by Peacedog on Mon Oct 15, 2018 1:47 pm
As for religion proper, well here is the rub....
Being a sincere member of a mainstream religion provides a kind of passive protection against this kind of manipulation if you don't go looking for these things. This is why all religious faiths suggest leaving this stuff alone.
The mechanism for this is known as an egregore. An egregore is a kind of empowered thought form/subtle battery that exists about one level up from this level of existence in what the New Agers refer to as the astral realm. Whenever someone prays, takes part in a religious ritual, etc. it provides a small charge into the appropriate egregore. Multiple this times millions of people over thousands of years and you have something quite powerful. The egregore itself will subtly manipulate the behavior and perceptions of it's members, but in a much milder way than the entities we previously discussed.
FYI, people who understand branding particularly well intuit this kind of thing subconsciously. As all large brands have egregores associated with them. As do all professions. It is why doctors, engineers, military types, etc. tend to exhibit common behaviors and perceptions of the world. You get the idea.
Likewise, skilled practitioners can actively protect themselves through a variety of means.
And this leads me to non-religious people and atheists in particular. Just because you don't believe in something, like gravity, doesn't mean it can't work you over. The non-religious, non-practitioner and overly intellectual are essentially free range chicken for this kind of manipulation. And this more than anything probably explains why these people report significantly higher levels of mental illness across the board than the moderately religious. The Golden Dawn practitioners refer to this as "demonic obsession" in case you are interested. Drug use, deviant/excessive behavior and a general lack of self control caused by an empty existence lacking meaningful connection to others further increases susceptibility.
The number of people I met in NYC suffering from this kind of problem as a percentage of the general population dwarfed the percentage seen in smaller more socially integrated communities. It was almost expected amongst the over-educated, socially awkward and under committed I met there.
Your great-grandmother and great-grandfather had it figured out. Be moderate in your religion, be involved in your community, reserved in behavior and avoid these things. If you want to be a monk/priest/deacon (i.e. cultivator) that is another situation.
As for the current set of issues involving the Catholic church anytime you get a group of people together you attract the bad as well as the good. Always keep in mind the need to separate the religion from the organization. This does not excuse what happened, and the Tibetan's had similar problems in the not too distant past, but serves as a reminder not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
As one of my teachers once, presciently, said, "It's not that people will believe in nothing that's the problem. It's that they will believe in anything." All of the mass murder stemming from Marxism, utopianism of the 20th century that was used as an excuse to kill and sterilize millions more, belief in "you need to break some eggs to make an omelet", cult worship of mass murdering psychotics like Che, the Malthusian garbage, the idea that the world is somehow dying, Global Warming, theories about over population et al stem from this mechanism.
Be moderate in your beliefs, connected to your community, involved with your family, focus on building physical things in the real world for a living, avoid looking for the hoogedy-boogedy and you will largely avoid these problems. Even in my end of things, the people who go looking for this stuff are cracked.
Last edited by
Peacedog on Mon Oct 15, 2018 7:18 pm, edited 10 times in total.