The Gentle Meandering Away from Truth

By George A. Boyd ©2023

In conspiracy theories, there is a detachment from consensual reality and absorption in deeper strata of belief and perception. These deeper levels of mental processing are subject to distortion and delusional belief.

The challenge for those attempting to navigate the illusions of the collective mind to determine reality and truth encounter seven major mental postures. These are:

  1. Recognition of objects in the environment and correctly labeling them, measuring them, and verifying their existence; this establishes facts and consensual reality.
  2. Speculation about causation and motivation using deduction and inference; researchers, journalists, investigators, and psychologists tap this level.
  3. Believing in things other people have told you or communicated to you without verifying the information you have received is correct; this is the first level subject to the distortion of conspiracy theories and others lying to you and exploiting you.
  4. Believing revelations and interpretations you receive from your own contemplation or that you receive from psychic readers or religious clergy; this level is subject to the distortion that comes from you overvaluing ideas or misinterpretation of the content you uncover or that is communicated to you; those who disseminate conspiracy theories often draw from these sources.
  5. Believing in signs, omens, and coincidences for guidance; the issue here is that you are not certain which of these presentations are genuinely guidance from your Soul and which are simply random signals; those that present distorted information from levels three and four with conviction and enthusiasm can readily persuade those who operate in this frame of inner guidance to adopt their beliefs.
  6. Receiving guidance from a spiritual entity other than your own Soul through channeling or automatic writing; the quality of this guidance you receive depends on whom you are channeling—you can receive very valuable and reliable information from this source, or you can obtain spurious and useless information. Some look for Gurus at this level to provide answers and show them how to realize their true nature.
  7. Gaining union with your Soul and having it reveal its true nature; this is union with your inner source of wisdom and discernment; this is the touchstone of inner truth and realization.

Not all of these postures of mental processing lead you down rabbit holes:

Postures one and seven form the bedrock of reality and truth. You can verify consensual reality through your senses and reason; you can gain conscious union with your Soul and tap into its direct intuitive stream.

Posture two, if performed with careful safeguards in place against bias can be a valuable tool to arrive at valid conclusions and correct inferences—without validation, however, these can lead astray well-meaning detectives, researchers, and clinicians.

The zone that generates delusion and the strange beliefs of conspiracy theories spans postures three to six.

Posture three is the most common entry point for those who embrace conspiracy theories: because they cannot or do not verify the information they receive, they unwittingly adopt false beliefs.

Posture four is often the source of many of the distorted beliefs that underpin conspiracy theories: someone has had a revelation… someone has attempted to read meaning into a cryptic scriptural passage or an arcane, symbolic manuscript… someone has interpreted an event in an ominous or apocalyptic way. Those that operate at this level still think, although their thinking process may be corrupted.

Posture five begins to operate when someone has set aside thinking and analysis, and instead embraces intuition as their source of truth. This is a highly experiential, serendipitous frame of mind that seeks to discover truth. Divinatory arts like tarot, angel cards, and I Ching tap into this intuitive matrix. This posture leads to a mindset that views the unitive nature of the universe, the connections between all things, and a sense that there is a deeper reality behind the observable physical universe. At this level, one “creates” through intention and visualization; events occur synchronistically.

Posture six typically dawns when someone seeks guidance from a wise and highly evolved spiritual being: this often takes the form of a search for a spiritual mentor or Guru. If someone selects an ethical, genuinely realized teacher for this stage of their aspirant journey, they can receive teachings that help them advance both in their personal life and their spiritual development.

Choosing wrongly can lead to involvement with spiritual cults and enslavement and abuse at the hands of authoritarian and paranoid spiritual leaders. Some alternately draw their information and inspiration from guides they encounter in the inner Planes; like flesh and blood Gurus, these sources can be legitimately helpful or they can lead people into greater delusion.

It is possible to avoid slipping into the traps of postures three to six:

In Mudrashram®, in our intermediate classes—the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program—we teach our students how to tune into posture seven to directly know and commune with their essential nature and skip over the pitfalls of postures three to six.

You can have greater success with posture two, if you learn critical thinking and obtain an education that emphasizes careful intellectual inquiry and analysis.

We encourage you to identify in what ways you operate in each of seven postures, and to progressively learn to uncover and eliminate the false beliefs you may have adopted in listening to the siren voices of the Astral and the misinformation coming from those who seek to exploit you and manipulate you for their own agendas.