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The LP Core provides a curriculum of basic spirituality. The LP Core gives you concepts, ideas, and techniques that provide a foundation for the more intermediate and advanced spirituality of subsequent levels.
If you’ve been around spirituality and religion for a long time you may be tempted to “skip” this level, especially if you consider yourself knowledgeable or experienced, but I don’t recommend you do that. On the one hand the LP Core provides critical information that corrects a lot of the old world dogma and indoctrination that you may have unwittingly absorbed, and that suppresses your body’s energy system and prevents your normal development, awakening, and empowerment. On the other hand, the LP Core provides a conceptual and technical foundation that will allow you to handle, without fear and difficulty, the expansion of consciousness into the body that occurs as you progress forward on this path. It is hard to overestimate the importance of this technical and conceptual foundation. People have said in the past that there is a fine line between mysticism and madness and in a world so clueless when it comes to consciousness and Spirit, that is certainly true, but unnecessary. There is no need to walk this razors edge at all. A little conceptual foundation coupled with some solid spiritual technique will give you the footing that will allow you to avoid the difficulties that many other individuals experience as they attempt to “advance” towards a more conscious and connected mode of existence.
To proceed with the LP Core level, simply begin by reading the books. I recommend you read the books in roughly the order outlined, but that is not strictly necessary. As you will find once you’ve spent some time walking the LP, the writing and information is interwoven and “multidimensional. “Concepts like The Fabric of Consciousness, which may initially be relatively meaningless and insignificant to you, will come to take on increasing levels of meaning and significance as you progress on the path. Also, pay attention to the parables, blog posts, and other resources that I make available. A lot of these additional materials will provide context, additional information, and connecting assistance that will help you weave a deeper and more authentic understanding and practice.
The Rocket Scientists’ Guide to Authentic Spirituality
The first thing that you should read as you begin your spiritual journey on the LP is The Rocket Scientists’ Guide to Authentic Spirituality (RSGAS). This book is like a professional standards document and outlines criteria that you may use to assess whether a spirituality, religion, guru, or priest is offering you an authentic spirituality that is designed to awaken and empower, or simply handling you a bottle full of costly ($$) snake oil. The book is not designed to be the final statement on spiritual standards by any means, it is simply an introduction that I hope we can build on. In a world where anybody can say anything about God, god, consciousness, spirit, and creation, the RSGAS is designed to get you thinking about the difference between authentic spiritualities which awaken and empower, and those which oppress and enslave. You can think of this book like your introduction to critical spirituality. You can also see it as a bit of an introduction to The Lightning Path itself since The Lightning Path is built on the seven pillars of authentic spirituality outlined in the book.
The Parable of the Blindfold
The second thing you should read as you begin your spiritual journey on the LP is The Parable of the Blindfold (PB). It is hard to describe the PB to someone who hasn’t already read it but the parable basically helps you see the spiritual and religious realities of this world. The PB opens our eyes to the fact, or at least opens your mind to a consideration of the fact, that a lot of people on this earth who purport to know, understand, and even teach about God, spirit, creation, and your place in it, really aren’t any more knowledgeable about these things than a rock in a field. The sad truth is, people dress themselves up in fancy robes, surround themselves with all the right “symbols,” build massive temples and churches, and collect your dollars and cents for the opportunity to feed you horseshit and nonsense. They talk a good game, use a few fancy (but poorly understood) spiritual terms, and convince you that they are wise and knowledgeable priests and shamans, but it all really amounts to little more than chaff in the field.
These might seem like harsh statements, and they are, but in my experience they are certainly true. As the book Rocket Scientists’ Guide to Authentic Spirituality (RSGAS) states, when you look at the Religions and Spiritualities (R&G) of this world (and the individuals who purport to speak for them), you find a mish mash of dogmatic and violent doctrines, fluffy and substance-less alternatives, and profiteering prophets who will say and do just about anything for the opportunity of taking your money. When it comes to R&S the reality is there are no professional ethics, no standards of conduct, and no way of judging the Truth from the horseshit. As pointed out in the RSGAS, earth based R&S is a potpourri of anything goes. From priests telling children that God’s gonna burn them for eternity to crystal toting new-agers who dance a song of enlightenment while treating their families like absolute dirt, nobody draws a line. In the realm of R&S, anything goes.
But, the buck stops here!
In the RSGAS we ask the questions, “what constitutes an authentic spirituality?”
“How can you tell when a spirituality works?”
“How do you know the Truth from the bullshit”?”
In the RSGAS we draw that line. On that side of the line are inauthentic, old world spiritualities that oppress, disempower, and justify the horrors of this world and on this side of the line are new world spiritualities that awaken and empower. The RSGAS teaches you to tell the difference between the two, which really isn’t that hard when you come right down to it. It is only because nobody ever taught you to think about the difference that you can’t see it. Once you’ve got the conceptual and intellectual tools to understand, the two are different like night and day.
Ultimately, the goal of RSGAS is to raise your thinking about spirituality to a higher level and get you to treat spirituality like any other professional discipline, If you hire a professional engineer to build you a bridge, you expect that engineer to build you a bridge that works. In other words, you to expect the Truth. RSGAS teaches us to expect the same from the priests, shamans, authors and others who don the mantle of spiritual authority. If they are going to talk about God, Spirit, consciousness, life, creation, and everything then it is reasonable that we expect them to know what the heck they are talking about.
