Pope John/Paul II, who reined from 1978 to 2005, stirred up world wide opinion by his unforeseen statements of recognition and apology for the atrocious and complicit acts carried out by the Catholic Church at certain periods within the course of her historical existence. Although his statements of apology pointed towards specific incidents, there seemed to be an genuine intention to include all the vile acts, emanating from the Church's origination to the present time. To my mind Pope John/Paul's apology was bold and courageous, given the strict, ancient tenets surrounding actions taken by the Church concerning faith and morals. The ancient Church doctrines give the reigning pope the attribute of infallibility whenever he makes a decision concerning faith and morals. This recognition of infallibility comes out of the unbroken line of vicarship dating back to Jesus the Christ, than to St. Peter, and continuing, unbroken to the present pope Francis. St. Peter was the first living vicar of Christ; a living conduit from Jesus the Christ invested with His infallibility.
The Pope's apology, as the Vicar of Christ, certainly brings into question the validity of the doctrine of infallibility. Here we have the head of the Catholic Church, invested with the attribute of infallibility, admitting and apologizing for vile mistakes and complicit acts committed by the Church. The Pope's action must have created waves of outrage through out the hierarchy of the Church. Yet, despite the harsh theological and political reactions he knew he would receive, Pope John/Paul II spoke out.
Some speculate that because of the Pope's deteriorating health he wanted to make this apology the hallmark of his rein, and thus to be recognized by history as the pope of peace, justice, and truth. Although the Pope's poor health might have added urgency to the timing of his apology, I cannot see the motivation being derived from such a selfish desire; rather I take this good man's actions as a peacemaker through out the world and his willingness to be the torchbearer of the virtues of justice and truth to be the guiding intent of his motivation. Any interpretation of his apology as anything other than an act of sincere confession of repentance would be the cynical projection of the interpreter.
The Pope's apology was unexpected and took most every one by surprise, but I believe his impulse towards truth and forgiveness was a dramatic representation of a more universal impulse for truth and justice beginning to unfold through out our entire world. When we listen and pay attention to the events happening, we find empirical evidence that shows that within the present human, collective consciousness there is a germ of the virtues of truth and justice growing within our hearts and minds. This impulse is not simply a reaction to acts of repression and force or is it an act of strict obedience to religious doctrine, but a fundamental, cosmic principle of being, that has impregnated our hearts and has begun to manifest.
The ideas of truth, justice, and tolerance have attached themselves to our collective mind, and within the deliberate and inevitable, steady march of human evolution, will begin their growth towards full expression. These are ideas whose time has come, and we say with Emerson, ..."It is impossible to tilt the beam. All the tyrants, and proprietors, and monopolists of the world in vain set shoulder to heave the bar. Settles evermore the ponderous equator to its line, and man, and mote, and star, and sun, must range to it or be pulverized by the recoil."
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Sunday, January 25, 2015
economic ideas ruling our lives
We have forgotten a great many ideas as we moved along our way in life. Some of these forgotten ideas have changed the course of our lives, some were unfulfilled wishes, and some were mere expressions of our vanity, but all, regardless of the degree of their influence, gave us direct testimony to their power.
It is ideas that make and shake the world, and that unmake human beings and the world. Ideas, once loosed by the human mind have the power to shape and determine present and future realities. They can fizzle and sputter, and eventually die out or can, like a giant magnet, create a great field of influence, and attract and persuade the mind of millions. It was ideas of compassion, love, and forgiveness by Gautama the Buddha and Jesus the Christ that lifted the hearts and minds of men and women out of spiritual depression and inertia, and into a higher spiritual awareness, which awareness, is still manifest today. It was the ideas of, revenge, superiority and dominance from the mind of Hitler that launched our globe into World War II.
What are the current ideas that influence our lives, and that make and shake our world?
Our minds are most focused today on ideas of how to accumulate wealth and material things or expressed in a poetical way, "getting and spending." We have mixed the deeper aspects of our lives with ideas of "getting and spending." For instance, we have taken simple and primary ideas of survival, (food, shelter, clothing, procreation, etc.) and convoluted them with complex ideas of business and investment economics such as, scarcity, supply and demand, profit, marketing, inflation, deflation, etc. Where once obtaining the necessary knowledge, resources, and proper know-how for survival, while physically very demanding, was but a relatively simple task. Survival today has become extremely complex, due to the involvement of vast for-profit business networks, and intrusive public regulatory institutions, with the power to exert legislative and legal sanctions. For example, instead of doing the work of building our own shelters with our community's help, we pay dollars that we earn from a job to a vast empire of real estate brokers, mortgage bankers, builders, trade workers, suppliers, and building code officials, who in turn take dollars as a consideration for the building of our shelter. We call this involvement in getting dollars from our job, to spend on survival by the euphemism, "making a living." We spend the better part of our lives pursuing, "making a living," and as a result have atrophied the best and highest part of our essence, our souls.
How have these ideas of economic getting and spending come to be so dominate in our cultural mind?
From about the Middle Ages on to our present time, the ideals that have been seeded and growing in Western Civilization were manifested by the strict deductive, rational thinking processes that came out of Western Philosophy and Western Religions. The metrics of measuring and judging tangible objects as to, length, breath, and width, was a natural fit to just about every aspect of commerce and economics. Today these ideas have developed into an entire belief-system, sanctioned and maintained by a legion of economic preachers, with all manner of certified degrees, who have now tied in with the technological developments of advertisement which have helped to reinforce, support, and expand this belief-system. Both the private and public sectors of our culture have learned long ago how and where to use messages to promote and influence their special interests. Consequently, our senses of sight and sound are continuously assaulted by streams of propaganda, slogans, and advertisements.
We have been exposed so thoroughly to such messages that they have infiltrated into our cultural lives. We have incorporated them into our every day speech, and have used them as basic truths for conducting our lives. Plato, in his "Dialogues" remarks, ..."A man should come to resemble that which it delights him to associate."... In a great irony, we have become to resemble the very products that we work to produce and offer for sale. As products, what we offer for sale is our natural, human resources, in the form of economic productivity.
Like products, we package and market our productivity based upon the economic ideas working in our cultural belief system, which implicitly states that what validates us as human beings is our productivity. Thus we package ourselves in the most fashionable accessories, mark ourselves with a price tag, distribute ourselves in the wright demographics, and affirm ourselves with smart slogans.
It is through ignorance of our essential human constitution, that we place our greatest value on economic ideas, and value out humanness by our capacity to be economically productive. By forcing our mind primarily on economic getting and spending, we have reduced what it means to be human to its lowest and most material common denominator. The poet, Wordsworth admonishes us:
"The world is too much with us;
late and soon,
Getting and spending
we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away,
a sordid boon!"...
