inner breath – Traou an Dour

ॐ, buddhism, Esoteric, Esoteric Psychology, New Age, Quotations, Rāja yoga, Yoga

Definition of the Intuition

Extracted from “Glamor – A World Problem” by Alice Bailey & Djwhal Khul

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The intuition is not a welling forth of love to people and, therefore, an understanding of them. Much that is called the intuition is recognition of similarities and the possession of a clear analytical mind. Intelligent people who have lived in the world for some time and who have experienced much and who have contacted many other people can usually sum up with facility the problems and dispositions of others, provided they are interested. This they must not, however, confound with the intuition.

The intuition has no relation to psychism, either higher or lower; the seeing of a vision, the hearing of the Voice of the Silence, a pleased reaction to teaching of any kind does not infer the functioning of the intuition. It is not only the seeing of symbols, for that is a special sort of perception and the capacity to tune in on the Universal Mind upon that layer of Its activity which produces the pattern-forms on which all etheric bodies are based. It is not intelligent psychology, and a loving desire to help. That emanates from the interplay of a personality, governed by a strong soul orientation, and the group-conscious soul.

Intuition is the synthetic understanding which is the prerogative of the soul and it only becomes possible when the soul, on its own level, is reaching in two directions: towards the Monad, and towards the integrated and, perhaps (even if only temporarily) coordinated and at-oned personality. It is the first indication of a deeply subjective unification which will find its consummation at the third initiation.

Intuition is a comprehensive grip of the principle of universality, and when it is functioning there is, momentarily at least, a complete loss of the sense of separateness. At its highest point, it is known as that Universal Love which has no relation to sentiment or to the affectional reaction but is, predominantly, in the nature of an identification with all beings. Then is true compassion known; then does criticism become impossible; then, only, is the divine germ seen as latent in all forms.

Intuition is light itself, and when it is functioning, the world is seen as light and the light bodies of all forms become gradually apparent. This brings with it the ability to contact the light center in all forms, and thus again an essential relationship is established and the sense of superiority and separateness recedes into the background.

Intuition, therefore, brings with its appearance three qualities:

Illumination. By illumination I do not mean the light in the head. That is incidental and phenomenal, and many truly intuitive people are entirely unaware of this light. The light to which I refer is that which irradiates the Way. It is “the light of the intellect,” which really means that which illumines the mind and which can reflect itself in that mental apparatus which is held “steady in the light.” This is the “Light of the World,” a Reality which is eternally existent, but which can be discovered only when the individual interior light is recognized as such. This is the “Light of the Ages,” which shineth ever more until the Day be with us. The intuition is therefore the recognition in oneself, not theoretically but as a fact in one’s experience, of one’s complete identification with the Universal Mind, of one’s constituting a part of the great World Life, and of one’s participation in the eternal persisting Existence.

Understanding. This must be appreciated in its literal sense as that which “stands under” the totality of forms. It connotes the power of recession or the capacity to withdraw from one’s agelong identification with form life. I would like to point out that this withdrawal is comparatively easy for those who have much of the first ray quality in them. The problem is to withdraw in the esoteric sense, but to avoid at the same time the sense of separateness, of isolation and of superiority. It is easy for first ray people to resist the tendency to identify themselves with others. To have true understanding involves an increased ability to love all beings and yet, at the same time, to preserve personality detachment. This detachment can be so easily founded on an inability to love, in a selfish concern for one’s own comfort – physical, mental or spiritual, and above all, emotional. First ray people dread emotion and despise it, but sometimes they have to swing into an emotional condition before they can use emotional sensitivity in the right manner.

Understanding involves contact with life as an integrated personality, plus egoic reaction to the group purposes and plans. It connotes personality-soul unification, wide experience, and a rapid activity of the indwelling Christ principle. Intuitional understanding is always spontaneous. Where the reasoning to an understanding enters, it is not the activity of the intuition.

Love. As earlier said, this is not affectionate sentiment, or the possession of a loving disposition; these two later aspects are incidental and sequential. When the intuition is developed, both affection and the possession of a spirit of loving outgo will, necessarily, in their pure form, be demonstrated, but that which produces these is something much more deep and comprehensive. It is that synthetic, inclusive grasp of the life and needs of all beings (I have chosen these two words with intent!) which it is the high prerogative of a divine Son of God to operate. It negates all that builds barriers, makes criticism, and produces separation. It sees no distinction, even when it appreciates need, and it produces in one who loves as a soul immediate identification with that which is loved.

These three words sum up the three qualities or aspects of the intuition and can be covered by the word, universality, or the sense of universal Oneness.

Is that not something which all aspirants aim to achieve? And is it not something that each of you, as individuals, needs in a peculiar sense? Where it is present, there is an immediate decentralization of the dramatic “I,” of that capacity always to relate all happenings, all phenomena, all group work to oneself as the center.

I cannot enlarge further upon the subject of Intuition. It is too vast a matter, and too abstruse. All I can do is to put before you its three aspects and then to urge upon you the need to submit to that training and to apply to yourselves that discipline which will work out in your life as love, light and understanding. When the theory is grasped and the right adjustments are made and when the needed work is done, the personality then becomes magnetic, whilst the brain cells around the pineal gland, which have hitherto been dormant, become awakened and vibrant. The nucleus of every cell in the body is a point of light, and when the light of the intuition is sensed, it is this cell-light which will immediately respond. The continuance of the inflow of the light of the intuition will draw forth, esoterically speaking, into the light of day every cell which is so constituted that it will respond.

Om mane padme hum

Dreams, Karma, Personal Development, Poetic Prose, Poetry, Vision

Tenebris

The ancient cloak descends through the mists of time upon the earth, primordial in its essence, unforgiving in its relentlessness, cloying and suffocating all in her path. Beauty is extinguished as the damp greyness envelops and enfolds. It recovers the nascent growth, the seeds that part the earth in search of the sun falter sans lumière.

On the hillside sheltering from the storm against a low brick wall stands a man, his coat shaggy and stained by the peat water of the marsh. He turns up his collar against the wind. He looks at his hands cold and sore from the wind and the rain. He feels the salt path as the tear of his life rolls across his cheek, leaving a track in the mud and the dirt. There is a break in the rain and he stands and looks into the mist. There on the horizon he can see the tendrils of smoke from his cottage. Wearily he picks up his bag and sighs. Bracing himself once more against the elements he sets off. Each step is slow and forced as the memories of every step seem echoed in the fibres of his body. Slowly he gathers his strength to stand once again in the darkness. He searches in himself for the life giving spark. It is there. He fans it with his inner breath, the essence of his life force. He blows gently and soon the spark of his self belief is beginning to glow. Soft and orange, smoky and pungent with the pine sap of his blood. He gathers his will and harnesses it, he corals and directs it towards the flame with the strength of his will he ignites the fire. There he stands a glimmer a life alive.

He reaches in, to his heart, to open wide the portcullis slammed shut at the frustration of it all. As he walks his body shakes as he once again renders his heart to open. To take it so wide and to prise open the overrun vines of neglect that has clamped it tight. He looks again to his flame and brings it to the castle gate. He holds it aloft and towards the ice. He peers at the reflection of the flame as the white surface snows melt and the image of his outer being is reflected within. He looks within at the eyes. In those eyes he can see the ashes of his lives, the very footprints in the sands of his times, the canvas of his lives written and painted with the palette of his moods. Windswept and dark, light and warm every shade of season, every nuance of feeling each stored as a pastiche of his story. He holds the flame of his self belief to the glass chalice of water, the one whose contents sear his being-ness and burn and pose the question why.

The pine smoke of his flame darkens the glass and he watches as the water begins to dance with the flame. Yes, there it is that first bubble of hope, it floats and it rises and bursts forth into the now heavy air. With its release a spark returns. He feels its exuberance and its irrepressibility as child in his eyes. He turns again to the manger of his heart, that external womb where he seeks to nurture. He pulls back the covers and looks to the soft downy blankets fresh with the smell of the newborn. For into that heart he puts the child, the symbol of his vulnerability, the symbol of his damaged trust.

He pauses and searches again for the dove of his being-ness. He reaches within his cloak and cradles it in his hands. He coos into its ear and raises it aloft. He sets it free onto the four winds, to fly and to soar, taking with it the autumn leaves of his self doubt to scatter them to the corners of the world. In the inner world the now wrinkled leaves change into the first seeds of acceptance. He kneels as he abandons. In that release the chains of his own petty wants and desires are rent. Link after link is stretched the metal bending white as the force of his will rips at the steel of his chains. The echo of release runs down his spine as that which was wrought is now asunder.

He feels himself dissolve and expand into the cup of his karma. The flame of his being-ness bursts into pure light and sound as it expands across the landscape of his world. The vision of all places and all times, the omniscience that is not him yet he is of it. His consciousness flows across the patchwork fields of the low countries. It becomes the royal eagle soaring against the sea cliffs where earth plunges into ocean. The ocean spray washes his wings and freshens his face, as he plays with gulls and rides amongst the nests on the cliff faces.

He dives like a cormorant into the ocean of his life, driven this way and that by the currents that he does not understand nor comprehend. He emerges onto a desert shore. The dry warmth begins to ease the form. He smells it, the crescent of the desert moon sparkling in the sky. He sniffs and the lungful adds to the spark of his inner flame. He walks with camels in the desert night, lit by the majesty of the stars against the backdrop of the infinite heavens, the veils of space and time showing him the mirror of his own insignificance against the cosmic canvas torn apart and created by a purpose that cannot be named.

He looks within at the sun now dark and sees the orange fire that shows the blackness and he huddles for comfort on that mountain hillside, shaking and afraid. He lifts up his head and howls at the crescent moon, the sound of his voices echoing all the pangs of birth resonant with the sorrow and with the joy of the world, of hope long forgotten. The core of him stretching back through aeons and the string of his voice tendered and marked by every hand that stretched it. He allows his consciousness back to the source, the rose of his own birth where the essence of his own being was forged and thrust into life. He feels corpuscles of his being-ness clustering into that flame held in the ether of life, the spark of that arrow made by the divine fletcher.

Then he sees it, the first blue in the darkness. A hush falls on the land as slowly the form can be seen in the shadow and the purple black recedes into shades of blue, so heart warming. The primordial darkness yields to the sun as the pinprick pink pierces the sky, deepening of colour, certain of its own footing, it pushes and probes the darkness. The lotus flower of its leaves opens in song as it rejoices its own birth. Heady and fragrant it yields its fresh perfume on the day. It calls to its heralds the angels, to sound forth the clarion call of life, a life alive and ready. The sky now alight in the soft radiant dawn has a clarity of diamond and a purpose of pure and ecstatic white, brilliance and clarity. The mists of darkness recede and the divine and cosmic essence shines forth warming the heart of man, healing in hues of emerald green, warming with soft yellows, energising with blues and comforting in its sound. It causes his whole body to shake with release. As he bathes in the sun the aches and the weary-ness of his existence are soothed.

He turns again to his flame and it is now bright. He moves across the hillside with more eagerness and perhaps he can now smell the tendrils of the wood smoke from his hearth that is waiting for him.

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Om mane padme hum – the jewel in the centre of the lotus….