Real psychology

As people catch on to the garbage nature of modern day psychology (early 20th century onward) it should be stated that there is a legitimate psychology. It is a psychology not of the sub-normal (which, by the way, assumed the sub-normal as the normal as the decades of the 20th century rolled on) but of the normal, or the good householder, to put it metaphorically. This is psychology Christians should be aware of.

Real psychology tells you things like resentment is not a noble emotion. The world, the flesh, and the devil teach you the opposite. Real psychology will tell you further that gratitude is the opposite of resentment and should be cultivated.

Real psychology will tell you the difference between waking sleep and true self-consciousness, let alone objective-consciousness.

Real psychology will tell you that a human being has different centers and they all like to hijack each other's energy. For instance, our emotional center loves to operate on sexual energy which turns into violence. Our intellectual center also likes to hijack sexual energy which creates things like seething jealousy and suspicion and paranoia. Intellectual center also likes to 'think' using emotional energy. The problem is these different energies have different speeds they operate at. Sexual energy, for instance, is very fast and when used in the intellectual center, which is the slowest center (sorry, public intellectuals) it's like putting a very refined fuel into a very crude engine. Explosion and other phenomena occur.

Real psychology will tell you we aren't unified in our inner presence. We determine to do one thing one minute, and do something entirely opposite an hour later. What we call 'I' is as stable and enduring as bubbles on the surface of boiling water.

Real psychology will actually teach us the concrete features of our fallen nature. That is shining light on them so that we can actually identify them and become conscious of them. As it is they are like an invisible opponent who is able to punch us in the face at will forever.

Real psychology will give us an idea of how to see things from another person's perspective. Not in an "everybody is more holy than us" but in a self-interest way that is win-win for all. Sometimes called 'tact.'

Real psychology can explain to you the difference between self-will and real-will.

There are more things real psychology can teach us that are too subtle and complicated to list concisely here.

These are things the devil does not want you to know. Neither does the world want you to know it. Neither does your inner fallen nature which fights you daily to stay alive and in power.

You can call this knowledge progressive sanctification, you can call it spiritual warfare. You can call it ancient psychology, you can call it New Testament psychology once you begin to see the connections between it and what Jesus is teaching. It helps a Christian to understand watchfulness (or be awake) and love your enemy, for instance. Among numerous examples. It's not extra-biblical (in the bad way) if the concepts are the same. Any more than a Bible commentary is something to avoid. The worth, judged by the standard of the truth of Scripture, is what we use to discern the value of such things.

Now here's where I sound like a cult recruiter: the knowledge listed above and much more can be found in a language called the 'Work', or the Fourth Way. It's called the Fourth Way because it's not knowledge solely of the Monk, the Yogi, or the Fakir (ascetic). I.e. it's not solely concentrated on the emotions, the mind, or the body. It's above that and includes all. And it's done in the traffic of your everyday life.

It's not for everybody, but it's available to anybody. It requires a bit of a unique prior development. You have to be somewhat developed intellectually (a book reader, a writer, a thinker, etc.), and emotionally (a musician, an artist, or just some raw experience that gives you sympathy for the human condition), and physically (a developed athletic discipline, performing arts, life of a soldier, etc.). Just a balanced development of these things that sort of coalesces, or fuses together to create a sort of inner platform where a somewhat stable 'I' can appear. That is the 'I' associated with things like a dawning conscience or a sense of self-awareness we associate with a kind of real folk intelligence (as opposed to the fake, piece-of-paper, Ivy League 'intelligence'). It also is accompanied with an inward motivation to learn things as opposed to a solely worldly motivation to learn things. The plumber who's reading Thucydides in his off hours but isn't doing it for a class at a college, just on his own. That kind of thing.

It also requires one be beaten down in life quite a bit. That happens to many of us without our effort in the process. We have to feel our own nothingness, so to speak. Not in a low self-esteem sort of way (though we might be there too despite ourselves) but in a sort of awakened conscience sort of way where we've seen our own idiocy and shortcomings, to put it mildly.

Then we are more able to truly connect with such a language and value it. Such ideas, practices, and goals are found in the book by Ouspensky titled Fourth Way. Also, Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution. Evolution in that title not having anything to do with the garbage science of the 'theory of evolution.' These are books that are off the radar, for the most part of academia, of books that warn of cults, etc. Though the ideas are often used by cults, just as the Bible is. In the same way. Dishonestly, distorted, twisted, turned upside down.

We need discernment that comes with the Holy Spirit. I met the Work, or the Fourth Way, before I was a Christian and rejected it. Which is ironic because before I was a Christian I was eager to learn about anything that wasn't Christianity, or, i.e. that didn't have hard truth in it. At least to a great degree. Obviously the Work has hard truth in it, to a great degree. Only Scripture is pure wheat, though. There is some chaff in anything else.

If you learn 1) the Bible and real, hard truth biblical doctrine; 2) this ancient psychology I've been talking about in this post; and 3) worldview analysis (another big subject altogether, but just see James Sire's Universe Next Door, David Naugle's Worldview: The History of a Concept, and Nancy Pearcey's Finding Truth for starters), then you will have the trinity of real knowledge and understanding as a Christian that will truly make you an exceptional soldier of Christ on the spiritual battlefield doing battle with the Devil, the flesh (your inner fallen nature), and the world respectively.

