The trap of tradition
We live in a very special time as in our days for the first time of maybe some thousands of years the absolute and universal peak knowledge about God, the human being, the spiritual evolution and creation has been revealed (by Franz Bardon). Before this surprising and most amazing event, all seekers of truth had to examine religions and spiritual traditions practically and in theory to be able to grow and to understand the mysteries at least in parts. The main problem here was and still is, that the truth was often covered by half-truths, stories, dogmas, etc. and only existing in fragments. So it was a question of luck if the seeker of truth was able to find some pieces of higher initiation or not and if he was mature enough to set them together in the right way for a holistic, universal understanding.
Simplified put, the seeker may has received some hints like “Read the holy text carefully. There is a secret message hidden.” Or “Follow the instructions and do the exercise!” but the results were open. The priests or Gurus also understood only as much as they were individually able to understand, so the quality was questionable. We see this problem even today where teachers of religion and spiritual traditions proclaim things which simply show that in their lineage certain things were not understood or passed on well.
To put it in a little bit evil way, you can be a follower of a religion or spiritual tradition but this can mean that you are only a good parrot who can repeat what your predecessors said and did. This can be nice and fulfilling for you personally. But this doesn´t mean at all real, universal initiation with the aspects of being a refined god-human, a creator of reality, etc. And if this is not the case, then you simply have missed the most important point (in comparison with the available initiation today).
So indeed it is a trap to simply follow a religion. And it is even a bigger trap to simply follow a spiritual tradition. Following and repeating might be nice but compared to real initiation and real development it is nothing.
We still have countless nice societies, secret groups, traditions here and there with a real or imagined lineage and in main they simply follow and repeat. Follow and repeat. Follow and repeat. Copy and paste. Copy and paste. Follow and repeat. And they are happy with it. But they forgot about the real art which is creative, innovative, which origins from the Spirit itself, from the enlightened mind. Many of these societies are simply dead structures of repeating patterns. But certainly there are people who enjoy these things.
The main problem besides these repeating patterns is that these societies are not interested in the pure universal highest quality teachings and training but that they prefer to do what their predecessors already did before the revelation of the universal teachings. They simply study religious and traditional sources which are of questionable quality and often full of half-truths, nonsense, opinions, etc. glorified as divine revelations. This is again “nice” but not more and in main simply a massive waste of precious time.
It is comparable with the differences between someone who is interested in looking for cloths and someone who is interested in the nature of the human being who wears the cloths. This is a massive difference. The first one follows the idea “The cloths will reveal me something about the owner.” And the second one follows the idea “Cloths are maybe nice but I can study directly the owner, – direct understanding!”
Today we have the chance to study the “real thing” and not some kind of low quality indications from someone who we do not know which offer a lot of space for personal interpretation and opinions.
We can imagine the offers for spiritual development and initiation in form of a pyramid. Below the basis of the pyramid, we find atheism, materialism, nihilism, etc. Then the basis is religion. Above religion there are the spiritual traditions and at the peak of the pyramid there are the universal, eternal teachings, the straight and lawful system of training and initiation.
So as now the peak is available for everyone, why should a real seeker focus on the bottom, the lower levels?
Throughout the years, I have seen so many “holy texts”, so many “super important” training instructions. All of these texts were also very old and with this “precious”. But from the point of view of an initiate of the universal teachings, many of these texts were simply a waste of precious life time in reading them leave alone trying to find some hidden treasures or secrets in them.
Indeed, you can waste years and decades with becoming a good parrot in old outdated systems of belief and research or you focus directly on the top of the knowledge and invest your precious time in the maximum available progress for your development.
You have the choice like everyone else. No one can judge you. At least you should know that you have the choice. Today no one is doomed to stay stuck in outdated systems.
I prefer quality instead of quantity. Time is just too precious today to be wasted.
At last, certainly, everywhere beauty can be found. It is up to us to separate the wheat from the chaff and to honor what is of real quality.
Wow I feel that this article is personally for me, having first been introduced to Hermeticism through a Spiritual Tradition and then shortly thereafter finding the teachings of Bardon and God through his/her Mercy and Wisdom being kind enough to lead me away from the trap of these type of organizations. There are a lot of politics and many of them either discredit Bardon or don’t give him the credit that he truly deserves . They tend to focus elsewhere , based on the teachings of a lot of other so called adepts. many of the teachings will appeal to the student on a theoretical basis put there isn’t a whole lot of practical work even though they will try to make you feel like there is. The trouble for me after God had lead me away from these things was some of the Charisma in the text, and _” why would be lead here only to be lead away ” One thing I’ve learned is that everyone claiming to be Spiritual isn’t honest , many of these ” lineages ” pay very well and even when they say they don’t have economic aspirations they often do. Thankful for Bardon for the teachings he has laid out, and also very thankful for the Sura Academy
Yes, the problem is in all cases the human factor, respectively the ego. For this reason it is super important to be dedicated to higher values or higher ideals to go beyond the limitations and all the problems of the ego, especially in a secret society or spiritual training group.