Original Date: 04/18/2006
Posted on SpiritualismList

I bring this general subject up again, because there's an old-fashioned idea still hovering around that if we want to be spiritual we shouldn't soil ourselves with worldly things. I agree that there's amurky side to these three areas, and I for one would like to see the complete disappearance of the sexindustry, sex in advertising, drug trafficking andcrime, dishonesty in business and politics, andhypocrisy in religion. Where to start the clean-up?!

If we ignore what's going on around us, the most horrendous things can happen. Looking back to the1930s, the church turned a blind eye when Mussolini bombed Ethiopia, and when Hitler persecuted the Jews and other minorities. No one spoke out when half a million machetes were quietly ordered and imported into Rwanda in the mid-1990s. Then when the slaughter was taking place, apart from a few individual attempts to rescue some of the victims, all that UNO would do was to start a debate trying to define what constituted genocide. The same thing happened more recently in the Sudan and Darfor. We need to speak out, and take action, politically or in some practical way, as some individuals did after Katrina and the floods devastated the South.

Sometimes spirit tries to catch our attention. Before the troubles in the Balkans in the 1990s, the Medjugorje Apparitions to which many people from all countries made a pilgrimage, were I am sure a warning from spirit about what might, and did happen after the break-up of Yugoslavia. No country was sufficiently aware to stop the disaster of anarchy and ethnic cleansing.

We have this responsibility to be aware, whilewe belong to society here on earth. We should notice what is going on, too, with regard to immigrant labor and outsourcing work to distant countries. Cheap labor in our fields and or chards, and in factories abroad may be giving profits to our farmers and corporations, and provide us with relatively cheap produce and products. But when our own workers herein Canada and the USA are deprived of work, or will nolonger work in jobs they think are beneath them, preferring to go on social assistance, then we are out of balance. The pay-back will come, in a few years,when the emerging countries will become more skilled, more willing to work and progress and become more prosperous as a result. In business, why should directors and senior executives receive these enormous salaries?

There are a whole host of anomalies in business, politics and the judiciary which need investigating and rectifying. People like Lou Dobbs, Bill Moyers, Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky and other whistle blowers point out some of the problems. We can all help here, firstly by choosing local and national politicians who will act on our behalf rather than be bought by the lobbyists from the big corporations. It was grass-roots work and demonstrations which stopped the bombing in Cambodia and Laos, but only after over half a million civilians had been killed. But this protest did bring the war in Vietnam to an end. Most of these covert carpet bombings have been expunged from official records, but they remain in the memories of the survivors. The effects of Agent Orange continue to this day for civilians and our veterans alike.

We need balance in our lives. We need a certainamount of time for rest and sleep, time to eat, to work, to play, to create, invent, take part in our sports and hobbies, spend time in our spiritual pursuits, and our arts and sciences. Less than 1% of our time is spent in sexual activity, but it is a natural part of everyone's life, and if not expressed, is likely to throw our whole behavior out of balance, which happens in the case of celibate priests, monks and nuns. Those I have met, as far as I can read, either dampen their feelings by too much drink, or are not celibate at all, either leading a natural (or unnatural, in the case of molesters) sex life. In spite of what Freudians say, it is not possible to sublimate the natural life energies indefinitely. Even 75% of the yogis and swamis are not celibate, and tantric sex is a false path leading to many unhealthy energy imbalances. I know it is not polite or politic to talk of these matters, and in fact, whenever a health minister or minister of education has brought up the subject of sex, and sex education, they have been dismissed from office. It is just not politically correct. But I am past my three score and ten years, and have seen enough suffering to know that these issues need to be out in the open.

Another point is that people confuse pornography with natural eroticism. Please throw awaythe Playboys and the like, with their pseudo-sex, and Pornography, with its violence and pedophilia, along with the tradition of stag nights, lap dancing, prostitution, street life and the drug trade. I wouldn't go back to the prissiness and hypocrisy of the Prohibition Era, but I would question why society has condoned this whole dark side of life, with its crime, slavery, cruelty and addiction. Just look at the dating and call-girl ads in the newspapers and on the internet. The church is partly to blame, in making the act of creation a sin, so that fear and guilt prevent us from expressing our feelings normally and adequately. Then again, there is one law for men, and another for women, even today.

I will mention one more point about the three unnecessary "C"s I mentioned yesterday. Part of the out-of-control behavior of sexual deviants may be a result of past experience of certain souls who were servants and counsellors in the courts and palaces of past eras. Many of them were eunuchs, and in the case of the higher spiritual advisors to the courts, they were totally castrated, with the whole genital area removed. I have seen the curved knife with which this was done in China. If the young man didn't bleed to death, it was considered a good omen, and he achieved a high rank. Now, some of these people either reincarnate, or come back as one of our guides. In that case, we have to be aware that a frustrate ddesire in the past life of this spirit does not influence his, or our behavior in the present. Once again, we just have to be aware all the time of the possibilities and tendencies. This is why, as Spiritualists, we can't divorce ourselves from the mundane matters of everyday life. We live in bothworlds.

Anyway, thanks Robert and you others for writing your thoughts and sharing your experiences. I just wanted to share some of mine. Things happened in my childhood, too, but they've been recognized and resolved, and thank goodness, didn't affect any of my own actions.

Richard Rowley