Introduction
Having become increasingly aware of the limitations of critical thinking, I’ve taken time out to reflect on how best to proceed on my journey of discovery.
Over the first 60 years of my life, I learned to “play the system” of the current political economy with variable success but remained, for most of those years, in a state of Trained Ignorance, as described in How We Live. Public and private education take us on a linear journey of learning through prescribed curricular, abstraction, erroneous assumptions and binary logic, which obscures the subtleties, ambiguities and contradictions in life and how everything is connected.
Abrupt changes in my life in the mid 1990’s started me on a journey of learning but I continued to “play the system” as best as I could.
However, as draconian limits were imposed on our freedom, due to the geopolitical and social upheaval, following the false flag attacks on 11th September 2001, I realised that everything I thought I knew couldn’t be relied on and needed to be questioned. The reality gap between my previous convictions and my lived reality fuelled my thirst for understanding.
Having explored the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the realisation that our governments and institutions are complicit in murder and duplicity to the extent of what unfolded from that day in September 2001, was both shocking and frightening. It did not, however, stem my curiosity which was largely driven by outrage and disbelief.
Prompted by a friend, in 2009, I eventually started to explore man-made global warming which I’d hitherto had no reason to doubt. However, within a few short weeks of research, my “belief” in the alleged “man-made global warming” consensus quickly evaporated. My scepticism has increased since, as accumulating evidence highlights the mismatch between the perceptions and reality of climate change.
The subprime crisis prompted investigation both into the causes of the crisis and the banking and monetary system itself. Imagine my surprise to find that everything I’d learned, during my years in finance, economics and investment management, was questionable, at best.
This was the learning foundation on which my real journey of discovery began with Critical Thinking in 2012. The co-creative learning methodology, which evolved through practice, took us on a spiral of learning and accelerated the expansion of our understanding. Within 5 years, Critical Thinking had pretty much tied down the fundamental nature of the current political economy and the “mechanics” of our enslavement.
The strongest driver of my learning was the realisation that the least important or significant factor in learning is one’s own knowledge; it is what we learn from others and their different perspectives that accelerates and expands understanding. Critical Thinking’s motto is:
In co-creative learning, humility accelerates the expansion of our understanding.
As we subsequently refined and promoted Critical Thinking’s analysis, we encountered resistance among many which caused us to explore this reluctance to learn. It was in pursuit of understanding why people so readily submit to authority, while rejecting information which offers freedom and prosperity for all, that our forays into esoteric knowledge and the psychology of servitude began. However, as explained in recent posts, logic and empirical analysis have limited application when exploring the occult and related phenomena. It was the recognition that intuitive contemplation is an essential component of learning and thinking that prompted me to cease working on new material for Daily Pickings and Critical Thinking.
This is the beginning of the next stage of learning, spiritual exploration which, as the journey of discovery continues, I will share with you here.
Thus far, I’ve only begun to “scratch the surface” of esoteric knowledge and there is much to explore but in Tai Chi there is a saying, “A journey of a 1,000 miles begins with a single step“. This post is that first step.
Pure Divine Order
My sense is there is a higher truth, that emerged from Critical Thinking’s work.
Learning and relationships are paramount: we learn from each other and we are all related through universal consciousness. Learning and relationships define our being. That, in retrospect, is why co-creative learning has been key to Critical Thinking’s successful interpretation of political economy in answering the question: who rules, how and why?
When we recognise and acknowledge the role of divine energy in all things, there is no place for fear. We are spiritual beings but most are oblivious to this reality having been “governed” (as in how one restricts the power of an engine with a “governor”) and trained into ignorance of our reality. When we embrace our spirituality, fear is replaced by wonder and curiosity, not driven by anger but by love.
Critical Thinking has brought me to this realisation and there is an audit trail of how this understanding unfolded in some Daily Pickings.
However, occasionally, we encounter spiritual beings who have undertaken a very different journey through experience. They’ve become knowing or gnostic through dramatic, and often tragic, life-changing experiences. Not many of us are privileged in this way; rational abstraction and trained ignorance ensure we are wont to dismiss claims of the “paranormal”, often because they may not be genuine but as Colin Wilson explains in The Occult, there are sufficient instances of inexplicable phenomena to warrant serious interest.
There are those that know and we should listen to them irrespective of our trained antipathy to the paranormal.
The near-death experience of Jeff Olsen
Jeff Olsen explains how he had a near-death experience, and why it has changed his vision of life and death.
Jeff refers to divine moments which are analogous to the sense I’ve experienced, on occasions, for no identifiable reason. A sense that something beyond my own will drives and informs what I do and reveals a path to follow.
My recent exploration of the Tarot hints at the nature of our journey of this life as a temporary learning experience in the continuum of our spiritual existence. Jeff also refers to “the big game” – that this life is a test (probably one of many) not for us to be measured but to learn, adapt and improve on our spiritual journey. There is a pure divine order. Our choice is whether to adhere to the comfort of our trained ignorance and dismiss what we can’t currently explain, or whether to open our minds for spiritual enlightenment.
Now this is where the conversation or exploration gets sticky and potentially frightening. Like most fear, this is born of misunderstanding. In simple terms, those who subscribe to Satanism are also seeking enlightenment and the return of Lucifer, the light bearer, but we are talking about a higher truth.
It is too early in my journey to expand on this beyond a crude, ill-informed summary. There are three elements to our existence spirit, soul and body.
Our spirit is an instance of, and belongs to, universal consciousness; our soul is the fusion of our spiritual and bodily being and belongs to us; and our body is our physical manifestation in this life. A helpful introduction to these concepts is The Latent Power of the Soul by Watchman Nee.
Satan is after our soul. But Satan is not an entity as such but is the manifestation of our weaknesses and selfishness; it is selfishness (nurtured by the political economy, underpinned by Satanism) which allows us to be manipulated and harvested. Our alignment with spirit is how we arrive at higher truth through unselfish being.
Stories and teachings of institutionalised religion are metaphors; they all stem from this higher truth.
But more on this later…
Practical Tips
A primary driver of accelerated understanding are Mind Maps. They are very much the unsung heroes of Critical Thinking’s work but are described in the CoCreative Learning Process. Mind Maps prove their worth over time as a “picture” or diagram of reality emerges over successive pages and notebooks. I’ve recently started a new one for this current work, having accumulated 6 notebooks of Mind Maps for Critical Thinking.
In view of their importance, I will incorporate the relevant Mind Map(s) into each post.
