posted September 19, 2008 07:37 AM              

Have a blessed day and weekend...

posted September 19, 2008 03:47 PM              

quote:

---

Now, there are those who persevere in hardship, but it is better to go where the heart longs to lead us, for the heart tends unerringly towards the kingdom of Truth, ...

---

what if your "heart" - and by this I assume you mean the spirit, rather than a jumble of emotions - leads you toward hardships?

posted September 19, 2008 04:48 PM            

That is a great question.

I've not experienced anything like it,
so, it is beyond my sphere of understanding.

Let me know how it works out.

I am inclined to believe that,
if those hardships are something you plan to undertake,
in order to arrive at a "future present moment",
then the effort must necessarily be futile.

Trying to understand what Tolle says in the above clip...

Siddhis may be acquired on the level of form,
but all things acquired must be lost
(or safeguarded by a constant effort,
which would appear to be impossible).

I cannot see that the present moment requires any effort.

I am more inclined to think that our egos have an attachment to hardship,
and to struggle of any kind, in order to feel heroic, or in a superior position.

The heart, I think, is content with peace and love.

But I am open to what you have to say.

posted September 19, 2008 07:52 PM              

I'm trying to find the exact quotation....
this may be it, though I'm not quite sure... Basically it was about the gifts in embracing extreme hardships because they are the ONLY things that can truly make one grow and evolve into what one is destined or has chosen or desired to become in a certain lifetime. An 'easy' life is not much of a growthful life. Though there is nothing wrong with choosing an easier life here and there. We all do at some point(s)...? A life strewn with hardships and obstacles is an is one full of invitations and opportunites for growth in leaps and bounds....i wish i could explain it better but it really rang true to me. And that's not coming from ego.

This seems like a really great book that i will read fully at some point and i'm sure all of you in this thread would gain something from. Interestingly, it was written some time ago..in 1938. But it seems to be one that is timeless.

I'll quote pieces here that jump out at me (there are plenty of them) and hopefully i come across the part i'm talking about...

________________

"We are told that the Ego decides before birth upon the experiences, hardships and conditions of life by means of which it shall learn its next lesson, ‘develop its next spiritual muscle’, upon earth.

It then chooses, or is drawn to, a birthdate which will tune it in to such conditions, and selects parents with whom it had already built up certain Karma or obligations in former lives.

posted September 19, 2008 07:56 PM              

The individual may choose thus to hasten his development by speeding up the improvement in his own character. Or he may take the simpler way of the heart, the way of Intuition and Love. In this case he will, through opening his heart in love and faith, establish a direct link with the Great Plan, the joy of which superconscious Knowledge will uphold him through all experience. It will illuminate his path through life, investing sorrows and joys with the radiance of their inner message, so that he would not wish one particle of his life changed. ‘Stone walls do not a prison make’ – nor do palaces a paradise!

Illumined poets throughout the ages have expressed these truths. Milton said, ‘The mind is its own place and in itself can make a hell of heaven or a heaven of hell.’ We have to learn to taste life to the very dregs while listening intently for the inner spiritual message which it teaches, and never losing sight of the inevitable and glorious goal – Godhood."

THE FINDING OF THE THIRD EYE

posted September 19, 2008 08:01 PM              

Finally, we are told, man will master this lesson of balance – or non-evil – in all parts of his make-up.

He will learn to love deeply, but unselfishly, without stressing the self, understanding and forgiving all because of his own experience and realization of the laws of development. He will no longer give all his love to his own people and nothing to the world. He will realize that all the world is serving him – with the experience he so deeply needs for his growth. And he will keep the balance by giving back to the world always, giving of all the love and understanding he has, without criticizing that ‘evil’ by means of which others are striving to develop, just as he is. Understanding the law of rebirth, he will realize that all stages, either of ignorance, sin, unhappiness or achievement, either have been or will be once his own. He will learn to balance his emotions with his aspirations, becoming dispassionately passionate, joyfully serious, calmly intense, unhurriedly quick, and actively passive.

