Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Inspiracy and Conspiration on the Left

We never got to item four on yesterday's agenda, Is an atheist New Ager who meditates and claims to be enlightened accessing the same O->(n), or is there a dark side to this practice?

Two words: Deepak. Chopra.

First of all, I would be extremely skeptical of anyone who "claims to be enlightened" (let alone someone who sells enlightenment), because such claims are rarely made by the enlightened. Saints don't declare their sanctity. If anything, the opposite: they are most aware of their sinfulness.

Even Jesus didn't say, "hey, look at me, I'm enlightened! Buy my book!" Rather, when it is genuine, "enlightenment" is something that is witnessed and testified to by others. And it awakens and resonates with something spiritually healthy in the witness.

In this regard it is a matter of discerning spirits. By definition there is no objective way to discern a spirit, being that spirits are not objects. Nevertheless, there are ways.

For example, Jesus advises us to "Beware of false prophets" deusguised "in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves." (This recalls Churchill's characterization of Nazis as "carnivorous sheep.")

So, how do we tell the difference? "By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?" My Bible has a cross reference to Jeremiah 23:16, where it says that these false prophets "speak a vision of their own heart, not from the mouth of the Lord."

In Spitzer's Finding True Happiness there is a whole section on Discernment of Spirits. It is appropriately contained in the chapter on Divine Inspiration and Guidance, because if there is divine inspiration, then surely there is sub- or anti-divine inspiration.

What really inspires the Islamists, for example? There is no question that they are inspired, and that this inspiration gives them the strength of will to engage in "superhuman" (antihuman) feats.

This is one reason why Obama's inability to name that which inspires them is so diabolical. By failing to say what in-spires them (or what they are in-spiring from below), it is as if he is con-spiring with them -- or with the spirit that animates them. Which he surely is, for those with eyes to see.

The question is, why does the left protect and embrace an ideology that runs directly counter to so many of its sacred cowpies, including homosexuality? It must mean that the spirit that unifies the two -- Islamism and Leftism -- is coming from a much deeper source than mere surface differences. To con-spire is to "breathe with," and both Islam and the left are definitely inhaling.

This would explain how the left could oppose Hitler one day, only to embrace him the next with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. For a normal person this would cause intolerable cognitive dissonance if not ontological whiplash. But spirit is very fluid, easily dissolving such contradictions. There is a logic involved, but it is more like dream logic than the wideawakey version.

Life is hard enough. It's harder when you're stupid, but perhaps it becomes easier if you combine stupid with evil, because then the stupid doesn't burn as much -- or at least you have lots of support in your culpable stupidity.

In ten or eleven Muslim countries homosexuality is punishable by death. You can ask for gays and Muslims to unite there, but only one side will come out standing.

Here are some additional contradictions on the left which the unholy spirit helps to smooth over:

"Biological sexual differentiation must yield to voluntary gender identity," and yet, homosexuality is genetically determined; "the demonstrable failure of socialism wherever it has been tried is proof that it has not been properly implemented"; "democratic Israel is an apartheid state"; "Islam with its record of unstinting bloodshed is a religion of peace"; "a child in the womb is a mass of insensible protoplasm" (unless the mother decides otherwise); "there is no such thing as truth, an axiom regarded as true"; etc.

I say, resolving such stark contradictions is an infrahuman task that requires assistance from below.

That was an unintended snidetrip. Back to the question at hand, which is a little more subtle than it is on the pneuma-political plane (where it would be comic if it weren't so tragic), since the phenomena will generally be more of a mixed bag, a combination of good and evil, light and shadow, instead of unalloyed evil (being that there is no one good but the One).

But we're out of time, so, to be continued...

29 comments:

Gagdad Bob said...

More on wolves & sheep.

Gagdad Bob said...

From today's Best of the Web: the New York Times’s "dishonesty is doubly despicable. The paper falsely blames its political adversaries for a grievous crime that was ideologically motivated, while furthering the official lie that the killer’s ideology amounts to nothing more than 'crazy notions."

