Mystery Teachings from the Living Earth
by John Michael Greer
Reading Mystery Teachings from the Living Earth was a curious experience. I felt like I was reading two books at once: the first describing spiritual teachings we can derive from ecological laws; the second, how the mystery teachings are being misinterpreted and distorted by more modern spiritual movements.
Greer devotes much time to discussing why the belief that one can create one’s own reality is a partial truth and how popular spiritual movements promulgate that belief. He points out that this has been a corruption of the mystery school teaching that we are created by the reality that was here before us and that we always co-create with that reality. He nails it when he says:
…the self and the rest of the universe join together at each moment to create the reality you will experience in the future. Thus, there are things you can accomplish and things that no amount of tinkering with attitudes will allow you to achieve, because they are contradicted by the momentum of greater processes in the universe as a whole. Equally, there are things you might be able to achieve but should not attempt, because the achievement will set patterns in motion in the universe that will not be welcome to you.
This is the nut around which the whole book turns. He makes the argument that those “tinkering with attitudes” and doings things that should not be attempted because their result might be unwelcome (i.e., treating the Earth as a disposable commodity) are departing from the traditional mystery school teachings, and …Read more
Image credit: Ian Sane