The Media's Spiritual Blackout (Tuesday 10 January)

Tuesday 10 January 2012

This is the final day of the |stressful third of this week| according to the formula, but the moon's presence in Leo helps make things more cheerful. The reconstruction of your life continues, with supportive strength (Saturn and Jupiter well-aspected, and a trine between Mars and the sun). Questions of income are being resolved. Your mind is sharp to understand finances and practical matters, and so your choices in that realm are likely to be correct, for the rest of this week at least, so if you are working out something of that nature, now is the time.

Household matters go well, as if you are enjoying your home and prosperity within it. Gifts may be given or received.

The quite rare (twice in 29 years) trine between Saturn and Neptune is almost exact, and so is worth pondering. It is a happy collusion between materiality (Saturn) and spirituality (Neptune). Meditation, prayer, and spiritual study or awareness are favored deeply. Which brings up matters Sir Real has been concerned with . . .

Cosmic Piper


The Media's Spiritual Blackout

Spiritual seekers have been portrayed as escapists. One feels, for example, that the editors of the New York Times have decided, point blank, though never mentioning it to their readers, to publish no good or helpful articles about spirituality or spiritual seekers. They publish very frequently articles by agnostics or atheists, or scientistic thinkers debunking what they consider superstitious beliefs in the mysterious or paranormal. One might think that "the world's greatest newspaper," in the interest of comprehensiveness, might report on the actual beliefs and spiritual practices of the world's people. No dice. Not unless, of course, some religious person or group does something silly or nasty. Then one will find long, detailed, accusatory articles in the New York Times and in the other media (which mimic it when not actually stealing from it). "Look how silly, wrong, unethical or ridiculous these religious people are!" is the very clear message. One might call it a "subtext" although it is usually more blatant than that.

For example, I saw yesterday that the Times had published an article titled "Yoga can Wreck your Body" with a comic-strip drawing of people's bodies knocked out of shape or distorted by hatha yoga exercises. In other words, "We were right all the time, the best way of life is the materialistic agnostic or atheistic New York way of life: work, get rich, have sex, be a real mensch. Yoga is for idiots." It's not hard at all to read that subtext. The editors of the Times also believe, no doubt, that "Christianity (Islam, Hinduism) will wreck your mind and your life," although since they might have a few Christian or Muslim or Hindu paying subscribers they are rather timid about making obvious what they really think.

I have been doing hatha yoga for thirty years, almost every day, and my body is in excellent shape. I chose the best possible exercise to do, the Surya Namaskar or Salutation to the Sun, which I recommend to one and all.

When have you seen in "the world's greatest newspaper" a Christian sermon? Or a Jewish rabbi's sermon? (Although the Times is, of course, pro-Jewish, when it comes to secular Jewish culture, it draws the line at the core of the religion itself.) Or a Hindu guru's instructions to his followers? A Muslim sheik's sermon? Or a commentary by a Buddhist teacher? In my view they might easily, at least once a week, devote a page not to the scandals which ripple across the field of religion as across every field, but to presenting the actual views of religious people. They publish the views of atheists, but not the views of Christians, Muslims, or Hindus. (I won't even mention Theosophists, occultists, and astrologers.)

"The world's greatest newspaper" has a lot of catching up, and growing up, to do.

Sir Real