Yahoo! 360�- Raven's World of Light and Dark

Yahoo! 360� - Raven's World of Light and Dark: "Words of wisdom...
Before you criticize someone,
you should walk a mile in their shoes.
That way, when you criticize them,
you're a mile away and you have their shoes.




Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.
Teach him how to fish and he will sit in a boat
and drink beer all day.




If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again,
it was probably worth it.




If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.




Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead.
Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow.
Do not walk beside me, either;
just leave me the heck alone.




It's always darkest before dawn.
So if you're going to steal your neighbor's newspaper,
that's the time to do it.




Don't be irreplaceable; if you can't be replaced,
you can't be promoted.




No one is listening until you make a mistake.




Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else.




It may be that your sole purpose in life is
simply to serve as a warning to others.




It is far more impressive when others
discover your good qualities without your help.




If you tell the truth,
you don't have to remember anything.




Some days you are the bug,
some days you are the windshield.




Good judgment comes from bad experience,
and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.




"

One Breath

Each breath is a seed

Every gift I have given you

Every power to manifest your desires

Every solution to every problem

The ability to see worlds beyond

The ability to go without feet

The ability to heal and touch

Without ever moving from your couch

Is wrapped within the seed

Of the breathing lesson.

A seed contains a tree

Or flower

Or child that

Discovers star-engines

To propel us across the galaxies

Or new vaccines for terrible plagues

Or writes acclaimed novels

Or loves just one person with all of his or her soul

We despise the seed

As we despise the ant

Yet without either our world

Would collapse into entropic chaos

The Master said Faith is like the seed of the mustard plant

Tiny, small, easily dismissed, carried by the winds

But when it is tended by the skilled gardener

The seed is able to produce a great haven

For birds, and nesting materials for mice

And so on.

Each breath is a seed!

Prayer

As a baby soft and needy
Laying on mother's rising
Lazy tummy, falling sweetly

I am as having been sated for
Suckling her nourishing teat

When I have quieted
Every thought in prayer,
Laid down at the feet of Jesus and
Let Him do the talking.

Stones Thrown at Little Brothers

The following is a passage from The Seven Story Mountain by Thomas Merton (if you don't know the name no big deal. He was a contemporary Catholic Mystic and was a prolific author and influential voice in the community)

ppg23

I suppose it is usual for elder brothers, when they are still children, to feel themselves demeaned by the company of a brother four or five years younger, whom they regard as a baby and whom they tend to patronise and look down upon. So when Russ and I and Bill made huts in the woods out of boards and tar-paper which we collected around the foundations of the many cheap houses which speculators were now putting up, as fast as they could, all over Douglaston, we severely prohibited John Paul and Russ's little brother Tommy and their friends from coming anywhere near us. And if they did try to come and get into our hut, or even to look at it, we would chase them away with stones.

When I think now of that part of my childhood, the picture I get of my brother John Paul is this: standing in a field, about a hundred yards away from the clump of sumachs where we have built our hut, is this little perplexed five-year-old kid in short pants and a kind of a leather jacket, standing quite still, with his arms hanging down at his sides, and gazing in our direction, afraid to come any nearer on account of the stones, as insulted as he is saddened, and his eyes full of indignation and sorrow. And yet he does not go away. We shout at him to get out of there, to beat it, and go home, and wing a couple of more rocks in that direction, and he does not go away. We tell him to play in some other place. He does not move.

And there he stands, not sobbing, not crying, but angry and unhappy and offended and tremendously sad. And yet he is fascinated by what we are doing, nailing shingles all over our new hut. And his tremendous desire to be with us and to do what we are doing will not permit him to go away. The law written in his nature says that he must be with his elder brother, and do what he is doing: and he cannot understand why this law of love is being so wildly and unjustly violated in his case.

Many times it was like that. And in a sense, this terrible situation is the pattern and prototype of all sin: the deliberate and formal will to reject disinterested love for us for the purely arbitrary reason that we simply do not want it. We will to separate ourselves from that love. We reject it entirely and absolutely, and will not acknowledge it, simply because it does not please us to be loved. Perhaps the inner motive is that the fact of being loved disinterestedly reminds us that we all need love from others, and depend upon the charity of others to carry on our own lives. And we refuse love, and reject society, in so far as it seems, in our own perverse imagination, to imply some obscure kind of humiliation.
end-----------------------------------

Notes:

When Jesus was asked which was the greatest law
His response elevated the lesser law to be equal to the higher
and brought the highest down to earthly level
This typified his life of uniting heaven and earth in man

Jesus said If I be lifted up I draw all

We are to also be lifted up when we take our cross up so

All then are drawn to us; they see our love, etc

We are then beacons of Light in the darkness of the World

How do we respond to them? Do shun them b/c they

Dress differently, speak differently, act differently

Do we look at the pierced lips and brows, tattoos, etc

And turn away?

How often we toss rocks at our little brothers

Who are drawn to us and long to be with us

Somewhere. Out there. Across the universe is the end of me.

The Cycle of Breath

I forget who I was
to be who I am

I give up who I am
to be who I must

I Am
. . . . . Now
Birth and death
Light and dark
Summer then winter
Start and Finish

Breathe
God is Breath

Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord

Sunlight, God, Light: Love, Love, Love

All who see me, see the Light bouncing off my body. I am not the Light but I am sent to broadcast the Light; to reflect the Light

I already radiate God’s glorious Light.

There is therefore no reason at all to go seeking the Light of God, but rather to allow my mind the ability to recognize the Light that is always here.

There is no reason to seek an entrance to the presence of God, but rather to allow my mind the ability to recongnize the Light that is always here.

There is no reason to seek forgiveness of sin, answers to prayer, help in times of ‘trouble’, prosperity, health or eternal life; but rather seek the means by which I may allow my mind the ability to recognize the Light that is always here.

In this way I will remain IN the world but I will not be OF the world. As Christ increases, I decrease. (see The Cylce of Breath)

The world does not receive it because they do not perceive it. They do not reject the Light, rather they do not recognize it. The Light is all around them, it illuminates the physical world and dispells the darkness. Yet, they are blind despite having wide-open eyes filled with streaming Light and having the contrasting Night by which to more easily recognize the Light.

Adam and Eve, it is said, lost the Glory of God by becoming self-aware with an assertion of the ego over Self. Yet the Light was never lost. It was ever present. The flaming swords which prohibit a return to Eden are images of Light and their prohibitive power is not in their Light but in the failure to perceive on the part of those who would enter into Eden.

Self-awareness with a capital S is gaining the mind of Christ (i.e. Christ consciousness, god consciousness). In gaining this we do not learn the way back into Eden; We are instantly transported to the very center of Eden, and we see the Light from the back side even as Moses did see the back side of The Light.

I note here that perhaps you may recognize John chapter 1 woven into these words. It is this scripture by which I understood this idea. Do not remain asleep to the powerful revelation written into John’s gospel and the gospels of Christ in general. The gospels have their literary meanings by which the story of Jesus is communicated, but there is a very thin veil beyond which these gospels take on a depth and power unimaginable, and by them do we perceive the Kingdom of God/ Reality/ Love/ the Universe.

“You cannot see the Kingdom of God unless you are born from ‘above’,” said Jesus to the most educated religious man of his day Nicodemus.

Niko is from the Greek word meaning victory/ conquest; demos means ‘the people’, ‘the population’; thus he represents that which holds a victorious condition over the people and/or is the champion of the people, being the height of their religiosocial order/world. John even says that he was a archon/ lord/ leader/ ruler of the Jews (John used ‘the Jews’ to refer to the system of Jewry). Notice that Nikodemos came to Jesus during the night, during the period of an absence of light. Allegorically, those dwelling in the darkness of their ignorance of God are drawn to the Light of Jesus. But even this gives only a simple road map to the Light. You must do the work to gain the understanding Jesus was trying to elicit within Nikodemos. “You cannot see…” “must be born from above…” “no man can see the Kingdom of God unless…”

Moses went to the isolation of the mountain in the desert, and even then went into the cleft of a rock (a cave-like structure). Moses was an Egyptian mystic long before he liberated the people from slavery. These are allegorical also; like John’s gospel. One would do well to read again from an enlightened perspective the Pentatuch; this, of course, assumes that one gains such a perspective.

