posted December 09, 2007 09:22 PM            

Within my being's depths there speaks,
Intent on revelation,
The cosmic Word mysteriously:
Imbue your labor's aims
With my bright spirit light
To sacrifice yourself through me.

posted December 10, 2007 03:24 PM              

36th week ~
beautiful to imagine

posted December 17, 2007 12:31 AM            

Thirty-Seventh Week

posted December 24, 2007 04:49 PM            

Thirty-Eigth Week

posted December 26, 2007 07:57 PM            

Constantly I've thought of the teacher as an actual person or being that would come into your life at that right moment. Just recently have I realized that the "teacher" can also be any higher truth or knowledge that is realized and venerated by one's consciousness. These "teachers" include even "little things" such as cleanliness, timeliness, organization, orderliness, etc. These facets of human character are things that we usually take for granted and are rarely mastered due to being judged as insubstantial elements. What if, instead, we put value not on the coming "Teacher" that will free us from our Spiritual imprisonment, but the "teachers" all around us, holding lock and key, that don't seem to harbor a spectacular essence of higher truths and knowledge. Shall the mere taste of ambrosia deliver us from all our ailments and wrongs? Perhaps it is best if we chewed, first, the bread that is set upon our tables...

posted December 26, 2007 10:08 PM            

Yes, "teachers" are everywhere, in everything, and in every moment. I have seen teachers as people... and then as detailed as the bit of music that catches my ear... but your perspective helps me fill in a blank above, beyond, and in between the physical events and minute synchronicities. Entire concepts of life, entire flavors of energy, (such as "Earth" and "Virgo") are also divided into ideas of cleanliness and organization, like you said. And those concepts are further divided into certain flavors of people's ideas of what those concepts actually mean. And those are altered by what meanings they ascribe to other concepts.

Like my meaning of cleanliness means no animal feces and pieces of food on the floor, but books can be stacked everywhere and as long as the misc stuff fits my idea of what "organized" means (like I don't have make-up, jewelry and random items like light-bulbs on my desk... yes, I'm describing my actual mess) then I would think everything was "clean". Martha Stewart types with minimalist homes would be horrified by my "mess".

So, how do we gain new concepts or alter the concepts we have? As I think you were saying... we take steps toward increasing our mastery of our ideal version of that concept.

These steps might then refine our ideal versions of many different concepts, as things fall into place like in the game, Tetris.

Thank you for the interesting topic.

posted January 07, 2008 10:25 PM            

A lot of musings have been waltzing around my head lately. I had a "dream" recently, where I felt the presence of another being at the corner of my bed. I saw it and tried to scare it [by attempting a roar? (yes, like a lion, lol!)] but I found I couldn't get up. I was in a very strange state of consciousness, half-asleep and half-awake. I've found my self in similar states before (once while I was driving ). In this one, the closest thing I could analogize it to is saran wrap. Yes, it felt like I was wrapped in saran wrap and couldn't get up because it tied me down. I told myself to wake up, but it didn't work (at least not right away). I felt a strong fear there and I think I know it's message. There is such a fascination within me towards the unknown and, yet, there also lies an intense fear as well. Perhaps that's why I hardly remember my dreams or have never experienced a lucid one where I am in complete control? I think that we often feel fear, anger, pain and other "negative" experiences as constant reminders of where we really are on our paths. I know, for myself, that I often forget where I am but it is within every action, deed and experience in life that reveal the true essence of our own "Self" if we but seriously reflect on them and critique ourselves (as if we were a stranger watching ourselves) for even a few minutes out of each day. What are we doing, feeling, thinking, and seeing? Just as importantly...how are we doing, feeling, thinking, and seeing???

Just rambling.

posted January 11, 2008 07:01 PM            

Preparation consists in a strict and definite cultivation of the life of thought and feeling, through which the psycho-spiritual body becomes equipped with higher senses and organs of activity in the same way that natural forces have fitted the physical body with organs built out of indeterminate living matter.

To begin with, the attention of the soul is directed to certain events in the world that surrounds us. Such events are, on the one hand, life that is budding, growing, and flourishing, and on the other hand, all phenomena connected with fading, decaying, and withering. The student can observe these events simultaneously, wherever he turns his eyes and on every occasion they naturally evoke in him feelings and thoughts; but in ordinary circumstances he does not devote himself sufficiently to them. He hurries on too quickly from impression to impression. It is necessary, therefore, that he should fix his attention intently and consciously upon these phenomena. Wherever he observes a definite kind of blooming and flourishing, he must banish everything else from his soul, and entirely surrender himself, for a short time, to this one impression. He will soon convince himself that a feeling which heretofore in a similar case, would merely have flitted through his soul, now swells out and assumes a powerful and energetic form. He must now allow this feeling to reverberate quietly within himself while keeping inwardly quite still. He must cut himself off from the outer world, and simply and solely follow what his soul tells him of this blossoming and flourishing.

