Eclectic and Syncretistic Spirituality Explained

The word eclectic is normally used as a furniture style, but it is also related to thoughts and tastes etc. Syncretistic is an amalgamation of various religious traditions, cultures, and schools of thought such as philosophy. So syncretistic and eclectic spirituality is an amalgamation of beliefs. It is my belief that this approach makes by far the most sense in choosing a spiritual path and spiritual practices.

The reason for this is simple. All mystics are first and foremost human beings. This means that they are not only influenced by mystical input but also have the cultural and life experiences of their place in history, their community, and their familial and ancestorial traditions. It also includes all of the religious ideas they were exposed to by their environment. 

While this does not mean that they cannot rise above these factors, it likely means that all of the above factors will spill over into their mysticism. It is also dependent on the intellectual and technological advancements of their society and culture. Therefore, one can rest assured that all so-called sacred texts have within them a certain amount of human and cultural input. All means all and it is especially true of the bible.

This is where eclectic spirituality can be so important in one’s spiritual path. All religions have mystical revelation from the source within their teachings. Likewise, they all have human and cultural input. Our intuition is able to distinguish which is which if we but learn to trust it.

Since I was raised in evangelical Christianity, I have found that while there is mystical revelation in the bible there is likewise cultural input that is not necessarily pertinent today. However, I have also found that for me, Christianity is not complete and that I can find additional revelation in other religions and religious texts, and yes, even in science. We continually are advancing in knowledge and experience. This is true of us as individuals, and it is likewise true of us in various cultures as well as humanity as a whole.

I will give you an example of my eclectic spirituality. I draw mystical revelation from Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism, and Hermeticism. I have actually come to believe that Hermeticism is foundational to western religion and philosophy. But I also see that there is potential to reinforce mystical revelation from quantum mechanics, philosophy, cognitive science, and biology.

For me, I see reincarnation as a very likely phenomenon. So, I draw on some of eastern thought as well. However, I am not a fan of the perpetual circle of karma. This forces me to use my intuition and the mystic within me to find a better solution to the purpose of reincarnation. I have done this and have addressed it in other blog posts. There are countless other examples, but I will not pursue them here.

I mainly want to point out that we each have divinity within each of us. This divinity makes us all mystics. We are effective in mysticism to the degree that we believe we are divine, trust out intuition. I want to encourage you to make sure that you allow your intuition and your individuality to help you ascend along your spiritual path and find the perfect place of integration between your higher and lower self. Both are equally important to the human experience. Part of the lower self, or the human self is what Carl Jung called the shadow self, and we likewise need to embrace and accept it as well. That doesn't mean that we cannot improve and change the things we don’t like, but it does mean that we should embrace wholeheartedly our humanity.

An Introduction to the Kybalion.; Video Blog

I am going to begin posting video blogs to go along with the written ones. I will continue with the written blogs as well. I am using an AI program called Pictory AI. Please like and subscribe, and enjoy.

Introduction to the Kybalion

Deconstructing Scientific Dogma

Having been a relatively recent pastor and theologian in evangelical Christianity, I am well aware of deconstruction. I have in fact deconstructed much of my former belief system. That is terribly painful for some but was less painful for me because I had deconstructed before, and I allowed life circumstances to bring me back, but not full circle. The things that I learned and believed from my first deconstruction, many of them, I kept locked away, but I did not voice them because I wanted to fit in and work within the evangelical framework. One of my reasons was to attempt to reform and reshape Christian dogma into a more realistic and more palatable place.

It is my belief that much of scientific dogma is a reaction to Christianity. The age of reason liberated people from the constraints of religious dogma, but the process of liberation created a dogma that was just as ridged as Christian dogma to make sure that religious dogma would not gain a strong hold again. This resulted in denying any kind of supernatural or paranormal phenomenon. More than that, scorn was placed on any in science that would investigate or give credence to anything labeled pseudo-science. This included parapsychology, extra-sensory perception, and anything that could be connected with the spiritual plane.

Not only did academic science ridicule individuals that would look investigate the paranormal, the actively damaged the careers of anyone daring to step outside of the accepted scope of materialism. They had concluded that the material world happened independently of any outside force and that even consciousness arose from materialism.

Of course, there were intellectual giants that did not give into the materialist physicalist dogma, but they were few in comparison to all those in scientific endeavors. One such giant was Carl Jung, who held that one of the most important parts of psychology was humanities relationship to the numinous. Many of the physicists that developed quantum mechanics were bold in stating that there was most definitely a supernatural aspect to reality.