To attain complete balance in the character self-study is necessary.

‘Man, know Thyself’ was inscribed over the doors of the wonderful ancient temples of learning as the most important injunction to all aspirants.

‘The man who has mastered himself has mastered the world’, is another well-worn saying, which gains in significance when we reflect that man is said to contain within himself a facsimile of and a link with everything in the universe."

posted September 19, 2008 08:04 PM              

MEDITATION

‘It is in silence that the soul speaks.’

Men have always realized the mystery of silence; they have ever been haunted by the feeling that silence and stillness are full of potent and vital Something that is lost during activity and noise. ‘Speech is silver but Silence is Golden’, said the poet.

As we gain in experience we will be able to observe that one of the hallmarks of men great in spiritual qualities is that they are calm, still, and sparing of speech, although extremely vital. If you meet a man or woman of this type keep near to them. You will learn much from them, even without words.

posted September 19, 2008 08:06 PM              

He no longer needs to have faith in the existence of ultimate and divine realities. He knows. He has put himself in touch and in tune with them, and henceforth can bask inwardly in the radiance and joy of his knowledge. He can mentally look down upon the conflicting processes of the world’s development, including his own little suffering, much as one would study a fascinating Chinese puzzle. With one part of him he suffers and experiences, while at the same time with the other part he enjoys, comments and learns.

To many people the attainment of such a state of knowledge and power has been all-important. They have given up their lives to it. Such people are the Yogis, Disciples, Buddhas, and those of their kind in all countries.

posted September 19, 2008 08:15 PM              

And so the work grows on all sides. There are some, of particular gifts, who are practising alchemy itself, revising the ancient mystic knowledge and probably preparing a wonderful step forward for medical science.

Others are working faithfully and steadily to spin a web of constructive thought across the world by the formation of groups everywhere meeting regularly in Meditation.

In the Church itself many are beginning to feel the fires of inspiration rising once more, and their congregations are quick to appreciate it.

Even those courageous ones who seek to expose the ‘shortcomings’ of the medical profession are met half-way by many of the doctors themselves.

The flame of regeneration and renaissance is burning high already, and many are the little sparks, fanned by patient souls, ready now to flare into a rich fulfilment.

We find too that a higher type of teaching is gradually permeating various centres of investigation both spiritualist and Christian-Scientist, occultist and psychic, a type of teaching which is insensibly and subtly drawing them all closer to each other. At the same time the materialistic scientist, chemist and experimenter is, by virtue of his very persistence, approaching to the self-same heart of Truth in his own way.

A wonderful era may soon dawn when humanity will figuratively rub its eyes to find that blinkers and barriers of so many kinds have somehow melted away and that it has learnt to turn its back upon the illusion of Division, and seeks only to unite and fuse all people and all activities into one coherent Whole which ever becomes simpler and more complete."

posted September 19, 2008 08:23 PM              

18

DANGERS IN THE PATH

He who seeks Truth, the Philosopher’s Stone, and is determined to uncover and master the secrets of the universe for himself, is treading a Path beset with many pitfalls, dangers and illusions. The weakest points in his character, the tiniest chinks in his armour will be cunningly assailed.

Honesty is the talisman which will enable him to reach and to recognize Truth – plain honesty about himself, his purpose, and other people.

Seekers are side-tracked mainly by two things, a love of sensationalism and laziness, both of which undermine their honesty. It must always be remembered that sensationalism (or emotional excitement) is to the mentality what sexual over-indulgence is to the body. Even religious emotion can be a type of mental sensuality, and therefore unbalancing.

The discovery of Truth is the most wonderful, powerful and helpful work that any human being can undertake, and the capacity to understand it is the greatest attribute which the mind can cultivate.

To attain this inestimable reward of wisdom, man must expect and be eager to go through at least as much discipline, study and restriction as he would endure while learning the piano or training as a boxer.

