Spirituality and Politics

This is a difficult one for me.

My kabbalah teacher urges me and the others in our group to keep out of politics and political discussion, and concentrate on developing our own behaviours and attitudes in such a way that we become more generous, compassionate, disciplined, empathic, less greedy and fearful, and just generally more useful and pleasant to our fellow Earth dwellers.

For those of you who have not read my posts before, or need reminding, Toledano kabbalah (the form of Kabbalah that was developed in 13^th century Spain) has divided humans into three ‘classes’ – with names that I think are rather tasteless, but nobody’s thought up anything more appropriate yet. The first group of humans, by far the largest, are the ‘vegetable people’. These souls are content with enough to eat and drink, with adequate clothing and shelter, with being entertained, and having the opportunity to have children if they so desire, and they are keen to fit in with their 'tribe', e.g. their culture or religion. They are happy to be led, providing the leader does not cause them too much physical discomfort or alternatively, can offer a convincing promise of better times. When they don’t think they’re getting this, they may well form a populist movement to warn or overthrow their leaders.

The next group are the ‘animal’ people. These are the people who desire wealth, fame and/or power. Among them you find, for example, (not all, but a lot of) pop stars, business men and women, TV personalities, rabble rousers, people high up in religious hierarchies, teachers, and politicians. I’ve heard it said that if vegetable people are the pebbles on the beach, animal people are the waves that roll them about. However, people in the animal class are guided by the deep desires and aversions of their egos (their personalities). In a sense they, too, are the pebbles, and their egos (and ids, that is, their sub-conscious minds, fuelled by strong and ancient animal instincts) are the waves pushing them about.

The third class, the ‘human’ people, are those who are trying to free themselves of the control of their ids and egos in order to be able to see more clearly, to achieve glimpses of the bigger picture unskewed by ego fears and id impulses, and to act accordingly. It is probably still the road less travelled. Toledano kabbalists make regular visits to meetings where they recount their recent experiences to each other.  Others in the group are usually able to see if the ego is interfering in a way that a person themself cannot see. In my experience to date, this has never been a daunting procedure. I’ve not been in any group where somebody has taken a delight, or felt superior in pointing out to others something that has been overlooked. The prevailing culture is about mutual support for each other on our journeys. Nevertheless, I think that a person has had to have got through the ‘defensive against any suggestion that I’m not perfect’ stage before they can open to this in the most constructive way. I think you have to be a genuine seeker.

However, not all those aspiring to be human people are spiritual or believe in higher, nonphysical dimensions; many are humanists, for example.

There is another group with which I am closely involved and that is the Integral movement. Most Integralists are also concerned to act in the world from a ‘higher place’ than their egos, and that includes acting in politics, reasoning that this is what the world needs right now. Many people within the movement believe that the world will become a fairer, more pleasant and sustainable place for all to live in when we move beyond ‘left-right’ politics to something more, well, integral. Recently I’ve been part of some extremely interesting political discussions with others within the London Integral Circle (which I have to say have not degenerated into the ‘I’m right and you’re not’ slanging matches that I’ve been part of elsewhere.) And one thing that’s emerging is the need for a meta-political stance. John Bunzl, whom I know through Integral circles, and who also blogs for The Huffington Post, has set up an organisation called Simpol. To quote from their website:

“Simpol invites citizens around the world to use their votes in a powerful new way to encourage politicians to solve global problems like global warming, financial market regulation, environmental destruction, war, and social injustice.

Simpol offers us a way to take action on global problems; problems individual governments cannot resolve by acting alone.

That’s because these problems cross national boundaries, and because competition between governments to attract investment and jobs means the markets - not the people - end up calling the shots.

Governments cannot act alone to solve these problems because any government doing so would make its economy uncompetitive, leading to inflation, unemployment, or even economic collapse. Any government that moved first would lose out! While governments remain stuck, it's the markets that continue to run politics - not we, the people.

Simpol aims to break this vicious circle by encouraging people around the world to oblige their politicians and governments to cooperate globally in implementing appropriate policies simultaneously for the good of all.”