Over the millennia, Greek Philosophy, especially Platonism and Neo-Platonism stated that the universe at its core foundation was mental and ideal. Over the last one hundred- and fifty-years Newtonian Classical Mechanics has given way to space time and ultimately the micro world of quantum physics. These seem incompatible to scientific theory, and yet, it is quantum physics that is responsible for so many inventions and upgrades. You often hear physicists say that they cannot explain the weirdness of the quantum world but only that it works.

Philosophers have struggled with the hard problem of consciousness. The cognitive scientists have been unable to identify how we know the difference between the taste of chocolate and vanilla within the brain. They are unable to deal with experience. There is a rise in philosophers that have a panpsychist view of the nature of reality. The biologist, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake has theorized that there are morphic fields of resonance which are responsible for mental telepathy. It is not just in humans but in the animal kingdom as well.

Dr. Donald Hoffman, a cognitive scientist from the University of California at Irvine is working on a theory that consciousness is the foundation of reality. He is making progress mathematically using evolutionary game theory. In 2022 the Nobel Prize in Physics was given to three men who have proven that the universe is not locally real. The latest in physics believes that space-time is doomed and that there is a deeper reality out of which space-time arises.

The public is led to believe that everything in science is tangible, measurable, and repeatable. And while that may be true of the basic aspects of our science, it is not true at the foundational level of reality. In that area there are theories and hypotheses and there is a wide difference of opinion. They simply agree to disagree. The quantum level works for a multitude of advancements in technology, and yet it is still a mystery.

I can understand why they stay away from what they call woo, but that is not the same thing as ridiculing woo. The fact is, they ridicule woo! The question becomes why do they ridicule woo? I think the answer is, if they give any room for the supernatural, if they give any room for consciousness to be foundational to reality, they establish religion’s role in human philosophy. I don’t think it has to be the case. They can embrace the possibility of consciousness being foundational without validating religious dogma. But the fact is, they have developed scientific dogma to eliminate the return of religious dogma and in my view it needs to be deconstructed.

God Beyond Religion: Saved from Forgetfulness the Message of the Gospel of Truth

Before I dive into explaining the title, let’s examine the word Savior within the historical context of Jesus of Nazareth. In the first century of the common era, Savior (Greek Sotor) was a term given to Caesar. Caesar was the savior of the world because he provided “Pax Romana” Roman Peace. Also, there was an emperor’s cult that saw Caesar as a god man. Therefore, people were to give worship and allegiance to Caesar. This is an important understanding to have when one looks at the history of Christianity. The concept was not Roman. It was inherited from the Greeks and the Egyptians.

Since the term savior was commonplace in the first century, it is important to consider this when thinking of Jesus of Nazareth as savior. Savior from what? Well, for roughly 1,915 years, we have been told that it is from sin. I use the 1,915 years for this reason. It is from 30 CE to 1945. I say 1945 because it was the date of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library. I realize that it took some time for that library to be translated, but I will use the date simply to give the time span of the method of salvation that has been the most widely accepted. That was the result of the emphasis being put on the bible. So, for almost 2,000. However, that was not always the truth. There were those who lived in the second and third centuries of the common era that saw salvation in a completely different light. One such group were the ones who wrote “The Gospel of Truth.”

For almost 2,000 years we were unaware of the Gospel of Truth, or that such a gospel existed. The reason is that it had been burned by the orthodox church, labeled as a heresy, and removed from the collective memory. It is interesting to me that I just recently took the time to read it. Interesting because I had been leaning toward a similar salvation. I had been leaning toward the idea that we all, not just Jesus, but we ALL, went through a similar experience before incarnating into the material, corporeal world. We all experience what Paul in Greek called “the Kenosis” or the emptying or our knowledge of our innate divinity and that we are children of the source, and the source is a loving parent and we are eternal.

Here is where the Gospel of Truth comes into significance. In italics, I will posit a writing from the Gospel of Truth. “What exists in him is gnosis, which was revealed so that forgetfulness might be destroyed and that they might know the Father, Since forgetfulness existed because they did not know the Father, if they then come to know the Father, from that moment on forgetfulness will cease to exist. We empty our knowledge of our divinity upon incarnating, and Jesus’ unique message was to reignite the awareness that God is the parent and we are divine. This was delivered to him via the divine logos. He became aware that he was the incarnation of the divine logos, that God was his parent, and that love was the mission. He went on to teach according to the apostle John, or one of John’s students, that we too are the incarnation of the divine logos by the anointing of the logos or the Christ of the Logos.