I said there exists a veil between the two understandings of the gospels. Where is this veil? It is in your mind, and it separates your conscious experience from perceiving the kingdom of God. You need only pierce the veil and you will enter the kingdom and see the location of Eden. As Jesus said many times, “The kingdom of God is within You.” Accept this! And the follow it out to its conclusion. You will find God is everywhere, even as you are.

As ubiquitous as the Light.

Is your body solid matter?

Ageless Body, Timeless Mind, Deepak Chopra


Aging is a mask for the loss of the intelligent connection with the universe. The universal field of energy and information NEVER stops transforming itself, becoming new at every second. Your body obeys this same creative impulse. An estimated 6 TRILLION reactions are taking place in EACH CELL in your body EVERY SECOND. How many trillions of cells are there in your body?

IN order to stay alive, your body must live on the wings of constant change. At this moment you are exhaling atoms of hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen that just an instant before were locked up in solid matter; your stomach, liver, heart, lungs, and brain are vanishing into thin air, being replaced as quickly and endlessly as they are being broken down. Your skin replaces itself once a month, the stomach lining every five days, your liver every six weeks, and the skeleton every three months. To the naked eye, these organs look the same from moment to moment, but they are always in flux. By the end of this year, 98 percent of the atoms in your body will have been exchanged for new ones.


Here are some incorrect core beliefs:

Aging is natural, all organisms grow old and die;
aging in inevitable, it cannot be prevented;
aging is normal, it affects everone about the same;
aging is genetic, We live about as long as our parents and grandparents;
aging is painful, it causes physical and mental suffering;
aging is universal, the law of entropy makes all orderly systems run down and decay;
aging is fatal, we are all growing old and dying.

These are not 100% correct and form a foundation for a social misconception about aging and death/dying.

Some organisms never age. The honey bee can actually reverse its age by shifting its hormone balances. The human body also shifts hormone profiles. What if there is a mechanism lying dormant in the brain that, when turned on, allows the person to moderate this? What if all it took to engage that mechanism was thirty minutes of meditation a day? Wouldn't you be pissed to realize you gave up immortality and all you had to do to gain it was meditate once a day instead of watching an episode of South Park rerun, or simply used your idle time instead of lamenting how bored you were.

Aging is not normal; there is not predictability curves for aging which apply to every person.

DNA contributes very little to longevity. A healthy lifestyle can add as much as 30 years to a life span. Grandparents that lived to 80 will only tend to add about 3 years.

Aging is not painful and filled with suffering. Disease is. Disease can be prevented. Negative influence from within and without the body help to breakdown the orderly system of our body. If these were removed then a body will probably function well for 130 years or more.

Aging does not usually cause death. Disease causes death in 99% of the cases of mortality.

If your body is 70% water then there is at least 70% of your body that will never grow old. How does water age? What is 'old' salt and 'old'calcium? Besides as noted your body replaces itself on a cycle. Your body is composed of atoms which are in turn comprised of energy bonds arranged in various structures. All of this was at the beginning of the physical universe in one form or another. Your body, all of you actually, is as old as this universe is. That makes you an eternal creature already. Your flesh is already 16.5 billion years old! Think how many candles are on the cake!

The Master Waits Patiently

The Master is waiting.

The Master is waiting patiently.

The Master is waiting patiently for the disciples to learn.

The Master is waiting patiently for the disciples to learn how to submit the flesh and the emotions to the authority of the spirit.

The Master is waiting patiently for the disciples to learn how to submit the flesh and the emotions to the authority of the spirit so that they can be drawn into the Master’s spiritual body of light.


The Master is waiting patiently for the disciples to learn how to submit the flesh and the emotions to the authority of the spirit so that they can be drawn into the Master’s spiritual body of light, and the disciple can begin to learn the higher levels of work in the spiritual realms


The Master is waiting patiently for the disciples to learn how to submit the flesh and the emotions to the authority of the spirit so that they can be drawn into the Master’s spiritual body of light, and the disciple can begin to learn the higher levels of work in the spiritual realms, and then others can be helped along the Path toward the Master who is waiting patiently.
[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[


Certainly, no one is overlooked in this process.

The story is told about a man who knew his friend to be ready for the next level of discipleship training and recommended him to the Master. The candidate was very well educated, possessed of a saintly character, and in his devotion to qualifying himself for service at the higher levels he faithfully sought to deepen his understanding of the Great Ones. He seemed to be a man in every way so perfectly suited for discipleship that it was difficult to understand why the Master had not yet selected him. The question of the man’s readiness was presented to the Master who smiled broadly with a gentle amusement and said:

“Ah, you need not fear that your friend is being overlooked; no one can ever be overlooked. In his case there still remains a certain karma to be worked out. This makes it yet impossible for the moment to accept the suggestion of drawing him in. Soon your friend will pass away from the physical plane and later he will return to it again, and then the expiation will be complete. What you desire for him will then become possible.”

As the Master’s words yet filled the air he did blend our consciousness with his, raising it to a plane far higher in perspective than we could ever reach, and from that vantage point we saw how the Great Ones view the world. The whole earth lay before us with all its billions of souls; a veritable ocean of undeveloped souls, nearly all of them were inconspicuous from the others. But wherever in the midst of that vast multitude there was one who was approaching even at a great distance the point at which he could be used toward the Master’s end he stood out from among the rest the way a brilliant beam of light from a lighthouse stands out in the dark night at sea.

The Master said, “Now you see how utterly impossible it would be for anyone to be overlooked. When the are any who are near being accepted into probation they stand out just so.”

We should take great comfort in this. For our planet is even more populated today that it was when those words were first written. (I have modernized the language some). But they are just as true today as they were a century ago, or even ten centuries or thousand centuries ago. The Master is waiting patiently for each of us to work our way through the system so that we come to a purified place where we can actually begin to do the work we have to do.

Now there are a good many who balk at the idea of recycling people through the physical world. I suppose that is the influence of the power mongers' post-Constantine re-writing of the Judeo-Christian scriptures. (It is amazing what a governing body can get away with when they dominate the media. But all is for a purpose; we fret not). Just the same; if we use nature as our teacher the lesson is very evident. I won’t belabour the point, and instead will continue as if it is an accepted fact. (If you don’t agree that’s fine. You can choose to read on or stop. I don’t care either way).

The Master in this text clearly communicates to his chela/ disciple/ learner/ padawan that recycling through the physical world is a very necessary part of the purification process of every person. Each person begins as very crude clay and evolves within the limiting realms of time and space to become the purified being of the substance of the Father, for it is the seed of the Father that gave rise to the person and like the embryonic form the child must grow. This short essay is for those who are in this phase of time / space and are seeking their way on the path. Perhaps you are hoping to shine out from the dark sea like the lighthouse. There follows short discussions on hindrances to process.

The Astral Body Cooks from the Heart

Random Thots: "Conscious Cooking
Preparing Food With Intention


{Some good advice from Nel in Kuala Lumpur. This applies not only to our meals but to all that we do. Cooking is the metaphor, you see....... it's a Zen thing. .... Just go with it, okay?

Visit Nel's blog daily to read more good advice, enjoyable stories, and to stay abreast with the continuing saga of clubbing, bringing home a banana, and living the single women's life in Malaysia}


We are what we eat, but more importantly, we affect what we eat from the cutting board to the pot to the table. The health-imparting properties of food (also known as the life force) are subtly changed by the way in which we prepare it and the spiritual qualities we project into it. Thoughts and emotions, both positive and negative, are absorbed by food as it is prepared. Think of the powerful healing properties of the food you've cooked for a sick relative or friend. Chicken soup is simply soup until it is prepared with the intent to heal. As we cook, our intentions be they loving, sad, destructive, creative, or joyful are imparted into our food. And food prepared with positive intent provides nourishment not only for the body, but also for the soul.

Before you can begin cooking consciously or with intent, it is necessary to remove sources of unpleasantness or distraction. Transform your kitchen into a comfortable, relaxing, and nurturing space. Concentrate on positive thoughts each time you enter the kitchen because negativity can affect the taste and nutritional value of the meals you prepare. It may be helpful to think of food preparation as a type of meditation, wherein your thoughts are free of the 'buzz' of the world, and are centered and focused on the task at hand: cutting vegetables, measuring liquids, blending spices, and adding herbs.