I say you can't invert reality like that without assistance from the Evil One.

ted said...

It's amazing that anytime I mention the root issues with Islam that cultivate these violent acts, some liberal friend will throw in the harm the Christians did with the Crusades.

[my head just shakes back and forth]

Gagdad Bob said...

Very hard to explain such inverted thought without reference to demonic influences. It's like what Churchill said about Lenin and Trotsky: they proved the existence of God, because a hell was needed to house them.

julie said...

As to the question, seems like Chopra is as good an answer as any.

Re. the Christian blaming, I've even seen Christians doing it. Because not supporting gay marriage is exactly the same as wholesale slaughter. By that rationale, disapproving of a teenage daughter's boyfriend is exactly the same as honor killing.

Gagdad Bob said...

What I don't get is how the entire left can instantaneously spew the identical memes. It must be governed by some nonlocal force that travels faster than the speed of light. I am skeptical of rational explanations -- as if it is all being coordinated by the DNC or New York Times.

mushroom said...

By failing to say what in-spires them (or what they are in-spiring from below), it is as if he is con-spiring with them ...

Without getting in the politics of it, this is kind of what initially pushed me back in the direction of Christianity, e.g., Screwtape. There's something out there that gets in the minds of people and takes over. The problem with crazy conspiracy theories is they are not crazy enough. I have no sympathy for the devil.

mushroom said...

Howard Stern for president.

ted said...

Baba Booey to you mushroom :). Actually, Howard's informally endorsing Clinton on this run.

Van Harvey said...

Gagdad said "It must be governed by some nonlocal force that travels faster than the speed of light."

Oh, I don't know, the liar knows what they're lying about, the defamer knows who they're defaming, and the Left recognize the doppelganger they've created as the designated inversion of the Lightful subjects place.

The Left knows that they are promoting the islambies in order to defame & destroy the West, so the designated target can always be found in that inner inverted mirror.

If someone comes out with evidence that their doppelganger murdered people, obviously job #1 is to show them how it was actually the West that was to blame... and there are only so many ways of doing so in that instance.

Probably less nonlocal forces, than inverse spectral geometry. Not to deny the nonlocal forces, but I'd bet Ocam's razor, and laziness, applies in the dark too.

Roy Lofquist said...

"It must be governed by some nonlocal force that travels faster than the speed of light."

Quite simple really. Quantum entanglement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement if your interested. I highly recommend that you not follow the link.

The cult of the left has a catechism. Any deviation whatsoever will result in public shaming and banishment. The catechism changes without notice from day to day. If you want to be in the cult you have to be constantly aware of today's version. Thus, the leaders of the cult don't have to send out messages to the acolytes. They say it in public and the acolytes are watching.

For more insight read "The True Believer" by Eric Hoffer.

Bob has posted a quote by Eric Voegelin here in the comment entry section. This reference to Voegelin by Russell Kirk is, I think, quite relevant to we Raccoons.

"The great line of demarcation in modern politics, Eric Voegelin used to point out, is not a division between liberals on one side and totalitarians on the other. No, on one side of that line are all those men and women who fancy that the temporal order is the only order, and that material needs are their only needs, and that they may do as they like with the human patrimony. On the other side of that line are all those people who recognize an enduring moral order in the universe, a constant human nature, and high duties toward the order spiritual and the order temporal."

Gagdad Bob said...

Good call on the quantum entanglement. I was thinking the same thing. There's a section in volume 2 of Spitzer devoted to how it may explain how spirit and brain interact, so who's to say "negative spirit" doesn't use the same means?

Gagdad Bob said...

That's definitely a subject I'll be posting on, but not today, because my luck ran out and I have to report to court.

Roy Lofquist said...

Bob,

Could you post a link to the Spitzer book? That sounds very interesting.

It ties right in with my musings that the causation affected by the spiritual on the material is via the Quantum Enigma. In some interpretations the waveform collapses only if a sentient observer looks at it.

I arrived there coming from the direction of the origin of DNA and hadn't even gotten to the contemporary communication aspect.

horatio said...