If you join Simpol, you are signing up to vote for any politician, wherever they are on the left-right spectrum, who will make a declaration of support for a process leading to the simultaneous implementation of a range of policies to solve global problems. The website contains the names of politicians who have already signed up to this pledge.

Naturally these policies (that Simpol advocate should be simultaneously enacted by all), have certain values embedded in them. It could not be otherwise. These values are based on the fact that, as humans have evolved and life has become more materially bearable for a lot of us (less nasty, brutish and short), certain values have developed as well, values that have perhaps made such evolution possible. These values are to do with 1) being able to cope with increasing complexity: evolution can be seen to be producing increasingly complex systems all the time, in both the natural and human made worlds; and 2) developing greater compassion and empathy for others, people who are not us, or not like us, not part of our ‘tribe’, or even part of our species. Those who have made efforts to become more spiritually developed repeatedly report back that the feeling of separateness we all have in our ‘skin encapsulated egos’ is an illusion. So are feelings of independence and dependence. We are all inter-dependent, and so it makes sense to develop and live by values that reflect that.

I hurriedly add that becoming more compassionate and empathic does not preclude preventing others from taking advantage of you. It is perfectly possible to ensure one’s own needs, and non- greedy wants, are met, and still be generous and tolerant of others. As Gandhi said, “there’s enough for everyone’s need, not everyone’s greed”.

In kabbalah the universe is said to be held in existence between two poles: ‘force’ and ‘form’. (‘Yin’ and ‘Yang’ comprise a similar model). ’Force’ is outgoing, creative, expansive, merciful and generous. ‘Form’ is structuring, curtailing, setting boundaries, disciplining, gathering in, and defining. Without this latter ‘form’, the universe would expand into chaos; and without ‘force’ the universe would just shrink into itself and eventually disappear up its own fundament. The work of a kabbalist is to balance these two poles. This cannot be done successfully without having first developed a perspective which has risen above the level of ego and id. Some politicians have done this, even if temporarily, and changed the course of history for the better in the process but, again, one’s own level of consciousness has to be developed beyond the level of ego and id to spot them at the time.

After writing the above, as I had reproduced material from the Simpol website, I sent it to John Bunzl for comment. He offered the further thought provoking observations:

 The need for a meta-stance, beyond simply going beyond the right-left dichotomy, is that, in practice, the left has all but disappeared from the political scene. Today, party politics is really just different shades of right. This, I argue, arises because of the free-movement of capital which, because it forces all nations to enact only those policies which keep the nation competitive and attractive to investors, means politics is squeezed into a broadly centre-right straightjacket. An effect I call pseudo-democracy: whoever you vote to govern, the policies delivered remain substantially the same. (Like Henry Ford’s ‘you can have any colour you like so long as it’s black’)

-          So the need for a meta-stance is actually two-fold: 1. To be able to see the above in the first place and to see why/how its occurring. 2. To devise a strategy for doing something about it.

-          Force and Form. These two energies are like dance partners. Each is vital but each leads the dance at different times as evolution unfolds. Force, it seems to me, is what economic globalisation represents: market competition, as a force has outgrown the Form of the nation-state and has now gone global. Absent Form at the global level, Force is pathological, as we see today. (Another way to look at it would be to say that the market economy embodies the masculine principle whereas cooperative governance embodies the feminine.) Either way, the masculine principle – Force – has, since 1648, led the dance to the point where, if Form doesn’t make her move to go global too and so catch up to balance Force, we’re in big trouble! Simpol, if you will, is a channel, an emergent possibility, for feminine Form (i.e. global governance) to emerge and take practical shape.

-          Spiritual Politics: To me, the underlying spiritual import of Simpol is forgiveness. When we accept that no one is really to blame for the global vicious circle we’re all embedded in, we truly see that we’re all in the same boat. We forgive ourselves and each other. We give up the ‘blame game’. Only by doing that can we reach a spiritual turning point in which truly inclusive global solutions might be envisaged: we take responsibility!”

