The hierophant, he spiritual teacher in the Tarot. Card number 5 in the Tarot
There is no doubt that most of us get to know the famous, popular spiritual teachers, they sale many books, appear on television and get large audience. Teachers such as: eckhart tolle, deepak chopra, Neale Donald Walsch, Mooji, Robin Sharma, Jack Kornfield, Nissim Amon and many more. They are called Avarars, Gurus and more names.
Spirituality is big business, it’s a multi-million dollar industry. A lot of what passes for spirituality today is actually a commercial venture of one kind or another. It should be seen for what it is – business, and not serious, genuine spiritual knowledge.
Here are some books in the manner of popular spirituality:
The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle.
- Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda.
- The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, Deepak Chopra.
- Return to Love, Marianne Williamson.
- Conversations with God: Book 1, by Neale Donald Walsch.
- Key to Yourself, by Venice Bloodworth.
- The Power, by Rhonda Byrne.
- Stillness Speaks, by Eckhart Tolle.
- Manifesting Michelangelo, by Joseph Pierce Farrell.
- Leap of Perception, Penney Peirce.
In the ‘new age’ spirituality there are common and popular spiritual Clichés, here are some 12 of them: - “You are perfect as you are”
- “Be positive!”4. “Be here now”
- “Your mind is a trap”
Spiritual Clichés About Life - “If you believe it, the universe will make it happen!”
- “There are no coincidences…”
- “It’s your karma!”
- “What you see in others, you have it in yourself.”
Spiritual Clichés About Living - “Just let it go”
- “Go with the flow”
- “Money is evil”
But there in a less known S.T. (spiritual teacher) he is rarer, he represents a different spirituality, Inaccessible and mainly; difficult to digest.
The popular S.T. emphasizes the freedom of choice, and the ability of the person to have control of his thoughts and even his destiny, while the rare S.T. causes a meeting point in the student about the frustration about his inability to decide and change something in his life.
As a known rare S.T. Gurdjieff said: “a man is a Machin and cannot do”
Here are some more typical quotes in the same spirit:
“Without self-knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave.”
“It is very difficult also to sacrifice one’s suffering. A man will renounce any pleasures you like but he will not give up his suffering.”
“Awakening is possible only for those who seek it and want it, for those who are ready to struggle with themselves and work on themselves for a very long time and very persistently in order to attain it.”
“Two things in life are infinite; the stupidity of man and the mercy of God.”
“Man has no individual i. But there are, instead, hundreds and thousands of separate small “i”s, very often entirely unknown to one another, never coming into contact, or, on the contrary, hostile to each other, mutually exclusive and incompatible. Each minute, each moment, man is saying or thinking, “i”. And each time his i is different. just now it was a thought, now it is a desire, now a sensation, now another thought, and so on, endlessly. Man is a plurality. Man’s name is legion.”
“In order to awaken, first of all one must realize that one is in a state of sleep. And in order to realize that one is indeed in a state of sleep, one must recognize and fully understand the nature of the forces which operate to keep one in the state of sleep, or hypnosis. It is absurd to think that this can be done by seeking information from the very source which induces the hypnosis.
….One thing alone is certain, that man’s slavery grows and increases. Man is becoming a willing slave. He no longer needs chains. He begins to grow fond of his slavery, to be proud of it. And this is the most terrible thing that can happen to a man.”
“You are in prison. If you wish to get out of prison, the first thing you must do is realize that you are in prison. If you think you are free, you can’t escape.”
“Only super-efforts count.”
“Better to die than live in sleep.”
The common S.T. claims that ‘it is all in your head’, it is about the stories you tell yourself; change your stories, change your way of thinking, and all will be all right and you will be happy. The rare S.T. is claiming that the problem is that reality does not deepened on how you see it, but you deepened on your ability to see reality without any filters, as it really is. The way you choose to see it can only distance you from it. You need to give up your preferred way to see reality and to see it the way it is. And the shock is not in changing the filters, but to give them up altogether.
The rare S.T. presents to the student full consciousness, so that he finds himself exposed, not able to hide from the truth of himself. It is like seeing yourself in the video after seeing your favorite pose in front of the mirror.
When meeting a rare S.T. he shows his students that they want to work on themselves in order to feel good in their life. The movement between suffering and pleasure is situated very low in the evolutionary pyramid of life.
The rare S.T. sows them that there is another state which is above both and it is a higher, or awaked, state of consciousness. In this state he feels on, burning with inner fire, connected to a kind of high energy, higher and stronger than the usual emotional energy that he used to.
This is the change the ancient alchemists talked about, changing one’s consciousness from lead to gold.
Usually this state of consciousness is also experienced in particular psychedelic drugs, like L.S.D. mescaline.
Another term with which to understand the kind of change the S.T. is referring to, could be found in the concept: “a second order change”:
First-order change works within an existing structure and view of the world. You could view it as tinkering with the system – doing more or less of something, making an existing process better or more accurate, and making incremental changes.
With first-order change, the ends of the system remain the same – it’s the means of producing those results that change. What you seek, what you avoid, the way you see the world, and your values remain the same.
Second-order change is often described as ‘transformational’, ‘revolutionary’, ‘radical’, ‘disruptive’, or ‘discontinuous’. It involves seeing the world in a different way, challenging assumptions, and working from a new and different worldview.
Inevitably it involves new ways of doing things, changing values and goals, and probably structural change in the organization as well. This can be quite scary to most people, especially where changes are imposed from above or outside, and you don’t have any input to them.
Second order change is creating a new way of seeing things completely. It requires new learning and involves a nonlinear progression, a transformation from one state to another. The aim would be to enable the individual to behave, think, or feel differently. It can be described as:
Transformational
Revolutionary
Radical
Discontinuous
Reinvent
Reengineer
Rewrite
.
This concept is introduced by Paul Watzlawick, John H. Weakland, Richard Fisch in their book on the subject. But before them wrote about it Gregory Bateson in his book: Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. New York: Dutton, 1979.
And here is his definition:
Second-order change is deciding – or being forced – to do something significantly or fundamentally different from what we have done before. The process is irreversible: once you begin, it is impossible to return to the way you were doing before.
The rare S.T.presents a second order change, which means for the student a radical change, this is perceived a threat on his existence.
A second order change is a change in the state of consciousness, this has got nothing to do with change in the thoughts by an autosuggestion.
The radical change can ignite in the student with a consciousness fire, but the distress for him is in that that he realizes his inability to preserve the fire. For almost any difficulty and crisis pots him in stress and this put down the fire. And here he finds that this difficulties and the crisis are out of his control that this things just happens to him and he is quiet helpless in the face of them.
He only becomes aware of his inability to master his emotional downfalls when he meets the possibility of a higher state of consciousness.
The hope of the S.T. is that the student will succeed in falling in love with the high level of consciousness before they meet (for example) their inability to deal with the omnipotence of his venerable emotions.
If the catching fire of the consciousness in the student does not happen – there is no justification to the meeting. Between the S.T. and the student.
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“(…) what is deceptively being presented to the general public as a viable and appealing alternative to mainstream religious institutions is largely owned by corporations and individuals looking to profit from people’s natural interest in spirituality, making it nothing more than a cleverly disguised offshoot of the mainstream itself.”
Vida Narovski, Conscious Reporter
“spirituality (…) turns more into an alluring commodity to be bought and sold instead of a way of life.” —
Vida Narovski, Conscious Reporter
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Gabriel