We were not meant to live as products or increments of labor productivity or to direct our energy toward exclusive material gain and prestige, for a few self absorbed individuals or to blindly follow cultural belief systems based on the lowest and narrowest of ideas. We were born into our world with all Nature behind us and the whole glory of the Universe. We are microcosmic replicas of our Cosmos. The same qualities and forces that uphold the Cosmos, uphold us it in us, and us in it. Our true destiny lies not with the expression of the material elements in our make-up, but with the expression of our spiritual elements. Those universal qualities as unity, harmony, compassion, and love are the core out of which our true essence emanated.
By believing that our essence and value centers around "making a living" and our relation to what we materially have, we reduce our potential range of life to the lowest and narrowest quality, and constrict the breath of our hopes and dreams. However, by directing our human will towards our highest essence, we naturally entire into the porthole of the governing forces and qualities of the Cosmos, and infinitely expand the possibilities of our lives, hopes, and dreams; in so doing, we fulfill our true destiny.
It is ideas that make and shake the world, and that unmake human beings and the world. Ideas, once loosed by the human mind have the power to shape and determine present and future realities. They can fizzle and sputter, and eventually die out or can, like a giant magnet, create a great field of influence, and attract and persuade the mind of millions. It was ideas of compassion, love, and forgiveness by Gautama the Buddha and Jesus the Christ that lifted the hearts and minds of men and women out of spiritual depression and inertia, and into a higher spiritual awareness, which awareness, is still manifest today. It was the ideas of, revenge, superiority and dominance from the mind of Hitler that launched our globe into World War II.
What are the current ideas that influence our lives, and that make and shake our world?
Our minds are most focused today on ideas of how to accumulate wealth and material things or expressed in a poetical way, "getting and spending." We have mixed the deeper aspects of our lives with ideas of "getting and spending." For instance, we have taken simple and primary ideas of survival, (food, shelter, clothing, procreation, etc.) and convoluted them with complex ideas of business and investment economics such as, scarcity, supply and demand, profit, marketing, inflation, deflation, etc. Where once obtaining the necessary knowledge, resources, and proper know-how for survival, while physically very demanding, was but a relatively simple task. Survival today has become extremely complex, due to the involvement of vast for-profit business networks, and intrusive public regulatory institutions, with the power to exert legislative and legal sanctions. For example, instead of doing the work of building our own shelters with our community's help, we pay dollars that we earn from a job to a vast empire of real estate brokers, mortgage bankers, builders, trade workers, suppliers, and building code officials, who in turn take dollars as a consideration for the building of our shelter. We call this involvement in getting dollars from our job, to spend on survival by the euphemism, "making a living." We spend the better part of our lives pursuing, "making a living," and as a result have atrophied the best and highest part of our essence, our souls.
How have these ideas of economic getting and spending come to be so dominate in our cultural mind?
From about the Middle Ages on to our present time, the ideals that have been seeded and growing in Western Civilization were manifested by the strict deductive, rational thinking processes that came out of Western Philosophy and Western Religions. The metrics of measuring and judging tangible objects as to, length, breath, and width, was a natural fit to just about every aspect of commerce and economics. Today these ideas have developed into an entire belief-system, sanctioned and maintained by a legion of economic preachers, with all manner of certified degrees, who have now tied in with the technological developments of advertisement which have helped to reinforce, support, and expand this belief-system. Both the private and public sectors of our culture have learned long ago how and where to use messages to promote and influence their special interests. Consequently, our senses of sight and sound are continuously assaulted by streams of propaganda, slogans, and advertisements.
We have been exposed so thoroughly to such messages that they have infiltrated into our cultural lives. We have incorporated them into our every day speech, and have used them as basic truths for conducting our lives. Plato, in his "Dialogues" remarks, ..."A man should come to resemble that which it delights him to associate."... In a great irony, we have become to resemble the very products that we work to produce and offer for sale. As products, what we offer for sale is our natural, human resources, in the form of economic productivity.
Like products, we package and market our productivity based upon the economic ideas working in our cultural belief system, which implicitly states that what validates us as human beings is our productivity. Thus we package ourselves in the most fashionable accessories, mark ourselves with a price tag, distribute ourselves in the wright demographics, and affirm ourselves with smart slogans.
It is through ignorance of our essential human constitution, that we place our greatest value on economic ideas, and value out humanness by our capacity to be economically productive. By forcing our mind primarily on economic getting and spending, we have reduced what it means to be human to its lowest and most material common denominator. The poet, Wordsworth admonishes us:
"The world is too much with us;
late and soon,
Getting and spending
we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away,
a sordid boon!"...
We were not meant to live as products or increments of labor productivity or to direct our energy toward exclusive material gain and prestige, for a few self absorbed individuals or to blindly follow cultural belief systems based on the lowest and narrowest of ideas. We were born into our world with all Nature behind us and the whole glory of the Universe. We are microcosmic replicas of our Cosmos. The same qualities and forces that uphold the Cosmos, uphold us it in us, and us in it. Our true destiny lies not with the expression of the material elements in our make-up, but with the expression of our spiritual elements. Those universal qualities as unity, harmony, compassion, and love are the core out of which our true essence emanated.
By believing that our essence and value centers around "making a living" and our relation to what we materially have, we reduce our potential range of life to the lowest and narrowest quality, and constrict the breath of our hopes and dreams. However, by directing our human will towards our highest essence, we naturally entire into the porthole of the governing forces and qualities of the Cosmos, and infinitely expand the possibilities of our lives, hopes, and dreams; in so doing, we fulfill our true destiny.
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
the Christmas Tree
There is no part of a Christmas Tree I do not like.: its pungent scent, its perpetual greenness, its spiraling shape pointing towards the heavens, its tenacious will for life even after being cut away from Mother Earth, and its wonderful compliment of colored garlands, ornaments, and lights. What a wondrous site.!
The affinity I have for Christmas Trees goes back to the beginning of my memories, and
all of those memories are associated with feelings of peace and joy. I remember that on the first night of the day my family and I "put up" the Christmas Tree, I would get out of bed while every one was asleep and "plug in" the Tree's lights. Then I would sit at the "feet" of the Tree absorbing its celestial radiance. I was especially attracted to the lights on the Tree: the reds, golds, greens, whites, and the blues, as they spiraled the Tree from its top to its bottom, awakening the night with a dazzle of twinkles. I felt such comfort, peace, and joy just sitting there next to the Christmas Tree.
