Catholic-Perennialist

  Something which the online gurus are loath to speak of is the necessity of suffering on one's spiritual journey. It doesn't qualify as click bait, and no one would willingly sign up for an adventure if they were sure that they'd come back as a husk of the man they once were. "All men die, but few men truly live," to which I would add that some men die more than once; some many times.  Martin Luther once said of the common peasant that he dies as a pig dies. Perhaps apocryphal, but he said many similar things during the Peasant's War. What he means is that the internal psychic workings of the great mass of humanity is utterly sensual and incapable of beholding higher truths. This is an accurate assessment. Take one look at the YouTube or Ticktock shorts that garner 10's of millions of views and you are likely to find the basest tripe. Search for something more cerebral and it may have several thousand views. But if the topic is especially esoteric and rar...

It's probably no coincidence that Hollywood is both dominated by people of Hebrew extraction, and its movies are dominated by Kabbalistic themes. Kabbalism being a Jewish form of Gnosticism, there is much overlap when dissecting titles such The Matrix, or Dark City. What is more subtle is the long, protracted tale of the Guardians trilogy, directed by James Gunn. As a trilogy of films they are my favorite. I much prefer to watch these than Star Wars, which is another Kabbalistic saga. GoG is fun and intelligently written; Gnostic themes may not be obvious until one sees the third installment, but throughout all three films there is a running discussion of metaphor. I think this is our first clue to understanding these films; they are an extended Gnostic metaphor. The 1st film is pulling double duty by introducing a world and a panoply of characters while also setting up the back story for the broader Infinity conflict. The second film acts as an origin story for Star Lord and is Gn...

 Everyone should have a worldview implode at least once; ideally twice. It opens the mind to new possibilities and gives one a moment of pause before he declares any truth definitively. Mine imploded once as a Baptist, and again as a traditional Catholic. Looking back I wonder how I didn't die of cringe. Baptist pastors barking and bellowing behind a pulpit with such conviction, but rooted in a theological system that never seemed to make anyone better. The egoists and assholes and perverts and swindlers kept showing up, kept being what they were, and never really saw a contradiction between their lives and their faith. Perhaps this is true of every religion. Most of its adherents are nominal and lack even the capacity to examine abstractions. And maybe I could have overlooked this in the laity, but it seemed to infect even the clergy, so called.  Baptists, evangelicals, and the like, are almost universally poorly read. The less broadly they've read, the more certain they are ...

 We were told growing up to "pursue your dreams," and "do what you love," followed inevitably by the punchline: "and you'll never work a day in your life." This advice is about as damaging as insisting everyone pursue college education without regard for desire or ability. It's one of many stock platitudes that I call "boomerisms," built largely on American myths of success and self-determination.  Of course, none of this has been true for a long time. Take the story of the Tucker automobile as a microcosm: one man with a dream turns it into a business only to have a collusion of government, industry, and media disassemble it before it ever turns a profit. There's a movie about it. But what if Tucker had satisfied himself with building cars in his garage, one at a time? People do this now to great personal satisfaction. Government typically leaves them alone; rival businesses don't even notice; but your neighborhood will notice. G...