Genetic interests are sufficient to explain the media unanimity.

Van Harvey said...

Laugh of the day: Massachusetts Attorney General, 'investigating' global warming crimes by big oil, sends Alex Epstein a subpoena to turn over his emails. Epstein sent the only proper response:

"Fuck off, fascist."

She's soOo gonna regret attempting to subpoena him.

Gagdad Bob said...

Roy: The Soul's Upward Yearning: Clues to Our Transcendent Nature from Experience and Reason.

Roy Lofquist said...

Thanks for the link, Bob.

@Van Harvey: Molon labe.

Van Harvey said...

On the non-local leftist hive mind, Van der Leun posted this snippet of a Marshall McLuhan 1977 Interview - Violence as a Quest for Identity on fb, that might be tangentially relevant:

"[McManus]Way back in the early fifties you predicted that the world was becoming a global Village.
[McLuhan]We are going back into the bicameral mind that is tribal, collective, without any individual consciousness.
[McManus]But, it seems, Dr. McLuhan, that this tribal world is not friendly.
[McLuhan]No, tribal people, one of their main kinds of sport is butchering each other. It is a full-time sport in tribal societies.
[McManus]But, I had some idea as we got global and tribal we were going to try to -
[McLuhan]The closer you get together, the more you like each other? There is no evidence of that in any situation that we have ever heard of. When people get close together, they get more and more savage and impatient with each other.
[McManus]Why is it? Is it because of the nature of man?
[McLuhan]His tolerance is tested in those narrow circumstances very much. Village people are not that much in love with each other. The global village is a place of a very arduous interfaces and very abrasive situations."

Van Harvey said...

... that one line, "We are going back into the bicameral mind that is tribal, collective, without any individual consciousness., banged the gong.

Roy Lofquist said...

@Van Harvey,

Already bookmarked the McLuhan interview in my important thoughts folder.

Allena-C said...

"First of all, I would be extremely skeptical of anyone who "claims to be enlightened" (let alone someone who sells enlightenment), because such claims are rarely made by the enlightened. Saints don't declare their sanctity. If anything, the opposite: they are most aware of their sinfulness.

Even Jesus didn't say, "hey, look at me, I'm enlightened! Buy my book!" Rather, when it is genuine, "enlightenment" is something that is witnessed and testified to by others. And it awakens and resonates with something spiritually healthy in the witness."

Those are excellent points. Reminds me of people who claim to be funny. If they were funny why do they need to tell everyone who will listen?
There may be some who claim some amazing abilities or talents that actually are amazing, and maybe there's a place for bragging, such as wrestling (well, WWE wrestling).
However, someone who brags that they are enlightened, simply isn't, else they wouldn't toot their own porn so much.

Allena-C said...

OK, this is off topic, maybe, but I thought the title of your post initially read: Inspiracy And Constipation On The Left.
On second thought, that works too. :)

Anonymous said...

This post is chock full of psychic panspermia!

Chris said...

".........Is there a dark side to this practice"

Undoubtedly, much of the so-called New Age is banal and vaccuous. And Deepak is certainly no great thinker, that's for sure. But his outspoken opposition to fundamaterialism is not entirely without value.

Bob, are you claiming that nontheistic spirituality is essentially invalid?

Gagdad Bob said...

What do you say?

Anonymous said...

Could Republicans be described any better?

Islamic fundamentalists support:
anti gay
denial of abortion and women's rights
Ideological purity (RINO?)
fundamental belief in religious texts
love guns (NRA)
hatred of the government
deny science (evolution, climate change, etc..)
attack education
hostile fear of progress, progressives
xenophobia (Trump!)
intolerance to dissent
run primarily by men
restrict healthcare and social programs

Gagdad Bob said...

It's commenters like this who give straw man arguments a bad name.

julie said...

A) If you're going to troll, at least have the balls to put it on a newer post so everyone can see.

B) If you had no choice but to live in a theocracy, which would you choose? The Christian one, or the Muslim one?

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