Even now so many years from my first memories, I still get those same feelings when ever I am near a Christmas Tree. Of course, as I got older I came to understand that my deep feelings associated with Christmas Trees were not unique. Many people the world over are deeply affected by Christmas Trees. An evergreen, decorated with lights is a powerful symbol in and of itself, but combining it with reference to part of the earth's cycle, the Winter Solstice, greatly enhances the power of the Christmas Tree to affect human's hearts and minds.
Trees have been powerful symbols used by human beings in all cultures, ancient and modern, to signify endurance, wisdom, transformation, and high aspiration. There is the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, who's fruit when ingested transformed humans from unconsciousness and amorality to the knowledge of good and evil igniting self-awareness and responsibility. There is the World Tree, who's roots are growing from the heavens, and its limbs and leaves are attached to earth. It symbolizes the universal connection between the spiritual and material sides of life, our dualistic natures. The World Tree has been recorded in the ancient symbols of Hindu scriptures, in the symbols of ancient Maya, Inca, and Toltec civilizations, found also in the symbols of ancient Europe, and preserved to this day in the Scandinavian Eddas.
Another powerful element ingredient with the Christmas Tree, is light. Light is an essential part of our living experience. The light brings renewal, clarity, and hope to our souls, and as such provides us with direction. When this powerful symbol is related to the Winter Solstice and the Christmas Tree, we catch a quick glimpse at its quintessential, symbolic power. The Winter Solstice is a part of the earth's yearly cycle, where the Sun's light is at its shortest exposure. That is , the number of hours in a day that the Sun is exposed relative to night is its lowest. This position of the Sun at its most southern point, represents the end of the earth's yearly cycle. The old year, and all its trails and conquests have burnt out, and in great hope and anticipation the birth of a new year is ushered in with the beginning of the Sun's journey back north. From the point of the Winter Solstice on, the Sun's light will slowly begin to over take the night, culminating at the Summer Solstice in June.
The Christmas Tree wraps those power symbols (Tree, Winter Solstice, light), together in an irresistible display of endurance, hope, and continuity. Is there any wonder why, Jesus the Christ's birth was assigned to the period of the Winter Solstice? Is there ant wonder why, the Christmas Tree fells me with such peace and joy?
Dear Reader, have a wonderful holiday season, and may the light of the new year fill your heart with inspirational dreams of joy.
The affinity I have for Christmas Trees goes back to the beginning of my memories, and
all of those memories are associated with feelings of peace and joy. I remember that on the first night of the day my family and I "put up" the Christmas Tree, I would get out of bed while every one was asleep and "plug in" the Tree's lights. Then I would sit at the "feet" of the Tree absorbing its celestial radiance. I was especially attracted to the lights on the Tree: the reds, golds, greens, whites, and the blues, as they spiraled the Tree from its top to its bottom, awakening the night with a dazzle of twinkles. I felt such comfort, peace, and joy just sitting there next to the Christmas Tree.
Even now so many years from my first memories, I still get those same feelings when ever I am near a Christmas Tree. Of course, as I got older I came to understand that my deep feelings associated with Christmas Trees were not unique. Many people the world over are deeply affected by Christmas Trees. An evergreen, decorated with lights is a powerful symbol in and of itself, but combining it with reference to part of the earth's cycle, the Winter Solstice, greatly enhances the power of the Christmas Tree to affect human's hearts and minds.
Trees have been powerful symbols used by human beings in all cultures, ancient and modern, to signify endurance, wisdom, transformation, and high aspiration. There is the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, who's fruit when ingested transformed humans from unconsciousness and amorality to the knowledge of good and evil igniting self-awareness and responsibility. There is the World Tree, who's roots are growing from the heavens, and its limbs and leaves are attached to earth. It symbolizes the universal connection between the spiritual and material sides of life, our dualistic natures. The World Tree has been recorded in the ancient symbols of Hindu scriptures, in the symbols of ancient Maya, Inca, and Toltec civilizations, found also in the symbols of ancient Europe, and preserved to this day in the Scandinavian Eddas.
Another powerful element ingredient with the Christmas Tree, is light. Light is an essential part of our living experience. The light brings renewal, clarity, and hope to our souls, and as such provides us with direction. When this powerful symbol is related to the Winter Solstice and the Christmas Tree, we catch a quick glimpse at its quintessential, symbolic power. The Winter Solstice is a part of the earth's yearly cycle, where the Sun's light is at its shortest exposure. That is , the number of hours in a day that the Sun is exposed relative to night is its lowest. This position of the Sun at its most southern point, represents the end of the earth's yearly cycle. The old year, and all its trails and conquests have burnt out, and in great hope and anticipation the birth of a new year is ushered in with the beginning of the Sun's journey back north. From the point of the Winter Solstice on, the Sun's light will slowly begin to over take the night, culminating at the Summer Solstice in June.
The Christmas Tree wraps those power symbols (Tree, Winter Solstice, light), together in an irresistible display of endurance, hope, and continuity. Is there any wonder why, Jesus the Christ's birth was assigned to the period of the Winter Solstice? Is there ant wonder why, the Christmas Tree fells me with such peace and joy?
Dear Reader, have a wonderful holiday season, and may the light of the new year fill your heart with inspirational dreams of joy.
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
How is it possible to change our mind-grooved behaviors?
The most effective, general practice to change our negative, mind-grooved behaviors is to begin meditating, (look into my blog archive for "meditation-a discipline of mind," published 12-8-11). The practice of meditation works at the heart of change, by disciplining our wild mind, little by little, to focus entirely on whatever we need our mind to attend to, and for however long. Because most of us are rookie mediators, our mind endurance is very weak, giving little capacity to focus our mind for even a few seconds or minutes. For example, sitting in our meditation posture we commit our attention to following our breath, in and out, within less than ten seconds, our mind has shifted from our breath. The discipline comes when we notice the shift of mind and consciously bring our mind back to our breath; each time our focus is returned to our breath a stepping stone is built that in time will carry us to our desired change. There is a Zen koan which reads, "Before the archer releases the arrow the target is hit." This is the kind of mind control that is needed to change. The resources I used to learn how to meditate are two books: Suzuki's "Zen mind, beginner's mind," and Eknath Easwarn's, "Conquest of Mind." I am certain that with little research you could find many helpful resources that would aid you in finding a suitable meditation practice. Trying to change one's behavior by using our conscious mind to train our unconscious mind is not an easy task. It takes many years of training, with many failed tries, just like attempting anything that is worthwhile. Socrates admonishes us, ..."an unexamined life is not worth living."...
