Monday, January 23, 2017

be true to yourseelf

Have you ever entered into an unfamiliar group of people, and felt that all of their eyes where upon you.  We are uncomfortably aware of ourself as an object of the observation of others.  We speak of this kind of feeling as "self-consciousness."  We say, 'I was so self-conscious, that I spilled the drink all over my clothing,'  In such a situation, you are aware of your every movement, every word, and measure and judge each and every expression.  You try to behave in a manner and style which imitates the behaviors of the current culture of the immediate group, even though your imitative behavior may be in direct opposition to your true character.  If you are not practiced at this kind of masquerade, you would probably stumble, stammer,  and generally act foolish, because would have substituted false sets of behaviors for those that are characteristic of you.  Simply, you would be "acting-out" behaviors based on ideas about which were determined by others.  In his poem, from an "Essay On Man," Alexander Pope, illuminates the cultural authority created by man, and suggests a view point upon which to discover man's true self worth.

        "Honor and shame from no condition rise
         Act well your part, there all honor lies.
         Fortune in men has some small difference made,
         One flaunts in rags, one flutters in brocade,
         The friar hooded, and the monarch crowned.
         "What differ more (you cry) than crown or cowl!"
         I'll tell you friend! a wise man and a fool,
         You'll find, if the monarch act the monk,
         
         Or, cobber-like, the parson will be drunk.
         Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow:
         The rest is all but leather or prunella."

The worth which Pope suggest that makes all the difference is self worth: an unbending motivation that only allows your unique human characteristics to be clearly and sincerely expressed.  This kind of expression integrates you with your contacted environment.  It creats a quality of expression that harmoniously resonates with all that is experienced.  It forms an integration and a truth, and when this kind of expression focuses on noble ideas, it results in complete joy.

Such a high degree of character and integrity is not an easy achievement  Usually, trouble occurs, when "cobber-like the parson will be drunk."   For instance, the young adult who is characteristically interested in helping others, but through some self induced delusion discounts his "soul character" as a weakness or flaw, and focuses his life on the accumulation of wealth and power over others.  Trouble can also occur under the influence of assumptions made by others.  For instance, the child who shows "soul=character" in drawing, and is influenced to focus his life on something more solid and materially beneficial, like accounting.  In both of these cases, the misdirected journey of these souls is in direct opposition to their soul character.  This is like the old story about the two ends of a worm fighting over which is the true head.  The two ends of the worm struggle so hard that they pull themselves apart.  Such is the way with human beings, when their lower part is allowed to vie for control  over their higher apart, they begin to fight and consequently pull themselves apart.

Keep this in mind, find your authentic interests, those that truly involve your whole being, and that can evolve you to ever higher levels of development; keep a vigilant eye, lest you be carried away, and at all costs, keep yourself whole.           

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Saturday, January 14, 2017

we are made of star stuff

    "We are made of star stuff" was a sentence made popular by Carl Sagan, a cosmologist, plus other scientific titles, who quoted it often during his discussions on T.V.  Carl's use of "star stuff" and its content meaning is not original.  Some where in my readings, I remember reading about a philosopher, I can  not recall his name, but was prior to Plato, who used the phrase "made of star stuff."  This reminds me of another saying, "There is nothing new under the sun," (Ecclesiastes 1;4-11), only revisions and variations of that which has already been said and done.  What keeps us from not seeing the relative united extension of all things in their variations is our fixation on singular objects as the only real truth. If we can touch, smell, see, hear, or taste it, it must be real.  However, even though our senses receive input on a multi-dimensional field, we consciously interpret only a fractional part.   For example, physics tells that the total known range of light waves is from far infrared at 3 millimeters, to vacuum ultraviolet, at .3 nanometers.  The average range of light waves visible to our vision, is from 400 to 700.  We therefore see only the smallest fraction of what is going on.  Yet, for most of us it is this closed-end type of perception that is used as a conceptual basis for establishing the parameters of our reality.  Our material perceptions are so dominant that we even squeeze into them elements considerably less materially substantial, such as gases and air.  For us the material plane is the most dominant and influential field of our conscious involvement.  All other more ethereal modes of perception are under minded because of our preoccupation with the material world.

Given the material, evolutionary period in which we now live and its conceptual limitations, using an exclusive material measuring stick for our world understanding will fall extremely short with regard to an overall, comprehensive understanding of the physical and metaphysical truth. Our world consists of realities superimposed upon realities, from the invisible to the visible.  In effect our world is a creative synthesis of these multiple realities, mosaically wrapped and networked, speck and star united within a system and process so vast, so subtle, and so intricate, as to defy definition. 