He must remember also that in the uncovering of Truth there is never a last word, nor a completely accurate statement about any particle of it, because neither the human language nor brain can encompass it. Truth to anyone is only that much of it which he can as yet understand. At a certain stage even an untruth may be taught. For instance, primitive nations had to be given a jealous god of war, until they evolved sufficiently to accept a loving god of peace.

The mind must be trained, just like a muscle to cope with certain conceptions, and this very training enlarges and expands the capacity to understand still more. After a period of such training one can explain to an intelligent person something which he would have been quite incapable of visualizing at the beginning of it. It would have been impossible to talk of wireless, the telephone or gramophone to a man 200 years ago; neither his brain nor language was equal to it – he was living in the Dark Age. But to one of the wise priests of Egypt living 10,000 years ago one could have talked of these inventions and probably obtained a few suggestions! To understand the fundamental truths of life is to understand all! Those are the truths which Christ said would ‘make us free’.

The first effort of the seeker, then, must be to avoid laziness and to love honesty and discipline.

When once we are attuned to this ideal we will be enabled to distinguish a wise and good person from a charlatan and so avoid an infinite number of disillusions and dangers. The hallmarks of the wise are easily distinguished.

Wisdom gives humility, peace, poise and strength; its owner ceases to be afraid, to be rushed, sickly, worried, ambitious, emotional, sentimental or changeable. His voice is resonant, neither shrill nor grating, and his presence is never exhausting.

A truly wise one will be sparing of words, now will he loosly speak of initiations, Masters, visions, guides, or his own powers. People who talk of these things are childish – they have not felt the awe and reverence which first-hand knowledge gives.

A wise one will never ask money for teaching spiritual things; it is against the Law. He will have reached the stage where money sufficient for his needs comes without the asking. Nor will he ever try to persuade anyone to do or to think anything, nor will he attempt to teach unless earnestly asked to do so;; for he has learnt to have the greatest care for another’s free-will. A Wise one seldom uses the word ‘I’.

He will never attack anyone, or any cause, yet he is full of strength and energy. He has learnt to be ‘wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove’. He is not a crank on any one subject. He has become such a reservoir of love and of constructive thought that he is a worker of ‘White Magic’, lucky to those around him and the bringer of ‘miracles’ to pass.

Such a one is he who has for some while faithfully trodden the Path of Discipleship which leads to Godhood. He passes unnoticed among all those who are not seeking with the same purity of motive, the same vibration as his own. He is sometimes very cleverly aped by the charlatan, or he who tries to serve both God and Mammon, the worker of ‘black magic’, the bogus ‘Spiritual Teacher’.

This latter is usually very attractive to others. He has a strong personality, and often arouses extreme love and devotion in the people around him. This is because such a one has accumulated throughout many lives, because of his energy, the experience, vitality and power which he can now use for either good or evil.

A very evil person is potentially a very good one. (It is the stored power which counts and which gains a hold on people. That is why the enterprising lost sheep is of more importance than all who stagnate meekly in the fold.)

If a charlatan spiritual teacher were to give himself up finally wholly to good he would gradually defeat his own personality and lose, one by one, those habits and ruts of thought which give him what his friends would call his ‘little ways’, those very human attributes.

A person who poses as a highly evolved being, a teacher of others, and yet has human habits and frailties, makes a tremendously strong appeal, because his achievement, apparently, needs little discipline and rigidity. For that reason his followers are eager to adore his personality, and he allows, against the Law, such adoration. Thereby he feeds his own vanity and their attachment to physical form. They are not encouraged to discriminate, but to believe blindly what he teaches them. And the ‘teacher’, once this blindness is established, encounters no spur of criticism or judgement to keep him to the giving of his best. So the little community soon becomes a sham and intellect retires.

The inevitable result of this situation is that a hypnotic condition arises, due firstly to the teacher’s desperate desire to keep his followers’ attention fixed only upon himself, so that they will not discover better things outside and cease to contribute to his sustenance; and secondly to the wish of his followers to give themselves up to the lazy, emotional state of adoring a physical personality, believing in wonders without the use of intelligence, and flattering themselves with the importance of possessing a ‘great Teacher’.

