It seems like most humans naturally like echo chambers. If asked, I think most people would say they don't cultivate an echo chamber or that they don't want that experience. Still, we often unconsciously move towards them. It's a lot more comfortable for most people when most people around you agree with your views and say things which support them. It can make you feel appreciated or confident. The positive feeling there is normal so it's hard to fault people for falling into it when it happens kind of accidentally. It's another thing when people force an echo chamber to develop.
In an exoteric sense, avoiding echo chambers is important for magicians to learn, explore, and challenge ourselves. The nature of what we do really requires that we have that challenge and that we build facility with exploring. We also need to be able engage with and put ourselves in the headspace for a variety of ideas and perspectives even if they aren't ultimately our own or the ones we most often see as useful.
More than that, SPIRITS. We routinely seek communication with non-physical beings. The way they communicate with us is filtered through our own understanding and our internal language much more so than communication with physical beings is.
When we cultivate, or even allow ourselves to fall into, a life primarily built on echo chambers, it's a lot harder to recognize them. That makes it easy to ignore when our spirit interactions start to look like an echo chamber.
Why would spirits allow themselves to parrot your opinions? Well, unless they're tricking you, they probably won't just parrot your opinions.
Spirits should surprise you, challenge you, disagree with you, and teach you new things just as much as they agree with you, support you, and confirm things for you. The interactions should be varied and natural rather than play out as a constant reaffirmation of your expectations.
Sometimes...they might even just ignore you.
If your spirits only ever agree with you, only ever make you feel awesome special and chosen, or only ever match your expectations...you might just be deluding yourself. Or you might have spirits deluding you. You might have spirits showing up and doing stuff you ask but you might be completely misunderstanding or even making up the communication.
Do the spirits all have the same voice? Do they all seem like your voice? Do they all seem like something movies have taught you to expect? Do they lack individual mannerisms and characteristics? The answer shouldn't be yes to these questions. If it is, you have an echo chamber and it might be entirely populated by you, or worse, things feeding your expectations to take advantage of you. The former is probably more likely though.
Jumping back a bit...the spirits might not always agree with you but they might always fit your expectations. If you think angels will always be antagonistic and condescending and the angels you talk to exclusively fit a caricature of a condescending holier than thou, human-hater then how much of what you're experiencing is your imagination fulfilling your expectations? If demons are always cuddly misunderstood friends with no danger, or are always snarling monsters out to trick you, again, is this lack of nuance and this solid proof of your own biases an actual consistent element of spirit manifestations or is it your imagination?
If spirits show up and tell you that you're a piece of crap all the time, and you believe you're a piece of crap or you believe they think you're a piece of crap, that is just as much of an echo chamber as the spirits showing up and telling you that you're amazing.
Sometimes, the spirit echo chamber isn't hurting much except for robbing you of a more authentic and more helpful experience. Sometimes it might lead you to choices that could be damaging...but so could a real spirit interaction.
Ultimately, you need discernment. You can't test the identity of the spirit fully, but you can look for evidence of their presence, their activity in your life, the accuracy of the info they give you, or even whether or not what you're perceiving is what they're trying to communicate. Build those tools to test and explore your experiences. Use discernment the same way you should with humans in bodies. Look for nuance and individuality in the spirit world like you would in the real world.
We all need to hold this mirror up to ourselves from time to time, myself included. We need to examine whether socially with embodied persons or spiritually with non-embodied persons if we’re authentically allowing ourselves to experience what’s out there. When we do, hopefully it allows us a richer and deeper world.
Expect surprises.
*****(I would assume it goes without saying but it probably doesn’t, this is not advocating that you make space in your life for obvious non-starters, like people who are trying to hurt you. There are some things out there we need to avoid for our own safety and sanity. It is still valuable to be aware that those things are out there though.)*****
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