To finish this post, I would say just this: Those of us trying to develop beyond our egos (“egos are wonderful servants, but dreadful masters”) refer to it as ‘the work’ and, as my kabbalah teacher said recently, it’s not called the ‘work’ for nothing. It is extremely hard work.

But the wages are good.

Daily practice

There are those who can see some sense in what I’ve written in my first five posts, but who do not have time to read the books I’ve recommended in yesterday’s post, and who are more interested in what this means for them on a day to day basis, i.e. what action can be taken in their everyday lives.

Each tradition has very definite guidelines and ‘rules’ for this – the Ten Commandments, the Eightfold Path, and so on, but if it’s of any help, I have set out here the daily practice that I have evolved for myself, honed from many traditions. I would love to know what others are doing – please let me know.

First thing in the morning, - very first thing,-  I repeat the positive affirmation “I am loved, I am worthy, I am safe, I am free” several times, and then again whenever I remember to do so throughout the day.

Having affirmed this, first thing, the Christian’s Lord’s Prayer is a good set up for the day:

“Our heavenly parent (your ‘spiritual’ parents or, if you like, you at your most perfect level. The main thing about this entity to which you are praying, whether it be male or female, both or neither, is that it is wholly wise, understanding and compassionate, and has nothing but bottomless unconditional love for you. Don’t let any interlopers worm their way in here.)

Hallowed be Thy name (you intend to worship only that which is the begetter of the universe, with what that means, rather than any other person, thing, idea or ambition. I’ve kept the archaic language and capitalisation here because it lifts the prayer out of the ordinary mundane world.)

Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven (you are asking to be a channel for what God would like to be happening on Earth.)

Give us this day our daily bread (self- explanatory, plus you’re asking for what you need, rather than what you want, as we are often blind to the fact that if our wants were satisfied it would not always be in our own best interests.)

And forgive us for what we’ve done wrong, as we forgive those who’ve done us wrong (what goes around comes around. Anyway, holding on to a grudge weighs you down, psychologically and spiritually. This doesn’t mean that you mustn’t take loving compassionate action to try to ensure the wrong does not occur again – both those committed by you and by others against you.)

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil (This is acknowledging that we can’t keep out of trouble without Divine/spiritual help, and that we’re also trusting that God knows what’s beyond us, and won’t push us beyond what we can cope with.)

For Thine is the Kingdom, the power and the glory (as it should be, lesser entities just mess these things up when they try to pretend this isn’t the way things are.)

Forever and ever. So be it”

It’s important that you concentrate hard on what you’re saying as you recite this prayer.

I then usually round off my morning ritual running through the list of divine qualities I want to be channelling that day e.g. wisdom, compassion, understanding, patience, generosity, peace; and specifically requesting Divine help with that.

I then put a mark on the back of my hand or choose a specific piece of jewellery that will regularly catch my eye throughout the day. When it does I do a quick review of how I have been ‘manifesting’ the qualities I chose that morning, and if there’s anything I need to do as a result of that review.

At some point during the day I meditate for 20 minutes. I happen to use the ‘GetSomeHeadspace’ application, but that does cost money. Plus there are loads of places on the net, and thousands of books that’ll tell you how to do it. Very many people claim that this is the most necessary activity on a spiritual quest. In my opinion, it does help to peel your ego away from your more authentic self, which it is often smothering. This enables your more authentic self (the one more in touch with your Divine origins) to get a handle on the caprices of your ego, and id, and superego come to that. Always remembering of course that all three of them (ego, id and superego) are only trying, within their limited means, to do their best for you. They make great servants but terrible masters.

Now I’m unemployed, I also devote some time to extra prayers and spiritual exercises and contemplations during the day. The ones I currently use are from ‘Open Mind, Open Heart’ and ‘What We May Be’ (see my last posting) and also from Tau Malachi’s books ‘Living Gnosis’ and ‘Gnosis of the Cosmic Christ’. These exercises in these last two books can also be found on the Sophian tradition website I mentioned in my last post.

