Pretty much this

Belief in God that is absent real knowledge of God is ascetic and relatively sterile. It’s like believing in a hospital when you have never been in one or been operated in one or had things happen in one. You may intellectually know a hospital exists and can heal people but until you had an operation in one, the concept is really quite abstract.

If you are lucky enough to attain some direct knowledge of God, and assuming the trauma of it resolves in a way you decide, and can demonstrably see is good for you, that knowledge can remain with you the rest of your life; but not necessarily. Some people experience it but then the world slowly overtakes them again and they return to a state that is primarily materialistic and worried with the physicality of the here and now.

For some of us, however, the physicality of the here and now was never the most important thing, and not by a long shot, not even when we were atheists, and certainly not when I was a Zen-Agnostic quasi Shintoist.

This sense that ideals, honour, or some other virtue you recognise as fundamental takes precedence even over your ability to continue living, is FAR less prevalent today among men than it was millennia ago. The Romans were as ready to commit suicide rather than be dishonourable by their culture’s standards, as the Samurai were, or the Spartans.

Today the supposedly oh so smart and wise modern man looks back at the Spartans, or the Romans, or the Samurai, or even a contemporary willing to die for an ideal, and scoffs. How silly those barbaric superstitious fools were. Right?

And don’t get me wrong, setting yourself on fire because of Trump, or Joe Biden, or whatever American politician, is a sign of mental illness, not courage or honour or any other virtue, so there may be instances where that accusation might be valid, but not really concerning our old ancestors. You may say that the Gods of their time don’t exist and never did (I beg to differ, they did exist and probably still do, but were the entities God refers to in Psalm 82 (for crippled Prottie Bibles) or 81 (for righteous Catholic Bibles) and bad stewards of the humans on Earth) but I would posit that neither does your version of Jesus if you’re a Churchian that sings “Jesus is my boyfriend” type stuff.

The point is, that whether it is perceived as such consciously or not, some people are aware of the numinous, and implicitly, instinctively, trust it more than the world they can see and touch with their senses. I do not know why that is, and I don’t profess that those who can are necessarily better human beings than those who do not, but the fact remains some feel it better than others and it affects their choices and everything else they do.

There are, however levels of this awareness. At its most basic it is merely an instinct. The reason why some men run into the fire to save others instead of away from it perhaps, even if they have no higher aim consciously in their mind. And even if they may regret it later.

Some way above this is someone that is consciously aware that the intangibles are more important to him than the tangibles. These are almost always men. Women do not often reach this level of conscious agency, though they tend to probably react more often in response to the numinous when the stakes are not as obviously conscious or high. At this level one need not be religious by the way. You can still be even atheist and yet be this way.

Further up again are people that have realised that this numinous essence they feel beholden to is intelligent and has direction. It has, in short, rules. And they may spent years trying to figure these rules out. If they are mechanistic and material world orientated, they can be diverted into occult or ultimately Satanic practices. Short term gains at the expense of eternity. If they are more detached and objectively observant, they can notice some of the rules of this numinous level of reality that is actually on a higher plane than the physical one. The physical plane is a mere shadow of the numinous plane. At this point, at least some indication of religiosity begins to be present. It could be mystical New Age woo-woo, some blend of Buddhism, a generic Agnostic Christianity, a faint hope or belief in reincarnation and karma, or even a belief in Catholicism. But it is a sort of amorphous concept. There is an intelligence, there is a level of reality above our own, there must be rules, we try and follow them, sometimes, haphazardly.

In all of these levels, one can get lost or confused by their own emotions, particularly strong emotions or emotions that are triggered by trauma from the past and so on. And we will tend to confuse a discordant emotion with a real, linked-to-the-divine instinct. When things don’t go our way we will become blind and worried again. We may hold the lotus flower or the grace of God in our mind for a few minutes here and there, when meditating or sitting in a beautiful church, but let some guy cut you off and give you the finger and your serenity is quickly in the toilet.

Then there is a beginning level of some wisdom. Here you know the numinous is real and it is personal. You matter to that intelligence behind creation and it matters to you. So you begin to study. To observe, to experiment. And as you do you begin to discern patterns and begin to make choices. Most men get lost in this aspect of life towards the end of their life and never really reach any solid conclusions beyond a few generic ones. Those who persevere either end up down a wrong road, for a time, or to the end of their lives, and retain a certain TYPE of dissatisfaction. A specific flavour of restlessness. Or, they end up on the right road, which is Catholicism (Sedevacantist only).

And if you have stopped reading here because you think that’s just, like, my opinion, man… well, so be it. Off you go to other places on the internet.

If however, you are willing to explore further, at least intellectually, then let me tell you what happens next.

So you’re a sedevacantist Catholic now. Great. So you take a few years to learn the rules. The important ones. Don’t ask me when a fast day is, because I barely can figure it out. And sure, one day I will concern myself with that more, but I have some forest to catch up to before I investigate the trees. And if you don’t get lost in the minutiae of the details of various rituals, you begin to see the thing that really makes a difference.

Listen, I am not saying the rituals don’t have importance, they do, massive, but just like you can be thinking you really are a Jesus follower and yet, as He told us in the Bible you may have the rude awakening after your last day that He says to you: I never knew you. In short, you don’t want to do these rituals by rote just because you believe you are on the right path. For those who have understood a LOT more and gone further, that same ritual, that you might do out of rote, fort them is filled with meaning beyond your comprehension. Anyone can rattle off 50 Ave Marias. But few can recite ten with true conscious dedication and contemplation of each line they speak.

