Ancient Hindus, when choosing a temple site, considered cats to be a bad omen. Modern environmentalists want pet cats to be kept inside, to protect birds. "Stop scaring the birds away," my cats doubtless want to say to humans: "
You stay inside." Indoors or out, my cats treat a human lap like a temple, humming their mantra till the sacrilege of human busy-ness destroys nirvana.
I'm not
religious. Even generic spirituality repels me by implying human relationships and goals are "attachment" or "desire" (did your yoga teacher trot that out?) If you have any aim, it's to act like neutral countries in World War II: pretend to be Switzerland, above-it-all and
chill. Speaking of WWII:
"There are no victims.... You can't change the government, you can't change nuclear waste, but you can change what it means to you."
So says one of
Shirley MacLaine's gurus, inspiring the actress recently to dismiss the death camps of the Holocaust as karma. Allow me to guess why spiritual leaders "love what is" when it comes to atrocities: these preachers want us to
confuse feeling powerful with
being powerful. They don't care that our grip on reality is already warped by video games. Acknowledging victims disturbs our grandiose transcendence of all earthly things. Contrary to pretense, these gurus too are impotent in disasters. And morality would require that the
truly powerful attempt justice where none can suffice (as in genocide). So positive-thinker leaders are amoral. They get rich telling us we're magnificent even while we cause supposed horrors like
Climate Change.
Why would anyone say we can't prevent toxic waste? Here's one satirical answer:
"If you are critical of anything, you are using your MIND. And remember, you are so much more than your mind. Let it go. ...Dive deeper in... under my influence... and believe everything I say."
*
Products notably endorsed by Oprah include "
The Untethered Soul." In a workshop about it, the speaker asked me, "How can you
know that mass extinction is bad?" I said that annihilation of life
defines badness. He countered, "We don't know that, say, a nuclear bomb doesn't lead to something wonderful. If Hitler hadn't existed, maybe we wouldn't be here now." (Of course I stammered something to the effect that I'd gladly forsake my own existence to erase Hitler's atrocities.) Condoning or rationalizing human extermination is evil.... and
chill.
Human warmth is "co-dependence" or "people pleasing" (
A.A. Twelve-Step meets Sedona Method, with hordes of us now addicted to the
"Law of Attraction.")
Partial truths becomes lucrative charades. These
lovely lies seduce innumerable Westerners. Our culture is lousy with bastard children of Eastern philosophies that developed where (unlike in democracies) people had almost no hope of improving their physical circumstances. Self-absorbed passivity is an inevitable result where "
all beings are puppets on a carousel." My
Untethered Soul workshop leader put it colorfully: "I'm God in drag, just watching the show." That mind-set is particularly regressive for women in the modern world. It's already too easy for us to be passive and "in drag."
Life coaches and entire careers are launched by the notion that silver linings are all that glitters. They mesmerize you with what you want to hear: the status quo is the eternal now. Soothingly, this new escapist orthodoxy fits you in with all the locals stoned on Medicinal. Now-legal drug dealers rationalize the bounty they reap from hapless substance abusers: "I believe I deserve it, so the universe will serve it."
Or if not,
meh. Fatalism is
satori. Drug-like, no-drama
reductio ad absurdam "consciousness" portrays an enlightenment where eventually the mind becomes a closed loop: what you have must be what you want, and your narrow horizons must be where you belong.
Conflict is someone else's issue. Your self-esteem is so robust, if you fail to comprehend something, the fault couldn't possibly lie in you. Intellect and discernment? That's just "separateness" and "disconnect."
It sounds absurd but we really are surrounded by people convinced that thoughts control reality. They seem and in fact may be perfectly nice. But when you mention something unpleasant to them, they actually believe you are creating it by focusing on it, so they pity or resent your "negativity." To acknowledge some failure of humanity is to disturb the pristine thought creations of folks who have, say, seen “
What the Bleep Do We Know” (a popular
stealth infomercial for the
Ramtha cult). Do you dare deny that writing “love” or “Buddha” on a bottle of water will change H2O into a magical
elixir? Actress
Gwyneth Paltrow is the tip of that superstitious iceberg. (Down its slippery slope are two hypnotists I know personally who believe that water has emotions. When they tell their clients, it gives a new meaning to brainwashing.)
Of course your attitude affects your experience. Yet it's grotesque to extrapolate that, say, chanting "Peace" will end wars. Pseudo-science pop psychology draws the most far-reaching conclusions from literally narrow experiments like double-slit science and Random Number Generators. Yes, it's a glorious feeling to identify with quantum physics, cherry-pick data, preach to a converted echo-chamber, and indulge the limitless sense that the planet will be fine (if that matters) when you feel good about yourself. But was Tibet invaded because the monks there prayed defectively? Disciplines that may be new to you have been around for centuries. As the Dalai Lama says, "World peace will not achieve through prayer. World peace achieve only through our action!"
Even if "life is an illusion," moral action can keep you from sliding into negligence and damaging your own soul. (Don't think you have a soul? Hold all truth to be sacred, keep doing good deeds, and you'll start to feel it.)
