A Series of Essays

By

On The Beach

Essay One: Introduction

Essay Two: "The Antidote"

Essay Three: "Starting The Antidote"

Essay Four:  "How to Protect Yourself"

Essay Five:  "Creating Expanded Consciousness"

Essay Six:  "What To Do Now"

“I wish to acknowledge the professional editing assistance of Lion Lady who worked closely with me to make these essays more understandable and readable. Any positive reaction the reader might have towards these essays are due to her hard work and diligent efforts. Any negative feelings experienced are because of my poor thinking or writing skills which she was unable to repair.” - On The Beach

 

I’ve written two earlier essays for CD and Mrs. Cog’s wonderful website Two Ice Floes entitled ‘Everything in Modernity is a Lie’ and ‘Fear: the Great Motivator’; but I have felt uneasy leaving words where they were without further clarification. I now feel the need to continue from where I left off. Those two essays were both aimed toward helping individuals realize personal change is within our ability and necessary for our mental and physical well-being.

I wish to expand on these topics and say more about these very important areas because they are actually much more important than I described in those previous essays. I pulled some punches for personal reasons and I am not feeling good about that, actually.

I have alluded to, and even directly indicated in some comments on several forum topics on Two Ice Floes, that I have had the interesting experience of having non-physical teachers directly involved in my physical life for almost all my life. Regardless of what you may believe about this statement, this has been my life; and also the lives of my brother and sister. These experiences have led me to a very different knowledge of this universe than is the norm - different even from those in the so-called New Age movement. I have kept these experiences and this knowledge to myself, not sharing it with anyone until a few months ago. The urgency of the current situation on Earth has now led me to step out of the closet, so to speak, so that I may share with you what I know.

Please understand that these experiences, while unusual in terms of our current systems of belief, have done nothing to make me ‘special’ in any way other than my having direct personal awareness of our larger, more complex and more true spiritual nature and its implications for us as fellow humans.

I am not different from any one else. The lessons instilled to me would probably lead to exactly the same understandings for each of us if taught from the age of 4 years old as I was. These lessons were about the nature of being human, our connections to each other and to all other entities in the universe, and of the absolute necessity of taking personal responsibility for our individual selves in maintaining our individual sovereignty as interconnected beings in this universe.

Toward that end I intend to offer this series of essays exploring the following topics:

‘The Antidote, an Introduction’: What this means to us humans.

‘The Antidote’: defining terms and navigating the insanity.

‘Starting the Antidote’: Why it is so important to get past the Lies of Modernity right now while we are still physically alive.

‘How to Protect Ourselves’: How to explore our true nature safely.

‘Creating Expanded Consciousness’: How to expand the awareness of our true nature.

‘What to Do Now’: How to live life with expanded consciousness among those who have no clue.

Essays planned for the future include......

‘Convalescence’: How to work with this new-found consciousness so we can begin to become whole again will encompass four more essays.

‘Full Recovery’: Learning what it means to be a fully functioning physical human completely aware of our functional spiritual nature will encompass an additional three essays.

What I will say in these chapters is based upon my own personal experiences and nothing else. I do not expect anyone to fully understand or believe me - but I feel the need to at least say these words and place them out there for your consideration.

There is more I could write about, but these areas are enough for a start. Perhaps readers will suggest topics of interest that I can comment and expand on in future discussions.

I thank the Cogs for this opportunity to share my thoughts.

Laying the Groundwork

In my experience, there are at present two all-pervasive human institutions operating in the world that really sit on top of all other social institutions. I say this because they strongly influence our perception of our collective relationship with the universe and the unknown, and as such create connotations for all other institutions, such as government and education.

I call these entities ‘controller’ institutions and they are the institutions of Religion and Science. We are told they go back thousands of years, having been developed layer upon layer, one idea and issue at a time to best serve the purposes of mankind in general. That is what we are taught to believe in school about how these hallowed and long-lived social institutions were created and how they continue to function.

My contention is that the institutions of Science and Religion were not created for the benefit of humankind, but are instead some of the primary causes of a way of life I now call the Lies of Modernity. They are, in fact, created by people who stand to gain most from the results produced over time by these same institutions.

Science was developed as a way to explain the unknown using observation and hypothesis to create a series of questions and statements about observations of Nature. Such hypotheses can then be shown to be ‘factual’ through the combined efforts of a number of different researchers working on the same set of questions and procedures. This approach uses a rigorous method of questioning and peer review that is supposed to eliminate biased questions, observations and answers to the questions being asked.

Science has made great strides in asking and answering questions both basic and extremely complex about our universe. However, the current paradigm of science - materialism - can only be maintained by rigorously limiting the kinds of questions asked and thus creating a false bias among the answers agreed upon.

One of the hallmarks of materialism is its view that everything can be observed and tested; and if it can’t, then it is really ‘metaphysics’ and thus suspect and not worthy of investigation. In this approach, everything is material and nothing is non-physical. Any observation of Nature that is contrary to this paradigm is usually just disregarded. Of course, the main topic that cannot be disregarded is the entire concept of consciousness, which, like energy, cannot be directly observed. So science creates all sorts of explanations of consciousness arising from material substance, none of which can be demonstrated, measured or observed. Since it is logically impossible for consciousness to investigate itself, science is left with a serious flaw in its paradigm.