Devote the same amount of time and energy to simple tasks as you would to the preparation of a complex recipe, as this honors the processes involved in cooking. As you work, concentrate on nourishment and feelings of love. If you like, you may want to speak, chant, or sing a blessing over the ingredients before they are prepared to impart your positive intent. Finally, be present! in the cooking process from beginning to end by"

The Human: A Wonderous Creation "Machine"

Boiled down
In a nut shell
Simply put


The human being is a marvellous creating machine (if you will). Each person truly is made in the image of the creative God of this universe; let there be no doubt of that ever.

For the pattern of that image: We gain in the opening verses of the J-C scriptures an introduction to this our God. Sadly, it is blindly overlooked by those who want to know God even as he/she is known by God, and ignorance remains. That ignorance is the temporary undoing of the person that seeks. The first lesson of being like God (and therefore having the mind of Christ) is missed, and as a result the person sets out on a sidetrack decades long. This brief discussion is about that lesson and how to apply (or reapply) it to your own life if you choose to do so.


The Verse: IN the beginning God created heaven and earth. The ‘world’ was without any form and it was empty of content (it was chaotic/disorganized/ un-empowered by intent/ lacked focus, arranged purpose)….And God said, “Light, be.” And Light became.


A person could stop right there in his/her quest and simply meditate on those words for a span of time (varies with each person, naturally) and arrive at the height of spiritual maturity and gain his/her share in the divine nature without ever struggling through the trials and tribulations of worldly life. I’ll leave that thought out there to be considered by you when you are ready for it, instead I will focus my words on just one aspect of this divinely inspired verse and suggest an application of it.


The Lesson: We are created in God’s image. We agree on that much. We also agree that scriptures handed down through the ages are written by people who have the compelling need to share with others that which they have discerned about God, about our relationship to God, and how to discern these elements of Life on one’s own. With those agreements let us look at the scripture words for a moment.


We, being fashioned in the image of God, are spirit beings. This is true no matter who we are and no matter what our belief system is. All humans are spirit beings.


God, a spirit being, has us, who are spirit beings, being ‘expressed’ in the physical realm. That is he has made us to interact in this dense physical universe. If we, who are spirit yet are expressed in the physical, are made in the image of God then God, who is spirit, is also expressed in this physical universe/ world. It can be no other way.


But wait, God created the physical. How did he do that? Look at the opening lines of Genesis chapter one. There was disorganized empty chaos, then the spirit brooded/ hovered over the abyss and then he said something.


There was disorganized empty chaos, then the spirit brooded/ hovered over the abyss and then he said something.


At the risk of being boringly redundant, read that one more time in segments:

There was disorganized empty chaos,
then the spirit brooded/ hovered over the abyss
and then he said something.


We, who are spirit beings after the likeness of God create the same exact way.


We use our words to ‘develop’ ideas, ‘build up and exhort’ one another, express feelings, thoughts, and communicate hopes and dreams. I could go on with myriad examples of how we are utterly dependent on words to shape our world. But you can see this for yourself. Just look at how totally formless and empty this world would be without words in their many forms: no books, no radio, no speeches, no letters, no email, no advertising, no policies, no Declaration of Independence, no Magna Carta, no scriptures, no greetings, no “I love you”, no waving hello (gestures are symbolic of words), no smiles, nothing by which we could communicate our inner self to other inner selves. Words bridge the gap, that infinitely wide chasm between two spirits living in fleshly bodies. We use words to build our world. In that way we are exactly like God, the Father.


Why are we not getting the same kind of results He gets? I mean, He says and it’s there. Bam! Light, Be! And Light is there. I’ll tell you but you’re not gonna like the ramifications, and chances are you’ll not take to heart this lesson. That’s okay. I would suggest a reading of The Seven Steps of Alchemy in the near future (an essay based on another person’s book).


Back on target:

The Application: Why don’t we get the same results? Well, look at the verse again: The spirit of God hovered/ brooded over the abyss.


Two things to note here. First, the abyss is the first organizational stage of containing the chaos. It’s like putting parenthesis around a jumbled up set of letters that will eventually become a novel when properly arranged. This is the first step in reformatting the chaos into an image.


Second, the spirit, that is the essence of the person, the inner most being, hovered over, brooded over this initial aspect of the image. He is no longer looking at chaos and formlessness; he is, like a hen brooding over an egg, incubating the image of that which he will create. There is No TIME in this process. If you are to get creative results you must internalise this concept of time being an illusion of this world, and then disconnect from the illusion when you work to create. During this incubation of the idea the mind is quiet and serene; it focuses on that which is being created. And mark my words, the creation IS inside the mind, in the heart of the creator.


When the image was fully created THAT is when the Father expressed the creation with His words. He had built up inside Himself this overpowering image of Light and when He just couldn’t contain the image any more He literally exploded outward with His words LIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BE!!!!!!!!!! And there was Light. If that ain’t the Big Bang, I don’t know what is.


But still I haven’t explained why we don’t get His results, and here it is:


We don’t get His results because our mind is too cluttered with crap, absolute pure garbage. And our creative process expresses that cluttered disorganized mess of a mind and we can see it in the very fabric of our society. On the personal level the lesson could be Garbage In equals Garbage Out.


We all want a good life. We all want to have peace and harmony and happiness. What we do not all want is to do the work to achieve it. Oddly enough—and this is a bit of a oxymoron—the work we need to do is to learn how to Not Do Anything. Paul said it like this, “Labour to enter into that eternal Sabbath of God.” (Hebrews)


We don’t get the results we desperately want and need and crave inwardly because we fill our minds with a continuum of trash. Television, radio, self-help books, porn magazines, surfing the net, video games, sports, hobbies, chasing after seductive lovers, writing journals, watching DVD’s, the list is endless. There’s nothing inherently ‘bad’ in those entertainments, but that is all they are. They are diversions and they hinder our achieving the creative results we want by cluttering up the mind so badly that we can’t ‘hover’ or ‘brood’ over the abyss. And once we set our minds to un-cluttering the brain has an adjustment period to go through, a withdrawal phase, and we feel unsettled and at loose ends. So most will just return to the diversions because they ‘feel’ better. How sad it is then to be enslaved by these broadcasts ‘words’ instead of being the master of them. But how sweet and wonderful and joyous it is when once they are gone and the sanity of the divine self arises from within, and the inner eye sees God. Then we get results!


The Authorization: Now, lest you think I’m whacko here and this is all New Age mumbo jumbo I would direct your attention to Paul’s writings in the New Testament. In particular, Romans Chapter 8 and Hebrews Chapters 1, 4 thru 6, 11 and 12. Pay especial attention to Paul’s dissertation of creative faith of the Father. He begins alluding to it in chapter one, and while it is the topic of the entire letter, it is straightforward in Ch 11 “Now faith is…” .


Also, you will see this same concept echoing with a resounding thunderous reverberation in Jesus’ words. If your mind is uncluttered with crapola then all this is blatant and so ‘in your face’ that it is impossible to miss. If the mind is cluttered ….


The Common Denominator: I should like to add to this essay that the more compelled one is to fill their experience with diversions (“I get bored so easily” is often heard from them) then the greater is their personal access to creative power. So great is that power within that to shut it off more and more diversions are needed. For myself, I had to multitask: reading a book while chatting on line, while watching a DVD, often day dreaming at the same time, and frequently doing it in several languages. DVD in French, chatting in English, reading Greek, oh, and maybe having music on in the background so that when all else is quiet I would listen to that in the breaks. I've even had two or three computers on my desktop running at the same time. So I do understand the crave for 'input', and it does serve a purpose up to a point in life. But then comes the day when it all must be shut off for a few universal heart beats so that you can become more fully what you are.

So, if you get bored easily then realize now that the creative force within you is bursting to get out. And It will get out, and if you don’t help it by cooperating in the process then it will explode It's way out, destroying all things which try to bind it, and that process is powerful and unstoppable; much like the Big Bang.

Life finds a way.

The Seven Steps of Alchemy

This and the posts to follow (if I follow through) are from Deepak Chopra's "The Wizard within You", Harmony Books ISBN 0-517-70434-X. I've no intention to violate copyright law by posting portions of his worthy and well-crafted text. However, this is the only citation to his works in this Seven Steps of Alchemy and the 20 Lessons.