This situation can frequently be met with. It is an ambitious imitation of the real thing, and because of a lack of honesty on all sides, it goes rapidly downhill. The combindation of personality-worship, sensationalism and hypnotism soon leads these people into the toils of emotional, sensual and sexual indulgence of all kinds. Fraudulence, destructiveness, perversion and intellectual distortion flourish in this soil, and the link with the higher mind is broken. It was in such foundations that the horrible Black Mass and the orgies of ‘black magic’ were able to take root.

Black magic is simply the use of the developed mind-power for a wrong purpose. It exists in ratio to the strength of will and intelligence of the person using it and the lack of such in the victim or victims.

Any desire for power over others for either good or bad reasons is an act contrary to the great Law which stipulates complete free-will. The moment such power is established, we have a state of hypnotism, in slight or intense form, and therefore a condition of ‘black magic’.

Black magic is not a thing of the past; it is a manipulation of natural laws. It is with us always, existing for instance in such groups round charlatan teachers as have just been described; existing sometimes side by side, almost hand in glove, with White Magic.

Rasputin was a typical example of a modern Black Magician, and I can think of other living examples who could also be listed in this category.

All such groups provide interesting psychological studies. The author personally knows of several. In one, the ‘teacher’, a woman, claims to be the reincarnation of one of the Apostles of Christ. This is earnestly believed by a worthy but hypnotized little troop of women followers, who are blind to the fact that their ‘spiritual leader’ breaks most of the commandments under their very eyes. Another group is headed by a man who claims and is eagerly believed to be the reincarnation of three famous people in one! There are, I understand, several different ‘reincarnations’ of the famous Rosicrucian Comte de Saint-German alive at present, each supported by his little group! In fact, up to date the author has been honoured by the acquaintance of quite an array of ‘reincarnated saints and historical celebrities’!

There are also, I am told, certain coloured teachers claiming the highest spiritual status, of whose relations with their white women disciples it would be better not to inquire, the hypnotized women believing themselves to be nearly as honoured as the ‘Chosen of the Lord’; sometimes even with an acquiescing husband in the background.

All these things are going on, comprising an almost inextricable mixture of ‘good and evil’. The wise seeker will learn to understand the necessity for it all, and wade through in safety, protected by the life-belt of his own pure motives. He will not turn in dislike or disapproval from those leaders who savour of charlatanism or incompetence. They each have their audiences, who are drawn to them because of similar vibrations, and could go, at their particular stage, nowhere else.

Sometimes good teaching comes from very faulty people. This fact is a means of stimulating students into recognizing truth for itself, as apart from a personality. On the other hand a person who is intrinsically good and true may be unable to utter a word of sense to satisfy a seeker, nor take any interest in his seeking. The world is full of infinite variety, and all are seeking and learning in their different ways. It is hard to know who fundamentally is the most ‘advanced’. When the aspirant can understand this and grow to love his neighbours for their struggles and faults, and utterly abstain from any critical feeling, then ‘will all things be added unto him’. There will be no barriers to prevent it. Like attracts like, and his own honesty and charity will inevitably draw to him as to a magnet all that is good.

By the same token, any weakness which still remains within his character will attract him to that with which it has affinity. If he has a latent tendency to accept too much from others, and to lean on them, he will be an easy prey for a certain type who bind people to them by a great show of generosity. If he finds himself saying, ‘The one thing I cannot bear is meanness – I do like a generous character!’ let him reflect that possibly he still has something of the parasite within him, and is not determined to be self-reliant. Let him beware lest he is captured by one who has learnt how much it pays to be generous and how easy it is by that means to get some people completely under one’s influence.

Sometimes a ‘teacher’ who preaches and practises ‘generosity’ will soon obtain financial help from those well-meaning seekers who are able to give it, and will then proceed to gain more adherents by being generous with other people’s money! This very real abuse is often put into practice, the final result being that much money which would otherwise be given to the poor is spent for the pomp and comfort of the ‘teacher’ and his somewhat nebulous ‘cause’.

