Sign #9
Discouragement of Critical Analysis
(Look For: Insistence Upon Feeling The Truth)
This sign will seldom be obvious. There are belief systems that are openly anti-intellectual, but most hide it or it’s subliminally discouraged through the net effect of the individual beliefs. Other than finding a general air of anti-intellectualism, there are two hints relating to sign #9: an emphasis upon verifying the material through prayer, or verifying it through feeling.
Whether or not a system or teaching is “anti-intellectual” can be determined in a few ways. Do the teachings ask for obedience to rules without explaining the purpose of the rules? Are the teachers hostile to hard questions? What type of learning is encouraged? Learning by rote memorization? Or learning by a discussion of concepts? Does the belief system ignore large bodies of information that contradict its beliefs?
Another test for anti-intellectualism is the test for propaganda (see sign #1). Propaganda is meant to bypass the analytical mind by stimulating a gross emotional response and herding people into desired behaviors.
An emphasis on prayer for verifying truth is a potential trap, too. Now, I’m hardly anti-prayer. I pray all the time. I think prayer is great. Yet I do see dodgy groups using prayer against people. All the facts stand against them, but that doesn’t stop them from twisting prayer to “prove” their belief system is right. “Just pray on it,” they say. “You know it’s true.” “God/The Light/Whoever will tell you it’s all true.” If prayer was a totally secure line between you and your higher self, then this wouldn’t be a problem. If the mere act of praying automatically silenced the ego, cancelled outside interference, and protected you against peer pressures, then… well, there would be no worries. I do believe a person can pull through accurate information using prayer, but I think prayer can be more much effective if you’re aware of the risks of it. If you learn to recognize the sub-verbal intonations of your ego, and learn what foreign energies regularly affect you (your mommy, your friends, whatever), it’s much easier.
On the darker side of things it’s also possible that prayers are influenced by discarnate beings working through the advocates of the disinformation. I have a friend who joined a church based on a mystical experience he had when missionaries prayed over him. I don’t mean to appear arrogant, but after years of contemplation and research, I know the church he joined is false. It has its redeeming qualities, but it’s based on disinformation. It may be that the positive mystical experience he had was genuine and that, for whatever reason, it was right for him to join. Perhaps he’s raising the integrity of the organization by taking part in it. However, knowing him as I do, I know he’s bought into the disinfo. He’s a smart man, and was originally critical of the group he joined, but he threw his criticism aside after being overwhelmed by the power of his visionary experience.
Lastly
, a critical frame of mind is discouraged by an overemphasis on feeling. New Age channeled texts, I have found, ask for feeling-verification a lot. It typically appears in gently authoritarian commands like this: “You are ___. You know this to be true. You feel it (...in your core, etc.)” This could be nothing more than suggestion. Books written in this mode may eventually hypnotize you into feeling what you’re being told to feel through simple repetition. As you read on and on into this type of material you may stop critically reflecting and asking yourself, “Is that really true?”
Relying on feeling alone to validate information is chancy because the information may only appeal to the ego. The information may make the ego feel dandy. And so, if you steer by feeling alone, then you’ll probably wind up doing a lot of things that are great at first but turn into a total nightmare.
The intellect seems to be out of vogue in the present age. I think that’s mostly because
people crave the specialness of being psychic, of being an “intuitive.” In fact, it’s en vogue to view the intellect as anti-spiritual and as the chief obstruction to being spiritual. There’s definitely something to that view, but carried to its extreme, it invisibly creates an assumption that what we are now is not okay. It invisibly creates invalidation.
If the highest level of spirit is non-judgmental (see assumption #2 at the beginning of this article), then any material spreading invalidation doesn’t come from the highest level of spirit.
Logic
Re: Logic
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