Step 1: Innocence. You were born in a state of innocence. Of all the ingredients used by the alchemist, this is the most important. A newborn baby does not question its existence; it lives in self-acceptance, trust, and love. The nagging voice of doubt is not yet heard.

Step 2: Birth of Ego. The arrival on the scene of ego, the sense of "I". To have "I" you must also have 'you' or 'it.' The birth of ego is the birth of duality. It marks the beginning of opposites and thus the beginning of opposition. Every new step in alchemy overturns the one that came before, turning your old world upside down, but this revolution is perhaps the most shocking. You're no longer a god!

Step 3: Birth of the Achiever. Once you have ego you have a world 'out there', and a new tendency emerges, the urge to go out into the world and achieve. The first signs of this change are primitive. The baby wants to grab things and hold them; it wants to explore on its own, always making sure that mother is nearby. Soon it wants to walk and begins to protest if its mother won't let it. This desire to escape and roam is timid at first. But over time the same baby that yearned to be held and protected wails to be let go. This is a healthy instinct, for the ego knows that the unknown is the source of fear. If the baby did not go out ot conquer the world, it would grow to fear it more and more.

Step 4: Birth of the Giver. In time the ego hits upon a new notion, that the happiness lies not just in taking but also in giving. This is momentous discovery, for it rids the ego of many kinds of fear. There is the fear of isolation, which total selfishness must lead to. There is the fear of loss, which arises because you can't hold on to everything forever. There is the fear of enemies, those who want to take from you.//By becoming a giver, the ego doesn't have to live with these fears....Giving is creative...the giver feels pleasure...Love has entered the heart.

Step 5: Birth of the Seeker. For a long time the ego has had everything its way (even in the giving, ed.). The question what is good for me? has dominated all considerations; the limited individual viewpoint has been the only one that seemed real. This is only natural...This relative world has a purpose, to teach you to become an individual. But individuality eventually begins to open up and broaden its horizons. You might predict that given free will, humans would only indulge in more and more selfishness. If the loveless, controlling ego had the last world, perhaps this would be your fate, but alchemy works invisibly, in unseen passageways of the soul.// the next step is the seeker. The sense of 'I" is allowed to expand. Now the person becomes eager for spiritual experiences, sensing a source of love and fulfilment that even the most intense love of another person cannot deliver. Again, this about-face comes as a shock. At his best the giver is a philanthropist. He started out by giving only to family and friends, then to charities or community, but in the end the spirit of giving can't be satisfied until all humans benefit (emp. mine). (This stage) raises questions it cannot answer by giving, thus preparing the way for a new birth...A thirst arises to see the face of God, to live in the light, to explore the silence of pure awareness: the seeker's impulse can take many forms...//The stage the Grail Quest begins...a deep-felt need to escape the boundaries imposed by time and space. Your essence is boundless. You were born to a universal life. The world seems to be limited by time and space, but that is only an illusion...the universe is not hiding anything from you...the world is a school (the spirit your schoolmaster, ed)...the rule is that however you see yourself, that is how you will see the world.

Step 6: Birth of the Seer. The seeker's motivation was to be able to see, and soon that emerges. The birth of the seer is just below the surface of the seeker. By itself seeking carries no fulfilment; it would be a dry and frustrating life if you were only to seek without finding (and Jesus said, "See and you shall find", ed.)...The divine plan allows for all questions to bring their own answers at the same time, all goals turn out to be found at the source. Once you truly ask Where is God? you will see a response. This birth spells the end of the ego, the end of all outward identification. When the seeker arrives on the scene, you begin to sense the (unreality of the ego dominated life). Now self-image is seen for what it is, a flimsy projecting made real by the ego's desperate need to place importance on the time-bound mind and body.///The seer sees through this motivation and no longer buys into it. Instead of seeing yourself as flesh and bones that house a spirit--a ghost inside a machine--you realize that everything (!!!) is spirit. Arrows of light fly to us from the (spirit) world to ignite our souls, but we cannot send arrows of thought back. Spirit is a direct experience, but it transcends this world. It is pure silence teeming with infinite potential. When you gain knowledge of anything else (a rock, a rose) you gain knowledge of some thing, (about some thing); but when you gain knowledge of spirit you become knowingness itself. All questions cease because you find yourself in the womb of reality, where everything simply is. When the eye of the seer falls on something, it is simply accepted for what it is, not judged. There is no ego need to take or possess or destroy (or evaluate). In the absence of fear, no such motivations arise, for needing to possess is born of lack. When you have no lack to fill, then just being here in this world in your body is the highest spiritual goal you could possibly attain.

[I'm going to jump out of the text for just a minute to call people of Christian faith to attend to some biblical word: John wrote: perfect (fully-matured) love casts out all fear. Paul wrote: My God shall supply all your needs according to his riches/fullness in glory. Jesus said, judge not, lest you be judge by the same measure you use to judge. Paul tells us that the body is the temple of God. These texts are NOT taken out of context simply to apply to these lessons. In fact, one must take them out of their total context in order to get the watered down stuff that's feeding 'the church' these past 1800 years or so. Back to the final lesson in the book]


Step 7: Spirit. “It’s hard to imagine that there could be any higher stage of life," (the man) said after a moment. "Be careful with that word higher," cautioned (the teacher). "It's the ego that must have high and low. The goal of your life is freedom and fulfilment. Fulfilment isn't achieved until you know God as completely as He knows Himself. You "non-immortals" are always yearning for miracles, and I tell you that the greatest miracle is yourselves, for God has given you this unique ability to identify with His nature. A perfect rose does not sense that it is a rose; a fulfilled human knows what it means to be divine.//(This) is the seventh and final step of alchemy, pure spirit. When it dawns the seer finds that what seems to be total joy and fulfilment can still expand. You see, arriving in the presence of God is not the end of your quest but the beginning. You began in innocence, and so shall you end. But this time the innocence is different, because you have gained complete knowledge, whereas a baby has only feeling.///When you are able to see yourself as spirit, your identification with this body and this mind will cease. At the same time the concept of birth and death will cease. You will be a cell in the body of the universe, and this cosmic body will be as intimate to you as your own body is to you now.///No amount of thinking or feeling can approximate this state or bring it to you. Spirit is born in pure silence. Your mind's internal dialogue must end and never begin again, because what gave rise to the inner dialogue--fragmentation of the self-- is no longer present. Your self will be unified, and like the baby that was your beginning, you will feel no doubt, shame, or guilt. The ego's need for duality resulted in a world of good and bad, right and wrong, light and shadow. Now you will see that these opposites are fused (as one). Such is God's perspective, for everywhere He looks, all He sees is Himself.

(I point the seeker toward Paul’s letter to the Ephesians for a treatise on unity in the spirit and that even which is in Christ. I point the seeker toward the letter to the Colossians for cosmic unity in the anointing power of God called Christ).

If you feel this goal is too lofty or too far off, here is a secret. Although you seem to pass through the seven steps of alchemy, each one was (always) present from the beginning.

Love, struggle, passion and suffering cyclically bring us back around to love again and again.

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Child of God, I tell you plainly and without any guile that the concepts presented above can all be found in the life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. If you are one of the many trying to interpret the prophets and "John's Apocalypse" to determine where are we in the 'end times' you are wasting your effort and you are missing out on the greatest miracle ever! You seek knowledge in these writings to divine the future because you are still struggling with the ego. I tell you that you must get a grip on the fabric of God's clothing and never let go; daily telling God that you are not satisfied with your level of understanding, that you don't know him as the scripture promises you, that you MUST have more; get right in His face and stay there until you no longer see anything else but God. no stars, no trees, no people, no evil, no death; only God. When that occurs you can let go yourself.

Lesson 1: The Treasures in Silence

‘Silence is the great revelation,” Lao-tse, considered to be the first philosopher of the Taoist school back around 600 BC shared that with his students.

There’s been a lot written and recorded about the value of silence—a fact which I find to be a bit oxymoronic in nature—and there are even more than a few contemporary lyricists and singers who’ve made it into the top 40 by singing about silence. “Silence is Golden” and “The Sound of Silence” come to mind, but I think, poetic as Simon and Garfunkel are, they were not teaching on the path to enlightenment. Enigma’s “Silence Must be Heard”, Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence”, and “Code of Silence” by 10CC are other recent poetic attempts to use this powerful concept of silence in song.