So based on the principles of materialism, consciousness, that which is essentially ‘You’, is only caused by the little wheels and gears in our heads and when we die all parts of us become waste material and nothing exists past this waste, especially not any form of our consciousness. In this model, consciousness is only a transitory aspect of the material structure.

However materialism cannot withstand strong, logical attack. I won’t take the time or space here to get into materialism or its logical weaknesses. Instead my focus in this series is all about our consciousness and Science currently can make very little contribution to comprehending that concept.

To be told we are nothing more than a ‘meat computer’ that will eventually break and become only waste material at the end of our life is not a very comforting thought for most people. So the whole idea of consciousness as ‘You’ is passed off reluctantly by Science, and usually antagonistically, over to the institution of Religion.

Like Science, Religion also functions as an institution designed to explain the unknown. Previous to the rise of Science as a way of understanding, Religion had sole domain over issues of the unknown. Unlike Science, theological Religion has no system of logical observation and questioning. It operates at the empirical level by stating that the human hierarchy of the institution of Religion is closer to the God they themselves created than all other disciplines. Thus Religion has placed itself in the unique position of having the only acceptable answers to the questions of the unknown, whatever those questions might be. To question the illogic of this system is to question God which is a heresy sometimes punishable by death.

Of course some will say that Religion has come a long way since those days and now no longer burns people at the stake for their beliefs. While that was certainly true during the origin and founding of the Institution of Religion, there has continued to be a real risk in stepping outside the bounds of religious dogma. For example in 1428 supporters of the Catholic Church on direct orders of the Pope actually dug up the body of the Englishman John Wycliff who performed the first translation of the Bible from Latin to English. They crushed his bones and spread the dust on the River Swift since in those days it was illegal for any layperson to have, or be able to read, the Bible. I wonder what was in the holy words of God that made the personal exploration of Religion so fearful?

All organized beliefs under the umbrella of Religion, no matter their source, are vertical structures with their ‘top management’ positions being placed closest to the God(s) they themselves created, by focusing on this ‘God’ or ‘gods’ to the exclusion of all others. Also, by virtue of this verticality these ‘managers’ are thereby alleged to be operating solely under the authority and approval of those same gods and not open to being questioned by the rest of human participants. We have been effectively cut off from any form of direct connection with such gods or ‘God’ and must therefore rely on intermediaries to do so for us.

One of the main functions of this vertically organized structure is to administer to the spiritual needs of the faithful of this human-created institution. Such religions have unique and sole control over the unknown aspects of the spiritual consciousness and of the potential future for each of the faithful in that religion. Thus religions have created all sorts of rules, laws and codes of behavior for the faithful with punishments to be administered for misbehaving both here in the Earthly physical and also in future ‘otherworldly’ residences.

It is difficult to imagine a more perfect system being conceived of and implemented for control over humans. The institution of Religion holds the description of what our spiritual consciousness is supposed to be or look like, the rules of behavior for our consciousness, and our very future as conscious entities under its own private lock and key. We obey the institution or we suffer, many times because of very capricious rules of behavior that make little sense.

So, according to prominent Western Religions there is a benevolent, loving God who is everywhere and ‘in’ everyone, is all-knowing and all-powerful, has created everything, humans included and gave us all free-will as to our behavior within this creation. And then this same God created a set of rules for his free-will human creatures to live under - but promises to burn his creation alive for all eternity if they exercise their free will under anything but this omnipotent God’s specific rules. And the only acceptable ambassador to this all-powerful God on behalf of humankind is the Institution of Religion, the one that made this exclusive relationship up in the first place.

Does this make any sense?

If this does not make a lot of sense, how is it that in its place we are left with only Science and its statement of nihilism toward the consciousness of humankind as an alternative? Is life completely bereft of other avenues for spiritual exploration and expression?

 

Losing Our Religion

Under this model, if we do have a non-physical spiritual nature, it must thus exist under the control of Religion since Science has a default position that such a thing cannot exist. And Religion's position is that any spiritual nature man might have is under the explanation and control of Religion.

So under the paradigm of our current civilization’s view of reality, we either give up any idea of spirituality and trust in the power of Science - or we hand control of our spirituality over, lock, stock and barrel, to an institutional entity called Religion, something that was created and now exists well outside of ourselves. If that is truly the case, then under the norms of our current societies we must give up control of our collective and individual sovereignty over our own spirituality, something that is not accepted anyway by Science.

But - and this is the real kicker: if it so clearly does not exist, why does Religion want to control it so badly? And why does Science rail against it so vehemently? We seem to be caught between a rock . . . and a very hard place!

There certainly seems to be something very important going on with humanity and its spirituality, something we are being actively discouraged from exploring for ourselves without dire consequences.

