The Exaltation Of The Physical | On De'anism, Madrianism, Isianism, and other Thealogies

The Exaltation Of The Physical Jul 16, 2020 17:03:54 GMT

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Post by david on Jul 16, 2020 17:03:54 GMT

Dear friends,

In the 1950's and 60's, people thought that action should be immediate and forceful, and was inhibited by thought. There was a reaction against this by some people thinking that action should come from the mind and not the physical. In the late 1960's spiritual development became popular, and people started saying "Not intellect - spirit." People then began to believe that spiritual development was attained by overcoming the intellect.

If you look carefully at commercial art depicting a human figure, you will see that it is focussed to draw attention away from the face to the body. In a facial portrait, it draws attention away from the eyes to the lower face. The object of this is to stop the depiction looking thoughtful. People are seeing the spirit as coming from the physical.

In his book Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, Chogyam Trungpa says that materialism comes from the ego, which is created by the intellect. He holds that it is intellect which is spiritual materialism. His solution is to act directly from the situation. This means that the situation cannot be seen as a reflection of a higher reality. That would not enable action to come directly from it. The situation is seen as a thing in itself. This is taking the physical as the highest principle, and using matter to overcome spiritual materialism.

People have concluded that to act from the spirit, we act from matter. If you say that we must act from thought, they say that you confuse the spirit with the rational intellect.

This perspective comes from seeing the spirit as another faculty. We have several faculties: intellect, will, love, vitality, etc. The faculties are all different from each other. Love is not vitality. They see that in addition to this, we have the spirit as another faculty, different from the others, so we cannot act from the others if we act from the spirit. They don't believe this does not prevent us from acting from love, and they don't explain this inconsistency.

The truth is, that the spirit is not another faculty. It is the whole. The spirit is everything, and everything comes from the spirit. Nothing comes from matter. Evil and unpleasantness are distorted manifestations of the spirit. This means that when we use one of our faculties, we use a manifestation of the spirit. The intellect is a manifestation of the spirit.

So, if we act from the spirit, we still have the choice that we had in the 1950's of acting from the intellect or the physical, and the arguments are the same. Physical action is aggressive and mental action is controlled and enables you to know what to do.

May She be with you,

David.

The Exaltation Of The Physical Jul 28, 2020 17:33:37 GMT

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Post by david on Jul 28, 2020 17:33:37 GMT

Dear friends,

There are forms of physical exaltation that I should have mentioned in my previous message.

One of these is akido with ki. Ki is supposed to be the life force, and the throw is done by concentrating on the point below the navel. They pick the centre closest to the genitals because this where they imagine the life force manifests. They cannot conceive that it can have anything to do with consciousness of the higher psychic centres because their minds are geared to matter.

Another principle is phallic symbolism. The fact that it uses the genitals as the symbol distracts people from the main point. People react against using sex as the symbolism, and the debate is about sex. The real point is that phallic symbolism uses a material object as its highest principle. The fact that it is phallic is not important. The important point is that it is material. Imagine if people argued that, since solar symbolism is based on the circle, its highest expression is a football. People would recognise the materialism of it.

Physical objects have symbolic meaning, but they are not the highest embodiment of the symbol. The physical object is a manifestation of a higher principle. The Neopagans have stated that a magic wand is a phallic symbol, and archaeologists say that all rods and pillars are phallic symbols. Rods and pillars are manifestations of the Axis Mundi, or World Pillar. I have read that the Axis Mundi is a phallic symbol. This is taking a mystical principle as a manifestation of a physical object, when it should be the other way round.

The most important exaltation of the physical is the Divine Incarnation. The purpose of religion is to draw us up from the material level to the spirit, and the most important principle that we are drawn to is God. If God were to incarnate as a human being, that would draw us to the physical level and be an obstacle to spiritual development. Along with this is the doctrine "The Word became flesh."

May She be with you,

David.