Spirit Guides - what are they?

Given your familiarity with esoteric teachings and spiritual path, Marco, I wonder if you might comment on the following quotation from C. W. Leadbeater's Masters and the Path?
The candidate who has passed the first Initiation has entered definitely upon the Path ... The first stage of his journey ends in the second Initiation, to achieve which he must cast off three Samyojana or fetters, which are:​

Sakkayaditthi -- the delusion of self.
Vichikichchha -- doubt or uncertainty.
Silabbataparamasa -- superstition.
​
These last two fetters seem related to the subject of Spirit Guides - and discernment.​
 
If someone wanted a pseudo-scientific answer then it might be considered that spirit guides are a meditative way to speak to your subconscious. The placement of the subconscious into an animal form would give it the ability to suggest but not be considered as smarter and infallible. It might be considered to be quite healthy to converse with your subconscious without granting it full peer status. It could also be quite informative as the subconscious mind if able to put together things that we consciously miss.

Im not putting down spirit guides. Im all for them. I just like taking the role of scientific "doubter" and turning it into scientific believer to help arm people who might come up against such a person.
 
Re: Spirit that Guides it is...


Many thanks dear taijasi for your compliment and for having addressed my previous question; though I'll have to submit it to a further analysis of mine.

First of all, you have expressed that I show [some] "familiarity with esoteric teachings"; (I) would agree [to some extent], but, please allow to note that it does not mean that I may be knowledgeable of them, that is, that I have a so clear-deep comprehension of these Teachings that I would not incur myself and, involuntarily, my fellows into error. In fact I am not; otherwise I should be able to express them as I aspire to [one day]: not by my current vain speech, but through all my daily actions.

About "Initiation":

Though (I) have been avoiding all matters pertaining to higher Things--me; I had already been told once that "The candidate who has passed the first Initiation has entered definitely upon the Path ...".

About "fetters"

(I) have not devoted yet much thought into these aspects, so I am not able to provide much insight. Also, though some years ago I went through some of the Teosophical & neo-Theosophical writings, I have not yet read C. W. Leadbeater's entire text you provided, though I see it as a much valuable one.
Sometimes, I have to address and evaluate these issues within me, that is, how my lack of discernment, and my own personal(ity) will, may create illusions that will affect the entrusted Message that needs[needed] to be transmitted. Then I learn then to forget of myself. A this time I recall only that I can only but be totally Grateful.

Hope this may help.
Best unto your constructive efforts, Marco.

« A rosa não tem porque, floresce porque floresce, ela não se preocupa consigo mesma, ela não deseja ser vista. A rosa que vocês vêem com seus olhos físicos, em Deus está florida por toda Eternidade. » Angelus Silesius

​
 
From an interview with Fr. Thomas Rosica:

Q: When did we first start speaking of angels in the Catholic Christian tradition?

A: Angels are found among the four Western "religions of the book": Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

While they were an element of Christian piety from the beginning ... the study of angels, angelology, took off in the early sixth century, when the theologian Dionysius the Areopagite first classified them. His celestial hierarchy would later be elaborated by St. Thomas Aquinas, the Italian Dominican scholar of the 13th century who was nicknamed the "dumb ox" by his classmates, but the "angelic doctor" by the Church, not because of his holy life, but rather because of his profound teaching about angels...

... They are spiritual realities that reveal themselves to women and men in moments of vision, and that also break in on human consciousness in dreams, flooding it with awareness and wonder and fear.

... The notion of angels is [to be] mysteriously in the presence of God on our behalf, and simultaneously with us on our behalf. What a tender gesture of our loving Creator! Guardian angels provide free, womb-to-tomb guidance — lighting and guarding, ruling and guiding ... all the days of our lives.

Angels move our imaginations with good thoughts and impulses, and impel us toward goodness ... through secret impulse, intuition, without the benefit of [our] actually seeing or hearing them. They pray with us and for us, and in transporting our prayers to God, they may alter them ever so slightly to make them more perfect. They protect us in times of danger, in the physical as well as in the spiritual life, because not all is sweetness and light here below.

The appearance of angels in the Old and New Testaments, as well as in our lives, is consistent with a minor actor in a major play: They have one line to deliver, or a task to perform; they do it, and exit promptly. It is God who always takes the credit for their interventions and successes...

... If the angels teach us anything, they show us what it means to put on the mind of Christ. What a great privilege is theirs, to stand constantly in God's presence, to feast their eyes on Jesus, to know his face and even more, his mind. They look upon the world, and on each of us, with the mind of Christ.

To truly love someone is not only to adore their face and their external reality, but to enter their mind and heart. To have the mind of Christ is not a boast but a prayer, and the prayer is that we, more and more, learn to think his thoughts and to see the world around us through his eyes. We have not only the spirit, the love and the strength of Christ. We also have been given his mind.

... Second, the angels teach us about simplicity, about delighting in God's presence. Responding to the question of who was the greatest, Jesus called a child, whom he put among them, and said, "Truly, I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me. Take care that you do not despise one of these little ones; for, I tell you, in heaven their angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven."

St. Augustine captured this well when he said, "It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels." Children and angels know how to delight and how to rejoice! In the midst of our busy lives, I fear that we have lost the art of delighting and rejoicing. How often do we focus on our disappointments, rather than our delights!

