Be Afraid

A common complaint levied against Western Buddhism is its leniency regarding the self and its agnosticism regarding evil spirits. I found a gem digging in the uncle's crates today--a dharma tape telling a supposedly 500 year old story. It reflects what I've been reading in the Cassiopaean material with Laura Knight Jadczyk. (I'm currently on chapter 28 of The Wave.) LKJ is vehemently opposed to blindly loving New Ageism, sharply criticizing their wishful thinking and ignorance of beings trying to take advantage of them. This tape, entitled Destiny Can Be Changed, briefly mentions the technically advanced but immature beings who eavesdrop on us and whom LKJ discusses at length as the Service-to-Self (STS) beings.

I'm not finished listening to the tape yet, but so far, the story mirrors the section I'm reading from LKJ so much. The Venerable Wu Ling tells of a man who has his fortune told, and as the years pass, he finds the predictions so dead on that he relinquishes his grip on life and peacefully lets destiny take its course. He then meets a master who tells him he could change his destiny if he did some practices, such as being kind, being mindful, doing good deeds, reciting a mantra, and clearing his mind of discursive thought.

LKJ discovers in Gurdjieff and Ouspensky a very similar picture of the human predicament. We are robots with very predictable lives. Only if we practice diligently seeing how we are influenced externally can we ever find our kernel of free will. Another similarity between LKJ and Wu Ling is that Wu Ling also encourages practictioners to feel shame for making mistakes and to fear more sentient beings, suggestions you don't hear very often in the self-centered New Age circles LKJ criticizes.

Audio excerpt from Destiny Can Be Changed: Eavesdropping_Beings.mp3