Some paths are more circuitous and painful than others. Knowing what to watch for can save you lots of unnecessary trouble. This comes down to matching enthusiasm with discernment and seeking out the wisdom needed to navigate a clear path.

Here is a list of pitfalls I have encountered on my path to higher understanding:

• Accurate prophecies are no guarantee of positive intent. Deceptive sources may make successful predictions solely to win blind devotion, induce feelings of doom, or create self-fulfilling prophecies. When positive sources give prophecies, they respect freewill and present probabilities without macabre coloring or undue fatalism.

• That a body of material contains identifiable truths does not necessarily make it valid. Deceptive sources may pile a heap of lies upon an otherwise factual basis, while the sloppier cases simply slap together fragments of existing material. In contrast, positive material is always more than the sum of its parts and presents extra information that is novel, practical, and verifiable.

• Preoccupation with lower truths can distract from the pursuit of higher truths. For instance, obsession with exposing political corruption can distract from gaining necessary spiritual empowerment, which is a popular tactic employed by hyperdimensional entities and their human agents. Positive sources prioritize by framing lower truths in their higher context.

• Just because something contains convoluted trivia, complex jargon, and voluminous pages, it does not necessarily contain profound truths. The illusion of profundity sends people on a wild goose chase for grand truths better found elsewhere. Positive sources are complex only for the sake of accuracy and conciseness.

• The alternative to a fallacious belief system may not always be a better alternative. Rejecting something and seeking its diametric opposite could simply be going from self-deception to self-destruction. Positive sources do not subscribe to this mechanical binary thinking and instead present balanced solutions that transcend such false dichotomies.

• Deceptive sources win allegiance by stroking the ego and playing upon insecurities. We are all special and here for a reason, but these dark forces diminish humility and cater to self-importance by assigning one grandiose titles, messianic roles, and outlandish past life histories. Positive sources help you achieve a humble understanding of your place in the universe without exalting or repressing who you truly are.

• Sometimes an action toward balance can overshoot equilibrium and become a new type of imbalance. For instance, removing harmful contaminants from your diet can bring a healthier balance, but removing too many foods without proper substitutes can lead to nutritional deficiency. To avoid this trap, corrective actions must always be gauged relative to equilibrium.

• The right method for the wrong person can give detrimental results. For example, the Fourth Way methodology aims to grow souls within those who have none; if people who need soul awakening rather than soul growth limit themselves to such a system, they will assume they are less than they truly are and spiritually suffocate. By knowing yourself, you will know what is right for you. [By Fourth Way, I mean the system of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, which is incomplete and skewed. For a more balanced and complete treatment, see the system outlined by Boris Mouravieff in Gnosis].

• Gifts are not always given with sincerity. Alien abductees are frequently given psychic powers and even healing abilities, but to the aliens these are worthless trinkets they don’t mind trading for spiritual and biological ownership over the abductee. Gifts are only sincere when given unconditionally and selflessly.

• Being under attack is not always a sign of being on the right path. Attacks can sometimes serve as false confirmation in order to cattle-prod the paranoid into clutching more tightly onto their deceptive belief system, such as devout Catholics receiving demonic attacks because they are easily herded this way and fed upon. For those on the right track, attacks are far more sophisticated; they seek to undermine faith and pressure one into committing self-sabotage.

• Astral deceivers often impersonate impressive characters such as historical figures, ascended masters, archangels, Jesus, or aliens. They do this in order to form a parasitical bond with those who believe this deception, and they go to great lengths to build up their characters. Material should always be evaluated on its content, not its source, and deceptive sources will give cunningly flawed or empty material regardless of their self-proclaimed credentials.

• Noble intentions can be diverted onto quixotic endeavors. Those with good hearts can, due to a lack of knowledge or ungrounded idealism, be led onto a primrose path demanding much time, energy, and resources in order to keep them spinning their wheels thinking they are making a difference when in the big picture their talents could be better applied elsewhere. Discernment requires not letting subjectivity and wishful thinking mask the warning signs that one is pursuing an inefficient path.

• Group consensus is a double edged sword. While conferment and agreement between multiple individuals lowers the risk of personal bias, if the entire group can be entrained into agreeing upon a false idea, then any individual dissenting on the side of truth will be rebuffed on the rationalization that an individual is far more likely to be wrong than an entire group. Personal communion with one’s heart and mind should always take precedence over group consensus because the truth is within.

• Anything good can be shown in a bad light; anything bad can be shown in a good light. By taking the best promises of a deceptive path and comparing it to the worst risks of a productive path, the deceptive path may falsely seem like the optimal choice. Only by examining the totality of each option can one make an informed choice.

• That a method or system “just works” and produces visible results is no guarantee that the system is ultimately beneficial. What results you see may be matched by greater amounts of detriment you cannot see, which is especially true of systems that emphasize substituting technology, ritual, or formula for spiritual practice, self-determination, and discovery. The best one can do is consider the benefits but hunt for the potential shortcomings of a system and guard against them.

• Deception seeks to emulate truth as closely as possible while propagating just the opposite. It shares the superficial characteristics of a positive source and hopes the target audience does not look past the shallow mimicry. Ultimately, something always tends to feel “off” about these sources despite surface appearances indicating nothing out of the ordinary; once intuition alerts you, it is the job of reason to help you zero in on the problem.

http://montalk.net/matrix/118/methods-of-deception