Tag Archives: manifesting

Occultism and Esoterism, Spirituality and Psychology, Uncategorized

Stuff You Don’t HAVE to Believe: Karma

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I talked about manifestation, now let’s tackle karma. This is one of those things that grind my gears about the spiritual community, largely because it unveils how derivative, unoriginal and moralistic it often is.

To understand this we need to remind ourselves of one of Nietzsche’s criticisms of his philosophical predecessors, who, according to him, were trying to safeguard religious morality even after doing away (overtly or covertly) with the concept of God.

This exact same thing happened to the spiritual community, which often reacts allergically to Christianity, yet seeks to safeguard the moralistic notion of hell (“if you do X you will be metaphysically punished”) by transfering its role to a vaguely defined “universe” whose task is, somehow, to uphold the believer’s social, political and spiritual views and punishing those who contravene them by causing bad things to happen to them.

Let us grant that this is somewhat of a misunderstanding of the original concept of karma found in some Eastern philosophies, even though it is not THAT much of a misunderstanding. The fact remains that, as used by most Western “alternative” thinkers (who somehow always end up believing the exact same crap), karma is just a lazy excuse for maintaining the holier-than-thou attitude they accuse traditional religion of: hey, enough with the badly understood Christian superstition! Time for the badly understood Oriental superstition!

Except that at least traditional religion has something grandiose and awe-inspiring about it (some passages from the Bible could be turned into a cool metal opera). The alternative spirituality of many girlypops has a way of pettifying everything: wow you left your girlfriend via message? That’s bad karma! What? You acted like a douche your whole life and suffered no consequences for it? That’s for another life then! If this is not the epitome of bitchy passive aggression I don’t know what is.

As many silly beliefs, this, too, has its glimmer of truth hidden in it. The Platonic myth of the soul, according to which our soul chooses what to incarnate as, offers much food for thought and meditation on the nature of our choices and how we must then live with the traces that those choices invite into our soul. There is no need to add metaphysical burdens on top of it.

MQS

Occultism and Esoterism, Spirituality and Psychology, Uncategorized

Stuff You Don’t HAVE to Believe: Manifestation

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When someone decides that conventional spirituality just doesn’t cut it and takes the logical next step, namely they start being told what to think by the Mind Body Spirit section of their local library (or its social media equivalent), they are often presented with a starter pack of beliefs and practices: lighting candles, burning sage, rubbing crystals, gazing mystically at their daily tarot card, manifesting. 

These are often handed out as some kind of miraculous tool for breaking free of the matrix (while in fact they are so commonplace that you scarcely find anyone in the corporate world who doesn’t practice them. You know you’ve become stagnant when corporations agree with you).

The concept of manifestation is especially popular, possibly because several popular aspirations find some type of answer in it: 1) the wish for a solution to one’s problems that is just one thought away; 2) the wish to be seen as doing something magical while not actually doing anything; 3) the wish to gain some sense of control over one’s life. Most of all, manifestation is often presented as the great inner secret™ practiced by successful people and taught by all great religions and philosophies.

In reality, through thousands of years of recorded magical practice there is no mention, explicit, implicit or implied, of the principle of manifestation as we understand it today, unless we stretch and misinterpret everything we read.

I have several objections to manifestation, some logical, some philosophical, some magical. I also think that, like many ideas I consider wrong, it does capture a fragment of truth, even though it twists it until it’s unrecognizable. Maybe I’ll explore all this in the future. But that’s not the point here.

I’m not in the business of telling people what to think. But always remember that there is a universe of teachings, practices and beliefs outside of the 1960s repackaging of Victorian esoteric fads that animates the current spiritual-but-not-religious community, and it’s fine to question, explore, expand, revise. Just because a belief is popular doesn’t imply you HAVE to accept it. If that were the case, you’d be served much better by conventional religion.

MQS