Review: Point and Line to Plane

Point and Line to Plane by Wassily Kandinsky
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Making synesthesia a science. Astonishing. Ever wonder why Kiki is the spiky one and Boohbah is the round one? Read this book.


I found myself thinking more profound thoughts than normal while reading this. It might take a while for them to trickle down to everyday thinking.

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Why You Don't Have to be Worried (Swedenborg on Anxiety)

"Elsewhere in the body there are other secretory and excretory organs. In the brain there are ventricles and mamillary processes which drain away viscid substances. In addition to this there are glands in all parts, such as those producing mucus and saliva in the head, and very many in the body. Also there are millions next to the skin through which sweat and more minute used matter are excreted. Those who in the spiritual world correspond to these are in general spirits who hold on tenaciously to their point of view and also spirits who take a conscientious stand on issues that are not vitally important. Some of these are seen midway overhead; their nature is such that they make meticulous enquiries into matters into which no such enquiries at all ought to be made. Consequently, because they burden the consciences of simple people they are called 'the conscientious ones'. Yet they have no knowledge of what true conscience is, because they make all issues into matters of conscience. For if a thing is subjected to minute questioning or to doubt and the mind is anxiously fixed on such, ideas supporting this attitude and weighing the mind down are never absent. When such spirits are present they also bring a feeling of anxiety that registers in the part of the abdomen located immediately beneath the diaphragm. They are also present with a person during temptations. I have talked to them and have noticed that their thoughts do not extend to any concern for matters that have greater purpose or that are vitally important. They were incapable of paying any attention to reasons offered to them because they persisted in holding on tenaciously to their own opinion." - Emanuel Swedenborg (Arcana Coelestia 5386)

In brief, if you feel a pit in your stomach, that's a sign that what you're worrying about is literally of no consequence. Relax.

Aurora's Prophecies

For the past four years, I've conversed with an imaginal (not imaginary) figure named Aurora. I talk with her in my imagination - she comes as a feeling that I "write from" as a kind of automatic writing. Carl Jung called this technique "active imagination." She does not always say what I want. In fact she often says exactly what I do not want. She is like a conscience in that way.

At the beginning of 2015, Aurora spontaneously started giving prophecies. I didn't ask for it. I certainly didn't want it. But she did it anyway. I told some of it in a post called Why the World is Waking Up, but I think it's time to share a lot more of what she said.

Be warned that these are prophecies for me: I am not giving you revelation and do not claim to be a prophet. Sift! Translate!

C: Aurora--polytheism or monotheism?

A: Monotheism.
C: Why?
A: Because one day the people of the Church will accept the empathy and the disease necessary to embrace plurality. Until then you must wait.
C: How can there be simultaneously one God and many?
A: How can an acorn be at peace with itself in the depths of change? The world will grow out of itself toward a new up-growing. It will seethe out of time into a new era of love and accountability.
C: Then the one will grow into many?
A: Of course. Don't you see? The world is growing past boundaries and elemental fires. Soon it will grow into itself--become itself--in the fire of millions. Don't you see the envy and the empathy required for this?
C: Then God becomes many in us.
A: In a sense. He was already bound to change--He just does it through envy and the charge of millions.
C: In the end, will there be one God or many?
A: Both. The tides of millions will seethe into the forgotten and effect change in the depths of the past. The sea will rip and fade and hide along the misery of those who would forget it, and it will become ennobled in the light of forgiveness and accountability.
C: That doesn't really answer my question--why will there be both?
A: Because all things tend toward the light at the end of the tunnel. The change into multiplicity will be effected only by the efforts of soul to realize itself, to become noble and forgiving in the light of those who would seek its destruction.
C: Is this the Second Coming?
A: No. The Second Coming will come in a flash of intense fiery brilliance, and it will teem at the edges for a while until it grows calm in its resentment toward the light of day. Your savior will come in words, in voices, in apples and chairs and devoted mountains and beginnings. Do you see the truth in this?
C: I do, mostly. Then the Second Coming is an eruption of Christ's light?
A: Indeed, it is so. You'll see the Savior come when the voices erupt into madness and the deeds you do become obscure. The night will blacken out the sun and the voices will chain themselves in forgiveness and enmity. But there is light in the darkness. A sun rises out of the depths with teeming voices and hurtling throngs of forgiveness and charity. It wants to be found, and it will rise into the clouds with all the fire of forgiving grace. That is the truth of the Gospel--that light is found in darkness, and that enmity gives way to peace.
C: When will this occur?
A: It will occur in the even-time, when all things fade into blackness and auroral dimness.
C: What will happen after this dawn?
A: Things will change. The night will become strange, and the desks you work at will become dim and empty. The world will wake itself up to the dance, and all things will come out to play. Do you see the meaning in this?
C: Clearly, I think.