Keep in mind that there are gradients of grooved-mind behaviors, from the Lilliputians, to the dragon, sized mind-grooved behaviors. The Lilliputian grooved behaviors attack us in rapid succession, it is like Lao-tse describes as 1000 voices speaking to us all at once. These however, can be easily vanquished by simply making your mind aware of them. The more aggressive of these kind of behaviors, can be dealt with by being conscious of them, plus by saying, out loud or silently, to our self, "out," "not this," "be gone" or something equivalent, each time they enter our mind. Those grooved-mind behaviors that we have labored on for an extended time, must be brought to your consciousness, than use an opposing affirmation against it. A helpful book of how to create and use affirmations is by, Louise L. Hay, called, "You Can Heal Your Life." Keep in "mind" that your negative grooved-mind comes from the same source as your positive grooved-mind behaviors: so it becomes a double edged sword. The result comes from your desire of which edge of the sword is wheeled, the negative edge or the positive edge. You now have a slight peek into the operation of your dual nature. A apt example of using a positive to rub out a negative mind-grooved behavior is the "Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi:"
Lord make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy;
(I am sure you get the idea)
The tactics that are used to fight off the Lilliputian mind-grooved behaviors are only a preparation for the dragon sized mind-grooved behaviors. These obsessive/elemental behaviors are monsters of the Id, monsters of the astral kind, that can infiltrate and affect your heart, mind, and soul. You can begin to attack them on one level at a time, for example at the heart level, but great difficulty soon arrives because they can operate on the mind and/or the soul level. If that were not enough difficulty, after you slay one of them on a particular level, you must be continually alert for their reappearance, because the slayer, (which is yourself) is made from the same stuff as the slayed; you must "slay the slayer," (by renouncing, or another apt word, crucifying, (a hint at the esoteric meaning of Jesus the Christ's crucifixion), and transforming the slayer. You must take an extremely, long view and dig in, deep for victory; this is not a skirmish but an all out war, as the saying goes, "Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you." However, in each advance there is a small victory; it is in the accumulation of motivation and effort. Soon you will have built such a powerful force that even the sun and moon must range to it or be pulverized by the load.
In chapter three of the Bhagavad-Gita, Arjuna asks, Krishna, "By what is man propelled to commit offences; seemingly against his will and as if constrained by some secret force?" Krishna answers, "It is lust which instigates him. It is passion, sprung from the quality of "rajas," (one of the three great qualities; the driving power of nature; active and bad), insatiable and full of sin. Know this to be the enemy of man on earth. As the flame is surrounded by smoke, and as the womb envelops the foetus, so is the universe surrounded by this passion. By this-the common enemy of the wised man, formed from desire which rageth like fire and is never to be appeased-is discriminative knowledge surrounded. Its empire is over the senses and organs, the thinking principle, and the discriminating faculty also; by means of these it cloudeth discrimination and deludes the Lord of the body. Therefore, at the very outset restraining thy senses, thou shouldst conquer this sin which is the destroyer of knowledge and spiritual discernment."... Krishna is awaking Arjuna's innate spiritual knowledge so that he may perform his natural duty as a worrier. In a metaphoric sense Arjuna is us, embarking on our quest for our true, natural Self, and becoming self initiated onto the path of the Mystic Worrier. By choosing the mystic path you will have evoked a force in nature and set up a current and vibration which will go on no matter what you do.
So, your challenge and task is to depose your imposed mind-grooved behaviors using the same mental energy/forces that were used to create our negative, mind-grooved behaviors, the irony of all ironies. By rubbing positive, focused consciousness, spiritual discrimination and knowledge, meditation, verbal statements, affirmations, and worrier's spirit, against our mind-grooved, negative behaviors, it becomes possible to wash our spirit clean.
I leave you with an inspiring quote from Katherine Tingley, a Theosophist, from her book, "The Path of the Mystic," "To reach the truth there must be in an aspiring mind a certain quality of resolution, determination, and yet the truth is all about us, sweeping as on invisible currents into the very atmosphere in which we live. It is as though brooding over the world in its sorrow were a great urge, a great soulful power, standing between Deity and man's endeavor to rise and go unto his own. It is the real intermediator, and one feels its presents when in one's highest mood."...
.
Keep in mind that there are gradients of grooved-mind behaviors, from the Lilliputians, to the dragon, sized mind-grooved behaviors. The Lilliputian grooved behaviors attack us in rapid succession, it is like Lao-tse describes as 1000 voices speaking to us all at once. These however, can be easily vanquished by simply making your mind aware of them. The more aggressive of these kind of behaviors, can be dealt with by being conscious of them, plus by saying, out loud or silently, to our self, "out," "not this," "be gone" or something equivalent, each time they enter our mind. Those grooved-mind behaviors that we have labored on for an extended time, must be brought to your consciousness, than use an opposing affirmation against it. A helpful book of how to create and use affirmations is by, Louise L. Hay, called, "You Can Heal Your Life." Keep in "mind" that your negative grooved-mind comes from the same source as your positive grooved-mind behaviors: so it becomes a double edged sword. The result comes from your desire of which edge of the sword is wheeled, the negative edge or the positive edge. You now have a slight peek into the operation of your dual nature. A apt example of using a positive to rub out a negative mind-grooved behavior is the "Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi:"
Lord make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy;
(I am sure you get the idea)
The tactics that are used to fight off the Lilliputian mind-grooved behaviors are only a preparation for the dragon sized mind-grooved behaviors. These obsessive/elemental behaviors are monsters of the Id, monsters of the astral kind, that can infiltrate and affect your heart, mind, and soul. You can begin to attack them on one level at a time, for example at the heart level, but great difficulty soon arrives because they can operate on the mind and/or the soul level. If that were not enough difficulty, after you slay one of them on a particular level, you must be continually alert for their reappearance, because the slayer, (which is yourself) is made from the same stuff as the slayed; you must "slay the slayer," (by renouncing, or another apt word, crucifying, (a hint at the esoteric meaning of Jesus the Christ's crucifixion), and transforming the slayer. You must take an extremely, long view and dig in, deep for victory; this is not a skirmish but an all out war, as the saying goes, "Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you." However, in each advance there is a small victory; it is in the accumulation of motivation and effort. Soon you will have built such a powerful force that even the sun and moon must range to it or be pulverized by the load.