A genuine teacher always deserves and usually gains support but his ‘pomp and circumstance’ is conspicuous by its absence.

The final warning which must be given is about the imagination. By this word I refer to that power which the mind has to form images of that which it desires, and which it uses more successfully subconsciously than deliberately and consciously. There is a tremendous, intricate and forceful world of subtle life lying just below the threshold of the conscious mind which can be manipulated to produce varied results.

For instance, we sometimes hear of an earnest emotional female who has been practising either ‘meditation’ or ‘psychic development’ not wisely but too well, describing a wonderful vision she has had, perhaps of the ‘Christ Himself’. Who possibly spoke words of praise to her. She becomes vastly important and ecstatic about the vision, and her friends are much impressed.

But what really happened?

To begin with, the lady by affirming such an experience gives away at once her complete ignorance as to what is possible in such a way. In all probability that which occurred was simply a case of ‘imagination’, self-hypnotism into seeing and hearing that for which she longs; or she may perhaps have picked up the thought-form of someone else’s imagery. In any case, the one thing certain is that if anyone were sufficiently ‘advanced’ to obtain a genuine spiritual experience they would be so filled with awe and so alive to the laws pertaining to such experiences that they would find it quite impossible to say a word about it. The only sign of it would be a radiance emanating from them to those who were sufficiently sensitive to feel it. The great Moses, after having talked with the Lord, was obliged to veil his face because it shone so much that the people could not bear to look upon it.

Imagination can play us many tricks, but we can test things out pretty safely in the following way. Any experience we may have which makes us want to ‘tell’about it is not the real thing, but something to which we have laid ourselves open through an unconscious wish for a thrill or to acquire importance. Of a real experience we will never wish to speak, because we will realize intuitively that each soul grows at its own pace, and that our vision was sacred to us alone. The resulting faith that we enjoy is all we will impart. Therefore we must never be impressed by any idle and emotional talk we may hear about these things.

It is important, however, to try to visualize the condition of that invisible envelope of ‘compressed ether’ (for want of a better description) which surrounds us and goes by the name of our ‘aura’. This contains a vast panorama of photographs, ‘astral talkies’ of all our memories both conscious and forgotten. When we are forced slowly out of our bodies in drowning we see this aura ourselves, and review a rapid panorama of the events of our lives, as has often been attested.

Anyone who is genuinely ‘clairvoyant’, such as a crystal-gazer or fortune-teller, is able to see this aura on approaching us, and can pick out pictures of past events, as well as those of our subconscious hopes for the future, and therefore describe intimately our dead relatives or our home life – almost as easily as we could describe any film we were watching! There is not necessarily anything wonderful, new or valuable for us to hear – merely that which is already there attached to the mind.

Sometimes, however, she may even get a correct picture of some future event. In this case she is probably reading a thought-picture in our aura which we brought through subconsciously from something we were allowed to learn of in a dream. For those who are tempted to explore the phenomena of clairvoyance it is very necessary to study the human make-up from the psycho-analytical point of view, otherwise it is easy to be rendered awe-struck by some occurrence for which there is a scientific explanation.

The world is indeed full of many astonishing conditions and activities. It is better to have a clear understanding of anything untoward that occurs than to become paralysed with superstitious emotionalism and be helplessly swayed by influences which might otherwise be either ignored or put to good account.

There is no Black Magic, however powerful, no evil force nor astral horror which can have the slightest effect upon anyone who does not contain a strain of the same vibration in their own make-up. One who is completely honest and whole-heartedly trusts in the power of good is an untouchable as far as evil influences are concerned. ‘According to thy faith be it done unto thee.’

Therefore when any evil influences or threats of misfortune approach, the one attacked needs only to cleanse his own heart of fear, doubt or any ulterior motives, and he is at once protected by his own vibrations. If we tune our wireless in to Paris we do not get Moscow, and if we tune our personal wireless in to good fortune all other vibrations will flow through and onwards without finding any anchorage. It is upon this principle that the Christian Scientists and many others work. They know that the fear of anything is a very powerful magnet which draws that thing inevitably to the fearful one. As Job said, ‘That which I greatly feared has come upon me.’

