Working to develop our gifts and powers may do harm (when motivations are bad)

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This is William Arkle writing in the persona of God, who is writing a letter to us to explain himself:

You are in a situation where your own private world which you live in will be what you make it. If you allow it to be dominated by the wishes of your physical nature, you will feel alien to it even if you are carried along by it. If you feel like a stranger to yourself it will make you unhappy, and you will doubt your own true identity, and you will lose faith in all the higher values in life.

 You may disguise the situation to the people around you but inside yourself you will feel lost and helpless and degraded.

My work is to increase your sense of reality to yourself, and make it feel of great value to you, without it spilling over into pride and selfishness. The balance between the over-subdued nature and the over-inflated nature is not easy to keep, and is a necessary balance to be achieved before other values can be built in.

The balance between the over-subdued nature and the over-inflated nature is not easy to keep, and is a necessary balance to be achieved before other values can be built in. The foundation lessons to be taught are thus integrity and responsibility, combined with affection and sympathy, but added to an ability to feel a balanced importance in the scheme of things. 

It is not an easy thing to believe you have great value and ability, and at the same time maintain a temperament which does not try to show off and impress people, and perhaps even dominate them. 

Every new gift I give you with trepidation because I know you are more likely to misuse it before you learn to handle it correctly, so, to me, a gift can appear like an ordeal and a temptation, and I am worried when I see some of you working to achieve special powers which may well be your downfall so far as the graceful balance of your temperament is concerned. 

On the other hand, I am glad when I see you developing gifts as a result of loving aspiration and wise discrimination, for such gifts I know will surely benefit you and all those associated with you.

http://www.billarkle.co.uk/prose/letterfromafather3.html

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In our culture there is a tendency to assume that gifts and abilities ought to be developed - people should make the most of themselves -- in general, the idea is that power and capability (in persons or in our groups or nations) are 'a good thing'.

But from a divine perspective there is a big problem - and it is a problem that we can see with many geniuses - especially the most recent twentieth century geniuses.

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Gifts are potential abilities to affect the world - Gifts are Power.

Is power a good thing? It depends on what you do with it: But we would agree that giving power to an evil person, or even just an irresponsible person, is a bad thing.

Bad, that is, from a divine perspective, even when the specific person with power got what they wanted. And bad from the perspective of that individual's 'graceful balance of temperament'.

(Think of Gollum and the Ring of Power - Gollum 'wanted' to possess the Ring, but it was bad for Gollum's balance of temperament, and bad from a divine perceptive that he should have it.)

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I think this used to be much better understood than it is nowadays: That before someone has power, they need already to have learned the foundation lessons of integrity, responsibility, affection, sympathy, balance...

It applies to individuals, and it applies to nations and cultures. Yet not only are the foundation lessons neglected, they are not even attempted!

The situation is perilous enough when dealing with natural (divine) gifts - but the worst possible situation is when people, nations, cultures are systematically and successfully working to achieve special powers without any recognition that powers are intrinsically likely to be corrupted. And this applies to powers of all types - including medicine and healing, including art and literature, including housing and clothing... But obviously so in terms of science, technology, and bureaucratic organization.

Insofar as we fail to perceive the probability of hazards, we have chosen to misuse power - while blinding ourselves even to the possibility of misuse.

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The situation is really very simple: it is a matter of motivation. From the divine perspective; gifts and powers in the hands of the badly motivated are a horror - and only in the hands of the well-motivated are they a good.

Since everybody claims to be well-motivated (even Gollum) - but nearly everybody is this requires discernment on the basis that people tend to be self-deluded and dishonest about their bad motivations - and what people say about their motivations needs to be compared with their actions; and their ability to maintain good motivations in the face of temptations needs to be evaluated: power does intrinsically tend to corrupt, and corrupted power is far worse than no power.

The divine perspective would therefore seem to be: Better no geniuses than corrupted genius; Better no breakthrough innovations than those which would be used with bad motivations; Better cultural decline and extinction than an unstoppable evil empire.

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In other words, from where we are, and as we are, and what we want to be - gifts and powers, energy and determination will all do more harm than good - much more harm than good; and we cannot use the excuse that we have evil enemies and it is 'us or them' because - from a divine perspective, we may both be bad, but we may be worse because of our superior gifts and powers...

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Therefore - the situation is that on the one hand, we in The West we have cultural decline (decline in power, achievement, capability, efficiency, courage and will) because we have rejected Christianity - because we no longer place religion above all other considerations; and on the other hand we should not even allow ourselves to hope that Western cultural decline is reversed until after there has been a Christian revival, a Great Awakening.

And if religious revival does not happen (as seems all-too-probable) then it is better that we do not reverse Western cultural decline.

Because - motivated as we now are - with our policy, propaganda and multiple laws and regulations systematically enforcing explicit moral inversion (a situation of depravity previously unknown in human history) - we are already and are still much-too-powerful

So enhancement of Western power, achievement, capability, efficiency, courage and will in the absence of prior religious revival would (from a divine perspective) likely be regarded as one of the worst possible outcomes.

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Three sentences by William Arkle

1. We must seek not to concern ourselves with God so much as to concern ourselves with what concerns God. 

2. We must stop supposing either that we are an accident within an accident or wholly a cause within a cause.

3. It will assist us to consider the significance of the family unit as we experience it for ourselves, and to reflect that it may hold within it the secret of the underlying pattern and purpose of the whole of the manifested universes.  