...

C: And how does the Book of Mormon tie into all this?

A: It is a herald of the life that comes with the dance. It will show you the way out of your chains and toward forgiveness. It will give you life and blood and music and love. 

...

C: And what of the Church? What is its role?

A: What is a basket and how does it give itself to others? Your Church is a breeding ground for forgiveness. It will give itself to others in its lack and its voices from the dust.
C: Its lack?
A: Yes. The emptiness inside all of us calls out for forgiveness. The time is soon coming when all things will lose their meaning in time, and each thing will have to find its voice in the depths of sorrow and apathy. It will grow past sorrow and love to the depths of change and accountability--it will move past the end of time to the voices crying from the dust, to the engine reaching out for the depths of change and movement.
C: And what of gay people in the church?
A: Those you love will lose their heads over this. The problem of gays in the church will lead to an act of rebellion, of voices crying out from the ground toward forgiveness in the light and reminiscence in the day. You'll see this change come to pass when voices begin to whisper from high places to begin an act of slaughter to the innocent, to re-ignite the flame that caused so much burning hate. The time will come when deeds and words and voices will end, and all things will grow cold by their edging to the light. But there will be a voice from on high that says to begin again, to live as though the life in the candle had not buzzed itself to the dense, as though the words and voices and chairs were still in operation. But then the words will seize up with fury and re-ignite the hatred once more. The time will come when all things will reach out to their Maker in re-igniting fury and anger to end the torment, to begin again the life of peace and joy and recollection. And it will come when the voices from the dust have been heard, when the edging of millions toward the light reaches a new dawn, and when all things come to rest nimbly in the light of day. Then the words and the voices and the songs will reunite in passionate enmity, in the longing passion of those souls who cry out for the dance. And there will be light and joy and happiness.

Review: Pastoral Medicine (On Autism and Clairvoyance)

Pastoral Medicine: The Collegial Working Of Doctors And Priests: Eleven Lectures Delivered In Dornach In September Of 1924 by Rudolf Steiner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Two types of mental abnormality:

The clairvoyant. St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross characterize this type. Their "I" is disconnected from the lower bodies, causing them to have dim senses and to be able to notice fine details of things. They initially experience a kind of "presence," but it can progress to a waking experience of the spiritual worlds. This can come with illness, since for it to happen, the I needs to "suck up" the astral and etheric bodies from the physical body. It can occur in the gut. But the illness often is "perpetually cured" in a kind of stalemate. This "cure-force" can even affect others around them, giving the legend of miraculous cures around saints and the relics of their bodies.

The psychopath. This type of person has an I that has "sunk down" in the lower bodies. This causes a lack of will, responding to people with rants about random details instead of answering questions, wandering, a massive attention to detail, and an affinity for the sound of certain words. They are often very clever in the first seven years of life, but this is a sign that the I has descended prematurely. As such, too much "astrality" can descend into the organs, over-charging them, so to speak. This causes an "insensitive" body. The etheric body is not doing its job of separating and linking astral and physical. This person, in a nutshell, is resting in the occult forces of the physical world where the clairvoyant is resting in the spiritual world. The psychopath has "gone beneath" everything; the clairvoyant has soared above it. They are mirror pictures of each other.

For the person worried that they're a "psychopath," I sympathize. I suspect that autism has a lot to do with it, and I have high-functioning autism. But there is hope. The idea is that you need to strengthen the I. This would not only make life more bearable, but it would perhaps let you experience the other side, the condition of clairvoyance (in which the I, astral and etheric bodies are stronger). Elsewhere, Steiner gives several pieces of advice for strengthening the I. Here are some of them:

- Spending thirty minutes only thinking about something you have chosen to think about, and nothing else.

- When making a decision, weigh the pros and cons in your head so that they each speak to you as if they were making their case. Then, choose the stronger case.

