FAITH WITHOUT WORKS IS DEAD

Hypocrisy, corruption, spirituality vs. religion, and the common thread.

Religion is criticized for many things, but even moreso religious people for hypocrisy- practicing what they do not preach.

This is clearly not everyone, don’t take it personally. We’re going somewhere with this.

Reading a book, studying philosophy, studying religious and mystic texts of all sorts, that equates to knowledge of whatever topic you are reading about. It does not equate to experience.

Experience cannot be absorbed second-hand. When we read these books or learn from spiritual teachers, we are being taught the lessons, morals, and in many cases instructions, gathered from someone else’s spiritual experience.

This is not to say do not read, do not study, do not research. I encourage and do all these things myself.

This is to make a point:

Without direct experience, how could one possibly have true faith?

Here’s why this is a problem:

Belief is one thing, but down to your bones KNOWING makes you linked like a magnet to the Divine in this realm. So, how do we know?

We might think we know based on what we’ve been told our whole lives, but when shit hits the fan in personal lives, how many of us can truly say we have held fast to whatever our principles, morals, highest behavioral standards, and above all, faith?

I can’t — but it has improved over time. The only reason for this is experience, and these experiences must continue.

Just as someone in recovery from addiction cannot stay connected to their fellowship off of last months meeting, just like your stomach cannot remain full off of last weeks meal, we cannot maintain our spiritual progress off of last years spiritual experience. It has to continue.

The problem comes in within both religious and spiritual communities. These communities are, ideally, known and regarded to be safe spaces for healing. Often the most broken people will show up here looking for help. I myself am one of them.

But I’m seeing something within the spiritual community that is disturbing to me, and reminds me of the exact reason why so many flee from religion and choose other spiritual paths.

It is not an issue with the teachings, unless the teaching is telling you to not have your own experience and to just believe what you’re told without question.

I’m watching people join in and create toxic environments because they think they’ve found a new niche for their ego, for their material/social status, a way to make money or to have influence over others.

It looks like an attempt to foster control under the guise of wisdom and harmlessness (predatory AF), when the foundation of every teaching I’ve been exposed to, religious or mystic, is to relinquish control— they just explain or go about it in differing ways.

I’ve been guilty of this too; obsessing over trying to get to the “truth” of the TRUTH via research and books, as opposed to dropping all that shit and just allowing myself to have an experience. To have the experience. Every day. And allowing that to grow.

Why am I writing about this?

It’s how all things become corrupted, and often I don’t think people are doing this intentionally, but the impact is the same.

Entering a spiritual / healing / religious space with the intent of becoming “the most knowledgable” or “the most wise” or “the most spiritual”, the list goes on, having all the focus being on how much esoteric knowledge you can repeat, as opposed to aligning, being, and operating from that space in each moment, causes more damage than most would think.

It turns spaces that are designed to foster liberation of the human spirit into hollow, plastic places of shameless self-promotion, and in many cases, predatory behavior.

A lot of people who follow a Messiah low-key try to act like one. A lot of people who believe in creating your own reality engage in a delusional form of spiritual bypassing where the only things allowed in their “creation” are upper-class Malibu love and light unicorns, with an “everything is perfect, don’t you dare bring that contagious human experience near my aura you peasant!” type of vibe. (You get it.)

Again, because people are very sensitive these days, I am NOT talking about everyone. I am involved in BOTH of these circles. I love dearly many people in BOTH of these circles. I’m pointing out how easy it is for our egos to fuck even the best of things all the way up, and trying to offer a possible solution.

Life moves fast. We are all often overwhelmed. It takes great fortitude to develop through time, consistency and discipline, the ability to be truly present for ourselves and others. But if we can do this, our presence is healing to anyone in it.

If we cannot… which most can’t, I certainly won’t pretend that thats my vibe 25/8, we cause a lot of damage, and we become prime targets for becoming the exact person that we think we’re separating ourselves from in our pursuits.

I have also seen this in the “Truth” community. Many years ago, this was a very underground thing. Now? Now I see monetized social media pages (which is batshit insane because of the amount of censorship actual truth gets, so that right there should be your one and only red flag) that are doing nothing but pumping out sensationalist, shock-jock content for nothing more than views and subscribers, so Meta (or Apple) will cut them a check.

