Sunday, September 30, 2012

A Philosophical Attitude

This subject came during a recent time when I was very resentful of the cruelties I saw in the world: people attacking what is holy and good, the distortion of truth for selfish ends. It especially gets my goat when I see the many suffer because of the thoughtlessness of a few. Oftentimes evil men exploit the same freedoms we allow for the benefit of all. They represent the tares among the wheat. But there is a greater Justice that allows evil to temporarily exist in service to a greater cleansing to prepare for the good. Jesus explained this in His parable about the tares and the wheat,
But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.
But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also.
So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares?
He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?
But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them.
Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.
My Scorpio rising at times wants to take justice into my own hands and “force” people to see the truth or do what is right, or at least to get a bit of unholy “that ought to teach them” revenge. Our Scorpio, Jonathan, struggled with this too. Ann Ree received these words from one of the White Brothers for Jonathan,
You are in need of a more philosophical attitude, which will give you acceptance of things as they are - and more flexibility. Inasmuch as you are going to open wider portals concerning religion, you must open the vein of philosophy, that you may have an overlook into the human affairs of men.
Ann Ree also had a time of where she needed to learn acceptance and look past some immediate circumstances toward understanding why things are the way they are. In Prophet for the Archangels, she wrote,
One day when I was depressed and despondent due to my dying to the old way, the Mother of Jesus appeared to me in a vision. She was surrounded by a blue medallion, and gave off an inner light similar to the angels. In her left arm she held her Babe, and raised her right hand in a blessing, saying to me, “Fret not thyself because of evildoers.” After this blessing from Mary, I experienced a renewal, a rejuvenation, and accepted the new way before me.
Philosophy, despite its somewhat dusty reputation, is actually essential to working with poise in this world of conflict, contradictions, and frustrations. On the outside wall at the Foundation, Ann Ree had these words placed: Philosophy, Science, Religion, and the Creative Arts. We could call these the Niscience quadrivium, or meeting of four roads, in answer to the Renaissance Quadrivium of Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, and Music, which was the foundation of universities at the time.
Gene Cosgrove, who Ann Ree described as an advanced and selfless teacher, wrote in his book The Science of the Initiates
In our time, the student possesses four avenues to truth - Religion, Philosophy, Art and Science. In the days when the institution of “The Mysteries” was still before the eyes of men, these four ways converged at the center and constituted a wholeness of experimental values.
In general use, we find phrases about being philosophical about misfortune and loss, or being philosophical about the general ignorance in the world. Indeed in all disappointments and disillusionments, is a lesson in a greater plan operating behind our short-sighted desires, if only we could open our eyes to it.
Many of the great Masters had lives as philosophers in Greece. Their teachings, though far in advance of the general state of humanity, were yet part of a time when philosophy breathed with our breath and pulsed with our blood. People were more powerless then, especially regarding nature, and had to make sense of fate and the bewildering contradictions in nature. Through Nature they had an intuition of a higher Rationale behind apparent senselessness.
Today we have to deal less with the storms of the natural world, but like Peter, more with the storms of the astral sea acting on our own human nature. To walk upon these waters, Ann Ree counsels us in her excellent article, “A True Philosopher”,
To become a true philosopher one should live with men through the human side of wisdom; he should learn to blend with the human side of action. The philosopher comes to understand the thought process of the savage and the thought process of the Great in Heaven. The philosopher caters to babes and he caters to giants.
He who becomes a philosopher has reached the time in which he stands tall in spirit and in earth. He stands not above men as knowing more, but he stands with men as knowing their thoughts, their feelings, and the result of their feelings. He constructively builds within himself the realization that that which lives in the small or that which lives in the great has its interpretation through soul-value alone.
Value is closely related to feeling, preference, desire. It motivates thought. We are motivated to think about the things that are of interest or fascination to us. Ann Ree said that at the root of every thought is a feeling and somewhat humorously compared it to the Biblical story in Genesis: Eve eats the apple, then Adam follows.

If I may compare feeling to the motor of a car and thought to the steering wheel, I think you’ll get the idea. Without a steering wheel a car is as likely to take us into a ditch as it is to a garden. But without the engine it doesn’t matter how we turn the steering wheel, we get nowhere.
In my white paper material for this month Ann Ree wrote,
Thought is intricately interrelated to emotion. Emotion sustains all thinking. Were it not for emotion, thought would become fixed, static, and dead.
A philosopher seeks to understand the totality of how we learn and ascertain truth, which means the intelligent combined use of feeling and thought. Continuing my car analogy, the car needs a third thing: an intelligent driver who operates both the gas pedal and the steering wheel. This would be the Christ Mind. Philosophers have united in varying degrees with the Christ, but it wasn’t until Jesus that the Christ centered itself in the core of the earth and became accessible to whoever will enter into spiritual disciplines.
Ann Ree continues in her excellent article,
The philosopher commands his instinctual nature and learns to value the intuitive arts ... The intuitive mind is superior to the critical mind ... In the instinctual nature, man feels without thinking.
A philosopher must penetrate the intuition of others and concern himself less with battling the contrary thoughts in men’s minds. The Tibetan, through Alice Bailey, was expounding on the way mediation works and quoted these lines from a poet,
I and my kind do not convince by argument, we convince by our presence.
Poems, as do dreams and myths, draw upon images that directly touch deeper layers of the psyche. This is quite different from a seeking to battle the contrary views of an intellect. Continuing with another aspect of philosophy, Ann Ree wrote,
Men of true philosophy gather not to enter into controversies or dissensions. The true philosopher consorts not with those who argue.
Jesus spoke of the true war for truth when He said,
Resist not evil.
He did not mean to let evil have its way. He was speaking of how you can work not so much by angry contrariness, but by having an overarching view of the conscience of evil men and a cognizance of the Good Law of God and His Plan.
I had a dream where I saw a red river flowing under a bridge. The red, I thought in the dream, was due to blood from a war. In the middle of the river was a little rock which caused some of the water to flow in the opposite direction. Ann Ree interpreted the dream and explained that I lived during a time of war which caused rivers of blood. The little rock was showing me that even a little peace and good can change the currents of evil.

