Lumin Beings & Loony Moonbats

New policy: Saturdays will feature an edited post from two years previous. No post on Sundays. Policy may change at any time without my noticing.

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In certain ways, it's very simple: you become like that to which you look up. This is one of the bases of normal human development. As children, we require models to imitate, identify with, and internalize. My son, who is three years-old, already mimics and/or mocks everything I do. Yesterday I told him to stop playing in the garbage in the kitchen. He looks at me and calmly says, get a grip, Daddy.

This "mimesis" is fundamental to being human, and it doesn't stop in early childhood. It emerges again quite powerfully in adolescence, during which there a deep hunger for models -- which often end up being bad ones by default -- to imitate. You'll likely see it again in your professional life, as you try to define your own approach to your craft or profession. At first the model will seem exterior, but eventually, through an osmotic psychic process that isn't entirely clear, we "become" the model from the inside. We no longer require the external support.

It is just so with the spiritual life. Anonymous Friend writes that one venerates (i.e., loves and respects) "a non-incarnated being -- a departed person, a saint, or a hierarchical being -- in a disinterested manner. Your veneration -- which includes love, respect, gratitude, the desire to conform, etc. -- cannot fail to create an invisible link of sympathy with its object," as like calls out to like.

He continues: "It may be in a subtle and dramatic way, or rather in a slow, gradual and almost imperceptible way -- this does not matter -- the day will come when you will experience the presence... not a fluidic, semi-electrical presence close to you in space -- as in the apparition of a phantom or ghost -- but the breath of radiant serenity, of which you know with certain knowledge that the source from which it emanates is not at all in you. It influences and fills you but it does not take its origin in you; it comes from outside of you.

"Just as you know, in drawing near to a fireplace, that the warmth that you feel does not arise from you but rather from the fireplace, so also do you feel that the breath of serenity in question is due to an objective presence."

Once such a relationship is established, "it is up to you to remain silently concentrated so that the relationship established is subsequently developed, i.e., that it gains in intensity and clarity -- that it becomes a meeting in full consciousness." (My vibrant relationship with Anonymous Friend is a fine example of what he's talking about.)

It is largely because of our postmodern materialism and cynicism that we no longer seem to appreciate a process that is quite natural and must have felt obvious to generations past. In other words, something unnatural and inhuman has to be superimposed over this process in order for us to deny or be unaware of its operation.

Perhaps it is also because the process requires a certain childlike trust and unguarded spontaneity -- the very same way the little boy expectantly looks up to his father. We begin with a “feeling response” that is actually of greater significance than the literal truth or falsehood of the teacher’s claims.

Rather, a sort of “chemistry” or “resonance” must first be established -- which is actually very similar to psychotherapy. It is as if one must first be capable of recognizing someone who speaks “from truth” before we can discuss this or that particular truth. You might say that the true spiritual "medium" is the message. In fact, for many people with a "bhakti" temperament, this devotion is all they require.

If we try to identify with this source before honoring it as greater than ourselves, we will simply build a new addition to our ego. This is the esoteric meaning of "honor your father and mother." The ego can either orient itself around its true parent or pledge its loyalty to the "father of lies."

Throughout this process is the dual mystery of word and incarnation. In every case of identification and eventual internalization, it is as if an external seed is planted in the fertile ground of the soul, eventually taking root there and blossoming on its own. Then it is capable of producing its own seed. Sonflowering seeds. It is a very organic process. But the garden must be regularly watered, weeded, and harvested. Or, topped and smoked.

We are all looking for our fixed "star" to guide us -- that which we may follow without reserve. This star does not necessarily have to take human form, but it can be a big help. The star is your future Self, calling you to join it.

In life, we can become so lost that we seem to lose our orbit, like a planet that is too far away and begins to drift off aimlessly into space. Secular leftism is an entire philosophy that elevates the drifting planet to a virtue. Gaia replaces the sun, which, ironically, makes secularism the most vain and self-centered of all philosophies.

But it is also an infra-human philosophy, for man was made to revolve around the spiritual sun, just as a boy was made to revolve around his terrestrial father, who should be a reflection of the celestial light. Take away the light and warmth of the sun, and we live in a cold, dead universe: a culture of death is its natural consequence and intellectual blandmaiden.

Have you ever seen the sun shining at midnight? Even when all else is dark, in the middle of the night, you can see the light of the sun reflecting off of the moon. Who is the moon? The moon has always been conceptualized in feminine ways -- after all "moon" and "menses" are etymologically related. Wisdom is sophia or Mary, and true wisdom is always reflected from a greater source.

The moon is not the sun, and we are not God. But we can become receptacles or "luminaries," that is, lumin beings who ride the wild soph on waves of divine light. Or we may become glittering moonbats, those dim bulbs who form a circle and flick their Bics to look for the sun.