My contention is that one’s spirituality is a natural part of our non-physical consciousness. I think what is under attack and control here is consciousness itself and, most especially, the idea that consciousness is something that is part of a non-physical identity, an eternal aspect of us which is not residing exclusively in the physical; and that this consciousness should be under the direct control of each individual person and not under the control of religion.

For the sake of my argument let us call this non-physical consciousness ‘our spiritual nature’ and make it separate from Religion. If it is actually in us and a part of us, why would we give up personal control over it to something outside of ourselves? Well, the reality of our current existence is that we give up all sorts of control over various parts of ourselves and never think twice about it. I think though in this case of our non-physical consciousness or spiritual nature, the consequences of giving up control are extreme and dire for us both individually and collectively.

My biggest concern with giving up control over our own spiritual nature is that in exchange for doing so we are promised ‘salvation’ at some distant point in the future as long as we follow all the rules. This idea of ‘Salvationism’ removes personal responsibility for our thoughts, actions, experiences and individual growth from ourselves and hands them over to some entity outside of us.

What happens if we are being lied to and there is no long-promised reward of ‘salvation’ in the future? We have exchanged our potential growth in the moment for ease and a kind of ongoing perpetual childhood, choosing to remain adolescents living under rules that might actually be cutting us off from really knowing ourselves and ultimately enslaving us without our knowledge.

Religion wants to control and direct ‘our spiritual nature’ and our access to what might actually be our larger consciousness, the one residing inside our own non-local, non-physical aspect, something I will be discussing in greater detail later on in this series.

Why does Religion want to do this? Why is it important for Religion to control our consciousness? Probably because if normal people realized we are all able to connect directly to our non-physical consciousness, we would quickly lose interest in the rules, laws, and fears generated by the institution of Religion. A person connected directly to their own true nature would no longer have a need for Religion and therefore would not be under the control of Religion.

It seems this awful possibility of each of us independently accessing our eternal selves is an unacceptable consequence for Religion as an institution. For myself I can think of a number of ways Religion as an institution could actually function as a means to help people directly connect to their spiritual nature - but that is unfortunately not the current function of Religion - or its intention.

Please understand that I am not in any way personally attacking people who have lived their whole lives under organized religion. I would never do that. I know that each of our lives is ours to live, and in most cases we became involved in the institution of Religion when we were tiny children and are comfortable within its structure. But for me the inconsistencies and goals of organized Religion and the goals of Religion as an Institution are very possibly not in the best overall interest of the Individual.

I don’t intend for these essays to be a long polemic attacking organized Religion. Others have addressed the problems inherent in these organizational approaches to the ineffable far more eloquently and powerfully than I possibly could. Instead I want this series of essays to offer everyone the tools to help regain our own spiritual natures and to be able to connect to our larger non-local consciousness as individuals so that the power of organized Religion is no longer a dominating factor in our lives.

I think the loss of non-physical consciousness i.e. that which I call our spiritual nature, from our direct knowledge and control has led to many of the problems that seem to be ruling the world now. I don’t think this has happened by accident, but it is not the purpose of my essays to dig into how this loss of non-physical consciousness happened or how the ‘why’s’ of this loss have led to the enrichment of a very small minority of people. I want to focus these essays on how each person can regain a direct connection to their own unique and individual non-physical consciousness: one’s very own personal spiritual nature.

 

Living in the Material World

It is my contention that material exists in consciousness, not consciousness in the material. Scientific materialism depends on a concept called dualism, which is the clear and philosophical separation of the material from the non-material. This separation creates the entire current scientific proposition that metaphysical events have no relationship to events or material that is quantifiable through science. My definition contains no metaphysics and puts everything under the control of consciousness, which is a part of physics since in my view consciousness is a form of energy.

It is also my contention that our direct connection to, and understanding of, our non-physical consciousness is the most powerful antidote there is to the Lies of Modernity. These essays are all about how to get that connection back - and then what to do with that reconnection so that each of us can live a more balanced life.

All of us are spiritual beings, first and forever, and our nature as both spiritual beings and physical beings should be under our direct control. Religion should teach us how to make that connection and how to enrich it through thoughtful practices and rituals that enhance the individual, not their religion. Religion should not hand our spiritual nature off to the control of some self-created entity in the sky. It should ground us in our own inherent spiritual nature.

This connection could show each individual his or her own direct connection to all of Nature and to life itself. Each individual should learn to be directly responsible for their self and not rely on any ideas of Salvationism being handed out by Religion for good behavior. Learning good behavior should be the personal responsibility of all mankind, individually and collectively.

I think very old pagan religions did exactly that and this is the reason they were, and still are, so threatening to Religion.

For me, both modern Science and Religion have failed in their responsibility to humankind for the health and care they should provide to each of us as primary institutions. For me, both Science and Religion as institutions have been developed and are being used to control and enslave humanity for the enrichment of a very small minority of mankind rather than as a means for humans, both individually and collectively, to reach their full potential as beings on this Earth.

With this as my premise, let’s move on to discuss ‘Terms and Conditions’ for this Essay series. There is much more to come.

 

Written by ‘On The Beach’

22 June 2014

Iba, Zamabales, Philippines