I’ve found it very important to end the day with prayer as well. It’s a good idea to list all the things you’ve been grateful for that day (e.g. the roof over your head, the food you’ve eaten, the old friend who got back in touch), then to pray for others (both of these are actually for your own spiritual and psychological good) and, finally, to identify the issues and problems you are having trouble with, or are experiencing anxiety about (this is more for your own clarity, the Divine of course has no need to be told) and then, consciously turn them over to this Higher Power. It can see all sorts of angles and wrinkles and possible solutions that you can’t, will be thinking more in the longer term, and what would be good for others as well. I cannot tell you what a help this last prayer has been to me over the years.

If at any point during these rituals you begin to feel gratitude and awe – not an unusual occurrence – direct these feelings ‘upwards’ (spiritually) to whatever you’re envisioning as God, in order to share them. In religious parlance this is known as devotion, and can open all sorts of interesting doors.

As said earlier, I would love to know what others do.

Sources for further exploration

If anybody is interested in anything I've written so far, there is a wealth of further information out there. I tend to go for the type that turns up in books,- real material books,- so that I can write all over them.

I would most strongly recommend reading "What We May Be" by Piero Ferrucci. In fact, if I were in government, every household would receive a free copy of this book. Half an hour at the beginning of each school day would be given over to reading it and trying some of the exercises it recommends. In fact, if there's only one book you read in the rest of your life, make sure it's this one. Not that I've any strong feelings one way or another.

If you then want to go on, and read up further, try Karen Armstrong's "The Case for God". This woman is brilliant, and very readable (though not as readable as "What We May Be")

I would also recommend Z'ev ben Shimon Halevi's "The Way of Kabbalah", He has written several books with very similar titles, but I think that this is definitely the best one to start with.

Another favourite - the book that started me off down this track to begin with- is Kenneth Walker's "Gurdjieff, A Study of His Teachings".

After that, Christians would probably appreciate Father Thomas Keating's "Open Mind, Open Heart"
and Muslims might like Idries Shah's "The Sufis" though you don't have to be a Christian or Muslim to appreciate either or both..

For the intellectually adventurous (and possibly masochistic) I would recommend Jenny Wade's "Changes of Mind", as well as Ken Wilber's "No Boundary" and "Integral Spirituality"

Some websites which might lead you to interesting discoveries are as follows:

http://integrallife.com/

http://www.kabbalahsociety.org/

http://www.sophian.org/index.html

What books and websites would others recommend?

A spiritual cosmology, and the problem of evil

[Advance postscript: Some people have told me that they found the following post confusing. If that applies to you, I've tried to clarify it further in my posts on 28 October 'The Four Universes' and 29 October 'The Human Being'.]

I intend to be a little bolder, and considerably more provocative in this post, and tackle the question that has been thrown up for millennia by the critics of the Christian/Jewish/Muslim God, which can be formulated as follows:

Why is there evil in a universe created by an omnipotent, loving God? Either God is omnipotent, or loving. The existence of evil suggests God cannot be both.

In order to respond to this perfectly rational question, we must think the practically unthinkable, for human brains anyway. This is that the entity/ground of all being/”absolute” responsible for anything existing (–and I’m talking about all levels of existence here: Divine, spiritual, psychological and physical-) in other words, the prime cause that needs no cause itself- is nothing, i.e. no- thing that we could possibly imagine. We can only describe it by what it is not, and that includes any adjective we can think of. Those adjectives/labels include ‘omnipotent’ and ‘loving’. It is impossible to describe the entity that is responsible for existence in any way, let alone apply words like ‘loving’ or ‘omnipotent’.

However, as I have already suggested, there are several levels of existence between the material/physical universe that most of us are familiar with, and the ‘ground of all being/”Absolute”’, and all of those levels the original entity gave birth to (parthenogenetically!), or rather, is continually giving birth to.

