COVID was awful for so many reasons, but as someone who awoke from my slumber in the spring/summer of 2020, there is at least this benefit: more than 3 years of processing that the world I knew before was in many ways a lie. I think (hope?) that others who were awakened during this time have completed a similar journey from grief and despair to acceptance and the resolve to build something out of the wreckage. It feels like there's a lot of "build something" energy in 2024 - hopefully it lasts the year (and beyond)!
Perfectly said. We saw the true nature of our surroundings with absolute clarity for the first time. Jarring for sure, but illuminating and ultimately something to be grateful for.
We just took a walk in the woods for the new year and it was a manifestation of what you are talking about. Pops of brilliant color from cardinals fluttering from branch to branch (kingdom of God)... and then there was trash everywhere from lazy a___hole humans (parasitic, archon energy). It's hard to escape that duality these days.
I just read a Naomi Wolf quote this morning that might partly account for the unsettled feeling that so many of us have had for the last few years:
"Indeed, one of the reasons our current crisis feels so strange and disorienting to us humans, especially to us Western humans, is that it was in some ways modeled by machines and by programmers and may well have been continually modified via machine learning. We are not living through organic human history as it has unfolded in the past."
I’m not sure why you feel you’re more “gnostic” than Christian. Whether we call them Archons or Principalities is just semantics, and as you said you still find the gospel to be intrinsically true, but I only bring it up to say what your describing is deeply Christian in its view, albeit a much more medieval style than a lot of what we see today.
But good work, the powers that be are going to be cast into the pit.
I probably need to dig into medieval theology a lot more; I know I'm missing a great deal there. I agree that much of it is semantics, especially when it comes to the big picture of our present reality. There's an evil power that works through deception and manipulation, even going so far as to sometimes masquerade as the real God (or as the real God's angel), and who operates essentially as the "god" of this world, subverting its institutions and historical narratives, including religious ones. Somehow, the real God has intersected our world at various times and in various ways and left signs of that, in spite of the false god's attempts to eliminate or subvert those signs; when confronted with these signs, for some reason not everyone has eyes to see or ears to hear, but those who do can begin to recognize the difference between the real God and the counterfeit, and form a connection with the real God. I think the Gnostic account of creation resonates with me more than the traditional Christian view (i.e., that the world was created by a corrupt deity, rather than being originally perfect and corrupted after the fact), as well as the idea that not everyone has a soul and that this realm is some kind of spiritual prison we were "tricked" or coerced into entering (and possibly repeatedly re-entering via reincarnation). But there's so much smoke-and-mirrors bullshit, it's practically impossible to get to the solid truth about religious history; the best I've been able to do is come up with heuristics that seem to me to be true whether it's orthodox Christianity or Gnostic Christianity. At the end of the day, I think we'll be seeing some crazy shit happening in the next few years that will really clarify things, so I'll try to remain open-minded about all of this.
The True Lord made Creation and it was perfect, then the enemy rebelled, tricked us in partaking, and messed everything up. The change of state that ensued cannot be understood in merely materialistic terms, so don’t try to match that to physical history.
All of us do have souls, but some are “dead in sin” which is what you’re detecting. They can be saved because The True Lord is unironically that powerful and loving, but we have to choose it ourselves (all of us have the ability to do that, the biggest distraction is our ego/“pride is the root of all sin”).
I can’t get into extreme detail about this and obviously I’m leaving a million metric tons of it out, but I’m going to recommend a book called “Meditations on the Tarot” by Valentine Tomberg. He was an occultist for 43 years before converting to Catholicism and it not only sounds right up your alley but absolutely something you need to read.
I might have to start my own Substack and writing articles about these topics, it’s not only interesting stuff but also incredibly important.
Yes. "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
We need to place our faith in the things unseen, for they are eternal, as the gospel says. Unlike the false and fleeing things believed in and prized by the materialist globalist leftists.
It's going to be an epic battle... perhaps one that will eclipse any battle that has come before, but certainly one that later generations will read about in amazement and awe... and my hope is that some future dialog concludes with "We beat those fucking globalists!".
