The trick is that c2000 we were supposed-to recognize that the world was Not objective and external - and that instead we, each and personally, participated in the creating the reality of the world.
We were supposed to recognize that this participation in creating the 'objective, external world' needed to become active.
And that this active participation needed consciously to be chosen.
And for our creative contribution to be Good, entailed that we also chose to be aligned with God's creative destiny.
The problem was and is that failure to choose this active embrace of God and creation led to an evil default - which we see all around us today. Instead of actively/consciously-choosing Good -- Mankind has passively and unconsciously (and in-denial) chosen evil.
Dr. Charlton goes on to describe the failure to choose the active embrace of God and Creation as the failure to grow from spiritual adolescence to spiritual adulthood. Put another way, the free choice to align with God and participate in creation would have been to choose spiritual maturity.
As Dr. Charlton notes later in his post, this failure to choose has consequences.
The most significant of these is the regression of consciousness. The unwillingness to choose spiritual adulthood does not entail that people are allowed to remain in perpetual spiritual adolescence.
On the contrary, the unwillingness to choose spiritual adulthood precipitates a massive regression away from spiritual adolescence to a state I have sometimes referred to as 'slavery consciousness.'
The failure to become active participants in transfiguring the objective, external world opens the door for the objective, external world to actively overwhelm us and degrade us.
Spiritual adolescence is a state of alienation from God and Creation, but it is also filled with the potential for freedom and right choice. Spiritual slavery is an extreme state of alienation with no real potential for freedom or right choice because slavery consciousness severs all meaningful ties to Divine Reality.
People in this mode of consciousness no longer recognize the reality of God or the reality of their own spiritual natures. As a result, they surrender all of their spiritual resources and are rendered powerless against the forces of determination and objectification.
Since slavery consciousness is entirely preoccupied with external forces, it can no longer gauge, let alone use internal, spiritual resources properly. Consequently, people in this mode of consciousness are largely ruled by the forces of 'the given world' because they cannot perceive anything else.
As of now, the masses are either already firmly entrenched or are on their way to becoming firmly entrenched in this form of consciousness.
But what afflicts the masses does not have to afflict the individual person.
Choices can still be made.