Fear, laziness and lack of sincerity are therefore the defects which will lead the seeker on to the ‘left-hand path’ instead of the ‘right-hand path’. The natural Karma of this is that he will have to do twice the work before he finally reaches his true goal.

But if a sharp lookout is kept for the various pitfalls and illusions pointed out in this chapter much waste of time and many painful humiliations may be avoided.

posted September 19, 2008 08:31 PM              

From that which is called the ‘spiritual’ point of view, however, the prospect is infinitely more thrilling, inspiring and illuminating. He who is drawn to spiritual endeavour, who feels the call and the pull of the inner mysteries, will embark on a pilgrimage in which there is no turning back. He will go through the stages of studying the self, developing the self, and then forgetting the self completely. He will then realize that the ultimate privilege and joy, as Jesus Christ came to show, is to serve.

His battle-cry will be ‘Service’. At first he will rush around trying to serve, and getting very much in the way of his own inspiration. Later he will realize that true service is first of all to ‘Be’. He will understand that if he has once polarized himself to be a permanent channel or ‘receiving station’ for the Light of Wisdom, and can hold himself in that state of constant and unchanging radiation, he can become a fixed power-house, a torch in the realms of the mind. He can link up with others on the higher levels of their super-conscious, he can speak to them and teach them in that sphere where are no words, flooding them with illumination, peace and faith from his own storehouse. They have merely to think of his name and at once feel the anchorage of his vibrations.

He learns finally how not to make conscious ‘effort’ to help others, how not to interfere with their lives or their own way of working out their salvation. He learns not to criticize but to understand, and to be able to interpret them to themselves if they ask it, so that they can learn the particular lessons and reason of their difficulties. He learns to speak to each one who comes to him in his own language and on his own level; he learns to leave in peace those who do not seek his help, and to be a power of ready quiet strength to those who do.

Such an aspirant will begin by envisaging the Path before him, the progress from student to Probationer, from Probationer to Disciple, from Disciple to Initiate, from Initiate to Master, from master to Lord of a Planet and so on upwards and onwards illimitably. The dazzling prospect will spur him on over the difficult drudgery of the early steps.

But when the gate of his heart is finally opened and the mystery of Love floods his being, then all thoughts of his own progress are obliterated, and he would gratefully stay behind until the last faulty little pilgrim ;has passed safely on before him.

He waits and watches and helps, and suddenly he finds that he is one in activity and in mind with the Creator Himself. These things, however, cannot be expressed in words, although much glorious poetry and philosophy have been poured out in the effort.

All through history humanity has been offered the Key of heaven, even as this little book attempts to offer it.

Men exist as partially dead creatures until they have used this key and opened their hearts and minds to Reality. Then they are flooded with such life and brilliance and illumination that they do indeed experience a ‘second birth’ infinitely greater than the first.

As a final word, then, the value of the information touched upon in this book is merely that it can provide the reader with a tool for the building of his life. Like a knife, which can be used either to murder a beautiful life or to carve out an everlasting work of art, the value of the tool depends upon the user. It can quite definitely be used for unimagined achievement if the motive-power be sincerity and the highest aspiration.

Or it can result in a conceited boast of superior knowledge, the act of the ‘big fish in the little pond’, if the ideals are not sufficiently strong.

Or again it can fall to the ground through lazy inattention.

It is for each individual reader to decide whether he wishes to become a vital force for good, and to realize that until he is truly living for the world and not for himself he will never achieve anything of that which is thrilling, joyful, wonderful and inspiring.

A selfish person is short-circuited; nothing from outside can flow through.

Some people are not selfish, however, but self-centred, which is just as inhibiting. They are kind, generous and vivacious at times, but their thoughts revolve round their own kindness and all their little personal affairs unceasingly, how they feel and felt, what others think of them, what they know, how they love, what they must do, how they must help. They are complete prisoners inside their own little personality. It is this ‘I’ ‘I’ attitude which is so very difficult to get over, and which is such a subtle handicap to many.

