Are humans currently the enemy of all life on earth, even their own? Why do we wittingly and unwittingly destroy all that supports and sustains us? Why do we worship ugliness and artificiality so unthinkingly? Why is our society built on greed and intimidation? As a child I felt helpless rage at the total lack of feeling with which the land was destroyed and covered with ugly buildings and asphalt that then was termed progress. “You can’t stop progress,” my father would say when I ranted about what seemed to me pure evil. How can such greed, cruelty and insensitivity to everything that is alive and supports life be progress? Already I was learning that humans use words backwards. Euphemisms are lies.
I came to hate humans as the enemies of all life, even their own. But what can a ten-year-old do about anything? I fantasized wrecking all the schools and churches where such lies and false friendships were applied with the skills learned from centuries of brainwashing. And on that subject, why is mental seduction and bombardment called “brainwashing,” when it is actually brain fouling? I suppose I was terrorist material at age 10. But even then I had a counter voice within that said “hate and destruction does not cure indifference and destruction.” Somehow there was a beginning of faith in a process that stretched out in time beyond our imagining and involved processes beyond our (my) limited understanding. I came to appreciate that part of this process was my passion for life, beauty, respect, enlightenment as it set itself against ignorance, cruelty, ugliness, greed and fear.
Here we are supposedly the most intelligent of the beasts and this intelligence is used to undo the very foundations of life. As humans we build mighty systems for dealing with problems caused by those very systems. In a modern hospital, or scientific facility the powerful technology and atmosphere of authoritative knowledge is far more intimidating than is any megalithic stone god. The cures often seem lost in the rapid growth of even more pesky diseases. The more we aim technology at our problems the trickier and more complex are the problems and diseases.
Think about how sophisticated military technology has become. But the reasons for war haven’t evolved, and humans kill each other just as dead. It has been said that the next level of evolution will involve the activation of the heart chakra that connects the lower and higher chakras. Perhaps then we won’t act like gods and die like dogs.
Frequently in the movies superior technological destruction comes from power mad, greedy aliens who want to take us over because they’ve ruined their own world. But this is happening right here, no aliens involved. Of course there are many conspiracy theorists that would disagree and say that it is the aliens right here among us that are trying to take us over and hoodwink us into destroying ourselves for their benefit. But could both kinds of aliens actually be a projection of our own self-destructive activity. And does it matter if the aliens in question are from another planet, another dimension or the shadow side of this planet’s dominant species. Smart aliens can just watch us undo ourselves.
It is said in psychotherapy, that projection is the first stage in becoming conscious of the shadow self. To quote a famous 1930’s radio character, "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!" Unfortunately the shadow seldom moves inward from the projection screen to its true source in the mind of the projectionist. Who among us has the courage and potential for self-forgiveness to admit that they are what they most fear and loathe? This is the true magic of Christ consciousness.
We are all participants in destruction. No matter how often you visit the recycling bin, buy organic and free range food, or avoid buying from a large chain that exploits foreign workers, or serves meat grown at the expense of the vanishing rainforests the prevailing system will catch you in its net. The recycling bin will only accept what it can resell, the health food store will package its organic products individually in cardboard and plastic, adding to the mountains of trash and the rainforest continues to be depleted despite your boycott. You may even have decided to move out of the evil ugly city onto a mountain top cabin with five acres where you and like minded others are making life hard for the Mountain Lions and Bears by encroaching on their territory, which often gets them shot for your protection. It often seems that there is nothing we can do that is more effective than the relief of our personal conscience.
Is there any way out of this dilemma? What if we acknowledge our shadow and love both each other and ourselves without whitewash? What if we accept both the bad and the good as part of the human situation?
The usual answer seems to be that until we can trust the other guy it isn’t safe to let our guard down. Nothing is gained by trying to be so pure that one isn’t part of the dirt that envelops the planet. Self-righteousness never works in the long hall. Ecological purity is largely a middle-class and up choice. Few really poor people can afford to live organically unless they’ve never been touched by “civilization.” I remember the ecological movement as favored by the hippie subculture of the 60’s and 70’s. They tried to live off the land and adopt the ways of indigenous people. Of course they didn’t really know how to do this but they weren’t afraid to experiment. Having money was something to hide in that sub-culture. But the dominating cultural influences will win out in the end and every technique to counter the money driven exploitation of life is eventually absorbed by it. Once organic health-food markets were owned and used by hippies and now they are usually owned by yuppies. It reminds me of the religious takeover by the Christian Church as the vanguard of military political world domination. Churches were always built on pre-Christian holy sites. If you can’t change their minds you can always swallow them. Nowhere did I read in a history book the hidden in plain sight fact that Rome never fell; it merely put on a new face, the face of the Christian Church. I’m not attacking Christianity here, merely attempting to expose a very subtle exploitation that had nothing to do with a relationship with deity and the power of the Christ as a spiritual force. I suggest that the spiritual power embodied in the concept of the Christ is exactly what had to be stymied by the black magicians of empire. How better to do this than to swallow it and absorb it into the body of the enemy. Now this process is at work within the new orthodoxy of Scientific Materialism.
My definition of black magic is “the use of higher powers for lower ends.” This involves a continual test of purpose. It is my understanding that the actual purpose of Christ consciousness is to realize that we are involved in a constant creative process shared with the originating force of creation itself and even more amazing we are co-creators of our own world. And yet deity has a work in progress on a scale we can’t put our tiny heads around. There is a Sufi saying in reference to the work of evil: “The Devil is God’s most humble servant.” It is through our self-deception, and the deadly and cardinal sins that creation is forged. Can evil win? If it won it would have nothing to work with. Evil is not a creative force. It’s only power is to destroy the product of a genuine creative force. The devil does not create but only destroy, pervert, and hide what exists by the force of creation. And creation moves eternally. Is this not the plausible reason that children seem to be hardwired with a sense of justice? Maybe instead of the end of the world we will experience species puberty, which is the end of a familiar world.
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