Yeah, lets do this properly, cause you, like many folks may have doubts about the left-hand/left-hand path, bits of it sound a little too.., well edgy for them, a bit short on Christian morality, and that’s just not PC, is it..
Quick note – I’m going to start to use the new format for this post and all the others that are not in the ‘Basics’ category, where their is a reveal at the beginning, a statement and then a Summary as the key ‘take away’ at the end. Hope you like it..
Key Lesson: The 4th way is the path for everyone and anyone truly effected by the spiritual world and hence interested in the actual bedrock of spirituality, to go straight to the source, WITHOUT having to engage with the largely meaningless, distorted, ‘original’ and ‘unique’ spiritual traditions, without their priests, hierarchies and ceremonial traditions. But the 4th way is not stupid, delusional, power crazed or fame hungry, the 4th way knows this has all be done before, so it looks for those footsteps in the sand, and finds loads of them, its finds ‘Energy Work’. And so will you, and so have many peoples’ down through the ages, the bizarre ‘one revealed world religion for all’ is a very modern concept, a concept based on a form of social control.
So, all you really need to know is that the left-hand/left-hand path is agnostic, so this is going to be a short post.
Yep, the 4th way does not believe in any of these religions or traditions, does not believe in a creator god, does not believe that anyone of them is right, and particularly does not believe that there is only one way or path into spirituality, dominated by just ONE of these spiritual traditions. And just in case you are not aware, the priests of these religions DO BELIEVE that they are right, and everyone else is wrong.. Yep, total madness..
But the 4th way DOES believe in spirit, the 4th way knows there is a whole other side to our existence that has, for most of human history and probably well before that, been the goal of anyone who was anyone. Yep, engagement with and progress toward spiritual attainment has actually been the POINT of our existence since the beginning of time, for those able to do it.
This path focuses on the truth about spirituality, what comes BEFORE all these religions, the ‘source’ of them, the ’cause’ of them. The 4th way only cares about real spirituality, what is actually there, and how to access it, in and of itself. However it is more than happy to use the methods and processes they, the ancient traditions found to WORK, and the teaching models that, after being tested, were found to give some insight in to what is actually happening. The 4th way knows there is some truth out there in all of this mess, and the further you go back, the better and clearer it gets. Now, don’t get me wrong there are echo’s of this truth all down through to ages to the present day, all these oblique references in many traditions all clearly point to the same ‘type’ of thing… So, and please trust me on this, there is a common thread there, an actual universal truth that is not just a ‘teaching model’. And, sadly, you would be amazed at just how many folks, both alive today and down through the ages, know this only to well..
So lets just nail this one quickly for you… Know how many religions there are in the world, including all the separate sects and cults, all these people who think they are the ONLY ones who are RIGHT, and that EVERYONE ELSE is wrong….? 4,300. Yep….. when asked most people say 100-150 maybe, little do they know the madness that’s out there. Now, 75% of the world is covered by the big 5 (lifted fresh off the interweb a moment ago) – Buddhism (6.9%), Hinduism (15.1%), Islam (24.1%), )… and the winner is = Christianity (31.2%).
And you know what, when pressed, over 50% of these religious types, folks who say they ‘belong’ to such and such religious group then say they don’t really believe all or ANY of it, they belong to a religion as part of a societal or family/social group, they NEVER actually practise, basically only ever go to church for weddings, funerals and christenings. And of course use ‘their lords name in vain’ whenever it suits them. Spirituality is only ever a way to deal with death these days…
But there is more… Outside of that there are only 12 main ‘influential’ ones, including several you have never heard of.. anyone for Bahá’í, Shinto, Jainism, or (drum roll) Zoroastrianism, yep the big ‘Z’, the fire worshipers of old, and arguably the oldest of our ‘just the one God’ style of religions, even the template for the big 3 religions of ‘the book’ (ie Old Testament), where they got their structure from.
Ahh, you did not know? All the big 3 aren’t ORIGINAL, that they are all based on earlier religions, with minor differences and interpretations, multiple layers of ‘public’ interpretations by this prophet or that one, over thousands of years. Ohhh, hang on a second, NONE of these religions are ORIGINAL, they are all lashed together, copied, improved, degraded, personally or politically modified versions of traditions that happened thousands of years ago, in Egypt, in Greece, in Mesopotamia, India, East Asia. And ‘god’ alone knows where all that stuff came from..
The fertile crescent, the cradle of ALL (currently) recorded civilisation, is where almost ALL the early bible stories in the old testament actually come from, and were copied word for word by the Jews when they were imprisoned there.. Yep the Jews borrowed a lot, in fact the only religion that is less authentic than Judaism is Christianity. Yep, the modern version of a Christian, what and how you practise does not exist in the Bible, its all an interpretation, incorporating every pagan holiday of the faith its replaced, its a smorgasbord of every European tradition you can imagine. The genuine received word of God? I don’t think so. In fact very few people ‘think so’, still a VERY useful book however..