Our concern here is not the empty-headed lyric of wannabe philosophers and poets (not to demean anyone’s work but pop music sucks as philosophy IMnsHO).


“In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness.” That’s how Mahatma Gandhi put it back in his day.


And Nyogen Senzaki, a Japanese-born Zen monk (the first to teach in the United States in the mid 20th century), taught, “Meditating deeply... reach the depth of the source. Branching streams cannot compare to this source! Sitting alone in a great silence, even though the heavens turn and the earth is upset, you will not even wink.” Seemingly a long sentence for a Zen teaching on silence.


This lesson, then, is about making an initial foray into that somewhat elusive, frequently frightening part of our mind in which there is

………..quiet.


My text is greatly indebted to Fr. Anthony de Mello’s work “Sadhana: a Way to God; Christian Exercises in Eastern Form” published in 1978, St. Louis, MO by The Institute of Jesuit Sources ISBN 0-912422-46-7

Those of us on the path will invariably come to the place where the mind must be quieted in order to proceed. This is a fact. It is not some mystic guru mind-bending platitude, it is a plain simple fact: In the silence of the mind we find the purist revelation of God. And we should not be surprised to come across this idea in the Hebrew Scriptures and even echoed in a somewhat Hellenic fashion by Paul who was, like Jesus our pattern of faith, very much a mystic. Joshua’s prime directive was to be so focused on God’s Word that reminders of it be placed in every conceivable location—on the fingers, forehead, doorposts, and even, if they had been around, the refrigerator door and medicine cabinet mirror. Their minds were to be commonly focused on God and quietness (peace; shalom) is a prerequisite for that experience.


We in the modern world may seem to be at a disadvantage when contrasted with the authors of scripture two or three thousand years ago. Think about it. Their concept of time was different because they didn’t have the ‘soccer mom’ lifestyle, showing up for work on time meant waking up, eating a meal and stepping outdoors, there were no high-pressure deadlines, no planes to catch, no taxis to splash puddles onto our new set of clothes, no sirens, whistles and jets blasting the sound waves continually, no cell phones and pagers, no email, chat, or voice mail to check, no television, radio or Internet. The sun came up. The sun went down. In between those events the goats were tended, the cloth woven, the fields nurtured. And the night skies were spectacular! The air so clean and the atmosphere so pure that the stars were just an arm’s length away. When the moon rose from her bed at night she was HUGE! And awe-inspiring. There is no wonder at all why we used the moon and the sun as the most powerful symbols of divine Love back then. No so today.


But are we truly at a disadvantage? I think not.


Though it may seem difficult to do at first, we can turn off the tele and ignore the ringing, chirping, Mozart-tune playing phones. We can locate a place of relative physical quiet. We can arrange our schedule for a thirty-minute time-out each day. And we can demand the world leave us alone during. So let us for the moment assume that we can control a small part of our environment for the duration of this exercise I am going to suggest. We who attempt to quiet the mind begin our experience under infinitely varied conditions and will have equally varied results. Most will discover, much to their surprise and perhaps initially to their distress, that silence is something to which we are not accustomed.


First Exercise:

(I suggest reading all the steps through before doing them: otherwise your eyes will be closed after step one! It’s a joke. Go with it. J )


Find a comfortable place and take a comfortable posture. Nothing tense or contorted, but one in which you can relax for ten minutes or so. Then close your eyes.


I invite you at this point to keep silence for about ten minutes. This means try to stop your thinking from wandering, and just settle down to a ‘noise free’ rest of the thought process. When you attain this condition you will expose your Self to whatever revelation it brings.


At the end of the ten minutes assess your experience.


Nearly everyone will find that no matter what they do at this stage they simply cannot still the constant wandering or quieten an emotional turmoil felt with the heart. Others feel themselves approaching that boundary where silence begins but quickly withdraw. All those voices, thoughts, feelings have been constant companions; silence can be frightening.


Don’t be discouraged. There is no reason at all for discouragement. Even your wandering thoughts are a great revelation to you, are they not? You have learned that your mind wanders when you try to focus it. Just knowing this information puts you in a very small group of people on the planet. Most people never discover this. Yet, it is not enough for us to know it wanders. That is the first step. We must take the time to actually experience the wandering process and determine the type of wandering it indulges in. That too is a great revelation and a beginning of unsealing the mysteries of our own soul.


And here is the encouraging part: The very fact that you are aware of your mental wanderings or of you inner turbulence, or seemingly strong challenge of keeping the mind/ heart still shows that you already have some small degree of silence within you. You have enough silence within to enable you to be “The Observer” of your own mind. The simple task now is to take that small capacity at the level it is currently at, exercise it a little bit every day until it is a powerful force of nature within you. If you commit yourself to this task and build on this simple exercise your revelation about yourself will grow. The Silence will become your teacher and Silence will reveal things that cannot be purchased with money or learned in school, or read in a book, or even heard inside your place of worship. This small degree of silence will lead you into wisdom and serenity and joy and God. These are priceless and lasting throughout the ages of ages.


Close your eyes again. And once again seek that small degree of silence for another five minutes.


After five minutes or so, note whether your attempts were more successful or less. Also observe whether or not the silence revealed something to you that you had not seen the first time.


Don’t seek in this experience anything sensational. No lights, no booming voices of inspiration, no clairvoyant insights. IN FACT, don’t seek anything at all. Strictly limit yourself to observing your experience. Take in everything as it comes to your awareness and just log it in. No matter how trivial or ordinary it seems, just observe it.


Don’t worry about trying to remember it later on. You observation and revelation may consist of the fact that your hands are cold and sweating, or your eyelids itch, or your posture has changed. All of these are relevant facts and are valuable to the process. The content of the awareness is far less important that the quality of the awareness itself. As the quality improves with practice the silence deepens. As the silence deepens, the experience changes. And this shall continue in cyclical fashion. And an energy level builds within you that you never even imagined before. Teachers have claimed, and I have experienced, an actual transformation of the cerebral chemistry (that which rules the brain and human experience); DNA function is altered. You’ve heard of that unused 90% of the brain? Guess what it is waiting on you to do!


And when you do, then You will discover, to your childlike delight, that revelation IS NOT knowledge. Revelation is a power! It is the power of our alchemical process; It Transforms You. It is the Resurrection Power of Christ in You.


Come on back to learn more.

Lesson 2: Exploring the Treasure Chest

Lesson 2: Exploring the Treasure Chest


In the essay titled Lesson 1: The Treasures in Silence I discussed the value of developing your capacity to quiet the mind. There was also a short discussion on becoming the observer of yourself. I suppose by now you have mastered the technique of shutting out the world’s clamour, and have so exercised your quiet mind that nothing is able to disturb your inner silence. That is absolutely wonderful!



So, what do we do with our profound ability? Let’s apply it!


For the next level of exercise we’re going to take this newly emerging capacity and give it a bit of a work out. The idea is to strengthen your inner person with a goal of doing some housecleaning. And this makes sense if you think about an analogy in the physical world: You wouldn’t just jump into the middle of a 26-mile marathon race without having trained for it, would you? At least, not with an expectation of finishing the race.


Oh, it might be just fine if you only want to get an impression of the experience but the impression wouldn’t even be close to what a real marathon runner is experiencing. Months of training, special diets, a determined will to start and to finish, a desire to accomplish the work, and then there is the run itself; step and step, 137,280 feet of travel is roughly 54,000 steps; during which at some point the muscles begin to feed on themselves for the energy to continue, and the mind must take absolutely mastery over the flesh or admit defeat. You can’t get a feel for that if you only jump into the race for a mile or two, can you? The same is true for the path, which is a self-paced slow marathon in which you are the only participant and you must cross the universe and back many times along the way. Easy!


In this exercise we are going to focus the mind on parts of the body. If you’ve never done anything like this before it may seem a bit strange, but it is a valuable training experience and will prepare you for a greater work to be undertaken in the near future.


For this set of exercises find a position and posture that is comfortable and restful. Your breathing should be natural and relaxed. Place your hands comfortably on your thigh if you are sitting up, or tummy if you’re lying down. And I want you to quiet your mind.