So, the question would arise why the forgetfulness? Here is the answer that resonates deeply with me. The Source, the Parent, is conscious awareness and knowledge, thus the Greek word gnosis. Yet conscious awareness lacks experience. To be complete knowledge must be accompanied by experience. Without experience knowledge is pointless. We then, individual conscious agents, the Greeks called it psuche, we now call it the psyche which was translated into to English as the soul. We as individual souls incarnate to experience the knowledge we had as divinity and in order for the experience to be authentic we must empty or divinity and forget it. And yet, the fact that we were created in the image of God is best described by being conscious agents or eternal souls.

If there was a sin, it would be an error. The Greek word for sin means missing the mark, and the Hebrew word for sin means missing the way. So then, being saved from error would mean being saved from our forgetfulness of who we really are and what we are really capable of, and where we came from. The salvation would be an awakening to this old reality in a new way, and that would be a rebirth. When we remember our divinity and our source we are born anew, we become a new creation.

God Beyond Religion: Musings of a conscious universe, “it’s all one thing Part 2”

Panpsychism makes it all one thing:

If the universe is a creation of consciousness. If the main energy source of the world around us is consciousness. If indeed consciousness creates reality, then all phenomena stem from one thing. And to state the obvious, that one thing is consciousness. This would include normal phenomena, and also paranormal phenomena, or anomalous phenomena. Over the centuries, there have been a multitude of stories about anomalous phenomena. So, what are the various forms of these anomalies? Well, there is the UFO/UAP phenomenon. There is the spirit/ghost/poltergeist phenomenon. There is the cryptid phenomenon. There is the power spot or power vortex phenomenon. There is the interdimensional portal phenomenon. There is the psychic, clairvoyant, medium, telepathic phenomenon. I do not claim this list is exhaustive as I have probably missed many paranormal phenomena, but I simply want to point out that it is widespread. It is widespread over the planet, and from stories of the past it is widespread over time. In fact, from petroglyphs and hieroglyphs it goes back thousands of years, and conservatively, fifty centuries, and quite likely one hundred centuries. What is the old adage? Where there is smoke there is fire, and the smoke of these ubiquitous stories, point to a fire of plausibility. I like the term, preponderance of evidence. In this regard, the preponderance is overwhelmingly evident.

All of these anomalous phenomena have been met with skepticism over the ages, and I would say that over the last one hundred plus years, they have been ridiculed. And yet, over this same time frame, religions with likewise wild claims, have been accepted without question.  Who are the main ridiculers? Dogmatic Christian groups and dogmatic materialist, physicalist scientist. The obvious reason is that they interfere with the dogma and bring it into question. Yes indeed, I am linking materialist, physicalist scientists with dogmatic religion. There is a level of hubris in both groups that is unmatched. Likewise, they both have a vested interest in downplaying and debunking these phenomena.

On the other hand, the mental universe has been a continuous story across cultures for millennia. While I mostly understand it from the perspective of hermeticism and Taoism it is prevalent in other spiritual traditions including animism. So back to the concept of preponderance of the evidence. There is a preponderance of views about mental alchemy. The Logos, which is the conscious word of the creator has been widely reported for thousands of years beginning with Pythagoras and the Greeks who claimed that it originated in ancient Egypt. Circle all the way to 2022 and you have many scientists that hold a view called panpsychism. Of course, I have often mentioned Dr. Donald Hoffman and Dr. Rupert Sheldrake as two scientists that believe that reality is first and foremost mentation. Hoffman is a cognitive scientist and Sheldrake is a biologist that has developed a theory describing morphic fields of resonance in animals and humans.

But now breaking it down into the categories. There are Multiple reports annually about flying saucers. There are thousands per year in the USA. In fact, in 2020 there were 7200 reports in the USA alone. Many of these reports are from the military and military pilots who have seen and captured them on cameral. Added to this, there is radar evidence to back them up. Not only do they fly at unheard of speeds and maneuver in ways that impossible to our current technology, but they can zip into the water and emerge. In fact, the evidence is beginning to show that some of them at least may have a base of operations in the oceans. It is a phenomenon that affects the navy more than the air force.

So, what is the implication of these craft? What is the implication of the presence of other worldly or extraterrestrial beings observing us? I say other worldly because they may be extra-dimensional or they could be from another planet, star system within the galaxy. The fact remains that if the universe is mentation, then it is possible for worm holes and portals to be accomplished by mental manipulation, a skill that we have not yet understood or developed. If from another dimension it could be that they have constructed UFO’s, UAP’s, and USO’s that help maneuver in this three-dimensional world. One thing for sure is that it expands greatly the concept of the creative source of the universe and eliminates a god in the box that religion has created. It also establishes the fact that what was once ridiculed and considered mass hysteria is now admitted existing by governments around the world. It is not a quantum leap to believe that all paranormal activity that is widely reported across cultures and time has validity as well.