That thing you see, if you don’t get lost in the details of tradition with little deeper understanding, that really makes a difference, is this:

You now know God exists and knows you personally; cares about miserable, scum-being, little, insignificant you. That’s uncomfortable enough to not let you think straight for some time. But then you are so bathed in His Love and Glory and Grace, that over time, you begin to stop feeling ashamed and filthy and unworthy, and you begin to once again observe objectively, to just notice things, and then you recall that there are rules, that God is Good, and all is Love. And there are rules, not like in the world of things, but rules nonetheless. And so you begin to perhaps understand prayer, and you try it out, and you notice when you pray properly miracles happen, but when you do it half assed, maybe you only get a tenth of what you hoped for. And one of the first things you realise is that praying for shit is kind of a dick move. Praying to give thanks for ALL the incredible miracles you receive literally every day, is a much better thing to do. And then you may begin to notice that as you do this, give thanks and sense the numinous, and obey the rules, it becomes impossible to deny the Catholic religion. You can (and MUST) deny the fake impostor Bergoglio and all his pederast allies, but Catholicism itself, and those who still follow the Sedevacantists version of Catholicism (that is, the original one it has always been from the start) is true.

And then may come the next level, where you keep this knowledge, and it is knowledge, not just an idea or a concept, but an intrinsic, deeply felt truth. And in keeping that knowledge inside you, you begin to sense the winds of change, and so you begin to organise things in a way so as to be able to ride the crest of the wave, even if it be a tsunami. But this wisdom on the plane of the numinous may look like a bad choice on the worldly plane of things, and stuff, and physical practicalities. In fact, it may well look insane on the here and now level of truth “knowledge”.

The classic Biblical example is Noah. Everyone thought he was an insane madman. Then it rained and they all drowned, except Noah and his kin.

If a man has reached such a level —at least some of the time— his life might not necessarily be easy, or fun, he may even end up a martyr, but he will not have that peculiar type of anxiety or restlessness mentioned earlier. And if he does have a nervousness about him, it will be of an entirely different kind to the one mentioned before. A man at this level is only anxious of one thing. The being able to serve God well and as effectively and invincibly as might be possible.

When you reach that state, things just happen to simply… happen to you. And you no longer strive for them. You sense them and you gently reach for them with your soul, and it is almost delivered to you as if in a dream. And if you do strive it is not for them, the worldly things themselves so much, but rather for keeping good company to whomever might be there too. And to help someone else perhaps.

Why all this? Well, because ladies, if you are married to such a man, you need to adjust to his flow, and let him guide the river he produces with his mind and heart and soul. And conversely, if it is your wife that has reached this level, let her gentleness and kindness melt you enough until you see your flow too. Perhaps some women can direct it better then their husbands, I am sure some exist somewhere, but it is not the usual way. The usual way is that the man gets there, consciously, and the woman, follows by love and faith mostly. And the more loving and faithful she is in her trust, the better the man becomes at “hearing” where the river is and “seeing” where it goes, he and gets better at flowing on it well.

Second-guessing, nagging, rebelling, and generally doing what in Italian vernacular is translated as “breaking his balls” does absolutely nothing to increase this almost miraculous flow of Grace. And the task of a woman is no easier than that of a man. Trusting another human being on that level is absolutely difficult, because as you know, we are all rat-faced, cowardly, spineless, liars and bullshitters (perhaps not all of them in the worst way, but if you understand a little bit of what God and being in his presence is like, trust me, calling you a rat-faced cowardly liar is being kind). And yet, this is your duty, and the better you can do it, the more your man will become closer to Saintly.

The whole point of the holographic relationship between Jesus and the Church being reflective of the relation between husband and wife is exactly that. A good husband will absolutely let himself be crucified for his wife, but in turn, the wife should be absolutely willing to trust him unto the ends of the Earth. And yes, I can feel all the quivering disturbance in the aether, as if a billion feminists all screamed out at once while their buttholes puckered in rage at the same time, creating a vacuum of soundless vibration of acidic narcissistic impotence.

Sure, sure, the last thing you want to do is be some supportive, subservient doormat to a useless, cheating, lying asshole. Duh. Of course. On the other hand, listen to that other tremor in the force, the sound of two billion severed testicles floppily splatting on the ground, from all the emasculated men that are henpecked to death by the shrews that will invariably cheat on them with Pedro the pool boy or maybe Mike their “best” friend. It’s two sides of the same coin.

But it’s a simple, simple, flow-chart to follow.

Do your loving best to do your loving best. When the other person appears to NOT be doing their loving best, you do yours anyway and gently ask them if they are doing theirs. Their loving best sometimes sucks the butthole of a donkey with dissentry. And you just don’t recognise that they really are doing outstanding stuff, if only you knew where they were coming from as a starting point. (But never let anyone use that as an excuse, because if they do… well… it’s an excuse). More relevantly, YOUR loving best sometimes is the donkey with the squirts one. If you both are aware of this and you both agree to check in with each other and tell each other when you are donkey sharting instead of being lovingly at your best, and if you both agree (and can actually do it) to not lose even MORE of your shit when it is politely and gently pointed out that hey… this is not chocolate, honey, you stand a chance of then being able to actually do to and for each other, what a relationship is supposed to do: Evolve one another over time and until the day you both drop dead.

If you actually both learn to flow down that river in synergistic harmony, well… then you will REALLY see miracles begin to happen.

So, that’s the piece of advice I wanted to share.

And oh… just in case you were wondering, none of the above means they won’t irritate the living crap out of you at times, or make mistakes, or get things wrong, or screw up in a million different ways.

But errors are forgivable, thank God.

Intentional lies on the other hand, that’s something else.

I hope this is of some use to some of you. If it is, let me know.