In chapter three of the Bhagavad-Gita, Arjuna asks, Krishna, "By what is man propelled to commit offences; seemingly against his will and as if constrained by some secret force?" Krishna answers, "It is lust which instigates him. It is passion, sprung from the quality of "rajas," (one of the three great qualities; the driving power of nature; active and bad), insatiable and full of sin. Know this to be the enemy of man on earth. As the flame is surrounded by smoke, and as the womb envelops the foetus, so is the universe surrounded by this passion. By this-the common enemy of the wised man, formed from desire which rageth like fire and is never to be appeased-is discriminative knowledge surrounded. Its empire is over the senses and organs, the thinking principle, and the discriminating faculty also; by means of these it cloudeth discrimination and deludes the Lord of the body. Therefore, at the very outset restraining thy senses, thou shouldst conquer this sin which is the destroyer of knowledge and spiritual discernment."... Krishna is awaking Arjuna's innate spiritual knowledge so that he may perform his natural duty as a worrier. In a metaphoric sense Arjuna is us, embarking on our quest for our true, natural Self, and becoming self initiated onto the path of the Mystic Worrier. By choosing the mystic path you will have evoked a force in nature and set up a current and vibration which will go on no matter what you do.
So, your challenge and task is to depose your imposed mind-grooved behaviors using the same mental energy/forces that were used to create our negative, mind-grooved behaviors, the irony of all ironies. By rubbing positive, focused consciousness, spiritual discrimination and knowledge, meditation, verbal statements, affirmations, and worrier's spirit, against our mind-grooved, negative behaviors, it becomes possible to wash our spirit clean.
I leave you with an inspiring quote from Katherine Tingley, a Theosophist, from her book, "The Path of the Mystic," "To reach the truth there must be in an aspiring mind a certain quality of resolution, determination, and yet the truth is all about us, sweeping as on invisible currents into the very atmosphere in which we live. It is as though brooding over the world in its sorrow were a great urge, a great soulful power, standing between Deity and man's endeavor to rise and go unto his own. It is the real intermediator, and one feels its presents when in one's highest mood."...
.
Saturday, October 11, 2014
why is it so difficult to change?
I have been intrigued with the deep seated taint or "dramatic flaw" that is carried within humans, it is like a blind spot infection running through an individual's life. There is no human exception to this kind of taint. It is an inevitable, psychological seed patiently waiting for the right evolutionary, environmental moment in which to bloom. For example, a "48 Hours" story, on CBS, presented a classic presentation of the taint's arrival upon a decorated and esteemed fighter pilot. After his successful career ended he gave in to a progressive sexual deviancy: from steeling women's panties to murdering women. Some people try to explain this taint in terms of genetics; in that the human genes encodes a map that predisposes the particular taint to manifest. The trouble with that explanation is it places the primary cause for the taint on genetics. The body, from my experience and insight, is what the genetic code primarily affects, character and behavior are not, however, fixed by a genetic code-and thank goodness for that; if it were the case, our life on this earth would be totally hopeless. The most precious asset a human has, is the ability to change himself.` As a verification of that capacity we have only to scrutinize the changes in behavior and character occurring within our immediate circle of relatives and friends. This desire to change ourselves reaches back to our earliest history, and has vigorously survived to this day. To those thinkers among you who are asking themselves, "If the desire to change is equivalent to an innate, human, universal urge, then why is it so damn difficult to change? What is resisting the desired change?"
If we were to ask psychologists, psychiatrists, brain-scientists, to explain our questions, their answers would be all over the map, with differing names for the same type of mental effects or syndromes or behaviors. We would become greatly confused, and our understanding would reverberate in every possible relevant and irrelevant direction. Believe it or not, a much clearer and adequate explanation of these questions were provided some 5000 years or more ago, in what might be called an ancient confluence of spiritual hymns, rituals, and worships, wrapped around profound commentaries. The historical source for this spiritual wisdom came from the fusion of two cultures, the Aryan and the Indus Valley, Indian civilizations. As time pasted, the mixing of these two civilizations produced commentaries called the Veda that was said to have been created by, Vyasa. The part of the Veda called the Upanishads is were we will place our attention for finding the clarity involved in the process of changing our self. The meaning of the Sanskrit word Upanishads is, "sitting down near" or at the feet of an illuminated teacher possessed with the wisdom of life and death, and the nature of the Godhead. Another point of attention, will be placed on the great epic of India called the Mahabharata, particularly an episode called the Bhagavad-Gita, which means, "the song of god himself" or "the song celestial." Our last point of attention will be focused on the Dhammapada, a collection of practical verses gathered by the direct disciples of Gautama the Buddha, their intention being, to preserve the Buddha's teachings.
Why is it so difficult to change? St. Augustine asks the same question, only in a personal way, ..."I can tell my hand what to do, and it obeys; why can't I do the same with my mind?" Let us start to answer our question by stating a universal truth spoken by the greatest spiritual psychologists that ever walked the earth, Gautama the Buddha, he said, "All that we are is the result of what we have thought;" and lets not stop with the present tense, we will add, 'All that we shall become is the result of what our thoughts are now." This universal truth, the Compassionate One has given us, is the bedrock upon which, if applied with a laser focused mind, would reveal the key to the understanding of our essential Self. A subtle, implied distinction the Buddha makes is in his use of the word "thought." He thus establishes that the faculty which is the primary cause of creating our destiny is not the workings of the brain, but the more comprehensive and superior faculty of the mind. As we advance our discussion, it is important to keep in "mind" that the mind is not an objective entity, it is a conceptualization, and that all the different qualities that make up the mind are unified, interdependent, interconnected, and operate under the highest quality of mind, namely consciousness. The lower qualities of mind are concerned with the many sundry, sensations that strike us daily, also with classifying these sensations and distinguishing them as sensations of like or dislike or pleasure or pain or neutral. The Buddha reiterates, ..."most of us live at the mercy of circumstances, going where ever life takes us." As babies, our entire conscious spectrum is primarily based on attention to sensations: hunger, sounds, tastes, smells, touch, etc., and whether they are agreeable or disagreeable or neutral; and as we mature our relation to the perceived sensations expand and become reinforced. The Buddha has broken down the cognition of sensations into three elements: the eyes, the object, and the act of attention. When all three elements unite there is sensation.
We have now established the groundwork upon which we can begin to answer our question. Let us begin to pursue the answer to our question by defining the meaning of two Sanskrit words: "asava" and "samsara." The mind attends to a sensation, and than relies on its subaltern components to classify and emotionally mark it as to like or dislike or neutral. For a simple example, you eat a piece of chocolate, you classify it under something sweet, and stamp it with "like." If this were a part of an early experience of eating chocolate you might have stamped it with "neutral," meaning you could, at this threshold take it or leave it. So we build a experiential, sensation's grid of likes, dislikes or neutral. These grids are not grooved in bone because they can change places, For instance, something that is liked can be moved into the dislike grid or something that is disliked can be moved into the liked grid. In the Bhagavad-Gita, chapter three, Krishna instructs his disciple Arjuna, in the workings of Universal Nature, ..."All creatures act according to their natures; what then will restraint effect? In every purpose of the senses are fixed affections and dislikes they are the enemies of man."...