But what about spiritual dimensions? Could they simply be dimensions within the universe that we as yet do not understand? That is more than likely the case. However, if the universe is an organic and atomic computer creation, and if it is sentient then it is possible that what we have come to call the spiritual world or spiritual dimension is all there is. At this time, I lean in that direction. There is one thing that is undeniable. What we call paranormal activity is reported extensively over all locations and time eras. It crosses cultures and centuries and by the sheer preponderance of the reporting it should be taken seriously. Especially when the reports are so similar.

There is a growing number of panpsychists that offer the possibility that it is all one thing. Many of them are well respected and published scientists and philosophers. While not all of them are comfortable calling consciousness spiritual, the fact is that it operates as essentially the same thing. Most metaphysicians look at spirituality being another name for panpsychism. It is definitely in this realm that all of the above-mentioned paranormal phenomena can fit nicely together as one thing, and that is likely why you have such wide reporting of a variety of phenomena at places like Skinwalker Ranch in the Uintah Basin, and Mount Shasta in Northern California. Up until the time that I began to understand panpsychism I had a hard time accepting that cryptids, and portals and other spiritual anomalies accompanied UFO/UAP activity. Panpsychism offers a unifying medium for all of them. Certainly, panpsychism offers a plausible answer to the problem of inter-stellar distances, explains how it is possible for extraterrestrials to hide in plain sight. It also explains portals in the sky and on the earth.

 

God Beyond Religion: An Egalitarian Gnosticism

The case against Christian orthodoxy is really solid when viewed with an open mind. The practices of the orthodox movement in general are shady when it comes to deciding what is orthodoxy and what is heterodoxy. The facts are undisputable. There was a rich variety of Christianity’s in the second through third centuries. Further, one can surmise that there was a rich variety of literature produced in the second and third centuries. It is very probable based on the Nag Hammadi find that there was much more literature that did not meet orthodox standards that was destroyed and will possibly never be seen. Let’s face the fact. It was serendipitous that we found what we found in the nineteen-forties.

Please do not jump to the conclusion that I think everything orthodox was wrong and evil and everything Gnostic and heterodox was right and good. That is not my view at all. You could say that I was born an egalitarian. From my earliest recollections I was always deeply concerned with what was fair and right for all. I still am. Its probably the reason that I see the error in the extreme polarization of our country these days. It almost seems like a plot of a bad movie but that is another topic for another time. Suffice it to say that egalitarianism in important to me.

While orthodoxy was not egalitarian neither was Gnosticism and the other heterodox views. I guess this makes me one following the left-handed spiritual path because for all of my years I have been a rebel. In a variety of ways, I hate conformity. My main criticism of Gnosticism is that it is exclusive. That is also my critique of Christianity, especially evangelical orthodoxy. I would argue that it is exclusivity that has alienated so many from Christianity. It creates an us verses them atmosphere. It creates a saint verses sinner when the truth is we are all a little of both. It reminds me of the Eagle’s lyrics “I’ve been searching for the daughter of the devil himself, I’ve been searching for an angel in white, I’ve been waiting for a woman who’s a little of both, I can feel her but she’s nowhere in sight” ~(One of These Nights) I think that these lyrics could be a metaphor for what most seek.

This is why I see the Gnosticism in some of John and some of Paul (not the Beatles.) Both writers have an egalitarian Gnosticism. In fact, universal reconciliation is an egalitarian doctrine, and it is present in both the writings of John and Paul. I know, they also sound exclusive at times, but that simply means they need to be discerned, and in my view that is exactly where gnosis comes into play. We are first and foremost conscious beings. If in fact we were created in the image of God, then that is consciousness. The Logos is consciousness. I believe it is fair to equate consciousness and spirit. In fact, we are tripart beings. We are body, spirit, and soul. The body is our flesh, our corporeal, material existence. The spirit is universal consciousness and our link to it. The soul is our individual psyche or our individual consciousness.

That was the egalitarian message of Jesus according to both John and Paul. We are the Logos in earthen vessels. This was the essential spiritual (universal consciousness) message that Jesus brought to humanity. YOU, I, and the FATHER are one. We are ALL wrapped up in each other because we all proceed from consciousness. That is egalitarian Gnosticism in a nutshell. That is the truth whether comprehended or not. All of us are moving in an upward spiral toward that ever unfolding and expanding realization. The way to grasp it with ever increasing degrees is to use our most important asset. It is our spiritual intuition. It is the amalgamating of the spirit and the psyche. Trust your gut! Both the orthodox scripture and the gnostic gospels contain spiritual revelation from source. You are capable of deciding which!