And that’s not all.. see, importantly, crucially, even the actual real thoughts, ideas and practises of these founders and prophets were only ever passed on in secret, with pretty much every religion in the world having an Esoteric side, a Tantric side, a hidden side, (where people actually DID SPIRITUAL PRACTISE, very much away from the limelight), including ancient, ‘Gnostic’ Christianity. Indeed, for all the mess that Christianity, a religion where most modern versions of it are literally just 400 year old inventions of their political leaders in order to free themselves from the Church of Rome, which remains still the most authentic version, if it is even possible to use those words. In the British case it was free its sex mad monarch and allow him to enjoy himself. So, to us at least, to expect religious adoration for such a tawdry creation seems somewhat ridiculous…
Hopefully I don’t need to go on… you get it now? The modern world of religion is not where seekers after the world of spirit go, they go back in time – they look, they try and they test. Then they find. But they are respectful, they know its not themselves who have discovered this, it was others, long ago. But all they really care about is what works, what’s actually true about real, lets call it genuine spirituality.
Lastly, there is much more to say about the spiritual traditions of the world, much more to explain about why things are the way they are, as its useful to know the mechanisms behind the issues in these traditions, but I will do this as a sperate post in the Awful Truth category. Do read it if the above pricks your interest, it contains one of my very favourite madness of modern religion stories – namely that Jesus is NOT called Jesus, its a totally made up name, and every priest and bible scholar has know this for literally hundred of years, yet it still says Jesus in the bible.. Now why is that… ‘Ahh’, said the last Catholic priest I spoke to, yeah they changed it cause the real name sounds like ‘Joshua’, and well, that would just confuse people. Ok, I get it, says I, the name of the ‘Son Of God’ you pray too and worship multiple times a day is not really that important then? Ahh.. of course it is, says he, of course WE use his real name… Priceless.
Lastly, know that where this path takes you in basic terms in the same for everyone, the same for thousands of years, all of which I will cover off later, but for now:
- All real spirituality is a form of Energy Work, the contact, control and development of your energies – in the 4th way you use forms of feeling.
- Spiritual method has 2 entries points, through your mental or physical practise – in the 4th way you combine these together.
- All energy work is what the ancients called ‘Subtle’, hard to find – the 4th way uses normal strong forms of feeling to help lead you to it.
- All energy work requires you to develop the difficult skill of ‘Attention’ through boring ‘focus’ – the 4th way makes this much more interesting.
- Spiritual processes look to remove the bad, stop the leakage of the good, and then build the good – the 4th way combines these goals together.
- All ancient spiritual traditions use acceptance/surrender to remove blocks to progress – the 4th way knows this is about strengthening your ‘Will’.
- All of these ancient energy work processes were designed for a society existing 2K years ago – the 4th way accepts that people have changed.
- Spiritual practises look to remove any risk – the 4th way accepts that risk is a fundamental part of being gifted and hence ‘manages’ risk.
- And all ancient spiritual processes hide the truth, using analogies, ambiguity – in the 4th way we just fecking tell you..
Summary: Think for yourself, take a step back and look… If you do you will find this is all largely bloody OBVIOUS – public spiritual traditions are simply the ‘fan’ clubs of the truly spiritual, those religious founders and prophets of old, they are forms of worship NOT practise, not cultivation, and hence totally bankrupt of any real spirituality. You need to do it for YOURSELF, not live 2nd hand through some ancient text you can’t relate to, and the 4th way is best, fastest and most effective thing to do.
Now to finish this post its easy to say that now, having noted the ‘landscape’ you are standing in, you can simply forget it. The 4th way has no club to join, badge to wear, no enemies its gives a damn about defending itself against. However…. there are 2 exceptions to this, 2 things you need to understand, that will start to define you going forward, and which I will write more about later, as they are the 2 main criticisms levelled at the Left-hand path.
- Left-Hand Path Rejects Christian/Western Morality: The 4th way rejects to need to be humane, to be nice, to be kind in order to be spiritual. The 4th way understands the morality of spirituality is exactly the same as ALL morality in nature – it is the morality of Power, the law of the jungle. This is where the able and strong are allowed to grow and prosper without the need to pander to the self interests of the majority, where quality and ability are everything. Whatever you may think, may like to be true, this is how the world works, deal with it. However, what you do with that is up to you, hence developing a sense of Honour early on in this path is a good thing.
- Left-Hand Path is Elitist: On this path not everyone is equal, some are more gifted than others, and this is the path for them. Not everyone can do it, not everyone should do it. Now, as everybody knows, we live in a capitalist meritocracy where your personal ability, power, value are crucial to life, to getting on in this world, not how equal your are. So the Elitism of the modern world is self evident, the 4th way just accepts this and does not bother to lie, does not bother to pretend that we are all equal, in any other sense that, yes all life is sacred and should be protected by society. There are both greater and lesser people on this planet to you and me, treat them BOTH with respect, but do be conscious of your place in nature, and respect that too, do not allow yourself to be abused by the others.
This path deals with how life actual is, it does not pretend and it does not shout about it. If you have an issue with this then consider whether you are best equipped to go any further at this point of your life. Maybe remember that the most common use of western morality these days is to ‘weaponize’ it – to pro-actively attack the characters of otherwise law abiding folks in order to manipulate them, one of the more serious abuses of ‘Power’ you see. Leave such judgements up to the law of the land, leave the so called moral judgements of people you might be tempted to make until you are better equipped to make them.
Quote to end as always, this time a simple one, clear and understated, from a man who was anything but shy about his abilities:
‘Ability is nothing without opportunity’ – Napoleon Bonaparte.
Laters..
TOB