When sensations are first encountered, there is little or no emotive force. But, lets reboot our chocolate example, when you start thinking about the feeling of pleasure of eating chocolate, over and over, a craving begins and so does the process called asava. The meaning of the word "asava" is an intoxicant, like whiskey or wine, out of fermenting fruit. The more chocolate we eat, the greater the asvavic fermentation; the greater the fermentation, the greater our intoxication. This cycle will progress until the craving has lodged, and at this point we cannot talk about our chocolate eating as a sensation. It has transformed into a fully bloomed obsession, and now we cannot help thinking about eating chocolate, and it cannot help thinking about itself. This "thinking about itself" is an intimation of the power of obsession. Think about the wide spread, human obsession of drugs and alcohol, and if that is not enough lets add jealousy, rage, lust, greed, fear, anxiety: you think of some. If that doesn't seem powerful enough for you, lets add that obsessions have the capacity to engage our heart, mind, and soul; not enough power, here's more, if you believe in reincarnation as I do, think of the many, many life times we have spent thinking and building upon our obsessions. Here is another point of the power of obsession, and here also is were we enter the realm of the esoteric. Most of us have little understanding of the comprehensive power of our mind, believing that it is naturally given to flitter here and there, and that it cannot be mastered; taking our darting conscious mind and use it to clarify and understand our unconscious mind-seems impossible. It isn't impossible, but very difficult, and those who have worked to master the mind tell us, 'It is like lassoing the wind.' Mind is conceptual, but like all manifestation, conceptual or objective, it possess energy/force; and behind mind are the directing forces of desire and will. (note the first position of desire, think about it) The strength and power of our conscious desire manifests the desire into a living astral form-our thought has become manifest, and that is why it is "thinking about itself." In the parlance of the esoteric realm, the concentration, over time of the force of our thought, has created an astral, one tracked, being, called an "elemental." To those of you who may be familiar with the contemporary mystic, Eckhart Tolle, he uses the same idea as the elemental when he explains the "pain body." You may find this last expression of mental power difficult to take seriously, it may smack of science fiction, (there is an old 1960ish film called "Forbidden Planet" whose theme you may find, as Spock might say, is "fascinating"), yet it represents a philosophy of life way beyond life's objective field.
Asava is then, the process of bringing a sensation, through the power and force of desire and self-will, into obsession, and finally into an astral, elemental form. Samsara is an umbrella term for a fully processed asava, from a sensation to a full blown obsession/elemental. To quote from the Mundaka Upanishad: ..."Such rituals, (primarily religious rituals intended for self reward) are unsafe rafts for crossing the sea of samasara, of birth and death. Doomed to shipwreck are those who try to cross the sea of samasara on these poor rafts. Ignorant of their ignorance, yet wise in their own esteem, these deluded men proud of their vain learning go round and round like the blind led by the blind."...
Hopefully, you now have a grasp of the power of our thoughts, and their deep effect on our behavior to direct our current and future destiny. These deep behavioral mind groves are the resistance behind our ability to change ourselves. Our experience with life should have shown us that there are degrees of depth of mind groves, from Lilliputian sized mind groves to the giant, obsessive/elemental sized mind groves.
I will not leave you with the absoluteness of your predetermined destiny. In my next blog, using the wisdom of the same 5000 year old resources, I will help show you how to use your innate capacity to change yourself.
If we were to ask psychologists, psychiatrists, brain-scientists, to explain our questions, their answers would be all over the map, with differing names for the same type of mental effects or syndromes or behaviors. We would become greatly confused, and our understanding would reverberate in every possible relevant and irrelevant direction. Believe it or not, a much clearer and adequate explanation of these questions were provided some 5000 years or more ago, in what might be called an ancient confluence of spiritual hymns, rituals, and worships, wrapped around profound commentaries. The historical source for this spiritual wisdom came from the fusion of two cultures, the Aryan and the Indus Valley, Indian civilizations. As time pasted, the mixing of these two civilizations produced commentaries called the Veda that was said to have been created by, Vyasa. The part of the Veda called the Upanishads is were we will place our attention for finding the clarity involved in the process of changing our self. The meaning of the Sanskrit word Upanishads is, "sitting down near" or at the feet of an illuminated teacher possessed with the wisdom of life and death, and the nature of the Godhead. Another point of attention, will be placed on the great epic of India called the Mahabharata, particularly an episode called the Bhagavad-Gita, which means, "the song of god himself" or "the song celestial." Our last point of attention will be focused on the Dhammapada, a collection of practical verses gathered by the direct disciples of Gautama the Buddha, their intention being, to preserve the Buddha's teachings.
Why is it so difficult to change? St. Augustine asks the same question, only in a personal way, ..."I can tell my hand what to do, and it obeys; why can't I do the same with my mind?" Let us start to answer our question by stating a universal truth spoken by the greatest spiritual psychologists that ever walked the earth, Gautama the Buddha, he said, "All that we are is the result of what we have thought;" and lets not stop with the present tense, we will add, 'All that we shall become is the result of what our thoughts are now." This universal truth, the Compassionate One has given us, is the bedrock upon which, if applied with a laser focused mind, would reveal the key to the understanding of our essential Self. A subtle, implied distinction the Buddha makes is in his use of the word "thought." He thus establishes that the faculty which is the primary cause of creating our destiny is not the workings of the brain, but the more comprehensive and superior faculty of the mind. As we advance our discussion, it is important to keep in "mind" that the mind is not an objective entity, it is a conceptualization, and that all the different qualities that make up the mind are unified, interdependent, interconnected, and operate under the highest quality of mind, namely consciousness. The lower qualities of mind are concerned with the many sundry, sensations that strike us daily, also with classifying these sensations and distinguishing them as sensations of like or dislike or pleasure or pain or neutral. The Buddha reiterates, ..."most of us live at the mercy of circumstances, going where ever life takes us." As babies, our entire conscious spectrum is primarily based on attention to sensations: hunger, sounds, tastes, smells, touch, etc., and whether they are agreeable or disagreeable or neutral; and as we mature our relation to the perceived sensations expand and become reinforced. The Buddha has broken down the cognition of sensations into three elements: the eyes, the object, and the act of attention. When all three elements unite there is sensation.