Rocket Scientists’ Guide to Money and the Economy
The Rocket Scientists’ Guide to Money and the Economy (RSGME) changes the pace up a bit. The RSGME continues the process of basic spiritual instruction by discussing the topic of energy, money, and labour. You might find it a little strange to be talking about money so early in a set of courses on spirituality, but once you read the book you’ll see why. Money is nothing more than a physical manifestation of energy and there’s nothing more spiritual than energy (i.e. money) and nothing more important than understanding how energy (i.e. money) is used (or rather misused) on this planet. And the RSGME does that. The RSGME shows you the nature of money as a way of exchanging energy (which is often manifested as labour) and then shows you the true nature of the primary economic systems on this planet. Unfortunately, the picture that RSGME paints is not pretty, but it is an important one. The economy on this planet is set up to rob people of their energy and accumulate it for the benefit of a few wealthy and powerful people. From a spiritual perspective this is bad because this situation prevents us all from manifesting and creating the world we want to create. The truth is, on any level of reality, we need energy to create. If that energy is taken from us then our ability to create is diminished. What’s worse, if our energy is taken and accumulated by others, then these others get to use our energy for their selfish purposes, and that’s not fair. This was more obvious during the time of kings, queens, and nobility who extracted energy (and sometimes even blood) from the peasants to build their castles and fight their wars, but it is the same today. The details of The System may have changed, and the people “at the top” may have been shuffled around, but the essence remains the same.
Besides giving you a crash course in the exploitative energy systems of this world, the RSGME is also important (as are all Rocket Scientist books that I write) because they demonstrate that even complicated and esoteric areas of inquiry, like economics, can be made accessible and easily understood. This is a useful spiritual lesson in and of itself because so many people like to take so much basic spiritual (or economic, or psychological, or sociological, or scientific) truth and wrap it up in so much complicated EPMO. As you’ll hopefully see quite clearly once you’ve read an RSG or two, complicated EPMO is usually the sign of either a) lack of understanding or b) a deliberate attempt to obscure. Good writers and good teachers make what they are teaching about easy to understand and digest.
The Great Awakening: Concepts and Techniques for Successful Spiritual Practice
Speaking of making things clear, The Great Awakening: Concepts and Techniques for Successful Spiritual Practice (GA) gives you a clear and precise run down of basic spiritual technique. The GA, which is short and easy to digest, begins the process of shifting your consciousness that is such an important part of the LP Curricula. In particular, the GA challenges your perspective on your physical body and encourages you to disengage your identity from it. The GA teaches that your physical body is nothing more or less than a vehicle for your consciousness. Just like the car that you get into in the morning so you can drive to work, your body is a vehicle that your “soul” (i.e. your consciousness) gets into so it can drive around and experience creation. And while this might not seem like a major insight to you at this point, it is. The GA begins the necessary process of you taking ownership and responsibility for your physical body, not as an expression of who you are, but as a vehicle that you have to honour, take care of, nurture, and develop. Towards that end the GA provides basic information on how to maintain and operate your physical vehicle ranging from basic spiritual techniques that even your children should know about (like deep breathing, mental control, self trust, and visualization) to basic nutrition and personal care.
You can consider the GA like the learner’s manual for your physical body. It’s the material you need to know before you “turn the vehicle on” and start driving around the great roadways of creation. You can ignore the information in this book if you want, but if you run into trouble once you’ve started the process of empowerment, don’t blame me.
The Book of Light: The Nature of God, The Structure of Consciousness, and the Universe Within You.
No course on basic spirituality would be complete without an introduction to cosmology and theology and that is what The Book of Light Volume One (BOL VI) is. The BOL VI provides a basic introduction to the cosmology and theology of the LP. The BOL VI answers all the primary big questions like what is the nature of god, what is the nature of creation, what is the purpose of creation, etc.
The concepts in the Book of Light are very important and you should make every attempt to understand them before moving on (and don’t worry, they are not that hard). In a world where God is presented to us like some maniac loser, madly “testing” his children and discarding those he finds unworthy into some kind of cosmic inferno, dust heap, or eternal grindstone, the BOL VI provides the Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth. We are light, we are god, we are glory and we are the ones we’ve been waiting for, just like Jesus and all the other great Avatars have said.
Corinthians 3:16 Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?
If you are interested, we’ve collected more of these sayings on our forums.
Coming away from this book you will have a sense of the glory and magnificence, beneficence and compassion, of God (with a big “G”). While reading the book I recommend you pay attention to the reality of this Earth with all it’s disease, suffering, poverty, and war. Note just how badly “out of alignment” and “out of tune” with our true power and glory this world really is. Keep in mind that the greater goal of the LP is to give people the skill and power they need to “tune things up” and fix this mess. As you’ll recognize after you’ve read the BOL VI, it is not beyond our collective power. After all, we have the power of God at our fingertips. We just have to wake up, remember, and claim that which was ours to begin with, but that was taken from us as children without our knowing.
The Basic Book
The final book on the LP core is The Basic Book. This book provides a broad psychological introduction to the LP. In this book I introduce several concepts that I hope will form the basis of a “spiritually sophisticated” social science (psychology, sociology, etc). In the book I look at your physical unit, go over the nature of consciousness (introduced in The Book of Light), look at how consciousness interfaces with the physical unit, and look at what constitutes proper developmental conditions (i.e. the developmental psychology) of the physical unit. I also take a brief introductory look at abnormal psychology and why things “go wrong.” As we see in that book, most of what’s psychologically wrong in this world (and with our physical units) can be traced not to genetics but to a pathological and seriously out of alignment system within which we are socialized, and of which we are forced to endure.
The book goes way beyond current psychological theory and presents a psychological framework that will push your understanding of the psychology of the physical unit considerably forward. Although this book will be of particular interest to professionals in the area of psychology and social work seeking to deepen their understanding of the physical unit and how to approach healing and proper function, the book is written for everybody. Reading it will not only deepen your understanding of the LP, but will also prepare you for the intermediate and advanced levels of this curriculum.
