Re: 2012 Ascension...internet site
Date: June 12, 2010 01:21AM
Well, new2this, I think that the group around that website do bear watching because there are a lot of these new-age apocalyptic cults and they have their own take on conspiracies and only a few will actually become activist groups.
Sometimes it is interesting to compare right-wing survivalists and new age starseed conspiracy theories just for entertainment ;) Conspiracy theories by themselves are not cults. They are the soil in which cults take root, however, because they grow on fear.
That being said, my experience with meditation groups is that the ones who emphasize the outer-space stuff often sabotage your self-esteem because when you pull yourself down to the very center of the meditation experience, there truly can be a feeling of vast emptiness, and that feeling can be interpreted and used in different ways. It is only one kind of meditative experience, and if the guru exploits the anxiety of the follower, he can convince the follower to believe in the ascension experience which can become a dangerous path to suicidal delusions. The mix of meditation with conspiracy-fear looks very bad to me.
We are not supposed to proselytyze so please take what I say with a grain of salt, because I now will speak from my own belief-base which is Catholic: Christian meditation also can reach that point of emptiness but will acknowledge it and will seek to fill it with the "Holy Spirit" or with Christ instead of telling you it means anything about starseeds, etc.
If you read the mystical saints like Saint Teresa d'Avila they describe that experience in plain language. Christian cultists might do the same as new-age cultists, which is they might try to lead you to that empty place and then place the local pastor or guru into it, but that would be an abuse. All traditional theology warns the meditating person to invite only Jesus Himself or the Holy Spirit to occupy that place, and warns the person to use prayer with the meditation. Furthermore all traditionally Christian theology also makes it very clear that your consciousness or your ego is not that place, and so you do not "channel" Jesus or the Holy Spirit as an individual, which I have seen some claim to do.
I am only posting this part so that you have something to compare while you study different approaches to meditation. Christian meditation is often called "Centering Prayer" and it is controversial because some cultists use it to build Christian cults around their own gurus. But the "Centering Prayer" and meditation as described by the old saints like Saint Teresa d'Avila in "The Book of My Life" (written in the 16th century, still in print!) is not controversial because it does not lend itself to creating new leaders or cult-control groups and a great deal of literature has grown around it for independent study.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/12/2010 01:25AM by dsm.