I've seen a
ghost. Unfortunately ethics prevent me from capitalizing on such things, unlike the author of
Proof of Heaven. As the Dalai Lama said about him, when a man makes extraordinary claims, a "thorough investigation" is required, to ensure "that person reliable, never telling lie," and has "no reason to lie." Taking advantage of our griefs and our fears around death like so many opportunists,
Eben Alexander, MD, is apparently a con artist. The afterlife probably isn't what we'd like. Time itself is illusory. One certainty remains: con artists tell you what you
want to hear.
Mystical forces exist. I often know who's phoning me without looking at caller ID. I've met folks on the astral plane. Yeah: wow. But sensitivity and integrity don't necessarily go together. Too many tricksters inflate a little psychic ability into a
big hoax.
Just because God exists doesn't mean you should believe everything you want about Her (ha ha). Serendipity doesn't absolve you of responsibility. Miracles and meaningful coincidences occur but it's pure speculation to conclude "there are no accidents." There's no proof that prayer or meditation stops disasters, in fact, the opposite: ignoring crimes against humanity encourages them. And escapism breeds consumers and speeds environmental damage.
So I don't buy it, no matter how it's packaged. And packaged it is. Bland, self-serving delusion has become an industry. It's the spiritual version of "Supersize Me": the delicious lie is cheap at first, but soon it's the only thing that makes you feel good, like McDonalds tasting better than home dinners. It's like when Chinese communists offered party membership to take the place of clan loyalty. The problem with conformity is that it makes you very sure of yourself while it eats your brain.
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| Shape-shifting Hindu Deity Hanuman |
Prayers, "
awareness training" techniques and fellowship groups can neutralize any mental agitation; incidentally they may neutralize your sense of justice and decency. You're rendered infantile, craving this pap of innocence to which churches, cults and
seminar programs are all too eager to addict you.
Zen is hip. "You treat everybody the same. That's Buddhist," a psychiatrist said to a psychopath.
"No Drama" creates no accountability. I attended a presentation by Carolyn Myss, the famous intuitive, and she advised anti-civic things like, "If anyone tries to complicate your life, turn and walk away from them" and look beyond this world to other galaxies. In my experience,
any good educator is trying to "complicate your life." And this planet desperately needs your devotion. Psychic ability does not indicate ethics, especially when the DVD is available at the door, only $69.86, exonerating you from responsibility for your own planet. If you believe that channeled entities have super powers, why not be wary of their misuse of said power? Power corrupts. Why wouldn't greed exist on all levels, even beyond the Milky Way? It's easy to become pawns of megalomaniacs who sell you the promise of recreating you in their glossy image.
Confusing correlation and causation, here's a typical calculation from Minister
Mary Morrissey:
"Your income is the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. Why? Because people who spend time together share a common level of consciousness, and the person who knows how to make fifty thousand dollars a month is at a different level of awareness than the person who only knows how to make fifty thousand dollars a year."
...Or maybe we just hang out with our homies, Mary. I personally avoid spending time with ministers of
for-profit churches. I wonder if this is your thought process: "God is love; I love money; therefore
money is God."
Someone is
milking our sacred cows. Capitalism has married non-violent communication. Their baby is as cardboard as a GMO veggie burger. Chewing in unison feels like
Oneness.
Here's one new Bible, per the NY Times:
“The Secret” is not really a book but a series of misquotations from historical figures and fraudulent maxims from no-count hucksters.
"The Secret" is that you narrow your focus and throw out any evidence that doesn't fit. "Law of Attraction" creates a
separate reality for entitled narcissists where acknowledging environmental degradation perpetuates it. "What you resist persists," eh? These wise ones tend to empower themselves on Climate Change - something that dwarfs anyone's hedonistic navel-gazing - by shrugging it off as End Times. (Remember 2012? Oh, yeah:
apocalypse was averted by meditators. Mmm hmmm.) Is it any wonder that - under our watch -
Obama okayed fracking and Arctic drilling? RIP Mother Earth.
Till the End, let's keep chanting to ourselves that, in between hurricanes, left-wing sustainable gardening will cancel out right-wing weapons arsenals.
Do you disagree? Really? Or are you upset because your fantasies got jostled?
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Please don't stay silent when "spirituality"
condones our killing the biosphere. |
To honor what's authentic, it takes true strength of character.
Or... a cat.
As Chinese put it, "The Dao that can be spoken is not the Dao." However, the meow that can be spoken is the Meow. God's Creation includes countless other species even more fragile than humans.
Want to feel God-like? Be accountable.
Reportedly even the Dalai Lama said, “The best meditation is critical thinking – followed by action.”
Thoughts do have substance. So at this juncture, if it doesn't stop mass extinction, it's self-centered materialism, folks, not spirituality.
(How do you know that Heaven isn't where animals sit in judgment of us? Save the Climate, and maybe eternity will be spent being caressed by elephant trunks and licked by lions! Or fluffy kittens. Yes, you like fluffy kittens, don't you?)
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