A worldview right in front of you

It's just occurred to me, this book list is a worldview:

01 HOLY BIBLE, AV1611

02 HOMER - ILIAD & ODYSSEY

03 WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH - PARZIVAL

04 TOLSTOY & DOSTOEVSKY - WORKS

05 CARL VON CLAUSEWITZ - ON WAR

06 SMITH - WEALTH OF NATIONS

07 MONTESQUIEU - SPIRIT OF LAWS

08 OUSPENSKY - FOURTH WAY

09 ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE - DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA

10 GIBBON - DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

11 THUCYDIDES - HISTORY OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR

12 PLUTARCH - LIVES

Imagine growing up in the wilderness of America in the early 1800s and only having these books on your rude shelf, yet it meant that you actually read them numerous times and got them into understanding. Then you travel to the east coast. Are you missing anything culturally or in your understanding? Not only no, you're not, but what you have is truly of more depth and breadth and balance and power than what the usual Harvard or Yale yokel possesses.

You have the most powerful, contained, true worldview a human being can come into in this world besotted with the illusions and delusions of Satan and his phantasmagoria of useful idiots and their by-products.

Why read the Homeric epics if you are a Christian?

Why should one read the Homeric epics - the Iliad and the Odyssey - after one has become a Christian?

If you're reading them as a holy book for a multi-god religion then I suppose you shouldn't.

If that's not the case, though, then a similar question could be: why listen to Beethoven's 3rd symphony after one has become a Christian?

It's art. A work of art. Objective art, in the case of the Homeric epics. The highest art.

So then can the activity of reading the Homeric epics be put in the category of sanctification?

I don't see why not.

Prior to becoming a Christian the Homeric epics can be a sort of gateway to the Bible (for some), but afterwards simply a work of great art that develops us the way all great art can develop us.

Of course, I don't think the Homeric epics have the Devil's influence in them. If I did I would no more read them for sanctification than I'd read the Koran for sanctification.

So am I overrating the Homeric epics? Are they not perhaps relics of a culture that didn't have the truth of Scripture, and are thus sub-worthy of any influence that should influence a Christian?

No, I'm not. The Homeric epics carry a higher visual language that depicts inner spiritual development and delivers that knowledge deep into a person who is able to engage the two epic poems at a basic level of understanding. They may only depict God as through a glass darkly, in fragmentary ways, yet they aren't intentional counterfeit designed to mislead or draw one away from the truth. And they could be depicting aspects of the higher world in ways we are not used to thinking such as the gods and goddesses being angelic beings, or having characteristics of angelic beings. The back story of Greek myth is missing the Creator/creation divide (among many other things), but it's worth is not how close it is to biblical truth. It's worth, as it is contained specifically in the Homeric epics, is a concentrated depiction of inner, spiritual development; delivered in a powerful and deep way via higher visual language; and a depiction of the dynamics between a higher realm and a lower realm. There is real truth in all of that that can be discerned.

Works with mysterious authorship like the Homeric epics, or the works of Shakespeare, or the Grimm's tales, or Grail legend often have these qualities.

T. S. Eliot's Wasteland is the Garden for us (deep, off-books history here)

The Garden of Eden is wasteland for us, until the return of the Fisher-King. Then it will bloom.

I can't not think about the possibility of the time in history of the death on the cross and the resurrection of Jesus Christ as being the same time in history of the second coming of Jesus Christ.

When Christ returns He returns in all time, yet physically at that point of culminated history that is when he died on the cross and was resurrected three days later. That general time in history is when and where Jesus will physically return.

We of this 21st century will see it because we will all be changed into the spirit when the second coming happens. Then this linear time we're stuck in will be transcended and we'll see all time and yet focus on where Jesus is, which is that unique point in time that was the culmination of history: the time of his death and resurrection.

(Just for the sake of this post I'm going to say that time was 33 AD. That may be off a few years forward or backward, but just for the sake of this post I'll go with that date.)

Everything after 33 AD is receding from the future. Because 33 AD is the culmination point of history. No event in history before or after 33 AD is more significant than what happened in 33 AD.

And there's nothing new under the sun. The worst we can think of and the most advanced things we can think of probably occurred as well in antediluvian times. Manipulation of God's creation at the (in our scientific language) DNA level to create hybrids and deathly viruses and so forth. Also, everything we see as advances over the past probably existed in antediluvian times, maybe to higher degree for all we know.

The Bible says those who pierced the Savior on the cross will see his second coming. That's a striking statement. That just means when Jesus returns it will be in all time, but physically at that point in time and place of his resurrection. That unique node (AD 33) in the timeline of linear history. And since all will be in spirit at that event then the physical place of the return may look very different as well.

This insight favors amillennialism. There's not going to be any post-millennial earthly glory going forward. No, there's going to be a last spasm of Satanic activity to destroy (what we are arguably seeing now because it is now that the nations are able to be deceived and united against the historically Christian lands and the Holy Land). There is only so much real estate on the planet, and here-to-fore the Devil and his minions have only ever been able to take control of a symbolic 1/3 of it (Islam at its apex, Marxism as well). Just as Satan was only able to draw a third of the angels with him in his rebellion.

