Freelance Spirituality (Independence)

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You have made the smart and reasonable move, in avoiding entanglement in the cult called the "School of Metaphysics." Your Soul is very glad that you "missed a bullet."

Yes, it does seem that gurus are always trying to take sexual advantage of students. This is both deplorable and despicable, but it is also very powerfully human. So, our best bet is genuinely to forgive them, pray for them, and move on with our lives.

As you know so well, the path of the spiritual free-lancer is followed here. There is no "belonging" to any group, organized religion, cult, or denomination. It is attempted to be a Christian, but not only a "Christian." And this is not the historical, or orthodox, Christian, but a gnostic Christian. The path is that of the "Jesus-Christian."

There are still goodness and integrity in our world, my friend. If you look around, you can find them. But be careful to expect people-- even the best-- to be spiritual only, and not perfect. For all human beings are imperfect, rather poorly constructed by a very complex karma. But the truly "good" ones are those who are doing their honest best; no one can do more, and we dare not demand more!
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The Beautiful Heart

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No, my friend, it was not hollow flattery to point out that you have a "beautiful and unique heart." You are halfright: Everyone has a "unique" heart, but not every heart is beautiful. (Well, yes, they are, but often so deeply as to be inaccessible.:) A beautiful heart manifests itself through acts of kindness, generosity, service, and expressed and practical goodness. It reaches out to help and aid others. It cares about people, and for human needs. It is courteous, polite, and solicitous. It is, in short, a heart of expressive Love, or of Lovexpressions. All of these qualities have been observed in your behaviors.

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Cults, Learning About, and Knowing, God

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This poor world contains a delicious, and very rich, potpourri, or smorgasbord, of spirituality. Members of certain cults or guru-groups are not the only people who have struggled valiantly and honestly to live lives of honor, peace, joy, and Love. Indeed, for many, the laws of human leaders and gurus (often in cults) are more important than even the immeasurable Love and grace of God. Through the centuries, many people have honestly striven to know God personally and directly, and they had not been cult-members. (Indeed, there were thousands if not millions of God-loving men and women before these cults came along.) The facile and shallow argument that Biblical characters were "really" cult-members in their hearts does not at all stand up to historical scrutiny. The older writers of the Scriptures were Jews, and the more recent ones Christians, but the name of a cult is not found a single time in the entire Bible.

Neither is the word "organization" found anywhere in the actual Scriptures. For it was simply not important enough ever to be mentioned.

I believe that God is Love, and that learning to love yourself and others is the only Way to please God and to find true fulfillment and satisfaction. I believe that God does not really care exactly what micro-doctrines you believe (since no one knows everything), but God, as living Love, does care how you behave and treat others. Orthodox Christians somehow came up with the odd idea that what you believe, rather than how you live, can "make" you a Christian, but Jesus denied this, saying that Love alone would mark his true followers. (Compare Jn. 13:35) So, in history, we have many people who "believed the right things" about Jesus, God, and the Bible, but were murderers, rapists, thieves, and liars.

So now, the personal spiritual path is "Love plus nothing." This reflects the simplicity and compassion (including non-judgment and forgiveness) taught by Jesus. And it is very easy, reflecting again his declaration that his "load is easy and My burden light."

All the religions in the world, so often filled with anti-spiritual pride, probably do not know a thimble-full about the infinite God of the cosmos, who is vaster and more beautiful than the galaxies. So, their pride in doctrine actually reflects a kind of foolishness or intellectual limitation. And nowhere do the Scriptures command us to understand God, but only to love Him, in the same manner that we learn to love human beings and other creatures.

God can be known, but not by the jigsaw piecing together of separate data. He can be known only by the moving, touching experience of Love.

Knowing that "God is Love," it is only reasonable that the ancient texts are implying the "radical" but enjoyable idea that we should worship Love in its most universal form. This has nothing to do with sexual activity (the way a fundycult-member would likely interpret it), but has everything to do with selfesteem, selfrespect, and compassion, respect, and tolerance for, and goodness and kindness towards, other people and other creatures. For God lives in and through them all.
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Beware the Anti-mystic

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The mystic is a being who makes honor, honesty, justice, fairness, and, most of all, Love the nucleus around which her entire life orbits. But there are truly anti-mystical people in this world. These mentally ill people are called, by psychologists, "sociopaths." (Sometimes, they are also called "psychopaths.")

A sociopath is a person who has sown the seeds of hatred, pain, obscenity, and violence life after life. In fact, he or she has created such a monstrous mind that, in this life, he or she is born without a conscience. This person is enormously, immensely unspiritual; in fact, the sociopath is spiritually crippled. All true spirituality is absent from his/her life.

The very ill sociopath often believes her/himself to be "superior" to the mystic, and to all others. For good people must live within the limits of a Love-trained conscience. Because the sociopath lives without any moral compass, or interior "gyroscope," he/she often sees him/herself as "free" of the need for goodness, honesty, decency, or responsibility.

The sociopath can lie outrageously. He/She can cheat, steal, gossip, ruin, and even kill without feeling a thing. In politics, the sociopath can be absolutely ruthless.

In public, of course, the sociopath must pretend to have "normal" feelings, but is often exposed by this single fact: The sociopath never really cares at all for or about other people. She can pretend, for short periods, to be charming, and even caring. But, sooner or later, her behavior-pattern will give her away. "For even her "acts of kindness" are contaminated by utter selfishness. She never performs a truly selfless act.

This nightmarish disease of the mind is always dominated by a naked, often absurdly cruel, selfishness. The sociopath is incapable of true kindness, empathy, goodness, selflessness, or Love. The sociopath, if she/he becomes a political leader, can mass-murder hundreds of thousands without feeling even a minor twinge of conscience. He/She can smile in your face while killing you-- or a friend, or a stranger. He or she can do absolutely anything, no matter how hideous or horrible, and never spend a single sleepless night; for the sociopath is totally without conscience. Because of this cruelty, ruthlessness, and total absence of goodness, the sociopath often creates much "personal success" in either politics or business. But she is always a miserable failure as a human being. For she/he has no idea in the world what even "goodness" means.

Since it is estimated that one out of every twenty-five people might be a sociopath, do not be surprised if you know one personally. The sick sociopath might be a member of your own family or neighborhood. Sociopathology is related to, but is not the same as, the mental illness called "paranoia." (The paranoiac believes that everyone is secretly acting against him/her, out to "betray"" him/her.

The sociopath is unable to love. He/she is in perpetual hell within her/his own mind, but cannot create a way out,for the way out of "hell"is Love. Best advice: If we do know someone who has the symptomology of the sociopath, and since we cannot change or heal her, it would be better for everyone if we simply avoided the agony that can be caused by the sociopath. For a sociopath, unable to love, devoid of Love, is as close
to true "evil" as any human being can come.
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