You can envisage it like this:

         Or like this:                                        

Several mystical traditions have it that the first universe to emerge from this “Absolute”, which is referred to as the ’Divine universe’, is beyond ordinary human comprehension. However, this Divine universe in turn produced out of itself the ‘spiritual universe’. At the head of this spiritual universe is the Being we can think of as the Creator God. So, to clarify, the ’Creator God’, referred to in the first verses of Genesis, is an aspect of the original “Absolute” and the original ‘Divine universe’.

In western Kabbalah and Gnostic Christian Kabbalah, the “Absolute” that calls forth from itself the Divine universe is referred to as ‘Ayin En Sof’ (‘endless nothing-ness’) and in at least one version of eastern Vedanta the concept is referred to as ‘Brahman’. The Creator God on the other hand is the ‘Keter of Beriyah’ and the ‘Tiferet of Azilut’ (the Crown of spirituality and the Truth of the Divine’) in Kabbalah; and as Brahma -without the final ‘n’- in Vedanta.  

    

Those who have had direct experience of this Creator God do report feelings of absolute bliss, peace, understanding, wisdom, compassion belonging-ness and one-ness with It in Its presence. (Not all of them are able to bring these attributes back with them.) (In fact not all of them come back and some, who are not sufficiently prepared, go happily mad.)

So, in answer to the original question set out above, my own thoughts on this is that the Creator God had to work within the ‘rules’ already set out by the ‘“Absolute” nothing-ness’ when it initiated all existence out of itself. The Creator God could not make 2 plus 2 equal 5, for example. Similarly it could not make an edible omelette without breaking eggs, just as you can’t build a comfortable, civilised town without having sewers in place. Thus the Creator God could not ‘choose’ to create a universe without what we think of as evil and suffering.

There is also the question of balancing ‘force’ and ‘form’, both of which are needed to make a multi- dimensional universe. On the side of force you have: expansive tendencies, creative impulses, revelation and wisdom. On the side of form you have: tendencies to contract and pull in, limitation and definition (e.g. structure), contemplation of what has been revealed, and understanding. (‘Understanding’ balances and channels ‘wisdom ‘ – this is a huge area that I’ll return to in future blogs.)

 As is the nature of any dynamic process, these two sides, force and form, can go out of balance, even before humankind started running around acting out of free will and often in opposition to God’s will. As I said in my last blog, too much force and the universe will go spiralling outwards and out of existence; too much form, and the universe would be too uncomfortable to be lived in (possibly disappearing up its own fundament). Between these two sides runs a ‘pillar’ holding the balance. In this strand of creation are will, grace, compassion and truth.

So, to re-cap: The Creator God not only brought the spiritual universe into existence out of itself (the exact process being described allegorically in the first chapter of Genesis), it also formed, out of the spiritual universe, the psychological universe (sometimes referred to as the astral or mental universe), from which the spiritual universe can be accessed; and from there (the psychological universe) made the physical universe, from which the psychological world can be accessed. It’s what brains were made for….

So Darwin was right, but only gave part of the picture. We are evolving back up our original involution.  The brain might act as a vehicle for the mind in evolution, but the whole body came about as a vehicle for the mind in involution.

Every human being has a physical, psychological, spiritual and divine aspect, because we are ultimately made out of the stuff the Divine universe. (What a lovely thought:  our bodies are made of stardust, literally, and both our bodies and inner selves are made of stuff that is, in its essence, Divine.) We all have immediate access to the physical and psychological worlds on being born. We have access to our spiritual and Divine selves by making our way up that central pillar of truth, compassion, grace and will. We do this through meditation, contemplation, prayer and appropriate action. [There is more about this in a later post called 'The Human Being'.]

There. I hope I’ve now put a stop to over 4,000 years of people asking such a pesky question…

[As mentioned earlier, if this isn't clear, have a look at the posts of 28 and 29 October.]

More on Why

In my first post on 4 Oct 2012, I said a little about why and how I got interested in mysticism in the first place, but little about why potential spiritual development has become such a priority with me now.

It's because, though I know I'm swimming against the tide in everyday society, I think IT'S THE MOST IMPORTANT THING ANYBODY CAN DO. And anybody can do it.