We have now established the groundwork upon which we can begin to answer our question. Let us begin to pursue the answer to our question by defining the meaning of two Sanskrit words: "asava" and "samsara." The mind attends to a sensation, and than relies on its subaltern components to classify and emotionally mark it as to like or dislike or neutral. For a simple example, you eat a piece of chocolate, you classify it under something sweet, and stamp it with "like." If this were a part of an early experience of eating chocolate you might have stamped it with "neutral," meaning you could, at this threshold take it or leave it. So we build a experiential, sensation's grid of likes, dislikes or neutral. These grids are not grooved in bone because they can change places, For instance, something that is liked can be moved into the dislike grid or something that is disliked can be moved into the liked grid. In the Bhagavad-Gita, chapter three, Krishna instructs his disciple Arjuna, in the workings of Universal Nature, ..."All creatures act according to their natures; what then will restraint effect? In every purpose of the senses are fixed affections and dislikes they are the enemies of man."...
When sensations are first encountered, there is little or no emotive force. But, lets reboot our chocolate example, when you start thinking about the feeling of pleasure of eating chocolate, over and over, a craving begins and so does the process called asava. The meaning of the word "asava" is an intoxicant, like whiskey or wine, out of fermenting fruit. The more chocolate we eat, the greater the asvavic fermentation; the greater the fermentation, the greater our intoxication. This cycle will progress until the craving has lodged, and at this point we cannot talk about our chocolate eating as a sensation. It has transformed into a fully bloomed obsession, and now we cannot help thinking about eating chocolate, and it cannot help thinking about itself. This "thinking about itself" is an intimation of the power of obsession. Think about the wide spread, human obsession of drugs and alcohol, and if that is not enough lets add jealousy, rage, lust, greed, fear, anxiety: you think of some. If that doesn't seem powerful enough for you, lets add that obsessions have the capacity to engage our heart, mind, and soul; not enough power, here's more, if you believe in reincarnation as I do, think of the many, many life times we have spent thinking and building upon our obsessions. Here is another point of the power of obsession, and here also is were we enter the realm of the esoteric. Most of us have little understanding of the comprehensive power of our mind, believing that it is naturally given to flitter here and there, and that it cannot be mastered; taking our darting conscious mind and use it to clarify and understand our unconscious mind-seems impossible. It isn't impossible, but very difficult, and those who have worked to master the mind tell us, 'It is like lassoing the wind.' Mind is conceptual, but like all manifestation, conceptual or objective, it possess energy/force; and behind mind are the directing forces of desire and will. (note the first position of desire, think about it) The strength and power of our conscious desire manifests the desire into a living astral form-our thought has become manifest, and that is why it is "thinking about itself." In the parlance of the esoteric realm, the concentration, over time of the force of our thought, has created an astral, one tracked, being, called an "elemental." To those of you who may be familiar with the contemporary mystic, Eckhart Tolle, he uses the same idea as the elemental when he explains the "pain body." You may find this last expression of mental power difficult to take seriously, it may smack of science fiction, (there is an old 1960ish film called "Forbidden Planet" whose theme you may find, as Spock might say, is "fascinating"), yet it represents a philosophy of life way beyond life's objective field.
Asava is then, the process of bringing a sensation, through the power and force of desire and self-will, into obsession, and finally into an astral, elemental form. Samsara is an umbrella term for a fully processed asava, from a sensation to a full blown obsession/elemental. To quote from the Mundaka Upanishad: ..."Such rituals, (primarily religious rituals intended for self reward) are unsafe rafts for crossing the sea of samasara, of birth and death. Doomed to shipwreck are those who try to cross the sea of samasara on these poor rafts. Ignorant of their ignorance, yet wise in their own esteem, these deluded men proud of their vain learning go round and round like the blind led by the blind."...
Hopefully, you now have a grasp of the power of our thoughts, and their deep effect on our behavior to direct our current and future destiny. These deep behavioral mind groves are the resistance behind our ability to change ourselves. Our experience with life should have shown us that there are degrees of depth of mind groves, from Lilliputian sized mind groves to the giant, obsessive/elemental sized mind groves.
I will not leave you with the absoluteness of your predetermined destiny. In my next blog, using the wisdom of the same 5000 year old resources, I will help show you how to use your innate capacity to change yourself.
Friday, May 9, 2014
lack of religous faith
Several weeks ago, I read a "Viewpoint" article with the heading, "When spirituality means 'dopey,' it masks lack of faith." The author's premise, from what I could gather, was that religion's original doctrines should always remain as the essential basis for religious faith. Strict adherence to these traditional doctrines is what makes the Lutheran Church Lutheran, the Catholic Church Catholic, etc. The article goes on the say, that the "profusion of spirituality" in our day is a direct result of the nonconformity to these original doctrines of faith.
The above premise, although seemingly grounded in empirical fact is only a simple expression of what is the most obvious opinion. However, that which is most obvious is not always the most revealing point of view. Given our technical capacity for instant data access and communication, any event or inquiry can be immediately saturated by streams of information, every bit of which, in a greater or lesser degree, is relative. In such prevalent conditions of data overkill, stating what is most obvious seems to us to be most important. Yet, apart from the report of what seems obvious of the conditions of an event, without a comprehensive commingling of related conditions, the obvious, brings little more than a point from which to begin. A more comprehensive view concerning the "profusion of spirituality" in our day. will bring about a greater degree of understanding then the author's dogmatic view.
Spirituality is an aspect of the total make-up of human beings. The source of human being's spiritual aspect is divine. In the earliest evolutionary development of 'mankind,' components of the Divine were installed as the core principles around which 'mankind' was fashioned. In popular, religious scriptural terms, 'mankind' was fashioned from a direct reflection of God's image, God's Spirit. Human beings are therefore, essentially spiritual beings. Religion, is the expression, by human beings of their spiritual core. Human beings aware of their God-Spark within, manifest that awareness through doctrines, rituals, and worships that in turn educate, recognize, and celebrate that awareness through their communities.
In their response to the impulse of their spiritual centers, human beings are continuously working toward clarification; bringing it from within outward to ever increasing levels of expression. Since the spiritual center of human beings has not as yet been perfectly transmuted, its religious manifestation is also imperfect and in a state of continuous refinement.
When a religion is born out of a human being's spiritual core it vibrates it turn with that spiritual impulse which inspired its birth. It however, looses its initial radiance over time, and gradually tunes to more mundane vibrations, while spiritually tiring its rituals and worships. At this point in the evolutionary cycle of religions, human beings are again urged by their spiritual core, to search within out ward for a new religious renewal or birth. The search begins uninterrupted from the ashes of the old; following the life cycle groves of Universal Nature.