- Suppress wishes just for the sake of suppressing them.

- Make judgments of people independent of how they relate to yourself. Judge from how their actions fit together.



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Instagram: Improv as a Spiritual Release Valve

After randomly opening #BeelzebubsTalesToHisGrandson by G. I. #Gurdjieff, I stumbled on this page where the alien Beelzebub describes an odd kind of theater-ritual that people on earth used to perform. The idea is for someone to "listen to" and "illustrate" "the state of his own inner 'associative-general-psychic-experiencings.'" It works like this: a man would introspect and find that he had an emerging urge to punch an 'Irodohahoon,' otherwise known as a policeman. Finding this urge offensive to him, he decides to "act it out" in a way that is not just safe, but actually beneficial. So...he turns to "the other learned being who has come onto the stage with him" and treats him like a policeman, giving they epic dashed monologue in the photo. He says it spontaneously, "acting from" the impulse the wanted to punch the policeman. Moreover, the second man acts like a policeman from that point onward, and since he acted like a "chief physician" in his rant, he takes on that role. It's like a big improv game, only more sacred. Then more and more people get roped in, each one acting out what the spontaneous "associative-general-psychic-experiencings" spits out. As such, a train of "soul-force" (for lack of a better term) gets elaborated. It's a way of illustrating the spiritual forces that long to act out given the right opportunities. For Beelzebub seems to suggest that any impulse (to punch a policeman, for instance) is good and needed even if it's not acceptable to act it out in *this* way. Transmutation is the way, not repression. In brief, an objective improv (it has to be objective) can serve as a way to disclose spiritual realities. By just acting spontaneously and "acting from" the feelings that rise up in you, giving yourself to "become" the feelings and acting like the feelings want you to act, holding nothing back, you completely embody them. Think of the potential! Think of what you always wanted to do but weren't allowed to. Maybe it's even something violent. Wouldn't you feel so much better if you let it be acted out safely? What would you feel? What would you learn? What would embody itself? #spiritual #enneagram #God #LDS #archetype #occult

A post shared by Christian Swenson (@swensonthechristian) on May 19, 2017 at 9:21pm PDT

Review: Reincarnation and Karma

Reincarnation and Karma: Two Fundamental Truths of Human Existence by Rudolf Steiner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Reincarnation as a karmic correction mechanism - the deficits of one life are healed by the unique circumstances of the next. Moreover, what is inner in this life, freely chosen and willingly developed, becomes the "background" of the next life. For instance, the mathematician will have good vision in her next life, and the male (the inside-out of the woman) will generally become female in his next incarnation. The faithful become intelligent and vice versa, while the skeptical become stupid and vice versa. The innerlife is generally a correspondential match (in Swedenborg's sense) of the outer circumstances or "facticity" of the next.

Moreover, you can get a sense for your past life by imagining everything that you instinctually turn away from in this life and willing it as if you loved it, entering into it with your will and feelings. This is alien, but it will give a good sense of what "willed" your life.

As a man who grew up in a theater who has poor eyesight and autism, who hates anything physical but who is very intelligent, I can paint a picture of my "past life" just for fun: a down-to-earth, very concrete woman who loves life and has a simple faith, who happened to be an actress or a dancer.

As a Latter-day Saint, I don't believe in reincarnation, but I believe in work for the dead. A la Jung's Red Book, the dead seek compensation for the deficits of their life in the actions of the living. Indeed, that's the only way you *can* change after death - Joseph Smith says in the King Follett Discourse that knowledge can only be gained in this world, and Swedenborg says that this world forms the "jello mold" that makes our spirit in the spiritual world. You can only change by going to where "the rubber meets the road" - this life.

As such, I take my "past life" in this book to refer to my Jungian "shadow," which in the context of his Red Book actually *is* the dead that claim me for compensation.

