You don’t have to conform to a religion to be a modern Pharisee.
There are still plenty of spiritual cults and occults who have made churches of conformity off of what they preach.
‘To go towards the light’ would mean that the light is coming from elsewhere, and not from within.
I had followed an online TikTok scribe for a while, and had received a few free, public readings from her – all readings at least about a month apart from each other. Her regular schedule consisted of afternoon readings for about four hours with typically around sixty to one hundred attendees at a time, giving channeled messages to people who ask for one in the TikTok live chat.
This summer, she announced to her communities that she would refrain from giving free readings from now on, stating that some people ask for readings without “doing the inner work”.
Reflecting inwardly, and taking her statement to heart, I decided to pay for a subscription to her Patreon account, which is the requirement to receive her readings. I messaged her for a reading without a response.
A couple days later, she posted a video on her Patreon and TikTok accounts saying that she is going to take a break from social media entirely and stop reading for everyone, regardless of a paid subscription.
Her explanation was the same, that there are too many people who are not doing the inner work.
About a couple weeks later, I noticed that she began TikTok live-streaming again, and so I attended a few of them. While online she disclosed to her attendees, subscribers, and followers that she was not giving any individual readings, but only collective guidance.
During one of the livestreams, I began casually responding to another attendee in the TikTok group chat who had mentioned some teeth complications in her personal life. I asked her whether it was on the left or right side, and if this may relate to any parental and/or feminine/masculine aspects in her life.
The TikTok scribe took a glimpse of our messages, and then started reading for her.
She said something along the lines of, “I know I said I wouldn’t read for anyone but I felt called to read for you, and if Spirit is calling me to read then I’m going to do what Spirit says.”
I then realized that I wouldn’t want to be someone who picks and chooses who to help. It was a moment of clarity of how often we have ‘played God’ by choosing favorites, sometimes dismissing those who were most eager to learn, and sometimes those who were the most inspired by us.
As I remember all of the past times I have disappointed others with my own cognitive biases, I now reflect on how it truly feels to love all parts, versions, forms of us. It’s a freeing-feeling - one uninhibited by judgment.
Who are we to judge from any liable source of knowledge - when our ego separates us from the ‘creator’ itself, who has all of the knowledge of creation?
Isn’t the source of creation, the creator itself?
If we are made in the creator’s image, wouldn’t we then embody the notion that all created is perfect in its own image, as the creator made it?
That we recognize other beings as the same source as our own being? That we came from the same source of creation, therefore accepting all that is, as is?
I can really only call myself a self-expert in what I know within to be true. I am far from an expert of the Bible, Emerald Tablets, Tao Te Ching, Bhagavad Gita.
But what I do know is that, this Spirit/God/universe that we talk about is all-encompassing.
This omnipotent, androgynous being which created all things doesn’t discriminate, wouldn’t exclude, couldn’t favor.
It (he/she/they/etc.) creates life for the sake of life: for these life forms to be as they prefer to be, as they choose to live - as we naturally have free will.
We must always be willing to question our own beliefs in order to grow from adversity and avoid stagnancy.
At this point in my journey I have ran into countless groups of “conscious coaches”, “spiritual gurus”, “lightworkers”…who all have found, and will find, something about me to judge. Judgment that I choose to be celibate. Judgment that I express my opinions on TikTok. Judgment that I don’t believe that germs affect me. Judgment that I don’t know what shape the earth is. I’ve been down enough rabbit holes for anyone to find some sort of contradiction between the way that I live and the way that they do.
It really isn’t about finding people who believe in the same things you do, but more so about who can accept you for who you are - without any egotistical need to persuade you that their way of living, state of being, is any better.
Like many have said in various forms: if they have to tell you, it must not be true.
If we expect a certain outcome, wouldn’t we only go looking for that outcome for confirmation - therefore turning a blind eye to all other possible outcomes?
Many people go looking around for confirmation to soothe a triggered insecurity, and therefore never leave the loop of cognitive bias, never close the gap of separation between ‘us’ and ‘them’.
When will humanity realize that this is the exact trap which sparked division among masses of people in the first place - who knows what, who has the greater status, who has the bigger truck, who has the larger following, who has more “credibility”? It all sounds like ego battles to me.
How much more evidence do you need to know that I am real? That you’re real? That we’re both existing in this world with both completely separate lives - and can still enjoy life without our state of being affecting the other?
All outcomes unseen are unrealized, and the perspective change is the openness to see.
(Sounds like a reality check to me. When our perspective changes, we jump into a new reality.)
Go ahead and be polyamorous – just leave me out of it. Go ahead and drink alcohol – just don’t shove a glass of wine in my face. Go ahead and take the COVID vaccine – just don’t try to convince me why I should toxify my blood for a virus that may lack any evidence of existence. Go ahead and watch Netflix – just don’t belittle me by claiming that TikTok is brainwashing me (at least I know that I have control over my algorithm).
Just let me be, as I let you be.
If you want an argument for the sake of arguing - what is it about my way of living that is shaking your belief system, even affecting the way that you live?
Those who must control how others live externally will at some point either have to face an internal ego death, or proudly die by their ego’s beliefs. In that case - kudos to them for standing so strongly for a subject that they are passionate about; it’s admirable in its own right.
My personal belief (which, of course, may change) is that the whole world is contradicting for a reason, that it is challenging me to find the inner peace within it all - and accept it in its totality.
Go towards the light within oneself, where one can meet the creator, where the source of creation fuels life to the soul, with you and the creator as one.
This place is at your center, at the core of who you know yourself to be, at the essence of your very existence.
You are the light.
And when you die, the light you go to will come from within, and be your own. You will come home to yourself.