Written Essay: Pro-Democracy Series #7: The Underlying Foundation

So some of you are still listening... You have made it this far eha? Since you haven't left we will use this one to summarize what is the underlying foundation of the authoritarian. A minority group throughout the world that all have a very specific thing they build their lies upon while even more importantly summarizing what is the underlying foundation of the larger, pro-democracy coalition.

The reason for these listeners leaving is surely due to us bringing up in each episode of this series so far, and for very specific reasons, the two things you're not supposed to bring up in polite conversation, politics and religion. So let's define each of these now. No big deal. Politics can be said to be "a part of ethics which consists in the regulation and government of a nation or state, for the preservation of its safety, peace and prosperity; comprehending the defense of its existence and rights against foreign control or conquest, the augmentation of its strength and resources, and the protection of its citizens in their rights, with the preservation and improvement of their morals."

At this point it's of extreme importance to also define what religion is. And believe it or not, we were surprised to find how sufficient the usually C+ to B- accurate Wikipedia definition is - Religion is a range of social-cultural systems, including designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relate humanity to supernatural, transcendental, and spiritual elements. Different religions may or may not contain various elements ranging from divine sacredness, faith, and a supernatural being or beings. More simple definitions of each could be that politics is the science of government. While religion is any system of faith, worship, or practice.

The founders of our country, the United States of America, were wise to put freedom of religion and freedom of speech in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. And as a reminder, it states - "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". Both founders James Madison and Thomas Jefferson expanded on these words. In an 1789 discussion in the house of Representatives regarding the initial draft of the First Amendment, Madison stated the critical importance of a "total separation of the church from the state" which "strongly guarded the separation between Religion & government in the Constitution of the United States", and declared "a practical distinction between Religion and Civil Government is essential to the purity of both, and as guaranteed by that Constitution." and continued in saying "We are teaching the world the great truth that governments do better without Kings & Nobles than with them. The merit will be doubled by the other lesson that Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of government." In an 1802 publication and corresponding letter Jefferson wrote "Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man (meaning both female and male) & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof", thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.

So both of these gentlemen, just like the majority of the founders, just like the majority of the world's pro-democracy coalition, just like ourselves, advocate for religious freedom due to the free will of the individual. Mind, heart, and will. What you think, what you feel, and what you do. And this separation allows for the freedom to choose. How democratic, the freedom to choose what you want to do - so long as you are not incurring injury or loss on another. Which means freedom of religion as well as freedom from religion. Of no faiths and practices and all faiths and practices all available if one so chooses. Religious freedom means one can practice what they want, even to worship Moloch, Baphomet, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and you can change your mind as much as you like without the undue influence of any government or any rich and/or powerful entity. Religious freedom does not mean freedom of those who call themselves religious to have it their way or the highway. Nor does it mean one can use their religion as a cudgel to create out-groups cause that would only include some of the people and not all of the people. It is instead catered to everyone's free will choice and is synonymous with an enlightened individual with a conscious mind to have freedom of mind. Religious freedom founders such as Madison and Jefferson saw it as a way to prevent their future government from enforcing specific religious doctrine. Including freedom from corrupt and totalitarian control.

Now because we can say religion is "any system of faith, worship, or practice" and the world has billions of people, you are inevitably going to get some good and some bad under that very broad definition. Or better to classify this under true religion vs false religion. Or what we could call religion for light or religion for shadow. And this is where many times someone on the spiritual path will completely decouple religion from spirituality - although this is a whole separate essay, if not a series of essays, if not a book to expand on later. But for Cliff Notes at this point and for this purpose, and for the word "Religion" being used in the first amendment of the constitution, we'll keep any spiritual practice, even outside the world's formal organized religions, still somewhere in the grey area of being a religious practice in the broad definition stated prior, regardless of size or level of organization. Not quite knowing what shamanism was, an anthropologist once asked an indigenous person in the Amazon basin about his religion, and the man simply said, "drink this Ayahuasca with us in ceremony tonight and you'll experience my religion." And in that sense, we say that is an accurate use of the word.