It’s not liberating, true, or for the people — it’s for attention, status, money, and the sense of control and elevation over others. This is a very dark temptation that humans often fall prey to— elevated status, having the upper hand.

I also see a lack of solutions and an obsession on problems, but not even problems that make sense to discuss. It’s usually political theatre that doesn’t matter, drains your life force, and is a losing game that no one can actually do anything about, because it isn’t real.

Same goes for the people who think they’re “red pilled” but endlessly post about conspiracy theories that sure, may have validity, but why does that matter to the people on Earth right now? They are endless rabbit holes that while it may be entertaining, it does nothing and goes nowhere. All it does is waste your time and keep you comatose, even though you think you’re awake.

We live in a very noisy world. Discernment is HUGE.

I was in a workshop today and the teacher was emphasizing an old principle of “discrimination”. This word means something very different today than it did back then. Today we think of discrimination as an unfair treatment, abuse or neglect of a person based upon race, gender, sexual preference, disability, criminal background, etcetera.

So the teacher has a tendency to alter the word to discernment to fit the times and avoid unnecessary misunderstanding, but it was explained nonetheless.

This discrimination is not about stupid shit that doesn’t matter and is only fed to us to divide us.

The ability to discriminate, or to discern, is the ability to know what TRUE VALUE is.

This could not be more necessary with the endless plethora of shit that is thrown our way that doesn’t actually matter, and we often don’t get this painful realization of what DOES matter until we lose it— and realize we took it for granted the entire time we had it. Does it not feel like you’ve been living under an actual spell in those moments of clarity? The scary thing is how quickly we fall back under the spell after the clarity.

We didn’t even see it, because the culture we live in tells us to look at all the shiny things and chase mirages and phantoms, as opposed to having this ability:

The power of NO based on your power of KNOW.

When you KNOW what you value, when you KNOW what you truly want and where you are aiming in this life, you have the power to say NO to anything that isn’t that.

Without this? Without the power of KNOW-ing our true selves, we lack boundaries and let all kinds of hell into our lives and waste countless years, sometimes lifetimes.

That’s because we don’t know what to say no to. So we sometimes fall into lack mentality and start saying YES to everything, everything except the shit that would actually liberate us because that thing almost never offers instant gratification, another thing we’ve all been programmed to prioritize without a second thought.

That can be a nightmare.

Or… we might lock up and shut down because we are so overwhelmed, and just say no to everything, which isn’t any more helpful.

A trap I often see (and have fallen into) is this:

When we don’t have our KNOW-ing, and this does not come from reading a book, this comes from the experience of peeling back layers of bullshit and finding the truth within, or putting whatever it is we’re studying to practice and experiencing the magic of it for ourselves, then we are basically blank canvasses for anyone who has their KNOW and wants to rope you in on it.

We can become prey to always asking other people for advice — this is necessary in much of life, we absolutely need mentors and teachers, but not to the extent of being so dependent upon them that we can’t think for ourselves.

We also have to have the discernment of who these people are — judge by the fruits of their endeavors and the condition of their heart and mind — if you take their advice, that’s likely what they’ll advise you toward, so… is that something that you want?

Or you may wind up in a situation where you’re surrounded by a bunch of people who have zero idea who they are, their grand ideas are subject to change every day (or hour), and you feel like you’re being pulled around in endless circles — because you are.

We all must have our own north star, compass and anchor.

Then we can figure out who we truly align with, and do it on the foundation of authenticity and true kinship, rather than treating people like a fast food drive-through — company for the sake of convenience.

How does this tie into what I was going on about before?

Just because someone is a lover of Truth, does not mean they are headed in that direction.

Just because someone is spiritual or religious, does not mean they behave in any way that is authentic or aligned with Love.

I wanted to point it out because I’ve had that experience before, and it can be easy to throw away the teachings based on the teacher, it can be easy to throw away the path based on many of those who walk it.

People are drawn to shit for all different types of reasons. Likely, they have no fucking idea, especially if what they do causes harm. Unless we’re dealing with narcissists, psychopaths and sociopaths, which in that case, yeah, they’re fucking shit up intentionally and have no conscience— completely hijacked machines programmed for self-serving impulses by any means necessary, 9 times out of 10 very nefarious, and should be avoided at all costs.

But this is by no means the majority of the population, because it isn’t.

