I think my last articles surprised people quite a bit, but probably not all for the same reasons. If I talked about anything spiritual in the recent years, it would usually be the unpleasant stuff such as karmic transformations, and for some reason I think people interpret that as me being fucked up and inventing some rationalisation to explain it as something non-obvious, and since I didn’t mention God much either they concluded it’s because I’ve fallen out of grace or something. Also, the fact that I write about photography or politics doesn’t mean I can’t write about other things. It’s just that writing about God isn’t my only way of writing about God, if you get what I mean.

Also, I did not get weaker over the years and decades. Someone will say “who knows when that darshan he’s talking about happened, it might be decades ago”. No, it was last week, and again yesterday as I wrote the last article, thank you for asking (she made a comment). However, the last time before that was in the late 1990s, if I recall correctly. Too long; 27 years or something, unless you count being married to her tulku as a form of darshan and lila, which you actually should, in which case it’s a whole different story. Then someone’ll say it might not be real, it might be my mind playing tricks because I was feeling terrible and it’s a coping mechanism. Sorry to disappoint, but during those 27 years I felt mostly terrible and during the entire time I couldn’t even remember something like that well enough to fake it, or even well enough for it to be any comfort, let alone pull the experience out of my ass. It just doesn’t work that way. You see God when God wants to be seen, not when you want it or need it. Why now; I don’t know. Why not before; I don’t know that either. However, feeling terrible means I’m doing my job of being an anvil that breaks all hammers, not that I have fallen from God’s grace.

Some are asking the right questions, such as who the fuck am I, really, if all that is true? Well, that’s the worst kept secret of all time, I guess. Some will be in the “we knew it!” camp, others in the “oh fuck…”, but I have no wish to waste time spelling it out for you. But yes, I also take pictures of heather bushes in the sunset, and I also write political commentary and spend inordinate amounts of money on gear. 🙂 You might ask “why”, and the answer is “why not?” I’m not a fan of pompous and pretentious bullshit of any kind; in the afterlife, I’d be the one in jeans, chatting up the team over some equivalent of coffee that they have there.

A while ago, when I was writing about the Judges of Karma, I remembered all of them that I knew personally, and they were all male. I wondered about that, thinking if there’s a reason for that, when one of them came into my context; she felt like an older woman, kind and smart, and with an undertone of gentle humour said/thought/communicated “Not all of us are, apparently”. I found it strange that she chose the appearance of old age, but I thought she probably found it appropriate since she was a very serious person, something you would expect from an old university professor or a supreme court judge, or some similarly dignified role. She could manifest as a woman in her 20s, but I’m sure she would find it immature and frivolous.

Then I started thinking how interesting it is that I didn’t see her “physical” form, or any astral equivalent thereof, I didn’t hear her voice, just felt her presence, and I could immediately tell her sex/gender. Just a touch of her mind to mine, and I could instantly tell it’s a woman.

In the lunatic asylum also known as America, the debate is currently between people who think gender is a social construct and so anyone can be anything if they feel like it, and on the other hand there are the conservatives who think gender is an immutable physical property, defined by chromosomes and primary sex characteristics, and that’s that. If they even bother to think about soul, they would probably say that the sex of the soul matches the sex of the body, or that the soul is a sexless spiritual entity devoid of such inherently material designations.

I heard multiple variations on that theme; basically, sex is a property of the physical body, which soul transcends as it gets more used to its purely spiritual nature, and so on.

My experience is exactly the opposite. The lower the level of a spiritual entity, the harder it is for me to establish its sex. Something that would live in an insect or a bird has nothing I could recognize as sex/gender. It’s an amorphous structure, quite nasty, and has as much sex as a rock. Humans are usually easier to identify, but interestingly, sex of the soul doesn’t always match sex of the body. Someone will now say “aha, that must be explanation for the homosexuals, transsexuals and the like”. I don’t think so; things aren’t that simple. Homosexuals sometimes register as very feminine, sometimes as very masculine, and sometimes as just strange, weird and wrong, as if their sexual pathology is merely one of many aspects of their spiritual pathology. Also, sometimes I can tell that a soul had a male prior incarnation, but is a completely normal feminine heterosexual woman in this incarnation. Essentially, I’d say things are just complicated, and understand this in the least judgmental way possible. In that sense, the Abrahamic religions are just wrong in their judgmental attitude. They are so wrong, that they got exactly nothing right.

The higher the beings, the more clear and defined their sex, in direct opposition to expectations. They don’t feel like amorphous and generic sources of light or whatever; they feel extremely defined. Female deities are the most feminine beings I’ve ever met. Male deities are always absolutely and distinctly male. I never had a situation where I couldn’t tell their sex instantly, before I could register anything else they were communicating. Also, I never saw it visually, nor do I hear their voices, so that I could tell from that. Obviously, sex is a fundamental spiritual category, divorced from any physical characteristics of sex, something I can tell from the mere presence of a soul, without sight or sound that would communicate sex it in the physical realm.

You will be justified in asking how this is possible. Well, I have multiple hypotheses and I’m not sure which is right. The first one is that this world is designed to mirror and interface with the real world. If you design something like that, you want it to match realities as closely as possible. This means that the primary incarnation vehicles of choice were designed to be as similar to spiritual realities, and then causality was stretched backwards to create the timeline that would result in that.

The second hypothesis is that we perceive everything through the physical brain here. Absolutely every spiritual experience is translated by the physical brain into the closest equivalents that exist within the brain. This means that when I perceive some spiritual being as female, it’s merely the closest possible translation the brain could provide. However, I think this hypothesis can be easily falsified. You see, I had experiences that couldn’t be properly translated at all, but I still remembered them as they were; I just couldn’t translate them into anything useful. Also, when something has an undefined sex, like some demonic entities, I perceive it exactly as it is, buzzing energy of low specific “vibration level” and all. I don’t automatically translate it as anything. This brings us to the third hypothesis, that spiritually high beings meet me halfway and create something I can perceive in ways that will give out a message in itself. I’m sure there are some people who would very much want something of that sort to be true, just so that they don’t have to accept a reality where after death they meet a “being of light”, and that light is clearly either male or female.

There is also a hypothesis according to which souls evolve mostly through physical incarnations, and physical experience shapes the identity of the soul itself, which then usually keeps the appearance and sex of its last incarnation. That one might be true to a large extent, despite the fact that physical incarnation might not really be the primary method of spiritual evolution, and despite the fact that souls might choose to incarnate in bodies whose sex differs from that of their soul.

Whichever it may be, it makes things much more interesting than one would expect. Even I am not immune to such expectations; for instance, I understood that Biljana is a tulku very early on; the design of her “soul” looks like a mathematical equation, there’s not a trace of the messiness of karma that always follows from multiple successive incarnations and spiritual evolution. She looks like someone created her with a magical spell, and considering how precise and mathematically perfect the spell is, I was kind of intimidated by her “casting entity”; I expected it to be some huge Divine being of bright light that doesn’t give a shit about anything even remotely human. And then I met her, the “casting entity”, and understood that not only do I know her since forever, but she’s the girliest girl from girl world you could possibly imagine. It’s just that she’s so holy that saints and buddhas evaporate from the ground she walks on, and so powerful that time, space and universes are something that’s created, modified and destroyed in her wake. So yeah, the most powerful being I ever had darshan of is also the most clearly female being I’ve ever met. So much for gender being a social or a biological construct. If anything, it’s the most fundamental spiritual evolutionary attractor.

A conclusion I draw from that is that when two sides argue, the truth is not necessarily in the middle, or on either side. Sometimes, both sides are completely wrong and the truth is nowhere near anything they could imagine.

I was thinking about something related to the previous article, and I think it’s so important I can’t let it go.

You see, when I was talking about not speaking about spiritual experience in order to protect their sanctity and privacy, there’s an aspect of it that I’m sure everybody missed completely. I didn’t mean protecting my own privacy. I meant primarily protecting God’s privacy.

You see, to me God is not a resource, or a treasury, or a power source you exploit endlessly. God is family. God is not just someone you ask for things, or protection. God is also someone you protect.