Just like this indigenous man's religion, which is based in nature, all true deeper Religion will be based in nature and its external and internal natural processes, will spread love of the divine along with love for fellow men of all races and economic classes - especially the poor or the natives, will not be dogmatic, and is concerned with the spiritual self development of the individual so at its most esoteric and occult core will have a real initiation lineage. This is what we advocate for, that's why this is a pro-true religion series. However, there is another type of religion out there which is imperial and false - and a constant threat to democracy around the world. False religion replaces natures natural external and internal processes with an external hierarchy of male only deities and authorities (which is the off balanced patriarchy), promotes a "prosperity gospel" of enriching the already wealthy and not doing anything for the poor, says people are bad and born in sin, still has this manifest destiny attitude which claims God created nature to extract, (hence it's imperial and colonist), is exclusionary and divisive, and has zero interest in spiritual self-development of the individual but instead simply installs dogmatic doctrine. This false religion, or big religion, is a type of dark shadow religion of the Empire that has led to thousands of years of colonialism and imperial conquest of indigenous peoples.

Because we all need teachers in our lives to help us learn things, just like in the martial arts, there is no way one is going to advance spiritually, without good spiritual teachers and it's important to build networks and make connections along the way. One cannot only go it alone. So unfortunately, one of the largest traps for those on the spiritual path, is getting involved in cults. Which are extremely hierarchical groups led by a single authority bad leader or hierarchy of bad authority leaders who require unwavering devotion to a set of beliefs and practices that result in the loss of their members free will via what's called undue influence. That influence comes from both those authority leaders as well as other cult followers. There are many types of cults, such as multilevel marketing cults, or yoga and/or crystal and/or UFO woo cults, or organized religious cults. And a major trapfall is to think that cults are only small and medium sized, when in reality false religions are big cults comprised of millions of members that simply began as smaller sized cults and grew larger for decades or centuries based on the teachings or doctrines of certain leaders. But the primary trait they all share is excessive devotion by their members. So the more extreme one's devotion to a group, doctrine, and or ideology, the more close the mind and likely that the owner of that mind is in a cult. Not OCCULT as in hidden, but CULT which also all share the commonality of being something that you are a member of or subscribe to and then can not leave without pain. This is the foundation of every anti-democratic authoritarian in our country and throughout the world which all of the rest of their behavior radiates out from - an extreme devotion to their dark religious cult. Which they are usually indoctrinated into from birth, and then is doubled down and tripled down, and quadrupled down upon through the cult members lives - which then affect their politics.

This is the problem with false churches across America that spread an incorrect reading of dominion from the bible by engaging in dominionism - which is a skewed ideology that religious people (and by religious people they dont really mean all religious people but only mean their fellow cult members) who are supposedly called by God to exercise dominion over everything by taking control over religious and political institutions. So those within said cult, who think anyone outside of the cult is sinful or evil, will say things such as "This is a Christian Nation" which not only throws out all other faiths, it shows they don't actually want the religious freedom in the constitution, let alone a multi-racial democracy. They do not want muti-racial, multi-ethnic, muti-cultural, democracy let alone full spectrum spirituality but instead a theocracy. "Christian dominionists" and "Christian nationalists", are all secretly just "Christian supremacists" that all want to create a false narrative about the history of the founding of the United States, which has an ironclad & unbreakable separation of church and state to instead do the opposite and merge the church with the state and send us back to medieval feudalism. They are not truly conservatives, or foundationalists, they are just thirsty for a Handmaid's Tale nightmare. This is the issue with the American Christian Right / Christian Wrong. Which is not a positive spiritual movement - it is instead primarily a political block - a cult using their skewed version of religion as a front.

In the allegory "The Cave", Plato describes a group of people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them and give names to these shadows. The shadows are the prisoners' reality, but are not accurate representations of the real world. The shadows represent the fragment of reality that we can normally perceive through our senses, while the objects under the sun represent the true forms of objects that we can only perceive through reason. Socrates explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand that the shadows on the wall are actually not the direct source of the images seen. One prisoner in the cave who leans philosophical aims to understand and perceive the higher levels of reality. However, the other inmates of the cave do not even desire to leave their prison, for they know no better life. So when one of the prisoners in the cave moves from being unconscious to conscious enough to figure out what's going on, and climbs out of the cave to see the outside world, and takes a difficult and long acclimation period by coming out into the light, nearly blinded by it, and is eventually amazed by it, then goes back down to tell the other prisoners what he has witnessed. The returning prisoner, whose eyes have become accustomed to the sunlight, is even more blind when he re-enters the cave, just as he was when he was first exposed to the sun. The prisoners who remained, according to the dialogue, would infer from the returning man's blindness that the journey out of the cave had harmed him and that they should not undertake a similar journey. Socrates concludes that the prisoners, if they were able, would therefore reach out and kill anyone who attempted to drag them out of the cave.

