“The poison of jealousy turns even an angel into a devil.” When we go too high above our pray grade, we unleash a universal Constraining Force, which has the power to enrage the swine around us, or even the swine within. This is a fearful thing to unleash.

Recently I have immersed myself in winter and spring of 2010, rereading my first months in Riverview. I sure wrote a lot of worthwhile spiritual and generally good and useful stuff. I received a lot of revelations, and of course I had some from before, so I just kept writing it down. I am not really sure it has been of help to anyone, but perhaps one day it will be. Who knows?

I read a bit in Mouravieff’s Gnosis again. He mentions that those who are trying to break out of the general law – the inertia of the world – should keep silent about spiritual things. It is natural, he says, to want to talk to everyone about the wonderful things you have found. But it will cause the constraining elements of the world to become aware of you and react in various ways, externally and internally. (Resistance from other people, and temptations.) So while you may not need to literally go through your days silent, you should be silent about the spiritual sights you have just seen. He refers then to Christ’s words about not casting pearls before swine or giving to the dogs what is holy. They will just attack you.

That may be so, but if no one ever mentioned the spiritual things, then it would die with them, is that not so?

Well, that is so, but by and large it should be left to those who have achieved lift-off, I guess. Those who have so little to lose, the constraining forces can do little about them except revile them and kill them, which is not enough at that stage. Christ said at the end of his life that the prince of this world was coming “and he has nothing in me”. That is not the case for us newbies. Whether we think so or not, there is actually a lot in us that can be activated by the constraining force of the ordinary world.

But I keep having this notion that if I throw enough pearls before the swine, sooner or later they will lose their footing and fall flat. Since there seems to be an endless supply of pearls – for when you have been given an internal companion from Heaven, no matter how undeserved, there is no end to what could be said – it seemed reasonable to me that I must say all the words that should be spoken, before they are lost forever.

On the internet, nobody can see if you are a dog. Or a swine. I like to think that there are a few out there who are neither. But if I were to think of myself, and what is best for me, then I should probably keep a lower profile. The more we speak up, the more the constraining force will focus upon us, what the ancients called demons and Satan, which attacks both within through temptations and wild emotions, and without through slander and hostility. In one story written down in the gospel, Jesus Christ drove out unclean spirits from a man, and at once they went into a flock of swine. This is unfortunately so even spiritually speaking, that the swine are always receptive to the negative spiritual influences. The more pearls you throw at them, the angrier they get, unaware that what they are being pelted with is supposed to be valuable. We are not talking cuddly piglets here, a crowd of enraged swine is a fearsome thing indeed.

For a beginner such as I – and this is tragic in itself, to be a beginner after all these years and with all this insight – for a beginner, the constraining force may well completely extinguish the spiritual life if I go too high. This is a fact deeply enshrined in all serious spiritual traditions, and also mentioned in Christianity of course: “and not a new convert, so that he will not become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil.” The Devil is the personification of the constraining force, according to Mouravieff. I don’t think it matters here whether you think of the Devil as a person as such, regardless the point stands that it is not something we should mess with just for the hell of it. If we go too far above our pray grade, we become “inflated” as some translations put it, and the constraining force will cause us to fall into damnable actions.

This is not unlike what I experience when I play Go, actually.  See, at the start of a match, it is customary to place stones at strategic spots on the board, with the unspoken intention of declaring the surrounding are one’s own, or to occupy it if you will. But if I start out reaching far into the other side of the board early on, the opponent will react by invading my home territory and cut it apart, and I end up with nothing. Since I am a beginner and don’t have the skill to follow up on bold moves, the best I can do at my present level is to secure a smaller part of the board and wall it off from enemy incursion.

While I believe that my Invisible Friend could easily reveal to me innumerable books of Heavenly wisdom, it is unlikely that I would fail to make a fuss about it, and subsequently be cut to pieces by the constraining force, “an anti-dromedary” as I call it. (Enantiodromia.) When someone who has made a sustained and earnest beginning in spiritual work is gutted like that, the result is usually terrifying. An utter ruin, a destruction on a far more massive scale than the setbacks that anyone can experience in life. I have lived a charmed life so far. Long may it last – but that means not playing Buddha on the Internet.