Many people say that the spiritual path is the journey inwards, but I say we need to move away from our initial beliefs, to see things from a further perspective, or in context, and then we can come back to see our original beliefs but in a very different way - how it should be.
otherwise we inevitably get it wrong!
This principle is the same; whether you're a religion person or whether you're a science person or whether you're a political person. The point is we need to involve in something else, some other aspect of Reality, and then we can come back to our own ideas, our first or original beliefs, but we can then see them in a much wider and deeper way. This how we can simultaneously separate the true from the false, and go deeper. This is Holistic Spiritual.
Another way to think of this process is when we climb up a flight of stairs, notice we go away to the side (while we climb), but then we turn, and continue back to be vertically above where we started.
We have to move away - before we can return with clearer sight!
Computer drawn flights of stairs
Polarity
Liberté, égalité, fraternité is the famous mantra ...but they are all Single Poles! – Their counterpart is missing!
Liberty without Responsibility, is a serious problem!
Equality without Diversity, is also a problem, as people are different!
Fraternity without Inclusion, is yet another problem, as barriers are created!.
This realization was only made after moving my focus away into a long involvement in Alternative Physics after witnessing physical phenomena in spiritualist séances, that a single side of a polarity cannot exist by itself - like we cannot have Yin without the existence of Yang! Yet this aspect of polarity has nothing to do with Alternative Physics - unless we look holistically!
We live in a culture that esteems intelligence devoid of passion (e.g. university education) or esteems passion devoid of intelligence (e.g. Sport and Celebrities). But both are equally valid sides of the greater Polarity of human endeavour . Going deeper in the true spiritual sense must surely include both sides of any polarity!
Another often unrecognised Polarity is between Inner and Outer. Like a box, it necessarily has both - Inside and Outside, so too has direction - going inwards and going outwards!!
Justice There can be no Peace without Justice, and there cannot be proper Justice without awareness of the other person's position. So we need to foster higher holistic thinking... The active side of Spirituality, not just the passive! (Polarity again)
And there cannot be Peace without Gender Balance, where both the Feminine intelligence and the Masculine intelligence are held with equal value, with each valued for its specialness.
This shows the fundamental problem with striving for simple 'Gender Equality', we throw away so much if we try to pretend masculine is the same as feminine.
Biodiversity This world could not exist as it is without both Diversity and Randomness. Therefore Diversity and Randomness are part of the Big Design! Mathematics describes some of the Universe, but it cannot describe the whole, as Mathematics itself is only one Pole of the Language of the Universe, the other Pole we recognise as the Spirit of Nature!
Gender Balance is the Key
Gender and Native Americans
Sa'ah Naagháí Bik'eh Hózhóón (SNBH) Identified in English by the Navajo Diné College as:"The duality of knowledge in form of male and female are present in mother earth and father sky. — These are the foundations of teaching and learning"
They recognise all things as stages of interconnected processes. As such their worldview is of everything constantly interchanging, and therefore things cannot be given fixed definitions like European language cultures.
They know that everything has both male and female alternating polarities of Gender... "without both there is neither!" The female aspect becomes active, then the male aspect becomes active... endlessly cycling as does the sun and the moon, the four seasons of the year, seed growing into fruit producing new seed. Water endlessly cycles from liquid to vapour to clouds to rain back to rivers, but water also cycles through all plants, animals and humans. The Air similarly cycles through everything. All cycles therefore connect with all other cycles in multitudes of ways. So their concise phrase: "Sa'ah Naagháí Bik'eh Hózhóón" is difficult to translate into English static definitions, but a word by word translation of the phrase could be:
Maturity - Eternal - Going About - Pathway - Harmonious Beauty Restored
or more fluently: 'To old age walking the trail of harmonious beauty'
But in the context of the Navajo worldview, it also summarises precisely that the Gender Ways are Balanced, Distinct and Inseparable:
Sa'ah Naagháí is (male) immunity, Bik'eh Hózhóón is (female) fruitfulness.
Two Spirit People and LGBT
Many First Nation American people have respected concepts in their own languages, which all tribes together have now adopted the English term: 'Two-Spirit People', who are said to exhibit both genders, and can see what others can't as a spiritual reality. Furthermore, it can be fluid as to what aspect of gender displays displays on the surface under different life circumstances. In comparison, the western liberal concept of LGBT is based on the physical.
"...this is the difference between night and day!"
"The problem is not your sexuality, it is your ethics — you've got to live a decent life"
Note: Everything has been taken from these native spiritual people, so we must not take their term "Two Spirit People" and use it for our own identity, we must not take what is not given. The name belongs to the Native Americans only. ...Also, 'Two Spirit' was chosen to replace a deeply insulting word that Anthropologists used 'B****che'.
Spiritual people who are in touch with Nature...
City life takes people away from Nature, which makes them vulnerable to what they are told by others. So single gender viewpoint "teachers" who pretend to have knowledge, which they don't, can cause a lot of distortion. As a reaction to such oppressive control, people strive to be free and liberal, but this is not the same thing as being in contact with spiritual Nature! When the Revealed Religions were first brought to this earth, people did not have this disconnect with Nature, so the new teachings were automatically on a nature base, but today much has been lost. The city scholars have the worst disconnect.
As the Native Americans connected to their Land point out; that perceiving events in spatial terms gives meaning (they have location), but perceiving events as histories in Time breaks our connection to Nature and Reality! This is a fundamental difference between Tribal Nature-Religions, and the Christian beliefs of the migrants who invaded their land.
Barrier to the Spiritual Plane...
In order to reach the Spiritual Plane, we need to frequently be moving up and down the ladder, focusing on the Physical plane up to the Abstract-Mental with everything in between. All of them.- Spiritual Plane
- Abstract Mental Plane
- Concrete Mental Plane
- Emotional Plane
- Instincts Plane
- Subtle-Physical (Psychic) Plane
- Physical Plane
As the Physical Plane is the end result of all the other Planes, the Spiritual Plane is the reason behind all the others. So we need to have ALL the lower Planes loaded in our immediate awareness before we can reach the Spiritual.
...So involve your hands in both mundane and skilled practical work, open your heart to other people close to you, debate intellectually with those who can, then spend time on your own within Nature. Spiritual has passion to it, Academic Philosophy does not! Spiritual is higher.
Be Balanced - Be Curious