William Wildblood
We live in a world of lies. Anyone who tries to break free of that will be attacked and the attempt made to depict that person as mad, bad or stupid. I know this might sound rather an extreme statement, maybe even bordering on paranoia, but it is really just a simple observation of how falsehood seeks to protect itself. On some level, those who represent falsehood, who maintain and promote it, know that what they are doing is contrary to reality.
When truth appears, it threatens them and must be destroyed. Specifically, the reputation of the person who speaks it must be destroyed. Of course, Jesus was actually killed but anyone who tries to follow in his footsteps will face opprobrium when they run up against the falseness of this world and are forced to pick a side.
For the more one breaks free of the worldly illusion (fundamentally the denial of God because of a wish to be God oneself), the more one will be attacked. As my teachers told me “the greater progress you make, the more you will be assailed by evil in all its forms.” This manifests itself both inwardly as attempts to make you succumb to various forms of sin, pride, anger, fear, self-righteousness or whatever, and outwardly in the form of attacks by others who are not usually conscious of what they do but nevertheless can be used because of their own deficiencies and failings.
You cannot adapt a spiritual world view to a non-spiritual one. If you try to compromise with the default non-spiritual position of the present time, which embraces most of the apparent advances that have been made in recent decades (in the form they are understood at least), you will either end up betraying yourself and falling back into the non-spiritual or else being made to look hypocritical and foolish.
We live at a time when there is an all out assault on truth through science, through politics, through art, through various social movements and even through forms of spirituality that subtly and not so subtly distort the real. This is why it is important to speak the truth from the highest point one can and not to compromise. Compromise means failure. It means that that with which you compromise will first color and then consume your spiritual position. At the same time, don’t over-react to the lies by rejecting the elements of truth within them. They must have such or else they would not have become so attractive to so many. But see these elements from the higher standpoint and you will find that very often the secondary has been made primary and the primary ignored.
For instance, loving your neighbor comes after loving God and is dependent on that. Unless you exercise discrimination with regard to this teaching it means (theoretically) that you will direct equal love to Satan as to Christ. An extreme example undoubtedly but one that is intended to bring out the absurdity of taking this teaching out its proper context and misapplying it or else applying it to all and sundry equally.
When you read the Gospels you find that Jesus did not mince his words. He spoke the truth and it was frequently unwelcome. In this, he echoed the earlier prophets who were often persecuted by their communities. He was direct and he did not compromise in what he said.
William Wildblood is a Briton who spent five years in India on a spiritual quest resulting in the book ‘Meeting the Masters’