When the mind is relatively quiet, become aware of certain sensations in your body that you are feeling right now, but which you may not be normally aware. Be aware of the touch of your clothing on your shoulders. Become aware of the clothing’s touch on our back, or of your back making contact with the chair or cushion against which it rests….Now send your awareness to your hands. What are they touching? Become aware of where they contact another surface. … Now become aware of your thigh muscles, how they are resting, the angle of first one then the other upper leg…Now the feel of your toes inside your shoes or socks, or if you are bare foot perhaps you can sense the place where the air touches a part of your foot; a bit cooler, or the movement of air across the flesh…Now become aware of your posture; the angle of your spine, your chin. No need to change unless you want to. Just become aware of it.


Okay. Take a couple relaxing breaths but there’s no need to focus on your breathing. This is just a check on being relaxed. Then let’s repeat the cycle of awareness (there’s no set of rules to this; no specific order; I’m just working on a theme here).


Once again: your shoulders….your back….your hands—first the left, then the right….now your thighs,,, your feet….your posture. Take as much time as you want or need at each location. A couple seconds is fine, but there’s no hurry. Sometimes we need to just stop at a specific place for a little longer to actually ‘feel’. It’s okay, and this variety is part of the experience.


Let’s take another set of relaxing breaths. Did you notice this time whether or not your breathing had been altered during the awareness stops at different parts of the body?


Now that you’ve got the hang of it, go ahead and make an awareness circuit again but you choose where to focus your awareness: Head, ears, lips, knee caps, you are in the driver’s seat now. The important thing is that you get the feel, the sensation of each part, that you sense if for a second or two and then move on. After maybe five minutes or so just let go of all your senses, release them to do what they want and you relax you mind. Just let it go free and then open your eyes.




More often than not this simple exercise can bring a rapid sense of relaxation and refreshment. In fact it’s not unusual at all to drop off to sleep for a couple minutes. More than a couple times I have had a person under my care sleep for thirty minutes after the first exposure to this exercise.


There is a very good and significant reason for this, and I’ll go into it in more detail in a later lesson. For now let us just say that nervous tension, one our greatest ‘enemies’, is stored in our limbs, our muscles, even our body organs. Think about the highly stressed businessperson who develops an ulcer. That didn’t happen overnight and it develops because the stress is stored in a body location that affects digestion chemistry; acid, bile, pepsin, all that stuff. In our ‘modern’ world we are not taught the skills to properly deal with the tensions of life. How can anyone teach what they don’t know? So we turn to the universal teacher, who the J-C Bible calls the Holy Spirit, The Paraklete, The Tutor, and we access our teacher through our effective prayer and meditation. These exercises teach how to become effective in these endeavours.


The formula is really quite simple: You relax when you come to your sense; when you become as fully conscious as possible of your body sensations, of the sounds around you, of your breathing, the beat of your heart, of the tastes in your mouth, even the sound of the blood swooshing passed your ear drum, then you begin to access a part of your brain that has been repressed, squashed, locked away. With this exercise we basically are feeling our way around the treasure chest. We do this to first learn the exterior dimensions of the chest, and then to find the place into which we will insert and turn a very important key. As I said, this is a preliminary exercise, a training exercise to prepare you for the work ahead.


Now that is the end of this lesson. The rest of this article is just a redundancy of the information you already have, but it is said in a little different way with a little more detail added. The next lesson will be looking at some of the features of your treasure chest and to line up the keyholes.

Sat nam.
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From Fr. Mello’s Sadhana mixed with some of my ingredients:


Far too many people live too much in their heads—they are mostly conscious of the “thinking” (my emphasis) and fantasizing that is going on in their head and are far too little conscious of the activity of their senses. (ed. Additionally, they mistake the never ending inner conversation with thinking, they encourage a fantasy world that is motivated by their base desires. We will see later that these desires are the manipulative forces of rampant brats hiding in the dark corners and alleyways of the mind. We will gently coax them out into the light and lead them home.) As a result they rarely live in the present moment (the Now). They are almost always in the past or in the future. In the past, they are regretting past mistakes, feeling guilty about past sins, gloating over past achievements, resenting past injuries caused by other people, constantly on the alert to avoid being hurt again, or repeating a mistake, or constantly arguing with a past humiliating experience. Or in the future, they are dreading possible calamities and unpleasantness, anticipating future joys (which seem always to evade them), and dreaming of future events, planning a moment of revenge or getting even.


Recalling the past in order to profit from it, or even to enjoy it afresh, and anticipating the future in order to plan realistically are valuable functions, provided they do not take us out of the present for too long. (It is the present moment where we understand Reality and therefore find God). To succeed in prayer it is essential to develop the ability to make contact with the present and stay there. And there is no better method I know for staying in the present than training your mind to focus where it needs to. By focusing the mind on the senses we are taking control of ourselves, seizing it from those inner children and returning it to the rightful ruler: You in the Now.


Try to sense the heat or cold of the atmosphere around you. Feel the breeze as it caresses the hairs on your skin. Feel the texture and temperature of objects you touch.


When you prepare to walk become aware of your feet! Move your foot in a short arc and move your awareness into your toes as if to ‘see’ with your foot the floor space near your feet. You will be amazed at the number of accidents you will avoid in life if you make this an entrenched habit!


Add to this the awareness of your hands before you move them. Imagine you are sitting at a table or counter in a restaurant, doing the crossword or reading a good book. You don’t want to take your eyes of the text just to pick up your drinking glass, so you reach toward where you believe the glass to be. Wouldn’t it be great to reach for the glass without knocking over the saltshaker? A person who ‘sees’ with the hand first will avoid this pitfall and a great many others as well. Additionally, it will work in the reverse direction for you as well. When you are aware of your hands when you set down your car keys, or TV remote, you have encoded the information into several places in the memory. You will find that you do not misplace your wallet, keys, or kids nearly as often as before!


Once you have mastered this technique of sense awareness you will be pleasant surprised to see what it does to you if you are the type that frequently worries about the future or feels guilty about the past. There is a ‘draining’ technique that allows that dirty old emotional dishwater to go away.


A word about getting out of your head: The head is not a very good place for prayer and meditations. OH, it’s not such a bad place to start out, but if you stay there long and don’t move into the heart, your prayer will dry up quickly, prove tiresome, boring and frustrating. There is very little progress to be made by locking yourself up inside the prison walls of your head. And there’s not any good reason for staying there since you are not only the prisoner, but the jail and the jailer as well. So turn the key on that lock, swing the prison doors open and take a look beyond your prison walls. It’s a wonderful universe to explore. As you learn to move out of the area of thinking and talking, you will move into the area of feeling, sensing, loving and intuiting. These areas will become much more trustworthy and loyal to your experience than thinking ever was. Thinking is the most powerful tool for creating the illusion of a reality. The areas outside of thought are where contemplation is born and prayer becomes a transforming power. It is the place where real thinking begins and starts the flow of never-ending peace and delight in life. Joy is found beyond the words in your head, on the other side of the veil of the illusion.


It is just possible that some people- a very few—will feel as a result of this exercised, not relaxation and peace but an increase of tension. If this happens to you switch the focus of your mind to the tension itself. Note what part of your body is tense. Take note of what the tension feels like. Become aware of the fact that you are tensing up and not how you are doing this. For example, does a tension in your forehead begin in your neck? Does the tension in your neck originate between your shoulders? Does the knot between the shoulders begin in the lower back or in the pelvis?


When I use the world note I’m not referring to the reflection but to the feeling and sensing. It cannot be repeated too often that this exercise is a matter of feeling, not thinking. There are people who, when asked to feel their arms or hands, do not really feel them. Instead, they produce a mental image of their limbs; the know where the limbs are situated and the become aware of the knowledge, but not the actual limb. This is a very important distinction and cannot be overstressed.


In fact, you may pick up no sensations from a large portion of your body. This is because your ‘sensibility’ has been anaesthetized from so much living inside your head. Your skin is a major organ of the body; not just some covering for the bones and muscle. The surface of your skin is covered with trillions of bio-chemical reaction sites that we interpret in the brain as sensation (touch pressure, vibration from sound and moving air, heat, heat loss or cold, etc). If you have hardened yourself to the feelings of your flesh it is very likely the result of an emotional pain or conflict long ago forgotten and the emotional body carries this wound around in this ‘numb’ place. In this regard, your perception, your awareness, your powers of concentration and attention are rough and unwieldy.