The only importance the personality has is that it is there as a sort of buffer, to teach one how completely to get the better of it! PERSONALITY VERSUS INDIVIDUALITY! How can we discriminate between these two? The difference is much the same as between emotion and love. Individuality, the real thing, is a calm, steady, deep and lasting force felt within a person – his essence, that which composes the ego or inner man.

Personality (the word comes from persona, meaning mask) comprises all the little surface peculiarities, moods and changes, all which has to do with physical life, disturbing, evanescent and unimportant. In astrology individuality is that unchanging part of us governed by the sun, while the moon rules the unstable personality.

In true sacrifice and service we use our individuality and keep our personality in complete abeyance. That is what is called slaying our lower man or killing the dragon!

TRUE LIVING. If we can learn to love, think and serve as above described, the mind will become so powerful and co-ordinated, that it will unerringly direct all of our activities.

Our calm enthusiasm will inevitably give us that slow, deep and powerful breathing which will finally become automatic with us.

But if we start at the wrong end by an intensive training in breathing it may give us animal health, it may upset our nervous system, it may even put us in a madhouse, but it certainly will not give us a ready-made loving heart or wise and potent mind.

By the same token, with a mind and heart awake we will instinctively know how, when and what to eat. Our calmness will give us that slowness and sparingness in eating which is the first neglected essential, and our continual development will go hand in hand with a continual modification and change in our diet.

But if we begin at the wrong end by becoming diet cranks we may improve our bodies or we may ruin them – the chances are pretty equal, but we will no more create a ready-made wisdom and power that way than by breathing.

If our hearts and minds are rightly orientated we will quite naturally be drawn to those few studies and people with whom we can further our particular work – our choice will be unerring and inspired.

But if we start at the other end with absorption in theoretical studies, teachers and cults, and count on such outside help for our progress, and have not a strictly honest desire for the truth alone, we shall fall into any number of traps, and meet with danger and disillusionment and misery. The false always apes the real. It is only true honesty in ourselves which acts as a tuning-fork to recognize honesty in another.

Many people are drawn to the Great Search through a feeling of loneliness – that wistful misunderstood loneliness which attacks them in the midst of friends and festivities, and which is really the longing of the soul for unity in service with those who know, and for the realization that they are part of a wonderful whole – that they belong and are essential to a glorious plan. Loneliness also comes from being self-centred instead of world-centred, from a craving for a personal love and reward, and thereby the imprisoning of oneself in a tiny mental compartment.

Service leads finally to working with others, the beginning of the Universal Brotherhood which some of us cannot yet picture, yet which is inevitably and actually coming into being before our eyes.

The various banners of the vanguard of this Universal Brotherhood are already flinging a challenge right across the world. To anyone who wishes to achieve fulfilment for himself and to help to build the future Golden Age, the way is now wide open. The beginning has been made, the world is passing rapidly from Dark Age into Light, and there remain now only the fetters of man’s own blindness or laziness to hold him back. Let us shake off these fetters and move forward with those happy ones who are achieving their birthright – the triumph of Godhood in human form."

posted September 20, 2008 12:28 PM            

LOL

Whew, that's just plain HOMEWORK. I don't know when I'll have time to read of that but it looks like excellent stuff written by Saturn himself so far. I know that feeling.

posted September 20, 2008 09:15 PM            

"They will teach us to have churches," Joseph answered.

"Do you not want churches?"

"No, we do not want churches."

"Why do you not want churches?"

"They will teach us to quarrel about God," Joseph said. "We do not want to learn that. We may quarrel with men sometimes about things on this earth, but we never quarrel about God.
We do not want to learn about that.".

What the Native Americans wanted was the ability to teach their own children their own ways without government interference. Not only was the government wanting to control their lands, their food and their belongings, but they wanted to change the lifestyles of the "savages" so they would be "civilized" like the white man.