The Perils of Personal Gnosis

Have you ever noticed that when people bring up their past lives, they were almost inevitably princesses or queens or kings or knights or some other personage of note?

Yeah, that's not personal revelation. That's ego fulfillment. That's taking what you wish to be true and saying it's so. A particularly promising practice in an area where you can't be proven wrong.

But the fact of the matter is, most of us were not nobles or earth-movers in previous lives. Like most of humanity, we were laborers, serfs, merchants, sailors, hunters, farmers. Many of our lives were likely short, painful and bleak.

And if you're Buddhist, that's only counting the lives in which you were human, not your 800 years as a cockroach working off some lousy karma. (Which, by the way, is one of the reasons I prefer Daoism. Less karma crap).

Personal gnosis is a tricky wicket for precisely the reason that it's really difficult to prove to yourself the truth of your insights. Some people are really, really bad at that, which is what leads to failed apocalyptic cults. I mean, if you have to keep revising the time at which the Destruction of the World is going to occur, you're probably making it up. But in lesser matters, it's harder to tell if you are perceiving what you need to perceive or what you want to perceive.

Rules of thumb

Over the years of seeking – and listening to – wisdom from metaphysical messengers, including gods, sages and a couple of spirits who were just plain jerks, I've developed a few rules of thumb for separating the divine from the mundane.

1. If it is what you wanted to hear, it's probably not genuine. Let's face it, the gods aren't going to waste their time validating things you already know to be true. They, instead, will provide messages that challenge your self-perceptions, or provide uncomfortable information that you need to know. Yeah, if that hot barista really does have it for you, she'll write her phone number on your cup. Or, you know, ask her for it. And if a medium tells me that my dead mother said I was a wonderful kid, I'm asking for my money back because that wasn't how it worked.
2. Is the messenger appropriate for the message? The metaphysical world is subtle. If you believe Zeus himself appeared to tell you that you would buy the winning Lotto ticket this week, he didn't. Frankly, the only reason Zeus has ever made his presence known to any mortal was because he wanted to impregnate them. Don't buy the Lotto, buy the test.
   
   The first time I ever encountered a Daoist immortal, he manifested to me as a hitchiker. I picked him up. CLUE NUMBER ONE, I NEVER PICK UP HITCHIKERS. WHY THIS GUY? He looked, for all appearances, like a washed-up, old alcoholic. But on the ride I gave him, we had a short conversation that, seemed a little weird, but I just chalked that up to chatting with an old drunk. After a few minutes of talking, he gestured to the next corner and said I could let him off there. In the rain. He got out, and as he shut the door, he said "remember what I told you."
   
   Well, I did. And it turned out that the conversation wasn't weird, he was just being enigmatic. And then I did what he told me to do. It was the right move. Remember, all the beings in this reality don't go by our rules of appearance.
3. Set up the encounter with guardrails. In the middle of my time in seminary, my sifu asked me to spend the summer doing theurgy. I hated theurgy. I mean, every encounter I had ever had with a god ended with some sort of issue, beginning with my first contact with the spirit world in which a god rammed a car into the side of my building.
   
   I told sifu I would rather learn to split bricks with my head wudang style, but he was adamant. So I spent the summer building a relationship with Lu Dongbin, one of the Eight Immortals of Daoism. I really had a lot of admiration for the guy. So I made offerings at my altar, meditated on the meanings of his words, and otherwise directed my attention toward him so that he, in turn, would respond to me.
   
   When I judged the time right, I asked Lu to speak to me through the I Ching, the Chinese book of divination. I have studied the I Ching most of my life, and I figured that any message from the divine would be clear to me in that context. So I cast the coins, and looked up the resulting hexagram.
   
   Well, well, well. The name of that hexagram, in the translation I was using, was Lu. Clearly, the source of the response was unambiguous.
   
   And so was the message, which, pared down to it's essence, was F*ck off and don't bother me with this foolishness.
   
   Message received. A statue of Lu Dongbin remains on my altar today, a reminder not to bother the gods with sh*t I can take care of myself. Which is a good rule to go by at any time.

So if your choice is to invite the gods or the ancestors or some other spirit or demon to give you insight, be prepared to accept that insight. Because it won't be what you want to hear, and you may not recognize the messenger.

Take care of yourself. You're the only one of you out there.

Li Ning