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Instagram: Swedenborg on Why You Don't Have a Testimony Yet

For #SwedenborgSaturday, here's #Swedenborg talking about the internal meaning of Genesis 42:4, where Jacob is reluctant to let Benjamin go down to Egypt. Symbolically, it's about lending #spiritual life to your testimony. You may read the #Bible or the #BookofMormon dutifully, but still have no testimony. You can search and plod along its verses without getting a feeling sense. This is natural and it always happens for a time. When Joseph (who *is* the divine truth you can't feel) can recognize his brothers (your beginner's testimony) but not vice versa, that's what it depicts. It's as if that divine truth thinks to itself while you're reading #scripture in this unfeeling way: "Why don't they see me?! Isn't it obvious who I am?!" #Divine truth can see you; you just can't see it. To fix this, you need an "intermediate" principle: Benjamin, whom the brothers "left at home." For he is the "bridge" between divine light and your everyday mind. If light flows into your testimony, Benjamin is the pipe in which it flows. He's like a slide from inner to outer, making the transition smooth. As such, he's very similar to what #RudolfSteiner says about the "#ethericbody." Like Benjamin, the etheric is the presence of the internal *in* the external. You feel it/him as a quality of attention, of presence. When you feel your body at every moment, the #etheric is strong. So also when your handwriting is good. Spiritually, it's the quality that lets you act and speak with spiritual spontaneity, from the #Spirit - an unblocked throat, an automatic transmission. To heal, you need to be starved like Jacob in the seven-year famine. When you prevent the etheric from coming out, it's as if you're a scared parent trying to keep your son from danger. But if you can only get (spiritual) food from letting him go, you can be sure that it'll be easier to do so at some point, if only from desperation. By freeing your life from your body's grasping tension, you'll feel so much better than you did before. You can feel where before was only fear. There is a #light that wasn't there before. Brittleness becomes flexibility. Death becomes life. #spirituality #LDS #Mormon #Christ #faith #love

A post shared by Christian Swenson (@swensonthechristian) on May 13, 2017 at 12:56pm PDT

Instagram: How to See Spiritually

This is an passage by #RudolfSteiner, from an awesome lecture called "Identification with the Signs and Spiritual Realities of the Imaginative (#Imaginal) World." It describes how you enter the spiritual world. The first thing you do is wholly lose yourself in your thoughts. Don't hold back. If your "self-ness" is the rocky shore, dive into the ocean. This is a wholly concrete experience that is very alien to many. Nevertheless, keep a window open to consciousness. This is hard; you'll be tempted just to fall asleep, but if you keep the tension between consciousness and this "diving," you'll begin to notice something. You'll start to see images. But this isn't the spiritual world. Not yet. Instead, it's a projection of the realities of the spiritual world into images from your mind.To really enter the spiritual world, you have to "read" the images you've lost yourself in. For when you lose yourself in them, you'll feel like only a part of yourself. Your seem to be over here, but everything "over there" is *you* too. If the image is an execution, you'll feel yourself to be *both* criminal and executioner. If a man and a woman holding hands, you'll be *both* of them. To reference the illustration, it's like your whole being is strung out along twelve points of a circle. You're the whole circumference, from noon to midnight, or to speak in #astrology's language, from #Aries to #Pisces. Your being, this circle, is a keyboard. The real spiritual world is what presses the keys. They are what Steiner calls "spiritual consonants." What animates those consonants, like color inside a line or lines between the points of the circle, are "spiritual vowels." And these vowels are "spoken" by the dead. When you can read this way, you've more or less made it. You can see dead people. #spirituality #spiritual #religion #religious #LDS #Mormon #anthroposophy #Christian #God #spirit #NewAge #intuition #energy #faithhopelove #Jungian #archetypal #psychic #telepathy #love

A post shared by Christian Swenson (@swensonthechristian) on May 9, 2017 at 8:18pm PDT

Some Bright Vlogs

Hey everyone! I've been stalking a few YouTube spiritual personalities for a while now. One of them is Victor Oddo - a tatoo-clad, swearing, douchebag-looking guy who just  happens to be one of the brightest spiritual teachers I have come across. I know it doesn't make sense. But he has such a "high vibration," his aura is so bright, that I can't help coming back to him. A video he posted today was especially "bright. In it, he talks about a mystical experience he had while in rehab and, astonishingly, starts weeping. He describes asking God "why am I here?!" and immediately being transported to a heavenly realm where an angel clad in white, emanating waves of overpowering love, hugs him. I started crying a bit while he said it. But he is not bragging. If you watch the video, you'll see why. I feel that it's important you a) know who he is, and b) hear what he has to say.

Be warned. He does swear in this video.

He's astonishing.