The most efficient method Fr. Mello suggests for overcoming this problem area the following:


Close your eyes. Get in touch with the sensations of your body that you can feel. Ideally, don’t think of the various parts with labels such as ‘hands’ or ‘legs’ but just move from one area sensation to the next. If you notice an urge to move or to shift your position when you get to a particular area this is a key piece of information. Don’t give into the urge. Just become aware of the urge and the discomfort, if any, that gives rise to the urge to move.


Stay with this exercise for a few minutes. You will gradually feel certain stillness in your body. Don’t rest there but allow the stillness to remain. I’ll repeat that a little louder: Don’t stay in the stillness you find; this is not where we are headed.


If you become distracted, you suddenly find yourself thinking about the check book or a conversation you recently had with a friend or a flirtatious moment with someone to who you are attracted just go back to the awareness exercise. We all do this and it takes practice to avoid it for long periods of time.


Don’t look for the stillness per se and, as I said, don’t rest in the stillness the exercise produces; keep moving from one part of the body to the next. Now, why? Well, it’s because our goal is to develop the mind. If you stay in the stillness and the peace for more than a few seconds you will tend to induce a mild trance state and shift out of the Beta brain waves toward the Delta brainwaves of deep sleep. This is self-induced hypnosis. There is a time and a place for that but it is not part of our practice yet. So, let’s avoid it. By deliberately avoiding the attempt to produce the stillness or silence or parking in it once you find it, you avoid the trap of thinking the trance is the peace of God. It most certainly is not. So, in spite of the lure of the stillness and the restful luxury of the stillness, keep to the exercise of awareness. Let the stillness do its work alone. It will, and it will do a better job for you right now if you’re not around.


There will be moments when the stillness or the blank mind will be so powerful that it will make all exercise and all effort on your part impossible. In such moments it is no longer You who go in quest of the stillness, but it has sought you out. When that happens you may safely relax into the stillness and let go of all effort and struggle. WE shall for the moment describer her as the Universal Mother. Surrender to her loving embrace and trust her implicitly for she has come to heal.


We have in this exercise reinforced the practice of finding the still and quiet mind and we have taken the first significant steps toward harnessing the unbelievable powerful resource accessed by the mind. We have briefly pointed out some potential pitfalls along the way and in the end we have found that the Divine Spirit of our Creator is very much involved in this process. Or did you miss that?


In the next lesson I want to look at this same awareness process from a more active perspective and begin to use it with purpose. But first I think we should spend a little more time on what it means to escape the limits of the ego. So we’ll go back to Chopra’s text.


Peace.

Lesson 3: Blinded by the not-the-Light

Sung by Not-the-Bruce

As I have said many times over the years I am an avid lover of the J-C bible. I began my spiritual path by hearing the words of it spoken among the adults in my house (Grandma preaching to my mother’s lost soul, for example), and dedicated my life to the discipleship of Jesus as a teen (and NO, I was not an attendee of religious services and did not come by this decision as a result of the weak evangelism of man but rather by the call of the spirit), and have been reading to understand the nature of the Lord ever since. I have told the story in other essays in which I would steal away to the isolated and quiet Diesel Generator of my first submarine, light up a couple one-hit bowls, and read from a pocket New Testament. And how I was intrigued by and seduced into studying the Koiné Greek so I could get a feel for the nuances of the tongue and not miss out on the truth being revealed. I might tend to say from an intellectual standpoint my affair with the Word began when I heard it as a small child in 1961, but from the mystic’s perspective…. Well, let’s just leave that for now because my point is not about that.

My point is about the layering, about the scrolls within sealed scrolls of the Word of God and how they are pre-existent inside our hearts.

Paul wrote that the covenants of God are written upon the tablets of the heart (he used tablet to evoke the image of Moses and the Law; connecting the mystery of one to the other). And John wrote that we have need of scriptures for the Word is written within us. And that is how the promise is made that Jesus would reveal to us the Father and that we would know Him even as we are known.

Now that is a wonderful use of words there and one finds a simple but life altering truth in it. Evangelicals tend to shy away from where it leads because they have been wrongly taught by traditionalism to renounce self-knowledge as an aspect of vanity. (This is the kind of junk one gets when the truth is given into the hands of self-serving institutionalising ‘leaders’ seeking political power; i.e. the early bishopry). But focus on this idea: The Father is revealed (this suggest a process of unveiling), and we will know him as we are known. Who is the Knower here? Who is the one gaining the knowledge? The Knower, the knowledge gainer is You. You are the seeker. You are the one desiring the knowledge of the Father. Notice the clever little ‘seal’ on this bit of truth. The phrase ‘even as you are known’ can be read from the flesh or from the spirit. If it is read from the flesh the reader maintains a dualistic relationship between self and God because ‘even as your are known’ implies that God is the one knowing us. But if the words are read from the spirit in light of the revelation of Christ in us then the seal is broken and a great revelation begins to unfurl within us. From the spirit those words are read as if You and I are the ones knowing ourselves, so that the statement can be read more like this: As you gain self-awareness and self-realization the Father is revealed to you, and the fullness of that revelation of the Father is linked directly to your level of self-awareness. Do you see this?

What prohibit our self-awareness? This is a very important question, and it is among the first questions which absolutely must be resolved before one can gain understanding of God. This concept, this question, the resolution of the question is one of the easiest seals to break on the ‘scrolls within the scrolls’ yet it is the one left unbroken by nearly every single person calling themselves a ‘child of God’ whether there tradition is Hindu, Islaam, Jewish, Ba’hai, Buddhist, Mormon, Catholic, Protestant, JW, Naturalist, or Blab-it/ Grab-it Tongue Talkin’ Wheelin’ Dealin’ Healin’ Holy Rollers. It is the seal that is missed most often until a older person’s physical health has decayed and she/he has given up hold of beauty, strength, and the many other tricksters of the senses. When he/she truly begins seeking God in the last days of a foreshortened experience on the planet.

In the next paragraphs I will briefly discuss this idea from two texts but be forewarned; there is no step-by-step instruction manual in this or any other text that lead to God because the journey leads inward where the real Word is written. The only instruction you will receive from me begins with daily practice of the 4/4 breathing technique. Learn to breath, learn the true value of the Breath, then begin to know yourself even as you are known.

I was eTalking with a man with whom I’ve maintained a loving relationship since our first meeting in the 7th grade (Mr. Dussell’s World History and then Ohio History). He’s been having a rather rough go of it the last couple years—the details of which are of no consequence to this story—and we were continuing an on-going eConversation about spiritual growth and enlightenment. We had already discussed the idea that words spoken from the real inner desire of the man’s heart are filled with the creative power of God, and the bulk of this eConversation was about adjusting one’s perspective out of the superstition of traditional Christianity to allow for one seeking God to take the next step.

After many lines of exchanged text we arrive at a point where he recalls a verse of scripture. The concept we were discussing was that the Way into God’s power is hidden to the minds of darkness, that the world is an illusion, and that the illusion serves a necessary purpose of screening out those who are not at a place in their growth to allow Love her proper place; and that God is everyone and everyone is God must be true statements if the Bible is used as a guiding text. There was much more, including a discourse on the Beatles and that Lucy in the Sky is NOT about LSD! –and the remembrance of the verse of scripture suddenly took on a very new and very powerful costume. The text was II Corinthians chapter 4.

I must reiterate before I go on that Paul, like Jesus, was a mystic of the Nth degree, and it is for this reason that his writings confuse people enough that they will actually fight over the splitting of rhetorical hairs!!! (And that’s fine because the mystic messages are veiled to them that are darkness and they’ve no business with God in the mercurial endeavours under the banner of an iconic make-believe Jesus.) I highlight this because if you are reading the text along with me and Paul’s words seem too poetic, too much mumbo-jumbo, or really frikkin’ hard to understand, then be encouraged that you will someday understand them. The fact that you admit the difficulty in understanding the words is the first step toward gaining their clarity, and if you patiently seek the Truth then someday Paul’s words (and John’s and Peter’s and Jesus’) will one day literally explode outward in your mind with revelation and understanding. It will be the Big Bang of your universe! So be patient and keep breathing.