In the increasingly available material comforts that science and modernism have given us, in the heady rush of “getting and spending” we “ lay waste our powers” (thanks, Wordsworth.) Our attention is all directed outward, and we are at the mercy of the physical world which, however pleasant we have made it, is neither designed nor able to fulfil a good many of us. Some of us are born with, or find we have developed, urges that the materialist world cannot satisfy. 

We may throw ourselves into our jobs, seek new relationships, engage in literature, art and music, drown ourselves in acquisition, or in drink (my personal favourite, though I enjoy them all); some of us will tell ourselves that there’s no point in asking ‘what’s the meaning’ because there is no meaning; and when we find ourselves wondering if this is it, we go out and buy something, or wait until our mood picks up. This does suit many people; probably most of the world’s population actually, which is quite sensible once you start to look into the perils of spiritual development. But many of us find we don’t have the choice. It nags away at us.

More importantly, even if there isn't such an urge, nagging away at you, there is a logic in spiritual development, (I've realised I don't like the expression spiritual development - could somebody suggest something else please?) The point of the spiritual quest is to try to align yourself, your everyday ego, with the will of an entity much wiser and more compassionate. 

Goodness knows the world could do with a lot more wisdom and compassion (compassion being the balancing point between 'mercy/tolerance/expansion' and 'discernment/judgement/contraction'. If there was an imbalance of too much of the first in the universe it would simply fly apart, and too much of the latter condition would make the universe unbearable to live in.)

Giving what one thinks is one's own will over to what appears to be some-one or something else is frightening in at least two ways: 1) your ego, who thinks it IS you, will fight like mad against this and 2) the spiritual quest involves rummaging around in your unconscious, and there's some very scary things in there (well, there is in mine.) Everything comes from the Absolute/Ground of all Being/Transcendent God, including evil, and there are entities out there (or, more rightly, in there) that are very unpleasant indeed. They don't always appear so, but look at what's going on around them ("By their fruits you will know them" as one great mystic said). It is necessary to affirm everyday that you are seeking the positive, the integrating, the true, the decent, the unselfish, the trusting, the hopeful and the loving.

Am I beginning to sound like a saint in my intentions??? Those who know me personally will know of course that I'm very far from it. This is all in the pursuit of self interest - what benefits the world benefits me, because I am part of that world. (I do wish some politicians would learn that.) Also, one has to take the long view. For reasons that I'll probably talk about in later posts, I believe in reincarnation, and life between lives. You can't take anything material with you from one to the other, but your mental, emotional and spiritual state will determine where you end up - like seeks to like. So it's win-win all round really.....

It's not easy being a non materialist....

In my last blog I explained how I came to be presently devoting so much time to mysticism. But it’s not easy being a non-materialist in a materialist world. I’m not derided for my beliefs, just mainly ignored by most people when I’m talking about those beliefs,-  even polite people who like me. (I’m relieved to say I think some people do, i.e. like me, even some close relations.)

I think this is because, to use my brother’s word, most people (in which he includes himself) are just plain baffled. Often the only language available for me to talk about my main interests in life is unintelligible. One of the reasons I am writing this blog is to experiment with mystical language; to find ways of expressing spiritual concepts that most people would understand, and perhaps find useful, without actually degrading those concepts. When teaching I had a lot of practice trying to explain some quite high flown academic and intellectual theories and models in a way that allowed students who were unfamiliar with such concepts to apply them immediately to their everyday work.  I don’t know if I succeeded, but I still seem to have the urge to try, albeit in a different realm of study.

Mystical language is obtuse, apparently, for a reason. Although it takes a lot of work, it is possible for a human to access other worlds with the result that such people acquire ‘unnatural’ powers in the physical world. The use of these could cause havoc (indeed, have caused havoc.) So the teaching was mainly oral down the centuries, and only to people who had proved themselves stable and of good intent. When something was written down, it was put into language which is not easily decipherable.

In addition of course, a lot of what I'm repeating in this blog would be considered heretical by many people, and in past centuries, and still in some countries, there could be dire consequences for the authors if their writings were understood by the community at large.