Third, the angels invite us to become angels and messengers for one another. For what is ultimately their role—to be messengers, bearers of words of consolation, hope, peace, joy, protection ... to remind others of the beauty and consolation of God's presence ... to invite us ever more deeply into the mystery of God ... to mirror God and God's glory to others ... to gently lead others to God.

Thomas
 
Thomas said:
From an interview with Fr. Thomas Rosica:

Q: When did we first start speaking of angels in the Catholic Christian tradition?

A: Angels are found among the four Western "religions of the book": Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Click to expand...
When did Zoraoastrainism become a member of 'religions of the book'?

Which book? Confused am I.
 
Hi Wil —

Yes, that took me by surprise. Maybe I should have edited it out?

I think the theological answer is along the lines of a Catholic view of Zoroastrianism as:
"The highest religious result to which human reason unaided by revelation, can attain" Fr. Ernest Hull, SJ, in "Bombay Examiner" 28 March, 1903.

If I were to speculate, I would along the lines of Fr. Rosica treating the heart as a book — although his deployment of the term is obscure if not misleading — but there are many commonalities between Zoroastrian and the Abrahamic Traditions, but the fundamental difference is the near-absolute duality of the former. At its best their theology is one of monotheism modified by a physical and moral dualism, with an ethical system based on a Divinely revealed moral code and human free will, and as such shares much in common with Christian morality and ethics.

I am not suggesting attribution, but rather that man will arive at a common set of values, virtues and vices the world over, by simple common sense and philosophy.

This same kind of message, of a Supreme God but a fundamental duality that accords evil equal status with the good throughout the created order, is evident in Mandeanism, the latter aspect being accentuated in the Mandean heresy, Manichaenism.

Roots trace further back into India, but the religious outlook of India was subsumed into a substantially Persian theological vision.

Thomas
 
Namaste Thomas,

Is this a current quote? Is this guy alive, can we email him and ask him what is meant?

I hear arguments that Zoroatrianism was the first monotheistic religion, and much was patterned after/borrowed from. But this reference is new to me.

Heck no you shouldn't have edited it out.
 
Hi,
Thomas said:
Hi Wil —
Yes, that took me by surprise. Maybe I should have edited it out?

I think the theological answer is along the lines of a Catholic view of Zoroastrianism as:
"The highest religious result to which human reason unaided by revelation, can attain" Fr. Ernest Hull, SJ, in "Bombay Examiner" 28 March, 1903.
Thomas
Click to expand...

Can I add another quote?
From Strange Birds form Zoroaster's Nest, by Laina Farhat-Holzman p23

"Zoroaster, who lived perhaps as early as the period between 1200 and 1000B.C., was the first prophet of what we call "revealed religion," a religion based on a recognizable human being claiming contact directly with a universal god. Zoroaster claimed to have met face to face with the universal and just god, Ahura Mazda (Wise Lord), who had created a perfect universe of fire, air, and water where plants, useful animals, and his crowning and most dangerous creation, human beings, flourished. Humans possessed a reflection of his wisdom, but they had free will, as did all intelligent life, including angelic helpers in his creation fo the universe. They were not governed by the puppet strings of animal instinct alone."

Zoroastrianism could be another piece of the puzzle.
.02
Joe
 
My greatest question is why channeled entities and spirit guides seem proffer cheap spiritual baubles couched as great wisdom from the other side. Almost all of them take hundreds of words of erudite language to explain the simplest thing, as if what we would want from such communications is style rather than substance. Apparently all departed spirits are given a thesaurus and style guide after crossing over.

Oddly enough, if there are any genuine spirits out there communicating with us, they don't seem troubled by the thousands of phonies out there promising to act as an intermediary to the other side for the 'small' fee of $80 an hour. It seems to me if your intent was to help people you might pay yourself a bit less. Especially when you're running a church dedicated to such communications. The profiteering never ends at one local church. Selling advertising on the church homepage, asking members to cosign on church loans, endless begging at weekly services, offering 'lectures' designed to sell someone's book, psychic fairs, "message services" with an $8 cover charge, all manner of classes with tuition, all in addition to the offering plate and whatever the notables are making from private readings.

I've never seen a church so monetized. Who knows where the money goes, probably right into someone's pocket. For all the grief new-age gurus give Christianity, they seem to be playing by the televangelist playbook. Ramtha's channel is using her name to sell pillows, wedding dresses, and comforters in an online store. Neale Donald Walsch wants $7.95 a month just to post on his forum. Tons of examples of that kind of thing. If I was an enlightened spirit who had a message for mankind, would I really be giving it through someone that sells fake diamond jewelry?
 
heavensblade23 said:
if there are any genuine spirits out there communicating with us, quote]




In common with man, angels are free moral agents, that is, they can choose to do right or wrong.


They are intelligent creatures that can worship God Jehovah or refuse to do so and take the consequences.


Some of them have rebelled against God, chief of whom is their prince Beelzebub, Satan the Devil.

Those who have continued faithful are termed "holy angels" and share in the vindication of Jehovah’s name, even as do faithful humans.—2 Pet. 2:4; Matt. 12:24; Mark 8:38.
Click to expand...
 
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