Posts

When Group-Based Power Becomes Spiritually Corrupt: Baneful Magick in Social Cliques, Community Covens, and Institutional Organizations Awakened Paradigm

Image
  Magick has been defined as the art and science of causing change to occur in accordance with one’s Will. So, when a social clique, community coven, or institutional organization deliberately uses its collective will, intentions, and influence to manipulate circumstances, interfere with another person’s life, or bring about harmful outcomes for someone it has chosen to target, I would consider that a form of baneful magick. What makes this type of magick even more spiritually corrupt is when the social clique, community coven, or institutional organization stands to gain personally from the very harm it is attempting to bring into another person’s life. And that personal gain can take many forms, including money, social status, influence, opportunities, or greater power within the group, where the mistreatment of another human being becomes something its participants can exploit for their own benefit. And at that point, they are not simply attempting to bring about harmful outcome...
Read more

When Outward Righteousness Replaces Inner Transformation: The Pharisaic Distortion of Faith Awakened Paradigm

Image
I am against Pharisaic expressions of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or any other religious tradition, but that does not mean that I am against faith itself. This means that my issue isn't with sincere spiritual practice or devotion to God; it is actually with the ways that religion can be used for anything other than the deeper transformation of the heart, soul, and mind that faith is supposed to produce. This means that when people embody corrupted forms of faith that lead to violence, oppression, hypocrisy, or the coercive control of other human beings, I am going to stand against those distorted expressions of religion regardless of which tradition they come from. Faith should deepen our humanity, refine our character, and transform us inwardly—not become a spiritual justification for bringing actual harm into the lives of other human beings while convincing ourselves that we are somehow serving God in the process. The people who think that we cannot criticize their faith are mo...
Read more

When the Christian Label Becomes Spiritually Meaningless: Performative Faith, Corrupted Power, and the Absence of Genuine Inner Transformation Awakened Paradigm

Image
 God is not impressed by the Christian label itself. This is because there is a form of Christianity in which religious identity, group belonging, public performance, political influence, and the pursuit of power can all become substitutes for actually undergoing the genuine inner transformation that is supposed to reshape a person’s character. In this distorted expression of Christianity, people profess faith, immerse themselves in religious community, and publicly identify themselves with Jesus, but they become cruel, prideful, hard-hearted, and oppressive while believing that they are righteous. So, when it comes to their faith and the religious life that they participate in, none of that actually changes the way that they live. Instead, they use those things to reinforce the very attitudes, behaviors, and corrupted uses of power that they would be moving away from if their faith in God were genuine and it was actually transforming them in the first place. And when Christianity ...
Read more

When Group Narcissism Turns a Community Against Us: Scapegoating, Collective Hostility, and the Refusal to Conform to Dysfunction

Image
In toxic community systems, if we want to understand why we may be experiencing, or have previously experienced, collective hostility, social exclusion, scapegoating, humiliation, or the recruitment of multiple people into treating us as though we are somehow the sole problem, group narcissism may be part of what is happening. This can be especially true when the community itself is inherently dysfunctional at its core, yet we are made to feel as though having healthy boundaries, maintaining our personal agency, or refusing to participate in unhealthy dynamics is somehow what makes us the problem.   While narcissistic traits can exist within all of us to varying degrees and can express themselves differently from person to person, group narcissism can develop when a community, organization, or social group becomes so invested in its own image, superiority, righteousness, or special status—that protecting the group’s collective ego becomes more important than honest self-examination...
Read more

When Collective Hostility Becomes Coordinated Wrongdoing: Civil Conspiracy and the Responsibility of Those Who Participate

Image
 When a community system comes together to unfairly target someone as a group—to isolate them, intimidate them, or otherwise coordinate harmful actions against them—what they are participating in can cross the line from ordinary interpersonal conflict into a civil conspiracy against that person. A civil conspiracy, in the context of a community, institution, association, or organization, generally involves multiple people reaching an understanding or acting in concert to accomplish an unlawful objective, or to accomplish an otherwise lawful objective through unlawful means, resulting in harm to another person. It is therefore not simply about several people independently disliking the same individual. The deeper issue is coordination: people sharing information, reinforcing one another’s actions, recruiting others into the hostility, concealing what they are doing, or deliberately using their collective influence to bring about a harmful outcome that would be more difficult for any...
Read more

Integrating the Wounded Spiritual Self: The Many Faces of Unresolved Religious Trauma and the Path Toward Genuine Inner Transformation

Image
 If you grew up in a religious environment, experienced trauma at the hands of the people within it, and consequently rejected God, part of your shadow work may be to integrate your own belief in God and sense of spirituality into a genuine and embodied expression within your life—the part of you that was buried, disowned, or pushed into the unconscious because your experience of the Divine within that religious environment became entangled with fear, shame, control, and spiritual abuse. This does not mean returning to the same religious system that harmed you, excusing what was done to you, or forcing yourself to believe in God exactly as the people within that system did. It just means separating God from the distorted image of Him that those who harmed you imposed upon your mind, so that the people who wounded you are no longer allowed to remain the final authority over your spiritual life. This means that your healing from a harmful religious environment may involve reclaiming ...
Read more

The Reprobate Mindset Behind Religious Authoritarianism: When Worldly Power Replaces Inner Transformation

Image
 Christians are not called to dominate society in a way that is coercive, authoritarian, or contrary to the spirit of Christ. They are not called to impose their beliefs through political power, to use the machinery of the state to force religious conformity, or to sanctify worldly systems of domination and control in the name of God; they are called to undergo the inward transformation of their heart, soul, and mind. Even Jesus himself criticized rulers who lord their authority over others and made it clear that this was not to be the pattern among his followers, whose influence was meant to be expressed through the transformation of their own character. Things like the rejection of inner transformation in favor of external control, the corruption of faith into an instrument of worldly power, the subordination of Christian faith to nationalist ideology, and theocratic authoritarianism are all expressions of a reprobate mindset, and that is why it is so difficult for people to awak...
Read more