Monday, March 14, 2022

Until you discover the power within, you cannot serve the light of the world's mirror on you.

Restriction is the great keynote of effort at the present time, of new things, new light, and very great help, if we invoke it.  The reconstruction of humanity!  How shall we set about it!  The first step, I, hold, is to declare to man; You are divine! There is in your soul life , and if you will to bring out that life it will reveal to you truth; it will make clear every step that you take. Greatest of all it will reveal to you your duty; it will make clear every step that you take.  For humanity at present is working largely on mistaken lines of duty.  

Duty is misunderstood, as are justice and equity.  Yet if we could free ourselves from the limitations of preconceived ideas---ideas that are literally riveted into the mind----we could move out into the free air of harmonious thought and action, and would know what duty is.  The things we believe in yesterday we should believe in longer; the false gods we have worshiped in our home life and the life of the nation, would vanish in the new light.  

For the light is only waiting to be perceived.  You need not go to India, nor wait for the touch of a swami's hand, in order to find the light.  You can find it for yourselves, although since all have evolved different environments, under different conditions, and up to different points of view of understanding, one cannot say when or how.  To establish a set rule for reformation would therefore be unwise.  This we do know, however, that with the motive pure and the soul ever urging one upward, one moves forward naturally on lines of simple duty, and thus into the light of the higher nature and of truth.  

This need not remain the age of darkness, nor need you wait until another age arrives before you can work at your best.  It is only an age of darkness for those who cannot see light, for the light itself has never faded and never will.  It is yours if you will turn to it, live in it; yours today, this hour even, if you will hear what said with ears that understand.  

Arise then, fear nothing, and taking that which is your own and all men's, abide with it in peace for evermore!

Wisdom comes not from the multiplication of spoken or written instructions; what you have is enough to last you a thousand years.  Wisdom comes from the performance of duty, and in silence, and only the silence expresses it. 

 Let us bring into life as an active, potent factor that knowledge which is not to be purchased, for it is only to be won by the surrender of the lower nature---the passionate, the selfish, the lustful nature---to the Christos-spirit, the god within. Then let us call forth this inner, divine self, that it may illuminate the mind and bring man to the heights of spiritual discernment, to knowledge of the higher self.

We shall never possess the courage that rightfully belongs to man as part of the divine law, until we know that we are souls, until we have opened new doors of experience in our lives, interpreting life according to this law and there higher knowledge of our being. 

When with great effort a man has clarified his nature, when he can say: Get thee behind me, Satan!--then has he entered the path of self-developed.  Though his lower nature may meet him at every turn of the path, never can he fail if his purpose is pure.  The godlike qualities of his nature are disciplining him, because he has said: It shall be so.   

Greater than all Christ knew was the divine compassion that he felt;  and it must have been when on the heights, sounding the harmonies of the soul in his compassion for humanity, that he looked into the future, beheld the divine possibilities of those who were to come, and said;  Greater things than these shall ye do.

The mentality of man will never be fully developed until he has made his own the enlightenment that comes that from the soul-knowledge.  And yet each holds this rare possession within his heart has heart of hearts.  It belongs to all men ; they have but to claim their own. 


                   Thank's Katherine Tingley.  One truth many paths.  Be, good, do good,

                                                            Louis DiVirgilio

 


Wednesday, March 2, 2022

Music is the song of the soul.

Music is one of the cornerstones of true education.  The world has not yet awakened to its value as a factor in refining and purifying the character, especially during the early and more plastic years of life.  Man is essentially a creator, and he can be considered in no other way.  It brings the soul into action, ennobles the nature, frees the mind and inspires, so that naturally it finds expression, directly and indirectly, in both art and music.

There is an immense correspondence between music on the one hand, and thought and aspiration on the other, and only that deserves the name of music to which then the noblest and purest aspirations are responsive.  One who really desires to understand the soul of things is ever careful in the selection of music, ever heedful as to what notes are sounded in the hearts of men, lest some harm be done instead of good.

There is a science of consciousness, and into that science music can enter more largely than is usually supposed.  A knowledge of the laws of life can be neither profound nor wide which thus neglects one of the most effective of all forces.  

Let us bring our children, therefore, close to the refining influences of the best in art and music.  In doing so, however, let us realize that the power of beautiful expression in these things is not an affair of the intellect alone, or of custom or convention. Nor can it be learned from books.  It comes from the awaking of the inner powers of the soul, Those qualities of nature which are in sympathy with whatever is high and pure.

Music is the song of he soul, and well we know that it has not yet fulfilled its function.  Had I had the millions that are yearly given out to charity, my first work after I had fed the hungry and clothed the naked, would be to give such help to the families of the poor as would lead to the establishment of a musical life in even the humblest household. For when the soul is stirred by music, when we feel ourselves within reach of the higher ideals of life, then we  find the light.  Do you not know how deeply we can be moved even by the old church hymns, in spite of the old-fashioned theology that pervades.

Music!  What a wonderful power lies in it to swing us out into the universal life!  To realize its power is to realize that when self is forgotten, when personalities disappear, we are free---out in the open air of thought and love and the higher purposes.  And yet even the best that we have today, is but a  materialistic expression in comparison with what it will be.  Everything in music is so imperfect as yet: we are but touching the fringe of the real harmony. 

If we could hold ourselves in the attitude of mind that is created when true music touches us;  we could bind and fasten ourselves to the larger views it opens out and broaden our comprehension of what life really means, we could tear down the veil that divides the seen from the unseen, the seeming from the real; we could look at life as it really is, at ourselves as we really are.

I have always believed that music should be a power among the masses; that the god of music should  rule every household, and that the little children, indeed the whole family, should give as much attention to music as to other duties in life.  If that were only the case, what a beautiful world this would be!  Were we only taught the simple, fundamental laws of music we could throw ourselves upon soul-resources when under the shadow of sorrows and trails of life, and sing ourselves once more into harmony and usefulness, into the light and joy of life.


                       Thank you Katherine Tingley.  One truth, many paths.  Be good, do good.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Louis DiVirgilio