When your roots are deep, you won’t mind when the wind blows.

This purpose of this post is to call awareness to a phenomenon people have long been aware of, but often become heartbroken or shocked by when it shows up where they’d least expect it.

Human ego. Corrupted motives.

Anyone can become corrupted (even without their knowing of it) if they do not know who they are or what they truly value.

This also ties into The Power of HOW — a broadcast recently recorded by Matt Kahn. You can still know who you are and what you value, but that will only be as powerful as HOW you go about it.

Will you go about whatever it is with integrity, or by any means necessary?

Then you have the other side of the coin: some people, for whatever reason, just aren’t that deep. They haven’t struggled much at all in life. I have no idea how anyone can experience life without extreme bouts of hardship, but apparently some do. That might just be their karmic assignment in this life. Same goes for those of us who feel like we get our asses handed to us like clockwork.

(( Also, personal choices and habits play a tremendous factor in this, I’m just referring to people who have never really experienced anything truly adverse, versus people who have experienced a lot of tragic and traumatic shit that had nothing to do with their actions. ))

If you have a person like this, their values deep down really might not be things like Love, Truth, Liberation and Service. They might not actually value Connection and Community the way most do. Maybe deep down somewhere yeah, but in their most authentic possible experience, they might just be people who think the only reason for living is to achieve money, material, attention, fame, whatever. I think for some people it might actually just end there.

But for most… it does not. Even if they think that’s all they want… have you ever watched someone obsess on those tings so much, and then once they get them, they are more miserable than they’ve ever been in their life?

That’s because they chased what they WANTED and VALUED… but there was a DISCONNECT. They did not know what they truly NEEDED, as a human being biologically wired for connection.

This is why the KNOW is so important. To truly know yourself, beneath the egoic identity you’ve (we’ve) developed over our entire lives. Beneath the programming that we began to receive before our earliest memory.

The power of No is powerful, because we save ourselves so much time and life force energy not having to engage (and essentially die slowly in) situations that do NOT serve our higher purpose (or anyone else’s for that matter).

This is also why it’s important to KNOW, because we greatly reduce damage done to ourselves (by our own actions) and we also become much less damaging, whether intentionally or not, to the people around us.

If you KNOW that what you want is to gain financial abundance just for the sake of financial abundance, and if you know what you want is to be a walking brand and be pat of this matrix, by all means proceed — but don’t do it in spaces where people are broken, vulnerable and looking for a way out of the very system you are embodying.

Some people may not be interested in things like healing. Some people lack the capacity to handle topics of depth, weight, and emotional intensity. Some people do not have the ability to show up for others. That’s fine, just make sure you KNOW that, as opposed to thinking it sounds nice on paper and it would get you (fill in the blank with egoic desire) if you pursued it regardless, and because you lack that capacity or genuine care, you wind up fucking people up who think they’re coming to someone with those abilities.

The world is very wounded and the demand for healers, truth, love, and answers is everywhere.

This is also why these areas are so easily exploited. If I know that, and you know that, don’t you think people like Andrew Tate have had that shit figured out down to a science? That’s how cults are started. Humans may be complex, but we are also very predictable, if you watch and observe long enough.

You can watch mindfully with the intent of a healer, or you can watch mindfully with the intent of a predator.

We can’t control the motives of others, but we can at least get down to the root of our own motives. (See the exercise I showed here on how to shatter delusions in this article, and heads up, it is below the paywall, but you can do a 7 day free trial and get access to it. If you don’t want to pay $7 in 7 days, just cancel the trial after you read it if you don’t feel you get $7 of value from the paid-content-only on this publication.)

Last warning.. don’t assume that because you watch with benevolent intent and a desire to heal, that the smiling faces around you are doing the same. Holy shit the lengths of deception from the mouths that say “I love you” know NO bounds.

Be rooted firmly in your foundation, and know what it is, and why.

The wind is never going to stop blowing.

Lot of stuff for you guys coming up, including essays on stoicism, liberty, tyranny, self-reliance (not in the way it sounds), and how we can all best align ourselves with the changing frequency and transition we’re all in the process of entering. Some of it is my commentary, much of it will be teachings that have been passed to me that I will be sharing with you. Leave a comment if you have something you’d like to request I cover. This article is public, so if you want to help this publication, please share it with someone you love. That goes a long way.

XO

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash