“Human Dignity has gleamed only now and then and here and there, in lonely splendor, throughout the ages, a hope of the better men, never an achievement of the majority.” – James Thurber
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It is my intent to change this.
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I see no other reasonable path to take. What else would make sense?
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First get your house in order. Then live in it.
Isn’t the Roman Empire a remarkable case study? In spite of tremendous power, wealth, influence and infrastructure, it fell.
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We could site a number of causes, but really it boils down to one cause: convolution.
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So many viewpoints pushed through so many laws and policies. Everything stopped making sense. It was a government gone wild.
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The United States would do well to learn from this. When policy stops making basic common sense and is justified by the perspective that the common people are just too stupid to understand, then there is a problem.
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The Roman Empire did not fall due to lack of genius. It fell due to lack of common sense.
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If the US does not wake up, it will face the same fate.
Consciousness is the ultimate reality.
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In the final analysis, consciousness is the only thing that really is. This entire universe is based on a mistaken notion: consciousness looked at itself and thought it was seeing something other than itself. This is called Cosmic Transference. It is the big bang!
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At the level of the Transcendent, even though it hasn’t lost the awareness of oneness, consciousness sees itself as other. There is a quality of wholeness and perfection in the transference because it isn’t lost to identity.
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Relative existence is based on transference—the projection of a notion onto something else.
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However, the quality of the transference changes as it is experienced from different levels of existence.
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Thus, the key to life is not about getting rid of transference. It is about being aware of our transference and knowing that what is beyond that world of transference, is Transcendental Oneness.
The following quote unfortunately has validity:
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“Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
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I intend to change that situation. Let’s do it together.
Numerous legends of Saint Valentine abound. One says that, while imprisoned, Saint Valentine signed a letter to his love (the jailers daughter!), ‘Your Valentine”.
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Another tells of his performance of marriages in defiance of the Roman Emperor who felt young men made better soldiers when not married.
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I find it intriguing that these and other legends of Valentine’s Day revolve around the theme of love overcoming obstacles.
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All relationships have obstacles. That is the nature of life.
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Valentine’s Day is well named. It is the day we celebrate our eternal dedication to the purity of love we all feel deep within us for our Valentines.
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It appropriately covers the full range of loving relationships, from a candy Valentine heart for a friend to our love for the one we hold most dear.
Today, when the military was filtering through the crowds in Egypt to clear the way for traffic, the protesters kept chanting “peacefully, peacefully.”
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That is incredibly significant. The Age of Awakening is happening. This is indeed “The Year of Change.”
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The pendulum will continue to swing, but our planet is indeed spiraling upward. It is a delicate time, but a time that holds great promise.
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The timely blossoming of Mount Soma is no coincidence.
I enjoy quotes: Below are a few with my comments:
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Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand – Kurt Vonnegut
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I smiled when I read this. Taken on face value it is a fun quote. However, the problem I have with a statement like this one is that it clouds the situation with nothing more than clever words.. We do well not to use rhetoric to deflect, bury, or otherwise undermine truth.
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The greatest mistake is trying to be more agreeable than you can be. – Walter Bagehot
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This is true for many of us. How easy it is to self compromise in the name of peace. Of course others self aggrandize in the name of poor self esteem compensation. One of each type, living under the same roof, is called codependency. Confrontation without conflict is a laudable, but not easily attainable goal. Wise, thoughtful, sensitive confrontation, though it may feel like you are traversing a mine field, can bring about splendid transformation.
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You don’t get anything clean without getting something else dirty. – Cecil Baxter
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There is a good point to this. However, it is fortunately not always true. We can purify ourselves and our planet through transformation from one state of being to another, not through transportation of dirt from one place to another.
Teaching around forty years now, it has been over twenty years since I left the ashram. I felt so full of knowledge, not just facts but real direct experience Knowledge, that I was compelled to go out and teach full time. I had no idea at the time what a shock I was in for.
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I remember feeling that I would get up on a stage, give a lecture, everyone would be inspired by what I was saying, and that would be that. It did not happen that way at all.
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People had read and studied various teachings. They had become vested in their resultant understanding of spirituality, healing, personal development, the nature of life and existence, etc.
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It is certainly not that the knowledge is nowhere else out there. However, it is not something that can be comprehended easily. Furthermore, many who are teaching do not really comprehend the depth to which the knowledge really goes, nor do they comprehend the degree of distortion they have imposed upon it. In many cases, they have turned spirituality upside down and backwards. I do feel sad when I think of the people who never really ‘got’ what I was offering. It is as if they were right there. It was in their hands and it slipped away–tragic.
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Real communication of sublime knowledge requires not only direct experience of Truth by the teacher but also time, patience and proper attitude of the student. Even among those few that actually do have the knowledge, even fewer have it in their nature to be teachers.
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In the early years of the school, when I tried to explain the distinctions that made all the difference, people were confused. It was as if difficult for them to grasp the distinction between an echo and the real thing. Being vested in the echo only made it more challenging for them. Sometimes they just got angry, feeling like I was unfairly (even arrogantly) criticizing the teachings of others. I was stunned and exasperated by the response. Admittedly, all those years in the ashram cultivated an innocence within me. I guess I had forgotten how hostile and jaded it could be ‘out there.’
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In retrospect, I realize that it took years for me to find ways to communicate my teachings. Of course, that learning is ongoing. It will never end. However, the proof is in the pudding. I am getting the information across much more effectively now. I do wonder though, if my method of teaching has changed much or if the people that are coming around now are from a somewhat different cross section of society.
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I do feel that the US spiritual society itself has changed. I do not see nearly as much superficiality (eye fluttering, hand waving, etc.) in the name of spirituality as I did ten or twenty years ago. Society does change rather quickly. I remember forty years ago, when many people thought drugs were the path to enlightenment. After that came the eye-fluttering era. Now it seems people are looking for something more solid, real world, reflective, and significant.
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Whatever the cause, we have come a long way in the past twenty years. I feel I am getting things across much better now. How much is it a refinement of my method of teaching? How much is a drawing from a group of more ardent and sophisticated students? It is hard to say. What I can say is I am pleased.
Periods of depression are common. I have been asked to discuss it. Let me begin by saying that I have observed over and over again that proper meditation is the greatest cure. Depression is primarily physiological. Proper diet and exercise also help greatly.
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But what about behavioral causes of depression? Depression is the result of suppressed flow of life force. There are multiple motivations to stifle your life flow.
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You may have imposed upon yourself a strict value system that is in actuality not in harmony with truth – not in harmony with your true nature and the true nature of life.
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Always trying to do the right thing can be most depressing if in actuality it is not really the right thing for you. Take care to not devote your life to invalid notions. You may tell yourself it is valid, but deep inside, where it really counts, you know better.
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You may be more image-conscious than you realize… acting and behaving in a manor that is not your true nature in the name of how you may appear to others. Proper manners is one thing, but to depress your true nature in the name of a facade you feel will win people over, is quite another.
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Second guessing yourself is another common cause. You may be unable to make a decision fearing it will be wrong. Whatever you do, you wonder if you should have made another choice. You tie yourself up in knots and end up depressed.
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Judging yourself based upon an internalized standard is always depressing. Standards are external. Internalizing anything external causes depression. Use the external as an aid to explore your inner being, but not as an imposition upon it. Freedom, joy, and fulfillment come from within.
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The list goes on and on. However, there is one cause underlying them all – fear. To discover what depresses you, ask your self what you are afraid of.
Then ask yourself how you impose restriction upon your life as a result of that fear.
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This exploration is not to be taken lightly or acted upon too impulsively. It is a process. But rest assured that freeing your self, i.e. living your true nature, is the only path there is to fulfillment.
When I see quotes like the one below, I often wonder how clear and far reaching the understanding actually was.
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Did Churchill understand that when a person lives in harmony with God (Natural Law) then the person, though totally free, also has no choice but to do what he must?
Did he understand that the connection rises as a deep abstract feeling from within, not just a concrete commitment to a goal or purpose?
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In other words, did he understand that thoughts are based in reason, reason is based in finest feelings, and finest feelings come from the Divinity within?
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Did he understand that the Divinity underlying an individual is the same Divinity dwelling as the essence of all people and all things?
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Did he understand that the issue of life then, was merely a matter of clarity of connection of the surface of life with the depth?
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Did he understand that people with clear connections could have missions in life that may conflict with one and other on the surface of life?
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Did he understand that support of Nature comes from that integration of life (transgradient integration) while, at the same time, brings “obstacles and dangers and pressures” arising from that which is not in harmony with nature?
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Such quotes hold within them the gateway to all knowledge. Of course, everything does so. That is not the question. The question is, how deeply does one see into all that is around them? This, of course, includes even their own quotes.
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Everything is rooted in the Divine. The question is only regarding the clarity, the integration, the correlation brought forth.
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“A man does what he must – in spite of personal consequences,
in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures –
and that is the basis of all human morality.“
– Winston Churchill
The Truth about Religion and Flatlining
