The Slippery Spirit

This is going to be a topic that will poke some buttons. Strap in. An issue came up among my students recently. So I'm going to share my thoughts on the ego as it expresses itself in the evolving Pagan. Most mystery schools believe (they have also found success in the application of this principle) that the ego is the largest barrier to moving energy and using one's innate paranormal powers. If you want to be a medium, you must allow your ego to be pushed aside. If you want to astral project, you must let a separation from ego happen. If you want to be a shaman, you must put yourself aside and act in the best interest of your tribe. If you want Kundalini to awaken, the ego must die. All over the world, spiritual paths promote the management or even the outright destruction of the ego. As an evolutionary step, this makes perfect sense to me. The ego is the remnant of our instinctual programming. It is the inner voice that wants our own material needs to be met. It is why w...

Before I can exorcise all the gook in my head that created this thesis, I have to define the Western Religious Tradition (WRT). To be simplistic, it is all of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. But the definition actually goes more deeply than that, because these faiths occupy a dominant position in the West. They influence the greater morality of our western society in a way that is largely unseen, or at least not very obvious. They all originated from the same concept that God made the material universe because he is a mega-powerful spirit-being. The material universe, as a creation, is separate from that which is spiritual. It is a difficult place we have to experience for a short time so that we can get the heck out of here - to a paradise - which is better than this material world here. This kind of eschatology spread throughout the Ancient Near East. Once a part of the faiths that originated there, it became incorporated into our deeper morality and eventually our legal syste...