My brother eRead the text with me and commented at various points. Now and then I would have him back up to point out a particular idea. He was so excited as he read “but if our gospel is hidden then it is hidden to them that are lost. It is in them that the god of this lifetime has eclipsed the minds of the unbelievers.

(Please note that I chose to translate as ‘lifetime’ what other more religious minded folks have translated as ‘age’ and even ‘world’; We are at perfect liberty to do this. The lexicon is clear on it, and the remained of this section Paul emphasizes the experience of the lifetime in the world contrasted with experiencing the eternal glory of God. “Lifetime” is a much more fitting translation and, instead of obscuring the meaning in thee’s, thou’s and fake words, reveals what Paul is actually saying!)

I should get to my point (eventually): He had read these words in the verse selection of II Cor 4 at his mother’s funeral service. I pointed out that in the spiritual realm what had happened is that he had spoken these words when his heart was very much engaged with them (given the impact of the events) and had thus spoke the Word over (in superiority to) death. And that since he had done so in that manner the words created a reality in his life that was just now coming into the physical realm. They were just as ‘real’ when he’d spoken them, but their influences were just beginning to ‘bear fruit’, if you will. I did not have the time or opportunity to demonstrate that not only were the words shaping his reality but were doing so in the lives of everyone who was within the sphere of his aura AND will affect the lives of them and those who come in contact with THEIR altered energy level/ aura/ reality, and so on.

[We so underrate the power of our words because we are total freakin’ morons about God. And we are morons about God because we turn to preachers and teachers to interpret the Word for us instead of turning to the Paraklete, the Holy Tutor, the Spiritual Schoolhouse Spook, i.e. the spirit of God dwelling IN us already. We are stuck in a rut that someone else has dug. I don’t know about you but I call such a rut a pit or a ditch or a trap trench.]

In Paul’s letter to the Church at Ephesus (a very developed occult centre, even more so than Corinth, I think) he tells us to mimic God as beloved children (would mimic their cherished dad). He also says, talking to the believers, “you WERE being (imperfect tense of the Greek Eimi / to be / être) darkness but now light in the lord: walk as children of light.”

That statement is really very powerful as is on its own, but when one reads it in the mystic’s context, particularly when imaged from the Hindi perspective, this is an explosive powerhouse of words. Elsewhere Paul talks about being translated, about working out our salvation, about becoming the mind of Christ (also read the Christ-ly Mind) and walking in the spirit. He talks about being present in spirit though absent in the flesh. I can tell you from my own personal experience that this kind of talk is NOT simply waxing poetic. A child of God who has gotten out of the superstition of modern Churchianity and done the work necessary to enter that rest (the eternal Now Sabbath of God) is able to easily be not just someplace other than the body but is able to be in several places at once! And is able to work in both locations simultaneously. Talk about your multitasking! (Bill Gates, IBM, even CRAYs ain’t got nothin’ on the kids of the kingdom, baby!)

This is real, but only is it real to a certain ‘class’ of believers. In Ephesians 3 Paul even demonstrates the presence of these various class distinctions and demonstrates how to move from one class/ group/ level to the next. When you read that chapter remember that Paul's word choices are very deliberate. His words are crafted to evoke an image. If he uses the word ‘prisoner’ it is with an imaging purpose. (If you doubt this take a look at Paul's treatise on ‘vain imaginations.” You can go looking for it yourself if you’re not too lazy. I’m not doing your legwork.) I do highlight his statement in v.18 which says that once certain conditions are met (hint HINT: Spirit equals breath, and breath equals spirit ) then the believer may be able to comprehend the dimensions, and may be able to have intimate intercourse with the Love of Christ (Love equals God equals the power behind the workings of Universe; Christ equals the express image of God; can’t get much plainer or simpler than that.)

This stuff cannot be grasped by the mind working at the low animal level at which 99.9% of humanity functions. The mind must be linked to the higher functions and this is accessed only through the narrow gate through which the wind blows. (see HINT above just in case you’re still not getting it).

The next step in Paul's thinking is in chapter 4 and he launches right into what it is like to live and function at the next higher level of consciousness. He defines our work and our goals and our methods. Notice the emphasis he places on speaking words! Especially v.15. And also notice the focus on being RENEWED IN THE MIND (this is all about getting functional at the next level and then going beyond. To get hold of this you are going to have to practice the breathing techniques and go inward (I know, I’m repeating myself, but there is such a magnetic tendency to continually fall back on interpreting these words in church-speak and that habit of thought has to change forever in you. It’s not easy unless you do the breathing and go inward).

Getting back to the being light:

From Leadbeater on Union with the Master

[Though the acceptance of the disciple by the Master produces so great a difference in his/her life, there is but little more of external ceremony attached to it that there was in the case of probation. If one observes this ceremony with the sight of the causal body, one sees the Master as a glorious sphere of living fire, containing a number of concentric shells of colour, his physical body and its counterparts on other planes being in the centre of the blowing mass, which extends to a radius many hundreds of yards.

In approaching the physical body of the Master, the disciple advances into that glowing sphere of finer material, and when he/she finally reaches the feet of the Master he is already in the heart of the splendid sphere; and when the Master expands himself to include the aura of the disciple, it is really the central heart of fire which so expands and includes him, for all through the ceremony of acceptance he is already fare within the outer ring of that might aura. Thus for a few moments they two are one, and not only does the Master’s aura affect that of the disciple, but any special characteristics attained by the disciple act upon the corresponding centres of the Master’s aura, and that flashes out in response.

The inexpressible union of the disciple with the Master which begins during the ceremony of acceptance is a permanent thing, and though the disciple may be far distant from the Master on the physical plane, his higher vehicles are vibrating in common with those of the Teacher. He is all the time being tuned up, and thus gradually growing to be more and more like the Master…By constant mediation upon the Teacher and ardent aspiration towards him, the disciple has so affected his/ her own vehicles that they are constantly open toward the Master and expectant of His influence….His/her higher vehicles/ bodies/ expressions of being/ are, from the astral (emotional) level upwards like a cup or funnel, open above but closed at the sides, and almost impervious to influences touching him at the lower levels.

The disciple thus becomes an outpost of the Master’s consciousness—an extension of Himself, as it were. He sees, hears and feels through him so that whatever is done in the presence of the disciple (or by the disciple) is done likewise in the Master’s presence…the event, while not immediately perceived by the Master… will be recorded in his memory to be examine when the Master turns His attention upon the disciple for a review and fine tuning.

When a disciple sends a though of devotion to the Master, the slight flash he sends produces an effect like opening a great valve, and a tremendous downflow of love and power proceeds from the Master. If one sends out a similar thought construct to another person it becomes a fiery stream of love from the Master to that person. The Master’s power if flowing outwards always and in all directions like the sun’s light; but the touch of the disciple’s thought (me ed. : assuming that the disciple isn’t engaged in thought that cuts off the flow immediately) draws down a prodigious stream of it for the moment.

(My edit.: If there is any serious disturbance in the disciple’s lower bodies it will affect the Master’s as well; such vibrations would interfere with the Master’s work on higher places, and when this happens there drops a veil that isolates the disciple from the Master until the storm settles down. This is for the disciple’s protection as well as the Masters, but also very much for the protection of those in the world who would become the unwitting targets of the Master’s power being wielded by the errant disciple. This must never be allowed. Forty-eight hours is not an unusual span for the disciple to re-establish the link. Christians refer to this as confessing their sin and restoring fellowship with the Father. It is the same process).]

This is getting to be lengthy, so I will close with something from the B. Gita:

The Gita says ”when one is completely free from all desires of the mind and is satisfied with the Eternal Being by the Joy of Eternal Being, that person is called an enlightened person. He it is who is not perturbed by sorrow, not craving pleasure, free from attachments, fear and anger; such a one is called a sage of steady intellect.

The sense, the mind and the intellect are the seats of lust (Kaam). Kaam deludes a person by controlling the senses, the mind and the intellect, and thus veiling self-knowledge. By controlling them in order (the senses first) one destroys the “devil” of material desire that prohibits self-knowledge and self-awareness. Think of Jesus temptation in the wilderness from this perspective. You will see the four spheres in which this teaching must be applied.

Sat Nam

R.