For me, the epiphanies came in several pieces. The first two came in 2002.
1. While pulling a near all nighter putting up campaign signs at polling places, I and a fellow Libertarian stopped at a Denny's for caffeine and protein to keep going around 2am. Our waitress regaled us with her tale of woe, taking care of two adopted blind kids and why won't the local churches help out? It truly dawned on me then that freedom is not the same as liberty. At some extreme point, economic power is equivalent to government power -- something the Right has learned more recently as Silicon Valley has gone Demoncrat. The populist seed was sown.
2. While working a marijuana legalization rally, I was trying to get the dopers to register as Libertarians. They wouldn't. Even though we were the ONLY party of pot with ballot access in the state, the hippies at the rally were more concerned about Big Corporations and the environment than they were about pot. But it dawned on me then that concern about Big Corporations is not identical to desire for Big Government. I became eco-populist-libertarian.
3. Several years later (pre 2008) the local Republicans were getting their dander up about illegal immigration. I had a question for them: what's wrong with it? Answer: "They broke the law!" My follow up: "Why is that law on the books? If we raised the quota, their immigration wouldn't be illegal." Their response: crickets. There are good reasons for restricting immigration, but they need to be freshly voiced! Simply citing old laws does not suffice. (I'm talking to you, Sean Hannity!)
Preach! And yes, we should be thankful for those who have seen so far, and sacrified so much, while we were still wandering blindly, contributing to maintaining the destructive course.
Yes, as exasperated as I can get about things now, I cannot even begin to imagine being one of the folks who knew 9/11 was bullshit when it happened and who had to deal with everyone getting war fever over Iraq and branding the few who dissented as being soft-on-terrorism. That is one thing that is encouraging: the lies around COVID came undone much more quickly than the lies around 9/11. People are increasingly waking up and learning to distrust whatever the regime tells them!
Fantastic optimism and from a fellow Gnostic no less! I just stumbled upon this Substack and I am glad to have found it. I look forward to reading more.
COVID was awful for so many reasons, but as someone who awoke from my slumber in the spring/summer of 2020, there is at least this benefit: more than 3 years of processing that the world I knew before was in many ways a lie. I think (hope?) that others who were awakened during this time have completed a similar journey from grief and despair to acceptance and the resolve to build something out of the wreckage. It feels like there's a lot of "build something" energy in 2024 - hopefully it lasts the year (and beyond)!
Perfectly said. We saw the true nature of our surroundings with absolute clarity for the first time. Jarring for sure, but illuminating and ultimately something to be grateful for.
We just took a walk in the woods for the new year and it was a manifestation of what you are talking about. Pops of brilliant color from cardinals fluttering from branch to branch (kingdom of God)... and then there was trash everywhere from lazy a___hole humans (parasitic, archon energy). It's hard to escape that duality these days.
I just read a Naomi Wolf quote this morning that might partly account for the unsettled feeling that so many of us have had for the last few years:
"Indeed, one of the reasons our current crisis feels so strange and disorienting to us humans, especially to us Western humans, is that it was in some ways modeled by machines and by programmers and may well have been continually modified via machine learning. We are not living through organic human history as it has unfolded in the past."
— Naomi Wolf, The Bodies of Others
Great quote!
I’m not sure why you feel you’re more “gnostic” than Christian. Whether we call them Archons or Principalities is just semantics, and as you said you still find the gospel to be intrinsically true, but I only bring it up to say what your describing is deeply Christian in its view, albeit a much more medieval style than a lot of what we see today.
But good work, the powers that be are going to be cast into the pit.
