I posted a link to a review on a book in my (electronic) reading pile a little while ago (part of here):
- one of the books I had planned on reviewing
eventually was “Egregores: The Occult Entities That Watch Over Human
Destiny” (Amazon)
by Mark Stavish. I may not, now, as this
review has been published;
I'm reading this a little further, and still consider the review particularly apt (especially about the switching of tone), and I now have a few extra thoughts I wish to publish (I have many other thoughts, but mostly on other topics 😊 ):
- firstly, this book was clearly written by a male with little to no awareness of male privilege - my experience is that traditionalism supports patriarchy and is thus evil;
- I've strengthened the comments about actions ensuring you are "fully yourself" in my weekly meditation descriptions (I thought I had written more on that somewhere, but have not found it)(;
- many people conflate "proof/experience of psychism / psychic phenomena / the nonphysical" with spiritual evolution - especially when they try to justify the dangerous and illegal practice of using drugs.
It's not.
Knowing something exists does not mean one is competent in it - in fact, using drugs to achieve an altered state of consciousness inherently means you are incapable of doing anything constructive while being in that state.
Such people are like those who go to a magnificent forest, say it is magnificent, and then log it ... or go to India, read the Hindu holy books and wax lyrical about India's spiritual traditions, and then impose colonialism ... or become fluent in the words of Buddhism, but don't do anything to make themself or the world a better place by applying the concepts.
Personal experience of something existing - which is NOT "proof", by the way - is not enough. As in all things in life, you have a few choices to make - choices that will determine whether you will be genuine, credible, and authentic, or not;
choices that will determine whether you will leave a legacy of enabling change or perpetuating misery; choices that will determine whether you are spiritual or a a fake and a fraud.
I also suggest having a read of John Beckett's recent column "Many Ways to Serve Many Gods".
