Seeing Ghosts where they don't exist.
For the sanitised, anything and everything that anyone else has to say on the deeper meaning of our existence is finger waved as lunacy, while ironically subscribing to a range of untenable materialistic beliefs. Words of Wisdom are reduced to sound bites to be attacked, and any who start a empathetic movement for genuine growth is seen as starting a cult. I often used to chalk the cause up to disillusionment from organised religion(s) that they were brought up with, often through the cultural zeitgeist of their time. Unbeknownst to most, destruction of any 'belief' is often done with surgical precision to replace it with something more convenient for the movers and shakers of their time. One must first be sanitised, philosophically, spiritually and ideologically, in order to be sold to repeatedly.
To quote Friedrich Nietzsche “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”
Killing 'God', was a purposeful endeavour by the increasingly material thought of the purely rational mind, and always will be. Especially at a time when the followers of their own faiths have genuinely missed the true meaning of their texts, how then would the society at large that are increasingly disenfranchised by their own traditions and faiths reconcile fantastical stories that carry truth of their own being?
If not a cult, then you're a conman!
Much like those that shouted "heretic!" when Galileo suggested a heliocentric solar system. It's almost as if one label does not stick, then the subversive label conman is invoked; that targets a person's ability to sustain themselves to such an undertaking. Although these days "Grifter!" is the word in fashion. For a species that is so profoundly connected and conscious of it's own spiritual nature in relation to the universe and beyond, we are so quick to denounce and separate ourselves from our own natures in the most ironic of ways, not realising that you will be constantly trading one ignorance for another perpetually, until you liberate yourself from the prison of your own fears and ego.
I don't blame them, but some of the same people line up at a studio in their leotards, yoga mats and 'gurus' on thrones for multi-billion dollar industry that bastardised meaningful practices to specifically tailor them for the inflation of one's ego. Truth is almost always sacrificed on the altar of the Ego, and the more we worship our 'infallible' rational mind, the more we become increasingly materialistic in our views. Perhaps it's time to listen to understand, not listen to judge.
We are the Demons we create.
My personal journey in understanding what little I do, comes mostly from the mistakes I unknowingly made in nurturing my own intellect, my strange evolution as someone from the far south east, cut off from my roots in a strange island that used to share the same culture as that of my heritage, so much that it's name is in Sanskrit but later westernised to lose it's own identity and heritage. I grew up with an anglo-centric understanding of the world, idolising western literature as the hallmark of human intelligence and progress. I started burrowing myself further and deeper into developing a disdain for organised religions, as the people that I followed at the time constantly preached that I was being lied to. I scoffed every time I saw someone praying, dismissing them and their stories as simpletons and that somehow I was superior intellectually.
Having developed strong critical thinking and reasoning skills as a result (the one good thing to come out of it), I soon realised the folly in my own arrogance much later in life, to come to the realisation that I was the very demon that I was denouncing. I was an atheistic fanatic, a shallow materialistic simpleton with no sense of reality, falling eternally into a nihilistic void of abuse and hedonism. While I see now the layers of reality that contextualises our understanding of the universe, I am just a man, limited by the evils and the divinity of our nature. I was exceptionally good at my job, and was exceptionally bad at being human.
I share this not in vain, but rather that this is a common theme of growth that connects us together. The only way we can grow is to be better equipped with tools that allow us to completely experience reality in all it's forms, while developing a keen understanding of our own natures.
Winning, is not a condition you can achieve against yourself.