I probably need to dig into medieval theology a lot more; I know I'm missing a great deal there. I agree that much of it is semantics, especially when it comes to the big picture of our present reality. There's an evil power that works through deception and manipulation, even going so far as to sometimes masquerade as the real God (or as the real God's angel), and who operates essentially as the "god" of this world, subverting its institutions and historical narratives, including religious ones. Somehow, the real God has intersected our world at various times and in various ways and left signs of that, in spite of the false god's attempts to eliminate or subvert those signs; when confronted with these signs, for some reason not everyone has eyes to see or ears to hear, but those who do can begin to recognize the difference between the real God and the counterfeit, and form a connection with the real God. I think the Gnostic account of creation resonates with me more than the traditional Christian view (i.e., that the world was created by a corrupt deity, rather than being originally perfect and corrupted after the fact), as well as the idea that not everyone has a soul and that this realm is some kind of spiritual prison we were "tricked" or coerced into entering (and possibly repeatedly re-entering via reincarnation). But there's so much smoke-and-mirrors bullshit, it's practically impossible to get to the solid truth about religious history; the best I've been able to do is come up with heuristics that seem to me to be true whether it's orthodox Christianity or Gnostic Christianity. At the end of the day, I think we'll be seeing some crazy shit happening in the next few years that will really clarify things, so I'll try to remain open-minded about all of this.
The True Lord made Creation and it was perfect, then the enemy rebelled, tricked us in partaking, and messed everything up. The change of state that ensued cannot be understood in merely materialistic terms, so don’t try to match that to physical history.
All of us do have souls, but some are “dead in sin” which is what you’re detecting. They can be saved because The True Lord is unironically that powerful and loving, but we have to choose it ourselves (all of us have the ability to do that, the biggest distraction is our ego/“pride is the root of all sin”).
I can’t get into extreme detail about this and obviously I’m leaving a million metric tons of it out, but I’m going to recommend a book called “Meditations on the Tarot” by Valentine Tomberg. He was an occultist for 43 years before converting to Catholicism and it not only sounds right up your alley but absolutely something you need to read.
I might have to start my own Substack and writing articles about these topics, it’s not only interesting stuff but also incredibly important.
Thanks for the book recommendation. It sounds apropos, and I will definitely check it out.
Yes. "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
We need to place our faith in the things unseen, for they are eternal, as the gospel says. Unlike the false and fleeing things believed in and prized by the materialist globalist leftists.
It's going to be an epic battle... perhaps one that will eclipse any battle that has come before, but certainly one that later generations will read about in amazement and awe... and my hope is that some future dialog concludes with "We beat those fucking globalists!".
For me, the epiphanies came in several pieces. The first two came in 2002.
1. While pulling a near all nighter putting up campaign signs at polling places, I and a fellow Libertarian stopped at a Denny's for caffeine and protein to keep going around 2am. Our waitress regaled us with her tale of woe, taking care of two adopted blind kids and why won't the local churches help out? It truly dawned on me then that freedom is not the same as liberty. At some extreme point, economic power is equivalent to government power -- something the Right has learned more recently as Silicon Valley has gone Demoncrat. The populist seed was sown.
2. While working a marijuana legalization rally, I was trying to get the dopers to register as Libertarians. They wouldn't. Even though we were the ONLY party of pot with ballot access in the state, the hippies at the rally were more concerned about Big Corporations and the environment than they were about pot. But it dawned on me then that concern about Big Corporations is not identical to desire for Big Government. I became eco-populist-libertarian.
3. Several years later (pre 2008) the local Republicans were getting their dander up about illegal immigration. I had a question for them: what's wrong with it? Answer: "They broke the law!" My follow up: "Why is that law on the books? If we raised the quota, their immigration wouldn't be illegal." Their response: crickets. There are good reasons for restricting immigration, but they need to be freshly voiced! Simply citing old laws does not suffice. (I'm talking to you, Sean Hannity!)
Preach! And yes, we should be thankful for those who have seen so far, and sacrified so much, while we were still wandering blindly, contributing to maintaining the destructive course.
Yes, as exasperated as I can get about things now, I cannot even begin to imagine being one of the folks who knew 9/11 was bullshit when it happened and who had to deal with everyone getting war fever over Iraq and branding the few who dissented as being soft-on-terrorism. That is one thing that is encouraging: the lies around COVID came undone much more quickly than the lies around 9/11. People are increasingly waking up and learning to distrust whatever the regime tells them!
Fantastic optimism and from a fellow Gnostic no less! I just stumbled upon this Substack and I am glad to have found it. I look forward to reading more.
Happy new year!
Thanks, and happy new year to you as well!