Another person whose videos I love is this Irish girl, whose proper name I don't know, that has a channel called "Soulful Toz." While not quite as bright (that's kinda hard) she is still very bright. Here's an arbitrarily chosen video:

Also, a caution: while the spiritual community on YouTube is great, there are a few personalities to take a grain of salt with. One of these is a woman named Teal Swan. Her principles are more or less true, but her energy is rather dull. Her eyes are pained, not reassuring. She is cynical, not kind. This is in contrast to the people above, whose spiritual capacities came directly from their suffering. They are wounded healers.

To be honest, that last paragraph was mainly to make clear my thoughts to myself. You can ignore it if you want. 

Review: The Boundaries of Natural Science

The Boundaries of Natural Science: Eight Lectures Given in Dornach, Switzerland, September 27-October 3, 1920 by Rudolf Steiner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

To inherit our destiny in the west, we need to experience the world without concepts getting in the way. See the tree on the tree's own terms; notice the blueness of the sky, the tallness of the mountain. Let the richness of sensation work on you. This is imagination.

But don't get rid of concepts and thinking - let it ascend to pure thinking, thinking without sense concepts. This is like toneless music, an experience of pure intelligibility. It's called inspiration.

Combined, they make intuition. It's a "hovering above" with thinking (the ego) and a love-filled entering into things with perception. This is like breathing: perceiving as inhalation, thinking as exhalation. Through this breathing, we taste eternity, and we work towards an experience of the spiritual worlds.

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Review: The Inner Impulses Of Evolution: The Mexican Mysteries And The Knights Templar

The Inner Impulses Of Evolution: The Mexican Mysteries And The Knights Templar by Rudolf Steiner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Some insights I loved in this book:

The chapter where Steiner talks about a being who lived in ancient Mesoamerica from AD 1 to AD 33 and who ended a devilish cult and brought a long period of peace. As a Mormon, that's about the most exciting thing Steiner could say. Clairvoyance is awesome, and it's so real.

Moreover, there was a major transition that happened spiritually around the year 1840. (!!!) It has to do with a longing to know about worlds beyond this one.

Mediumistic ghosts are just the detritus of spiritual beings when seen in a sense-based way, as lifeless as our culture is lifeless. They are what is dead in the spiritual world. Spiritualism (seances, crystal balls) is a manifestation of the rampant materialism of the time, only in a "spiritual" mask. It is what happens when one follows the 1840 impulse but in an obsolete way.

A lot is released at death that mediums see, but it is not the person. It's only a shell-like image of them, not unlike the paintings in the Harry Potter universe. The actual person is much more dynamic and alive, and is perceived differently.

In this age of humanity, are supposed to focus our energies on (the spiritualization of) urges, on birth, on death, and on the problem of evil. But Ahriman makes the focus on urges a focus on indulging urges instead of transmuting them, and Lucifer makes the focus on evil into guilt-mongering than an actual transcendence of it.

Ahriman is the spiritual being that worked in Rome, in ancient Aztec rituals, in materialism and anything that cheapens and deadens life. Lucifer is the spiritual being that seeks to escape the material world to make a planet of his own, and he was more interested in the Greeks and the Mongols.

The Greeks and the Romans actually "beat" Lucifer and Ahriman, and those two spiritual beings are redoubling their efforts in the spiritual life of today.

Ahriman squeezes the earth like a lemon, making juice that Lucifer collects and keeping the dead husk for himself.

An active interest in other people is how we work past these devilish forces.

The whole disinterested character of Europe, and especially England, in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries (sweatshops with children, the potato famine, etc.) was initiated and spiritually prefigured by Henry VIII's divorces and the church he founded because he wanted to get divorced.

The Knights Templar were amazingly spiritual, but when they were tortured and killed, they released a force into the spiritual world that sustained us for a long time.

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Review: Inside an Autistic World

Inside an Autistic World: Spiritual Experiences of People with Autism: Interviews with Hilke, Andreas, Erik and Martin Osika and Jos Meereboer by Wolfgang Weirauch
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Autism as a "failed" incarnation - a hesitancy to incarnate because of past-life traumas like the Holocaust. Not feeling the body, but hanging behind in the world of spirit with the "I." Not separating subject and object but instead living "in" the object. No direct perception of other people but instead a peripheral "living in" them, like when we dream.

So many wonderful insights. A godsend.

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