Suburban Shamans

As I mentioned yesterday we were off to a new course on the Astral Travelling, a FREE course (which is always a worry), that was on in our neighbourhood.

Toby arrived home from work just as I was putting the finishing touches on dinner, and we only had about half an hour to eat and catch up on our day before we had to go, so we ate a little hurriedly while chatting, then Toby put down his plate and let off this huge burp. I teased him on how typically male he was being (and he's such a metro-sexual), so he got up and said (in his deepest, manliest voice), "Yes, and now I'm going to get ready for my dreams and astral travelling class...", then walked off down the hallway singing Zap Mama's Bandy Bandy.
I live with a bloody comedian.

Anyway, here's the report on the introductory lecture:

It was wack, as I suspected, but we're going to go back next week anyway.

I am so glad that I've had the fortune or fortitude, whichever, to have found some brilliant esoteric teachers and mystery schools in my life. Their standards have always been set very high, and I'm very grateful for the training they've given me, especially because they've taught me to be more discerning and objective when it comes to "new information", especially when it is of a spiritual nature.

At first, we were pleasantly surprised at how many people had turned up. There were probably 150 people there. But we both grew more and more uncomfortable as the lecture wore on.

We knew that it was a lecture run by some Gnostics (and we're down with them), so we were quite pleased that so many people, and such a straight looking crowd at that, had turned up. But about twenty minutes in I started getting a bit peeved...there wasn't anything particularly wrong with what the lecturer was saying, it was what he wasn't saying that started to bug me. I was starting to wonder what their brand of "Gnosticism" was.

He basically sold the idea of astral travelling on the merits of it being like some kind of recreational sport, saying how great it is to be able to go to the Pyramids or have the experience of flying, or walking through doors. But he didn't put it into a spiritual context, or told us why it would be beneficial to go astral travelling in a deeper sense. He would just slip in a mention of their other courses when people wanted to know more. He said that one could also go to temples located in the astral planes and receive teachings from ascended masters there, which is good, but he glossed right over the dangers of going into these realms without the proper intent, or that not everyone you come across over there has the best things to teach.

Then when asked by someone to share something he had learned personally from his own astral travels, he responded rather strangely by saying, "I think that the things I am told by my teachers in that space are meant to be for me alone, and it's not that I don't want to tell you, but I've found that certain priveledges are no longer available to you if you divulge this information." Wha' !!??? Now I was really beginning to think I was being drawn into some weird cult, and we were all there because his "teacher" in the fifth dimesnion had instructed him to put these lectures on so we could all learn to astral travel to his temple and learn his creepy teachings......eew!

To top it all off, we had a quick look at the books being sold for the course, and the author (this guy's teacher), claims his higher self's name is Belzebuub. Hello.

So we kinda ran out of there as quickly as possible and spent the next couple of hours looking up these guys on the net. And we've determined that there's nothing that bad about what they're doing, they're pretty harmless really, it's just the kind of spirituality that is really, really suburban.

It's because of this low-level teaching style that spiritual teachers have for generations only passed down their information to students in small groups or on a one-to-one basis. The teachings become so diluted, and mis-appropriated, and then people have bad experiences, or treat this kind of endeavour as a sport. At least in the beginning.

At a certain point though, I think that the experience itself, whether it is lucid dreaming or having an out of body experience, indelibly imprints the fact to the student that they can and do exist in other dimensions of reality quite happily without a physical body. Once that is understood, life can never be the same again. It is humbling as well as empowering, and usually signifies the beginning of one's deepening search for Truth. Practicing your flying skills no longer has the same allure after that (but I'm not denying that it's fun).

And for all my views, it doesn't negate the fact that this course will be perfect for others. Someone else who was there told Toby today that he thought it was "amazing" and how it was this new path he's found. Ultimately, that's why teachers like that exist. If there were no need for their teachings, they wouldn't be attracting people to their classes. That saying about "when the student is ready, the teacher will appear" is all about how we attract the teachers that we need for that time in our lives, that are frequency-specific to us, and obviously for others like this guy it was exactly what he needed. At least he's doing something more creative with his time than sitting at home in front of the box eating a nicrowaved dinner, being brainwashed and poisoned at the same time.

We've decided to give it a go for another week and see whether we're willing to put up with some crap to learn some new techniques (which we can adapt if they don't feel right anyway). Given that we don't know of any really good teachers here, and we can't afford to go and do a "gateway" at The Monroe Institute yet (which is where we dream of going one day), it'll get us started and who knows, we might be in for some great experiences if we stay open to that.

It's funny, when we were imagining what it would be like in our heads beforehand, we both thought we'd find a bunch of hippies sitting around on blankets, and we were kinda dreading it (not that we don't love hippies, but there's a hippy-vibe that sometimes leads to long delays and periods of spaciness). When we got there though, everyone was sitting on chairs in orderly rows under bright flourorescent lights, in front of a whiteboard. And the guy had a mike. So when we walked home later, we did so wishing it had been the hippies after all.

category: Blog