But I think the main reason the language is obscure is that in modern society we just don’t have much idea of the concepts to which the language refers, or have a rather corrupted and vague view of them. For example, how often do you think of angels (the non-human ones) and in what context? What is your Soul, and how does if differ from the metaphorical way in which we use the word ‘heart’ (e.g. “her heart wasn’t in it any more”)? What is the relationship between your ego/superego, your Higher Self and your Soul, and how do you benefit from knowing? When I assure you that both you and me are ‘God’ do you want to run screaming from the room, or are you reassured? If I mention that your Soul doesn't take much interest in you until you show some interest in it, do you have any idea what I'm talking about?

Modernism, which we tend to date back to the Enlightenment at the end of the 18^th century, is wonderful. Its rationality has freed us from life-draining superstition and all sorts of unfair and unjust practices previously maintained as ‘tradition’. But in throwing out the bath water of superstition and religion, (many religions having drawn far away from the impulses which created them), we threw out the baby of access to our interior selves. The precise meaning of words like ‘heaven’ ‘paradise’  ‘soul’ ‘divine’ ‘prayer’ ’spirit’ are as baffling to most people nowadays as are the words used in quantum mechanics to most non-scientists. I suppose the majority of people think that understanding the concepts involved in either area is irrelevant to their everyday lives. Tomorrow or Thursday I intend to blog about that in more detail. In the meantime, I’d be very interested in others’ views.

So What Now?

Yesterday I wrote about the mundane way in which my interest in spirituality may have been generated. That was only a quick sketch of course and I will, at some later date, come back to various aspects of it, so that others might share their own experiences as well.

Today, I hope to describe how I’ve reached my present point, where I am now spending several hours a day not only reading up on and memorising everything I can find on Gnostic Christianity and Kabbalah, but also contemplating those readings, meditating, praying and carrying out various spiritual exercises. What am I hoping to achieve? And why is it happening now?

At a practical level, I have the time to do this because I am unemployed. I am not seeking work because firstly, my unemployment was the result of voluntary redundancy, and the subsequent redundancy payment is large enough, if I’m careful, to live on until I can claim my pension. Secondly, I am suffering quite badly now from fibromyalgia, and would not at the moment make a reliable employee.

 I have no mortgage, because 12 years ago I decided to downsize from a huge detached four-bedroomed house to a two-bedroomed cottage. I have no expensive hobbies, my life revolves around books, the internet, the TV, visits to and from friends and long outings to coffee houses with my husband to talk (we sometimes forget to do so at home.) My surroundings are becoming shabby, but not unliveable in nor yet  unaesthetic or displeasing.

That’s one way of looking at it. I have constructed another perspective; that in the light of what my studies have taught me, makes considerably more sense.

After a varied career, I became a lecturer in organisational management in a university, a job I loved. A few years back however, the job began to pall, and it was also at that time that my fibromyalgia attacks (involving pain, depression and chronic fatigue) began to become more frequent. I think these two changes were ascribable to a number of reasons. I continued to enjoy the teaching - most of my students were postgraduate and working fulltime, and taught me as much, if not more, than I taught them- and I enjoyed doing research. I had some lovely colleagues.

But I was disillusioned with where this country was going with higher education, and at odds with various aspects of the culture that my own institution had developed. Although now happily married, I kept finding myself dreaming of the life of a contemplative nun! (Perhaps one who was allowed home to her husband in the evenings an weekends.) The 20 minute walk to the station at the beginning of each day’s commute became increasingly difficult, and it was taking me longer to recover from each of the three hour lectures I gave. My own prime intellectual interest had shifted back from organisational psychology to mysticism, and I kept trying to introduce this into my own Doctoral level research on management in organisations, which really annoyed at least one of my supervisors, a committed Marxist materialist. (I’m using the word ‘materialist’ here to describe some-one who believes that nothing exists beyond the material world).

