I want to preface this post by clarifying that when I say “ignorant” I mean it entirely in the spiritual context of one who ignores or denies the spiritual truths of the universe. I mean no judgement.

I grew up with ignorant, hostile, angry people. I was a soft hearted child who felt everything intensely, and I was destroyed repeatedly until I learned how to take emotional (and physical) blows without experiencing emotional harm. Since then, I’ve met people who can change lives by virtue of their presence alone. I studied heroes and villains, and I learned the only thing that separates them are their beliefs and the heart that leads them. I learned the nature of ego is a lens by which we observe the universe, but it’s one made of a combination of our experiences as translated by our senses colored by our beliefs about those experiences. A well honed ego is a powerful tool for discernment, but ego doesn’t know its own limits and it seeks to grow and survive at all costs. Believing in threats and reinforcing our fears and adversarial beliefs is how the ego trains us to reinforce itself. It has no concept of its limitations and it will not change unless the only other option is ego-death.

After years of research into the psychology of the mind, I came to philosophy. Working back to first principles, I realized that religion and spirituality split long ago, and the original purpose of these symbolic stories was to help people understand the nature of reality. Over time, hierarchies of violence laid claim to these stories and manipulated their meanings to reinforce their own power. The meaning of the word “occult” means hidden. The nature of the occult are those spiritual teachings that threaten authority. Every witch hunt and crusade in history has been motivated by a threat to authority. When investigating into occult teachings you find a lot of magical thinking, but it’s part of the occulting process. Authority uses misinformation, violence, and other narcissistic tactics in order to eliminate the threat. The common themes underneath all of the gaslighting and misinformation is a worldview in which the material world rests within a greater context. Authoritarians and egos all demand separation, categorization, classification, control, segregation. All of these ideas are delusional. There is no real separation between you and I, except that which we believe in, and those beliefs require a physical/mental/spiritual effort to maintain. The gnostic (opposite of ignorant) perspective of reality contains this understanding of ultimate oneness, which I describe in the link at the end. All of history has been a grieving process and a balance between ignorance and gnosis. Those who have passed through the grieving process come out the other side as gnostics, and those who do not remain ignorant. The ignorant in denial are atheists, capitalists, and opportunists. To them, the world is a playground where they can explore their individuation. The angry ignorant are the crusaders, witch hunters, narcissists, fascists, and other ideologies of ego supremacy. The bargaining ignorant are starting to see signs of a bigger pattern. They experience ego crisis, illness, and economic instability. The depressed are no longer ignorant, but they haven’t been able to reach acceptance because the harsh reality of the world can be too much to bear without the underpinning of community and good programming.

Those who can reach acceptance can see reality for what it is, without judgement or fear. The brain isn’t the source of consciousness. The universe is consciousness and the brain is a lens. The ego is one facet of that lens. The grieving process is how that lens is honed. When the lens matches reality, we understand things as they are. When it’s warped, we understand things as reflections of ourselves. The other facet of that lens is the right brain perception. According to Iain McGilchrist in his book, “The Master and His Emissary,” The left brain is ego, logic, language, individual mind. The right brain is a different kind of perspective. It sees the universe in a holistic sense, without judgement, without ego, without language. It is an unfiltered perspective, aligned with the true nature of the universe. There’s a possibility that it contains a perfect picture of the universe, but at the very least it contains all of the information encountered by the individual. The left brain often doesn’t see the value of the right, but it’s a powerful tool for discernment if used correctly. Most of us have egoic beliefs that we enforce on the world, and think we’re victims of our emotions. What we should be doing is using the ego to hold up beliefs against our right brain perception and take note of the quality of our emotions. Modify those beliefs until they progress through the grieving process until we reach acceptance of reality. If your beliefs cause you to have discordant emotions, they’re half true. This is the core of egoic delusion and psychosis. It is always a case of clinging to a half-truth at all costs, for the preservation of the ego. The unhoned ego cannot tolerate nonduality and spectrums, but the universe doesn’t deal in binaries. The highest understanding of any dualistic concept is a nondual union of apparent opposites.

I know it sounds like I’ve drifted from your questions, but this underpinning is important. I’ll describe angels and demons then I’ll explain why it’s important to grok them as external entities

Angels and Demons are abstractions of fundamental truths of the universe. They’re reflections of thresholds of consciousness one must cross before expanding into higher levels. Even in mythology, demons are angels. The difference between them is their orientation to the highest truth of the universe, which was the original meaning of God. The gnostics knew them as archons, because they recognized that despite their manifestations, they’re working towards the same goal; the purification and enrichment of the individual soul. Giordano Bruno developed a technique for understanding reality. He would imagine a palace and populate it with symbols for ideas. He would fill these rooms with great detail until they became real in his mind. Any time he needed information, he would go into the relevant room and interact with the things inside, which would allow him to answer confidently and correctly about a vast number of fields. He described the nature of angels and demons and he would invoke either at will in order to imbue his consciousness with their qualities.

Compare the worldview I’ve expressed to that of individuals like Kenneth Copeland, Donald Trump, or Ron Desantis. They see themselves as kings, with the right to use violence or coercion for to accomplish their goals. They’re surrounded by pretense and justifications, protected by other ignorant individuals, exploiting the weak and sucking up to the strong. They see themselves as winners, but in fact they’re completely mired in delusion. When their brains inevitably fail, their consciousness will expand into the whole, and in the process they will come to encompass all of the suffering they’ve caused in this world. The collapse of a life is the same as the collapse of an ego. It can be an epiphany (appearance of the divine) or it can be torture. Even before the moment of death, could you imagine the life of Marjorie Taylor Greene? Every thought dripping with hatred and paranoia, surrounded by ill gotten gains and a family that despises you, routinely humiliating yourself on the altar of public perception. She doesn’t really believe in demons, but she’ll demonize everyone to protect her ego. As a result, she’s as demonic as a person can be.

https://lemmy.world/comment/1565796