Thus the "profusion of spiritually" in our day is not an anxious reaction to a lack of religious faith, nor some fashionable behavior born out of the minds of a handful of individuals, but a natural human response to spiritually defunct religious doctrines, rituals, and worships.
Human beings are currently involved in transmuting tired, traditional doctrines, rituals, and worships into spiritual expressions of a higher, more universal quality. What appears to be spiritual chaos is actually the workings of the collective human mind, exploring itself in an effort to transmute worn out religious forms into renewed religions forms.
The above premise, although seemingly grounded in empirical fact is only a simple expression of what is the most obvious opinion. However, that which is most obvious is not always the most revealing point of view. Given our technical capacity for instant data access and communication, any event or inquiry can be immediately saturated by streams of information, every bit of which, in a greater or lesser degree, is relative. In such prevalent conditions of data overkill, stating what is most obvious seems to us to be most important. Yet, apart from the report of what seems obvious of the conditions of an event, without a comprehensive commingling of related conditions, the obvious, brings little more than a point from which to begin. A more comprehensive view concerning the "profusion of spirituality" in our day. will bring about a greater degree of understanding then the author's dogmatic view.
Spirituality is an aspect of the total make-up of human beings. The source of human being's spiritual aspect is divine. In the earliest evolutionary development of 'mankind,' components of the Divine were installed as the core principles around which 'mankind' was fashioned. In popular, religious scriptural terms, 'mankind' was fashioned from a direct reflection of God's image, God's Spirit. Human beings are therefore, essentially spiritual beings. Religion, is the expression, by human beings of their spiritual core. Human beings aware of their God-Spark within, manifest that awareness through doctrines, rituals, and worships that in turn educate, recognize, and celebrate that awareness through their communities.
In their response to the impulse of their spiritual centers, human beings are continuously working toward clarification; bringing it from within outward to ever increasing levels of expression. Since the spiritual center of human beings has not as yet been perfectly transmuted, its religious manifestation is also imperfect and in a state of continuous refinement.
When a religion is born out of a human being's spiritual core it vibrates it turn with that spiritual impulse which inspired its birth. It however, looses its initial radiance over time, and gradually tunes to more mundane vibrations, while spiritually tiring its rituals and worships. At this point in the evolutionary cycle of religions, human beings are again urged by their spiritual core, to search within out ward for a new religious renewal or birth. The search begins uninterrupted from the ashes of the old; following the life cycle groves of Universal Nature.
Thus the "profusion of spiritually" in our day is not an anxious reaction to a lack of religious faith, nor some fashionable behavior born out of the minds of a handful of individuals, but a natural human response to spiritually defunct religious doctrines, rituals, and worships.
Human beings are currently involved in transmuting tired, traditional doctrines, rituals, and worships into spiritual expressions of a higher, more universal quality. What appears to be spiritual chaos is actually the workings of the collective human mind, exploring itself in an effort to transmute worn out religious forms into renewed religions forms.
Thursday, April 24, 2014
perfection
How many of you know someone who is perfect? Dismiss those people who claim they are perfect, and Olympians and "dancing with the stars" performers who receive tens for their routines. The closest person to perfection I know of, is Mary Poppins, and her claim is to be "almost nearly perfect." Perfection as a manifested quality in human nature is no where to be found. What is commonly found in human nature, however, is widespread imperfection. Although each individual, human being, while having a general uniformity of physical structure and mental capacities, has a multiplicity of unique adaptions to those general natural outlines. So too with all things manifested in our world. For instance, take snowflakes, each one has six general peeks, but within the interior of those peeks lays an entirely unique pattern; each pattern different form all other snowflakes. Let us take a look at all plants and animal spices, although similar in general form and function they are specifically unique as to individual expression of these general conditions of Nature. Even Mother Nature, does not operate from the quality of perfection. We can easily confirm that statement by arguing thus: if Mother Nature worked in an absolutely perfect manner, then all areas of her manifestation would be flawless. All spices would conform atom for atom, molecule for molecule, with no variation and no unique adaptions. This empirically, is not Nature's way. Nature, as we know her, operates imperfectly, yet with an ultimate aim towards perfection, thus allowing for trail and error. Universal Nature has not as yet perfected the Kosmos.
Nature in her operations is flexible and adaptive, allowing for misdirection and failure, but able to turn her failures into gradual successes. Nature is a genius leaner, and ever so meticulously, and with enormous patience moves progressively forward, towards full expression of her ultimate aim. Nature is like "good", as in ideal parents, who allow their children plenty of space in which to discover, to learn, and to develop, but always under their watchful and guiding eyes and always with the aim of "good" development. The good development of Nature's aim is in the light of expressing the highest principles that lie within each being and entity.
These highest principles which Universal Nature express are the central, creative fires, which permeate, shape, and motivate our lives, and the lives of all beings, entities, and things. St. Paul says that these highest principles are the essential elements, ..."in which we live, move, and have our being"... These principles are the essential core of all life, and at their highest, are divine and represent perfection. As living, conscious representatives of these principles, our ultimate aim is to attune, express, and live in accordance with them. This kind of attuned action is a true definition of virtue in its purest sense.
Even though very few of us are, in this period of evolution, capable of full expression of our highest principles, we can still aspire towards their fulfillment. If we accept Universal Nature's way, and step in time with Her, we will ever so patiently move, hand and hand with Her towards divine fulfillment.
Nature in her operations is flexible and adaptive, allowing for misdirection and failure, but able to turn her failures into gradual successes. Nature is a genius leaner, and ever so meticulously, and with enormous patience moves progressively forward, towards full expression of her ultimate aim. Nature is like "good", as in ideal parents, who allow their children plenty of space in which to discover, to learn, and to develop, but always under their watchful and guiding eyes and always with the aim of "good" development. The good development of Nature's aim is in the light of expressing the highest principles that lie within each being and entity.
These highest principles which Universal Nature express are the central, creative fires, which permeate, shape, and motivate our lives, and the lives of all beings, entities, and things. St. Paul says that these highest principles are the essential elements, ..."in which we live, move, and have our being"... These principles are the essential core of all life, and at their highest, are divine and represent perfection. As living, conscious representatives of these principles, our ultimate aim is to attune, express, and live in accordance with them. This kind of attuned action is a true definition of virtue in its purest sense.
Even though very few of us are, in this period of evolution, capable of full expression of our highest principles, we can still aspire towards their fulfillment. If we accept Universal Nature's way, and step in time with Her, we will ever so patiently move, hand and hand with Her towards divine fulfillment.
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