When I was much younger, in my early 20s, I read a book by some American Christian, Billy Graham I think, and of course his instruction was to accept the redeeming sacrifice of Christ, to accept his payment for your sins in order to be washed clean. I felt a sudden fury at the idea, and I thought, “I refuse”. The idea of letting God suffer at your behalf was so offensive to me that I instantly felt a surge of defensive anger. “In fact, I offer to take His place at the cross, any time, to protect Him from people like you, who would crucify Him for their benefit”. It was probably the most clear and defined thought I ever had in my life at that point. I would absolutely protect God from any harm, at my own expense, without a second thought, any time it’s necessary. It must sound weird, that my most basic instinct was to shield God in my protective rage, and take any harm that would befall Him upon myself. However, this is my nature. God is family. You stand between family and harm.

That, first and foremost, is why I refuse to talk about some spiritual experiences. They are something private that happened within my family. What happens within family, stays there. God is a protected family member whose privacy is sacred to me. So yeah, I understand that there are malevolent assholes out there who interpret my silence about these things as their absence, and they then interpret that as a sign of my spiritual fall or apostasy. Feel free, as far as I’m concerned, because you don’t matter. I prefer evil people to think whatever evil shit about me, if it means that all their thoughts, as if bullets, darts and rotten vegetables, hit me as a shield forever standing between their malice and God. I swore to protect God from harm and I meant it.

I’ve been thinking about what I said about godless people, how they lack any virtue and morality and will do absolutely anything if it means getting rid of someone or something that’s in their way, as they see it.

What I find interesting is that I met Catholics who tried to use that same argument on me. Basically, I am not a member of a Church. I don’t accept authority of the Pope, or any religious leader in general. I don’t necessarily accept the authority of scriptures. I question everything. What is to stop me from doing evil? I have no commandments to obey. I have no authority above me. What is there to stop me from doing any kind of evil or immoral things?

I thought about it, not in a sense that I myself wouldn’t know the answer, but I tried to formulate it in a way that would make sense to others.

You see, the expectation that absence of clear authority means that I can just do whatever is wrong. Sure, I don’t accept authority of scriptures or religious figures in that sense, but this absence of authority makes me extremely careful, because if I get something wrong, I have no obvious place to ask for help. I am aware that I have no mommy watching my back. If I get something wrong, I will suffer terrible consequences. I might disappoint good people who rely on my guidance and virtue. This alone is stronger reason for me to be extremely careful in my thoughts and actions than most people can imagine. For instance, my family expects me to be stoic, reasonable, sharp and understanding; they expect me to be someone who will solve problems, not cause them. They expect me to help those who show weakness and make mistakes. This expectation stems from long experience. If I started doing stupid, weak things, their confidence in me would be shattered, and it is not something I would wish to experience. I am expected to be the light in the darkness, someone who calms fears, offers good advice, gives understanding of what’s going on and how to approach situations. However, that’s only part of my motivation. The core of it is something else, much more private and personal; it’s my relationship with God. I don’t wish to speak about it in detail, because that would be both disrespectful and a breach of privacy, comparable to talking about sex with my wife to strangers. It’s just not done. You may ask yourselves why I don’t talk about God or my newer spiritual experiences, and that’s why. When I talked about those things before, it was a terrible sacrifice on my behalf, which I made because I wanted to open doors for spiritual experience, to create mantrically charged text that would enable initiation. However, whenever I open those experiences to others and talk about them, they are lost for me, forever. Their sanctity and privacy has been breached, and my memory of those experiences will forever be contaminated by the astral interference by people who read it. Losing the most sacred part of yourself is exactly as appealing as it sounds, and any normal person would prefer a bullet through the brain; and yet, I did that in order to give others the opportunity they would otherwise not get.

Those times have passed, however, and I am no longer willing to expose my personal spiritual experiences to external interference. That’s the reason why I don’t talk about them. However, I want you to understand their importance to me. If you can understand not wanting to break your family’s faith in you by acting from weakness or sin, imagine a motivation orders of magnitude more powerful – being in a position that something I do breaks my relationship with God. I would much rather die, and I don’t mean just physically, which is something I actually look forward to. No, I mean being completely destroyed as a spiritual being; I would prefer it to disappointing God.