Yet it must not be thought that much progress can be made if the senses are blunted to the world. First look at the things as keenly and as intently as you possibly can; then only let the feeling which expands to life, and the thought which arises in the soul, take possession of you. The point is that the attention should be directed with perfect inner balance upon both phenomena. If the necessary tranquility be attained and you surrender yourself to the feeling which expands to life in the soul, then, in due time, the following experience will ensue. Thoughts and feelings of a new kind and unknown before will be noticed uprising in the soul. Indeed, the more often the attention be fixed alternately upon something growing, blossoming and flourishing, and upon something else that is fading and decaying, the more vivid will these feelings become. And just as the eyes and ears of the physical body are built by natural forces out of living matter, so will the organs of clairvoyance build themselves out of the feelings and thoughts thus evoked. A quite definite form of feeling is connected with growth and expansion, and another equally definite with all that is fading and decaying. But this is only the case if the effort be made to cultivate these feelings in the way indicated. It is possible to describe approximately what these feelings are like. A full conception of them is within the reach of all who undergo these inner experiences.

If the attention be frequently fixed on the phenomena of growing, blooming and flourishing, a feeling remotely allied to the sensation of a sunrise will ensue, while the phenomena of fading and decaying will produce an experience comparable, in the same way, to the slow rising of the moon on the horizon. Both these feelings are forces which, when duly cultivated and developed to ever increasing intensity, lead to the most significant spiritual results. A new world is opened to the student if he systematically and deliberately surrenders himself to such feelings. The soul-world, the so-called astral plane, begins to dawn upon him. Growth and decay are no longer facts which make indefinite impressions on him as of old, but rather they form themselves into spiritual lines and figures of which he had previously suspected nothing. And these lines and figures have, for the different phenomena, different forms. A blooming flower, an animal in the process of growth, a tree that is decaying, evoke in his soul different lines. The soul world (astral plane) broadens out slowly before him. These lines and figures are in no sense arbitrary. Two students who have reached the corresponding stage of development will always see the same lines and figures under the same conditions. Just as a round table will be seen as round by two normal persons, and not as round by one and square by the other, so too, at the sight of a flower, the same spiritual figure is presented to the soul. And just as the forms of animals and plants are described in ordinary natural history, so too, the spiritual scientist describes or draws the spiritual forms of the process of growth and decay, according to species and kind.

If the student has progressed so far that he can perceive the spiritual forms of those phenomena which are physically visible to his external sight, he is then not far from the stage where he will behold things which have no physical existence, and which therefore remain entirely hidden (occult) from those who have not received suitable instruction and training.

It should be emphasized that the student must never lose himself in speculations on the meaning of one thing or another. Such intellectualizing will only draw him away from the right road. He should look out on the world with keen, healthy senses and quickened power of observation, and then give himself up to the feeling that arises within him. He should not try to make out, through intellectual speculation, the meaning of things, but rather allow the things to disclose themselves. It should be remarked that artistic feeling, when coupled with a quiet introspective nature, forms the best preliminary condition for the development of spiritual faculties. This feeling pierces through the superficial aspect of things, and in so doing touches their secrets.

posted January 22, 2008 10:56 AM            

Here is last week's:

Fourty-First Week

The Soul's Creative might
Strives outward from the Heart's own core
To kindle and inflame God-given Powers
In Human life to right activity;
The soul thus shapes itself
In Human loving and in Human working.

And here is this week's:

Fourty-Second Week

posted January 31, 2008 02:04 PM            

O, earth! Your granite presence! How I am overcome!
Who knew that found upon our homes was, deeper still, our Home?

posted January 31, 2008 11:11 PM            

Forever true the rings of Wrath
Have rippled onto shore.
Their distance was their beauty
And the one seed Violence bore.
Not clearly did experience
Reveal our Nature's bliss -
This lovely space around us
And the openness amiss.
For when Anger was the Demon
Guised as Angel of the meek,
Folly grew to flood the radials;
All their hours, days and weeks!
And the whole time all this stretch of space
Which nursed Division well,
There really was no breadth to take
Though thinking, thus, was Hell.
No one could, then, come fostering
The truth of how things are.
No one could, then, conceive the seed
That End was no thing far.

Each step that's plot
Is just a dot.
It there begins and ends.
The very spot
That once was not
Is same as was and bends.

No thing anew may come from view
That fears its honest hand.
No View may ever ring so True
Its Song without a band.