Not only are we going to be highlighting cults throughout the rest of this series, we will be getting into nested cults, meaning cults within cults in an upcoming essay, but if one knows the allegory of Plato's Cave, that hits the nail on the head of what cult members' lives are like. So when someone is extremely religious and is also extremely dogmatic about it, and puts it right up front in their communications - such as mentioning it very early in conversation, or putting it on a bumper sticker, or right on their social media profile with words like "Christian" immediately followed by "conservative" we and true religion would say they are neither truly Christian or truly conservative but instead in a religious authoritarian cult which is the underlying foundation for their political authoritarian cult and they are simply signaling to other cult members that they are on their team. Because they have no individual free will or identity and instead are only given their identity through their cult allegiance. They are the opposite of individualized, but are instead collectivist. They are regressive collectivist dogmatists. Their identities are so wrapped up in their dogmas they'll do anything to prevent themselves from being unplugged, even if it means living a life of lies, because it's easy and makes them feel good to take the low road by not having to think but instead use their hearts for hate by scapegoating others. Like Gollum being corrupted by the ring, this is what darkness does to the mind.

Just like the dark cave, when you're whole family, and friendship circles, and local community are predicated around the extremist faith spread at your church, or mosque, or synagogue, or temple, if one goes through enough soul maturity to become advanced enough when growing up in an organized religious system to realize that inside a minority percentage but still sobering percentage of these places they are being lied too because the whole thing is off-balanced, dogmatic, love-lacking, patriarchal, hateful, divisive, sexually repressed, un-educated, anti-philosophical, anti-scientific indoctrination which protects power and control and wants a king, emperor, or some kind of dictator who shares those dark values. If the individual who realizes some of these things wants to leave the cave, trying to remove oneself from such a system is so incredibly painful because those in such a group would have to give up everything, be outcast, and start all over from scratch. So a cult member will do anything to not want to go through that. Even lie, cheat, steal, or vote against their own interests because the ends justify the means. And when the most extreme degree excessive devotion is tested, which is usually put under the title of "faith" when the faith is tested, one can end up in a Branch Davidians situation where you're literally more willing to let yourself and your flock and even the children within it burn alive than admit you might be incorrect on some things. Because to admit you were wrong from a foundational level would just be too painful. So because of this pain and dogma, there is almost no use trying to convince someone to leave the cult. Most of them will be taking that shit to the grave. So this is why they say, don't talk about politics or religion. Because a minority but still sizable percentage of the population is so indoctrinated into their religious cult and is thus ultra close minded about not only about their false religion but their false politics - one of which predicates the other.

It's really key for more open minded, patriotic, traveled, educated, conscious, sophisticated, nature appreciating, scientific appreciating, and philosophy appreciating developed people, secular and/or moderately religious for light and love, or some mix of any of those things, to realize how this false religion always tries to sink its talons into politics. And that it's the reason for some of the most extreme deplorable political policies across the world which lack freedom. In Pakistan, which is majority muslim, the punishment for denigrating, or insulting, or even questioning the prophet Mohamid, is death. Uganda, which is primarily Catholic, Anglican, and Pentecostal has a kill the gays law. And Israel, which is majority Jewish, has created an open air concentration camp for Palestinians. Not to mention folks indoctrinated into the religions of the Empire who surely want to burn us alive for sharing esoteric spiritual philosophy for your dear listener's self development - and this is in 2023 at the time of this writing and not 1023. So the world's religions, especially the primary organized religions of the world - which contain light but also shadow, have a responsibility to denounce the skewing of their religious teachings away from religious freedom back towards religious freedom. We ourselves have such great respect for true people of faith and especially those within the formal organized religious systems who call out and denouse such toxic ideologies within their own religions. But that takes guts and we need more of it. The 2016 documentary "The Jihadis Next Door" highlights a small group of extreme fundamentalists Muslim morons in the UK who have become radicalized. And the most important part of the documentary is when it shows all the other more moderate muslims in the UK, who are angry at the more extreme muslims for perverting the teaching of their holy books and holy profit. Similar to how good police officers surely feel about dirty corrupt police officers - which can give all police officers a bad name even though they in no way reflect the majority's, attitudes, opinions, or behaviors. So thank you pro-democratic people of faith who are Inclusive instead of exclusive for helping promote religious freedom and the separation of church and state and who have an underlying pro-democratic foundation and thus are being the good cops and not bad cops. Not to mention who are then allowing, as James Madisan once said, "religion to flourish in greater purity."

Now that we've highlighted the importance of religious freedom, we are going to head over to the next essay in this series to what an individual's free will and freedom really are.