Selected from page 206 of A Geography of Consciousness by William Arkle (1974)

What makes good or bad luck?

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Consider the basic situation.

Since we were alive pre-mortally, we differed even before incarnation - differed in our needs. God therefore must have placed us in particular times and places, and with particular parents in particular situations, for some reason concerned with the kind of experiences we could expect. This would mostly be related by what we needed most to learn during our mortal lives to equip us for resurrected post-mortal eternity.

So, we were placed here on earth, in a world which God created, among people, animals, plants and minerals that God also created. Everything on earth was shaped from the stuff of the universe, everything is therefore alive - albeit in different ways.

Furthermore, everything is - to widely varying extents - conscious and in communication with everything else.

Therefore life on earth is all about relationships - the relationships between innumerable (more- or {usually} less-conscious) entities in-communication.

All the entities, every-thing, on earth can be regarded as a matrix or web: each entity influencing and responding to everything else; some entities much more powerfully than others; and sometimes entities will align together collectively  - either defensively or aggressively - and thereby amplify their influence.

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Luck can be explained in terms of the relationship between each of us and the web of other entities. Other entities in the web respond (individually and collectively) to our personal and collective human attitudes and behaviours - and that is the reason for luck; whether good or bad.

Bad luck may be a response to our own selfish, insensitive, aggressive, exploitative attitudes and behaviours being resisted by individual or collective responses from the matrix of living things (i.e. the web of other-entities); or this reaction may be against some group we are in - the species, a nation or smaller grouping.  In sum, bad luck is characterized by a relationship that is prideful, hate-driven, old, impersonal, careless: negative.

Good luck is the opposite - it happens when the relationship between an individual (or group) and the matrix is empathic, care-full, altruistic, warm, positive; that is, when the relationship is characterized by Love.

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It is vital to remember that this system is not set-up to optimize our mortal health and happiness; but to provide the situation for providing the experiences necessary for developing our post-mortal resurrected lives.

Therefore, true luck is not referenced-to our current state of pleasure or suffering.

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From this above metaphysical scheme, it can be seen that there is, on the one hand, no randomness to our lives - we are under God's care. But on the other hand, we are free agents with choice; and so is everything else in this world; not just the other people, but every-thing in this world.

We are subject to the consequences of our own choices and behaviours, and also subject to the consequences of the choices and behaviours of the other entities of the world. And as each of us is a sinful, weak, imperfect entity; so too (in their very different and diverse ways) are the other things in this world.

Just as we can be spiteful vengeful, self-centred - so too ca the matrix of things with which we are necessarily in relation.

Hence good and bad luck are not 'a matter of luck', not random, nor imposed individually and specifically at the will of God; but most a matter of the consequences of choices.

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The above argument is adapted from the chapter entitled 'Justice' in A Geography Of Consciousness, by William Arkle (1974).

How to meditate

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How should someone set about meditating?

I think it is important to recognize that there is no standard method for meditating well - by meditating 'well', I mean such that meditating 'does you good, that the meditating has a positive (Christian) effect.

Learning how to meditate therefore seems to be one of those tasks which each person must tackle for himself - and this is how it is meant to be.

Of course there are many 'standard methods' of meditation which are taught, and which people practice. There are many 'school's of spiritual practice. But (and each person will need to reach their own judgment on this) I do not find any of them to be effective in the job of making a better person. The feeling or 'vibe' I receive from those people who practice a standard form of meditation, and advocate it - and tell you how much it has changed their lives, is generally not good.

My impression is that trying to standardize and formalize meditation is an intrinsically bad thing - it leads to problems like fakery, spiritual pride, sensation seeking; and it easily becomes a tool for power seeking.

I think we are intended to chisel-out our own method, and that learning how to meditate is part of making meditation into a good and helpful activity (because it can, of course, be the opposite).

For a Christian, there can be some general guidance - in terms of what you are looking-for. Here is William Arkle speaking:

You have something in you which can give you exactly that essential faith. And that something is a little spark of God's own divine flame. It is there. To understand that God's own divine flame is there in you, is the most vital component of what you need to know about this process of mortal life; because once you can read that inner spark of God for yourself, then you can get all the necessary answers for yourself: and then your faith grows into certainty.  

From 1:30h : http://www.wessexresearchgroup.org/digital_08.html

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Educating the Angels

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It recently 'struck me' that - assuming angels are beings with free will, and are indeed of the same 'kind' as Men and Jesus Christ (as Mormons believe) - there is no reason to assume that angels are perfect or infallible; and, on the contrary, every reason to believe that they are learning, progressing by trial and error - as we are.

Angels are, indeed, engaged in a process of education by experience - but approaching this educational process from the top-down (rather than from the bottom-up, as are we).

I tend to assume that, because they reside in Heaven in close contact and communication with the Godhead, angels are always well-motivated, always doing their best, always Good - but I suppose that their knowledge and abilities and foresight are all limited.

They must therefore make mistakes and perform their jobs (to some extent) sub-optimally. 

So, on this basis, real life angels may be much like that most famous of fantasy angels: Gandalf.

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Note: this insight owes much to the ideas of William Arkle, for example: Discovering your soul's purpose at http://www.wessexresearchgroup.org/digital_08.html
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