By A.S.

A lot of people think that being spiritually advanced means being nice, never criticizing others, just purely focusing on love-and-light and doing your own inner work, et cetera.

Behaving like that is an entirely valid path. There’s nothing wrong with it.

It can even be argued that spiritual novices should be advised to behave like that, because spiritual novices may not yet have the discernment to know when it is appropriate to call someone out and when it isn’t.

And some spiritual masters genuinely are love-and-light, and again, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. It is entirely valid.

However, what’s not valid is the idea that this kind of love-and-light is the ONLY valid path, and that everyone who isn’t doing this is spiritually unadvanced and isn’t doing their inner work. Which is what some (not all) love-and-light people act like.

Some (not all) love-and-light people will imply that they’re superior to some other group who isn’t walking the love-and-light path, which is just subtle ego inflation and a subtle tearing-down of others.

Some love-and-light people will automatically condemn anyone who criticizes anyone else, regardless of context and arguments provided and what is actually being criticized. Some people view the very act of criticizing someone else as being inherently spiritually unevolved, when it’s not.

Hence today’s title: “do your spiritual views imply that Jesus was bad?”

Jesus chased money changers and merchants out of the temple with a whip. (John 2:13–16) Hence, do your spiritual views imply that Jesus was bad?

Of course it’s really easy to go “Jesus was great so of course I don’t condemn him.” But now suppose I would have told you: “someone took a whip and drove off people who were minding their own business.” Would you automatically conclude that the whip-wielder is a spiritually unadvanced person? If yes, you’re judging Jesus.

In Matthew 23:13–36 Jesus harshly and repeatedly calls out others, for example saying “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. (…) You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?”

Suppose I presented that quote to you, without telling you that Jesus said it. Would you automatically conclude that the speaker is spiritually unadvanced? If yes, you’re judging Jesus.

Similarly, in Matthew 16:23 Jesus says to one of his disciples: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me.” It’s obviously not very nice to call one of your disciples “Satan.”

So. If I presented one of these quotes or behaviors to you, without telling you that it was Jesus doing this — would you have labeled that person as spiritually unadvanced? If yes, you’re judging Jesus.

The core point I want to make here is that it’s too simplistic to label certain behaviors as being inherently spiritually unadvanced. Because in reality, sometimes calling people out, sometimes strongly rebuking someone or even taking practical action against someone, IS an in-alignment thing to do.

If those things aren’t your personal path, that’s entirely fine, but it’s still not correct to criticize others for whom those actions may be in alignment.

Or to put it differently, I think overall the spiritual community is unbalanced in the direction of “feminine energy good, masculine energy bad.” The masculine action of calling someone out or taking practical action against someone isn’t always bad, even if that means being not nice to someone.

I think the spiritual community is excessively obsessed with niceness and appearing spiritually advanced.

Ironically, some people in the spiritual community think they’re on the path of Christ, while actually they’re similar to the Pharisees. They think they’re advanced and they appear righteous to the average person due to their performative spirituality, while on the inside they’re full of unjustified judgement and spiritual ego. And they often treat non-love-and-light people in a subtly condescending and improperly judgemental way, in order to further inflate their own ego.

Jesus actually commented on people who falsely claim they’re aligned with him, Matthew 7:21-23:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’

If you want to argue “those bible verses are false, the real Jesus didn’t do or say those things”: are you sure about that? Are you sure you don’t have a pro-love-and-light, anti-things-that-feel-unpleasant distortion that makes you say that?

Plus, Jesus isn’t the only master who was harsh / critical at times.

See Majjhima Nikāya 63 (Cūḷa-Māluṅkyovāda Sutta)

A monk demands answers to speculative questions (Is the world eternal? Is the soul the same as the body?). The Buddha responds sharply, refusing to indulge him and comparing him to a fool who refuses medical treatment:

“It is as if a man were wounded by an arrow thickly smeared with poison, and he would say: ‘I will not have this arrow removed until I know who shot me, what his caste was, what kind of bow he used…’
That man would die before he learned all this.”

The rebuke culminates in a dismissal of the monk’s attitude as dangerous and foolish.

Here’s another example of a spiritual master being critical, namely the Indian saint Kabir (source https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/96714.Kabir?page=2):

“Saints, I see
The world is mad
If I tell the truth
They rush to beat me
If I lie they trust me

Hindus claim Ram as the one
Muslims claims Raheem
Then they kill each other
Knowing not the essence””

That’s a pretty strong judgement of entire groups of people. If today someone judged entire groups of people, that person would be seen as spiritually immature.

The same source shows Kabir being critical of a specific practice that some people strongly believe in:

“If by immersion in the water salvation be attained, the frogs who bathe continually would attain it.”

Then there are the zen “stick wielding” masters who would shout at or hit their students with a stick. That’s also not very love-and-light of them. Nowadays zen masters often give a symbolic tap, but historically (and sometimes still today) they would genuinely hit their students, in order to get them into the here-and-now and shatter their logical mind. Take a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WAi2fwUqN4&t=71s

There’s even a zen master who cut off a boy’s finger and thereby the boy became enlightened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juzhi_Yizhi

Sure that’s a bit extreme, but if you’re not enlightened yourself, why do you think you’re able to judge what is and isn’t enlightened behavior?

Hence you can’t just label entire categories of behavior, such as criticizing others or even engaging in physical violence, as being inherently spiritually unadvanced.

“If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him” — i.e. drop your attachment to spiritually advanced people always being nice and always being a certain specific way.

Spirituality isn’t about memorizing absolutist rules such as “criticism is always bad” or “people must always be nice.” And spirituality especially isn’t about enforcing those rules on others.

People who try to enforce rules like “criticizing others is always bad” simply aren’t advanced enough themselves yet to have the discernment when certain actions are and aren’t appropriate. And it’s fine to not be that spiritually advanced yet — but then don’t tell others how they should and shouldn’t behave.

Ironically, those who think that people shouldn’t criticize, will often criticize the criticizer.

Which illustrates that the person doesn’t actually believe in not-criticizing. Rather, they’re just playing an ego game.

Specifically, it’s the ego game of “I am better than everyone who does behavior X.”

Or it’s the ego game of “go into every interaction just blindly assuming that the other person is spiritually less advanced than yourself, and act accordingly.”

Although of course, not all love-and-light people behave like this. Some love-and-light people will look at someone who criticizes someone else, and just send them love, and go on with their day. And that’s entirely valid.

So, I think that covers it.

As a final sidenote: at this time I don’t have the energy to do more channelings, because my energy is going towards practically sorting out my own life at the moment. Hence it could be a while before the next channeling gets published. (Writing a message such as this one costs me substantially less energy than channeling.)

With all my love and well-wishes,

A.S.

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