Oriented Spirituality only making waves and rocking the boat?   So shouldn’t we all just focus on learning to cope well with Life and just be Happy.  But if things ever do go sour, well, we can assume that Spirituality would automatically assert itself, wouldn’t it? Crisis and Breakdown would be our Silver Linings around any significantly Dark Cloud, right?

 

 (32)But, yes, as a kind of an Insurance Plan it probably would be wise to recommend that we educate ourselves  in the Social Moral and Aesthetic Ideals in order to give one’s self the proper Cognitive Foundation so that if Crisis ever did Strike and we were to be broken down and reduced to Enlightenment, well, our Adaptive Response would turn out to be a commendable one and not just either some bazaar transcendental nihilistic dress code fashion embarrassment or some Idealization of Reactive Hate.             Maybe Our Ideal should be to make each other happy by making our World a better place to live in.

 

Well, that’s it for the Series.  Thanks everybody. If I can think of anything else, I’ll let you all know. Bye!