Yet now Satan has breached boundaries here-to-fore he had not been allowed to breach. Western Europe. The United States (and the other English-speaking countries). 9/11 and the fall of the Towers was a symbolic breach.

It happens both ways though. The world of evil has been breached as well. The world is currently awakening to the evil that has had an invisible control for millennia.

So, as we recede, going backward in history from the Resurrection, towards the Garden that history left, that Garden is a wasteland for us.

And there are no foreign actors in this drama. The white (still Adamic) populations of Europe and the English speaking countries are freaking out at the crashing in of darker peoples we always were happy to keep at a distance, yet those are our Adamic brothers and sisters as well, just the blood-defiled branches of them. Satan defiled the bloodlines with fallen angels coupling with human women (Genesis 6) creating defiled bloodlines that went from monstrous hybrids to eventually evening out to stable though sub-Adamic races. (This is deep, foundational history you won't get in textbooks, folks.)

The earth is young. Evolution is garbage science.

I am not saying all individuals on earth are our fellow Christians in the faith. But we all are similar in that we are all fallen beings in need of salvation, and salvation can happen to any of us, white, black, brown, red, yellow...even that unique strain of wicked Babylonian.

What this means going forward in these uniquely end times (remember, see above: only so much real estate on this planet)... I think that when God's remnant of Adamic (white) humanity is threatened with various annihilation the end (second coming) occurs before then, because it is meaningless to God's history of redemption to only have Satan and his hybrid races left alone on this planet. God needs his presence to be here, and it is the still Adamic people who carry that knowledge and history and traditions of God within directly and represent it in the form of, among many forms, creation of civilization and culture and the roots of order that bring truth to humanity. So I don't think whites have to freak out on the race-mixing type of annihilation so much (abomination though it may seem, like our mother Eve having sex with a snake).

That leaves evangelizing. Recognize the situation of our potential brothers and sisters in Christ who are stuck in defiled bloodlines and the cultures of those bloodlines. Have sympathy. Also, they need to have sympathy for their still Adamic brothers and sisters. Mutual sympathy. Because the wicked who will not change are against us all and all that is good, beautiful and true.

Thinking about the difference in people

I listened to a recording of a talk given by New Age type guru of the 1960's and '70's Alan Watts. At least part of it. Enough of it. I had read probably three or four of his books back in my pre-Christian days. Nothing was surprising. I'd already been shocked when going back to influences I'd had in my early life and seeing how shallow they were. It really is just seeing how shallow the world is in general when in rebellion from the truth. Emerson is another good example.

Those influences aren't totally worthless, or some of them anyway. They can represent a level we are at at the time we are engaging them. We just have to not get stuck at those levels and keep climbing to the summit where disturbing influences like the Bible reside. Actually the Bible is beyond summit.

So I was thinking of Alan Watts and his untimely death and wondering what makes an Alan Watts different from me? Because there is a big difference. Despite the fact that he was famous, and I'm a nobody; he was influential, and I'm not...why was he like he was until his death and I'm like I am as I write this?

It's because we both, like all human beings, have a spirit. That spirit is in our soul. My spirit is capitalized (Spirit); his spirit is not. I have the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit in my soul. Alan Watts through his life and at death had and has the spirit of rebellion, or the spirit of Satan in his soul.

I.e. my connection with God's creation is the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit - the Spirit of the Kingdom of God. Alan Watts' connection with God's creation is the spirit of the Kingdom of Satan. The spirit of the world, the flesh, the Devil.

When I die, like Alan Watts has died, my connection will take me to be with God. Alan Watts' connection has taken him to be in Hades, where the unregenerate go at death. What happens with him from there the Bible doesn't say explicitly, other than in time, at the Second Coming of Jesus, he will be judged to hell fire. Whether there's any hope for him in that 'in between' time the Bible doesn't say explicitly. The Bible wants us to realize the 'terror of the situation', so that we don't think we can keep putting things off to the future, because time does have an end. There is a harvest.

Anyway, that is the difference between myself and someone like Alan Watts. It's a difference that transcends worldly fame; and it's real.

A basic book on the deep meaning of order, edges on worldview

The Roots of American Order by Russell Kirk is a serious book worth looking into owning. One of those books on foundational things worth sitting on a short shelf of books with the Bible. The word American in the title doesn't limit it's subject matter to one country. It follows the five cities approach to the history of western civilization: Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, London, Philadelphia. Permanent ideas that make the foundation of what might be called good householder culture and civilization. The type of knowledge and understanding you want in your soul.

Good list of five books on the American Revolution

I was looking for a classic history of the American Revolution (because the events and symbols and so forth will be - actually are - relevant to what is going on today), and I found a page that lists 5 books.

Finding a good work of history in this era is obviously difficult because of one: agenda of the historian, not to mention mere competence; and two: specialization vs. having a parts in relation to the whole understanding of the subject.

This list is given by this person with those things in mind.