Your Church, your Pope, your religious laws and scriptures, that’s all children’s play. You evade and work around those daily. I am much more honest than that, in a very raw way. Making God disappointed in you because you fucked up, that’s something I never want to experience, and that’s the reason why I’m so extremely careful in everything I do. You can’t even imagine how much. I also take holy scriptures very seriously, even when I end up disagreeing. I see it as a discussion with my wife. Even if I disagree with her, I will take her extremely seriously, think about it with everything I’ve got, and disagreement will never mean disrespect. I don’t treat things carelessly, and I am always aware of dangers and responsibilities. The fact that I am the one making the final call just means that I have nobody to shift responsibility to. When I make a call, I try to make it the best one I can make, using all my abilities, all my insights and powers, and advice from all sources I respect and acknowledge. However, the final call is always mine.

It’s not what the atheists do – “oh, there’s no authority above me, I can do whatever I want, that’s great”. No. Terrible things will happen if I fuck up. I can disappoint people I love, and beings of such high order that I don’t even know how to describe them with words. I can’t even begin to describe how bad that would be, or what kind of a discipline this awareness automatically creates. To me, none of that is abstract or intangible. It’s a treasure of immense value, loss of which would be the greatest personal tragedy. You just don’t fuck with that; you rather suffer whatever agony or inconvenience instead.

So, no, I don’t have the authority of Church, Bible or Pope to guide my actions, but that makes me ten times more careful, controlled and responsible than you can imagine. The religious people can understand that in some way, but the atheists, they are idiots and scum. I have no respect for them whatsoever, they are moral and intellectual garbage. They don’t even understand the problems, let alone the solutions.

I’ve been watching that interview between Jordan Peterson and Charlie Kirk, and their discussion about the concept of the sin against the Holy Spirit, which Jesus mentioned as the only one that’s unforgivable, struck me as very interesting.

Charlie said it’s about using the garb of religion as a bludgeon against people, and in service of your ego, basically, and Jordan said it might be about rejecting the call of God to fulfil your destiny, or the failure to “aim up”, towards God. I thought they both have a valid point there, but something else came to my mind as I was taking a shower now.

I think the Evangelical, “sola scriptura” attitude, is the sin against the Holy Spirit. It’s the attitude that Holy Spirit was present when the Bible was written, and then took a permanent vacation. It’s the attitude that you can ignore people like St. Augustine or St. Theresa of Avilla because they are not in the Bible, and only the Bible matters because it’s the word of God, and God somehow went mute after it was completed. It’s the attitude that you own God, that everything outside of your own religion is of lesser quality, that it’s something that can be summarily dismissed, that it can’t have been inspired by God, and even if it were, it can be only to a far lesser degree than what you have in your own religion. To sin against Holy Spirit is to reject it in all things that don’t fit the mental framework of your religious beliefs.

It’s also about rejecting the living presence of God when it confronts you, and you think you are safe in your scripture and your religious rites and customs. It’s thinking you are always the one whose position is to teach, because that’s what your religion assumes, even when you’re confronted with “the living Force” that is trying to tell you something. It’s the sin of the Pharisees, who would lecture Jesus and try to trick him, assuming they own God and he’s some upstart.

Yes, it’s definitely about rejecting the path that leads up, and not walking through the door God opened before you, and it’s definitely about using the idea of God as a tool of your ego, in service of your self-aggrandisement. It’s also having the keys to the heavenly kingdom, but neither using them to enter yourself, nor allowing the others to enter, choosing to make the door an obstacle instead of a place of passage. It may also be using gifts of the Holy Spirit in order to confuse others and lead them away from God. There are indeed too many candidates, and I think all those interpretations are valid in their own way. Rejection of transcendence in service of your own lower nature, and using the form people associate with transcendence in order to deceive them away from transcendence and to give yourself power over others, though, seem like the best interpretation.