The poet William Wordsworth, in his poem, "The World Is Too Much With Us," admonishes us:
          
              The world is too much with us: late and soon,
              Getting and spending, we lay waist our power:
              Little we see in nature that is ours, ...
"Little we see in nature that is ours," and there my friends is our massive blind-spot.  We believe we know Nature, because we see, hear, smell, touch, and in ways taste it every day, so q.e.d.(it has been demonstrated), it is reality, period.  Our sense measuring stick is however, drastically misleading.  We are engineered, as well as is every manifest thing, animate or inanimate, by Universal Nature.  Our fault dear Brutus is not in our stars for understanding our higher self, but in our narrow quality of consciousness.  We are Nature, and  Nature.is us; no separation.  The same principles and elements that make us, also make the universe, the only distinction is it expresses itself in a hierarchical form.  There is an ancient Egyptian axiom that may help to explain what I am getting at, "as above so below, as below so above."  To further explain, lets use an analogy of a painter who has chosen a subject to paint, and has mentally developed a concept to model it after.  His mental conceptual subject is created on a higher, more ethereal plane, and his representation on a lower plane will lack a higher quality of representation because the painter must work with lower, energetic materials or dampened down, energetic materials.  So his painting, will not and cannot match his primary mental conception. 

You may be questioning, 'If I am made only of physical stuff with a dampened down consciousness, then who am I'?  This is a huge question impregnated with opportunities to evolve your consciousness.  Here is an example from my daughter, Nikki.  She is a writer also, and writes a blog, called thesoulreporter.wordpress.com, if you would be interested, and that she tells me that lately every thing she writes, recently seems like bull shit.  I told my daughter that she had a shift into a deeper, wider consciousness, which made everything she wrote previously seem shallow and confused.  Now, with our attention placed on the evolution of consciousness we are entering into the realm of spirituality.  We have left the material side of our life, the body and our mind, which primarily are concerned with our physical survival, and have entered into the metaphysical realm of life.  However, our motive is not to keep separate these two aspects of life, but to unify them.

Here in this metaphysical realm we originated from star stuff.  We are cosmic beings.  Pythagoras, (500 B.C.E.) called the vehicle seed which grew our physical bodies and minds, a "monad."  He explained the evolutionary growth of all material entities and beings by a model called,"tetraktys." Tetraktys are a symbol describing the cosmic elements and principles used to evolve all manifestation.  They are ten separates points placed in the form of an equilateral triangle, with the first point at the apex. and the two points underneath the one point, three points underneath the two, and four points underneath the  three.  Each point's position is a representation of cosmic elements and principles evolving the three dimensional material realm.  The highest principle producing the elementary, lower, chained principles, and so on and so forth down the chain of production for all manifest things.

In Plato's Dialogues, Symposium, Aristophanes, relates a story, which could be millions of years old, (I know that stretches my creditability, but just consider it),  concerning the form and characteristics of the beings that lived back then.  "Formerly the natural state of man was not what it is now, but quite different.  For at first there were three sexes, not two as at present, male and female, but also a third having both together; the name remains with us, but the thing is gone.  There was then a male and female sex and a name to match, sharing both male and female, and now there is nothing left but the title used in reproach,  (hermaphrodite).  Next, the shape of man was quote round, back and ribs passing about it in a circle; and he had four arms and an equal number of legs, and two faces on a round neck, exactly alike; there was one head with these two opposite faces, and four ears, and two privy members, and the rest as you might imagine from this.  They walked upright as now, in which ever direction they liked; and when they wanted to run fast, they rolled over and over on the ends of their eight limbs they had in those days, as our tumblers tumble now with their legs straight out.  And why there were three sexes, and shaped like this, was because the male was at first born of the sun, and the female of the earth and the common sex had something of the moon, which combines both male and female; their shape was round and they were round because they were like their parents.  They had terrible strength and force, and great were their ambitions; they attacked the gods, and what Homer said of Otos and Ephialtes is said of them, that they tried to climb into heaven intending to make war against the gods."

Our whole being is made of star stuff.  Our whole being, atom for atom, is intimately tangent and networked throughout the breath of the cosmos.  We are the same "stuff" molded from a cosmic matrix into one of the many possible forms.  In other words, we are the embodiment of the cosmos, and the same quality and the same conditions as those required to uphold the cosmos are essential to each of us.  Giordano Bruno, (who was put to death because of his views by the Catholic Church), a fifteenth century natural philosopher, explains our cosmic connection and relationship in the following:  "All things are in the Universe, and the Universe is in all things; we in it and it in us; and therefore, all things concur in perfect harmony."   He continued,  "All the differences that we see in bodies is in regard to their form, complexion, constitution, and other properties and relationships, which is nothing more than a different mode of the same substance, the unchangeable and eternal essence in which are all forms, constitutions and members, unmanifest and homogenous."  So in the whole Universe there is a certain relativity of its parts, irrespective of the exact measurement of any one of its forms.

We are as musical tones resonating in certain proportional vibrations to one another.  If we keep within the proportion we create benefit for all others and for ourselves.  If we violate this harmony in any manner, we bring injury to all others and to ourselves.