Saint Paul also writes about how to battle evil,
Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men. If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Descent at Christmas and Ascent at Easter

Descent at Christmas and Ascent at Easter

I dedicate my talk to these words of Jesus

For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.

 And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day.

Christmas is a yin time where Jesus descended into this heavy earth in the spirit of sacrifice and compassion, to teach the unhearing, serve the unwilling, and heal the ungrateful. His incarnation was a downpouring from heaven.

Easter is a yang ascending time where we can reap, if we will, an ascent of consciousness into the Christ mind. It is where Jesus's passion becomes the passing.

These two actions, the ascending and descending are what we use incessantly. They are, as it were, the mother and father of our evolvement.

A mother weaves a body out of her own body and provides a vehicle for an incarnating soul. The Mother of the World knows the harshness of this world, which is her womb, and softens it's blows to the young in experience or evolvement. And we are all young and awkward in any new endeavor and will be as long as there are new things to learn (which, it seems, will be approximately forever.)

An ideal father teaches his child to face adversity as a necessity in this world. Our consciousness cannot be gained without resistance. Much as muscle does not develop without opposition, so does consciousness in this eternity system not come without the opposition of the physical world. This, we’re told, until we are earth karma free.

I had a repeating dream as a child where I was moving through space and did not appear to have a body. Large bits of matter began to appear and grow. It was accompanied by a feeling of fear and anxiety. At a dear child round table, which was always presided over by Jonathan, I shared this when Ann Ree talk to us about dreams. I must have been around age twelve. These kinds of dreams, I later came to learn, often accompany or precede puberty.

Ann Ree commented with a very intent look on her face, "you must have a body. Every thing needs a body." It was my first philosophical exposure to why we have to live on earth, even though heaven is so much better; why we even have such a dense physical world, and why there was a fall from Eden at all.

There was no act of love greater than that of Jesus to descend from heaven to this world, and walk towards His crucifixion. Ann Ree once said, "think of what it must have been like for Jesus to come from the glories of heaven to this dense world."

Even as He was stretched upon a cross suspended between life and death, heaven and earth, so on a smaller scale are we stretched between an earthly life, its infatuations and challenges, and our spiritual intuitions, longings and ideals.

In Ann Ree’s prose/poem “The Song of his Passion” she wrote,

In small portions or fragments men will remember; they will work and strive. They will recall the time of Golgotha; and they will know it is their own body pictured upon the cross; and they will know that they too shall arise, even as the Lord did arise.

Some physical struggle is self made and unnecessary. Other physical struggle is part of our cosmic schooling.

Alice Bailey wrote a very interesting passage on a downward energy that comes from surrounding galaxies and falls into our eternity system.

These descending energies ... as they descend, they produce stimulation. As they ascend, they produce transmutation and abstraction, and the one effect is as unalterable as the other ...

Upon this dual process of descent and ascension the whole cyclic panorama of manifestation rests ...

There is a negative downward movement, where we become more enmeshed in maya. But there is a positive downward movement, where spiritual ideas are stepped down to what we can comprehend, and where spiritual beings slow down their vibration and descend into the world. These are spiritual downpourings. In dreams, rain denotes a release of tension between heaven and earth. Sometimes we dream of lightning, which by its suddenness, denotes some very electric resolution of tension.

The first beatitude reads,

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 5:3

One of its deep meanings is that we are blessed when we descend into the physical world to engage in our schooling to produce a greater consciousness, and also lift our fellow human beings. In its highest expression this is the bodhisattva vow.

Every thing God gave us in this earth, from mineral, to plant, to animal, to man, from low to high, must be viewed with reverence and gratitude, but not as anything to possess - only as something on loan to us and a temporary prop, much like a text book for a course, or a notebook and pencil for writing a chapter in a book.

Jesus, even though coming down from heaven, and knowing that earth would pass away, had reverence for this earth. Ann Ree writes,

The childhood of Jesus reveals a love of the earth, the mountains, the vineyards, the trees, the waters, the flowers, the grains. His feet on the earth were not as others in the world. His spirit was master over the land, the air, the water, the fire.

So much of our unhappiness comes from attachment to things meant to be temporary. So much of what is thought of as happiness is excitement or elation about things that are meant to be supports. Spiritual downpourings bring stimulation and change, as Alice Bailey noted. At first, until assimilated and channeled, this can bring more titillation and excitement than spiritual works. Many have fallen after receiving a token of grace if they misuse it. Much as fertilizer makes both weeds and flowers grow, so does a spiritual downpouring contain a test that we discriminately choose the energies quickened. Ann Ree, in her Easter talk said,

Christ Spirit came into our being and made us restless, more restless than we had ever been. Out of complacency and a drugged sleep we came into restlessness,

We might call restlessness the low side of stimulation.

She then spoke of satisfaction versus contentment.

Contentment is a spiritual, divine attribute. But satisfaction is something coming out of complacency and procrastination. We cannot be satisfied when we once see the diamond chalice in our hearts. We thirst for God with a total and complete thirst.

With a perfect balance of the physical and spiritual, we fulfill our paths as karma yogis. St. Paul, speaking of the resurrection said,

It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body...

Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual.

The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven.

As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.

And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.