 I began to feel restless, but it never occurred to me to give up or change my job. I couldn’t think of anything else that I wanted to do, other than pursue my mystical studies, and it never occurred to me to give up work voluntarily – that would have seemed too irresponsible. But I remember saying to my son one morning that I needed more help with the housework, or I wasn’t going to make it through the last few years that I had before retirement.

And then the University abolished my post. Over fifty posts were abolished and replaced with 29 new ones, for which the displaced post-holders were invited to apply. I went to bed one Tuesday night wondering how best to present myself to get one of those new jobs, and woke up the following morning knowing it was time to walk. I cannot tell you how overjoyed I was at this decision, even before I had calculated what redundancy money I would get. The prayers I didn’t know I’d been praying were answered, I think, because not only had my need become so great, but because the change suited the purposes of my soul. Kabbalah and Gnostic Christianity (well, most schools of mysticism) would say that my interest in the spiritual had sparked the interest in turn of Providence in me. Working from a place where time and cause and effect operate differently, the money to leave turned up as and when needed. Any earlier, and I wouldn’t have dared take the opportunity. Any later, and I would have been too ill, and perhaps already left.

Materialists can point to happy but meaningless coincidences if they wish, but this has happened to me one too many times too often now for me to be that glib about it. Again, this is something I might write about in future blogs, and I would be interested in others’ experiences.

Why?

I’m really not clear why, or how, my interest in the existence of unseen worlds beyond the one I live in everyday came about, but it is reassuring that there are so many others like me. Most of us, when introducing ourselves to a physical or virtual group of fellow seekers simply say something like: “I have always been interested in/drawn to/ aware of spiritual matters”.

In my own case I suspect that it was the often painful difficulties of everyday life, interspersed with long periods of the simple dullness and monotony of the daily round that sparked my interest in anything ‘other,’ from the possibility of extra-terrestrial life, through magic, extra-sensory perception, ghosts, fairies and mysterious ancient religions. I didn’t put modern day religions into this ‘exciting’ category – I could see nothing mysterious at all in most of them. Maybe Christianity, present nearly every day at school or Sunday school, was just too much part of the mundane world I was trying to escape because, looking at it now, there isn’t anything much more mysterious than getting born to a virgin, and resurrecting from death in the flesh. Perhaps that stretched even my own credulity too far.

In my teens, my interest in all matters ‘other’ led me to an interest in psychology, and to Jung. Jung’s writings led to an interest in mysticism, and the possibility of enlightenment, i.e. fulfilling one’s ultimate potential as a human being. As an unsuccessful over-achiever (having a good part of what many psychotherapeutic  disciplines would call a ‘striver’ mentality in the make-up of my personality) I found this quite irresistible. To my great delight, I found that most schools of mysticism had underlying cosmologies that were considerably more detailed, logical and interesting than could be found in the opening chapters of the bible or in cosmological science. Starting with Gurdjieff, whose work can be linked to the esoteric school of Islam, i.e. Sufism, I went on to find out as much as I could about (among others) Vedanta, Plotinus, Plato, Zen Buddhism, Shamanism, the Tao, the Western mystery traditions, Kabbalah and, finally, Christian mysticism.

My most profound discovery was how similar are the practices and belief systems of all these different schools. However, the symbolism of each is rooted in a particular culture, and therefore symbolism varies from school to school. I think that I might be getting the most from Gnostic Christian Kabbalah because the symbols were rooted in my consciousness at a very early age.

But despite my interest and my considerable reading on the subject, taking it any further has been difficult. I have consciously made increasing efforts (not always successful) to live according to the golden rule of most traditions – be kind to all other creatures, but the demands of work, child-rearing, keeping house, and coping with myriad non-fatal but considerably debilitating illnesses have been paramount. My personality’s need for worldly success, a certain degree of power (more about that in later blogs) and a level of material comfort and aestheticism combined to keep my spiritual aspirations in the background – an intellectual hobby, rather than a way of life.

This has all recently changed, and that is what has prompted this daily blog – the desire to make contact with others in the same position as myself. Please join me, with your responses.