In our times it is possible to find “instant experts” keen to profess their assumed knowledge and understanding from the nearest soap box whether made from wood or electronic. You can buy little sachets of “Instant Expert” which you can mix with water, add a little Ego and a dash of encephalitis pop them in the microwave and “hey presto” you become an instant expert on whichever subject you choose irrespective of whether or not you have researched said subject. The “Instant Expert” sachets are the latest wisdom hack. It is the new shortcut to omniscience.
There are those who may actually be an expert in one area who might assume that said expertise is transferrable to others.
I have been very fortunate in this lifetime in that a very large number of people have told me stuff, presumably to educate me, they have offered me their expert opinion and told me what I am. Many, to my eyes, have deemed that they “know-it-all” and in their largesse have been keen to share.
If somebody desperately wants to be right, to “win” an argument, I am generally minded to let them. If they are so certain, so adamant, it would be mean of me to piss on their campfire. If their opinion is so concrete and set, why would I waste any energy trying to alter it?
I will make a postulate.
The phenomenon of assumed understanding is widespread and in many cases that assumption is invalid. People understand much less than they might imagine. This does not stop them from opining in an adamant and assertive manner.
Or a more concise version.
People are often loquaciously full of bullshit.
One of the things one learns in higher education is that smart people, when they tip up, assume that they know more than they do. One can spend three years {or more} altering this knowledge self-diagnosis.
Realization of unity, wide-mindedness, tolerance, humility, gentleness and love.
This is the ceremonial ray, the ray which makes a man delight in “all things done decently and in order,” and according to rule and precedent. It is the ray of the high priest and the court chamberlain, of the soldier who is a born genius in organization, of the ideal commissary general who will dress and feed the troops in the best possible way. It is the ray of the perfect nurse for the sick, careful in the smallest detail, though sometimes too much inclined to disregard the patients idiosyncrasies and to try and grind them in the iron mill of routine.
It is the ray of form, of the perfect sculptor, who sees and produces ideal beauty, of the designer of beautiful forms and patterns of any sort; but such a man would not be successful as a painter unless his influencing ray were the fourth. The combination of four with seven would make the very highest type of artist, form and color being both in excelsis. The literary work of the seventh ray man would be remarkable for its ultra-polished style, and such a writer would think far more of the manner than of the matter in his work but would always be fluent both in writing and speech. The seventh ray man will often be sectarian. He will delight in fixed ceremonials and observances, in great processions and shows, in reviews of troops and warships, in genealogical trees, and in rules of precedence.”
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As I may have mentioned before my personality ray is ray seven. If you look closely you will be able to see the influence in the blog content.
The incoming ray is this ray ceremonial order or magic. Inherent in this is a major challenge for humanity, which so often is disorganised and in disarray. Winging it, is not seventh ray. The seventh ray may be précised as “the ray of having your shit together”. This is a long way from higgledy-piggledy and in some ways anti-hippie but in other ways it is the ray, par excellence, of natural rhythm. Everything should be in synch and on time with natural law and rhythm.
Yes, ritual traditional magic, craft, and mantra are a part, but only a small one.
Organisation, vivification, and energising are what proper order brings. An organism needs to organise and carry out its given physical plane learning. Karma can be thought of as residual “shit” that you have to deal with. Hence in working off your shit you get your shit together, less new karma, debt paid off.
Many people resist being organised and have never experienced the slick and the smooth of all cogs working in unison. People who are self-obsessed are separative and do not view themselves as part of the holistic whole. ME is a luddite spanner in the works. It causes discordance and discord, dis-chord, the sound jars.
The challenge of the incoming ray is to eradicate this notion of self and alchemize it into the holistic-whole, or ONE. The one humanity.
To say to a sloppy ill disciplined person, who is fond of the weird and the whacky, that they need to have their shit together is to ask for resistance.
“Hey man, that is not New Age!”
“Yes, it is! Get a haircut and pull up your trousers. You need to focus and stop being so dissipated!”
If one meanders and only cherry picks the easy fruit off the tree of teaching, then one will not taste the golden apples higher up the tree, which need more and continued effort to attain. Many choose only those teachings that are strap-on to normal life. Few want radical change. One could say people want to keep their cherry pie and eat it.
The seventh ray is also the ray of constant evolution and application. This is because Synthesis takes new learning and incorporates it with the knowledge heretofore garnered. Knowledge is never complete, because of constant synthesis one could say that knowing is a present participle synonym of evolving, knowledge relates to evolution. True knowledge cannot ever be concrete and finished.
Synthesis is an antithesis of Idealism and Devotion, the departing sixth ray. Sixth ray separates, cleaves and divides, seventh ray heals, stitches the rent wounds of division and stirs its synthetic pot of alchemy in search of the new.
The seventh ray is unlike the division with which our current world is so very badly scarred!!
It is time to synthesise and not cleave, the synthetic cauldron of inspiration must overcome the axe of cleavage.
It may seem a little out of place to start discussing power in the context of freedom and equanimity, but it is necessary. Until you have more than a notion of your relationship to power and with power, it is difficult to have balance. Power of course has many meanings, there are many types of power and it comes in all shades. There is power in the sense of dominance, power in the sense of ability, power in knowledge and power as in material plane enforcement. Power is a vast topic itself. Some people have power, that can be positional or organisational power, it can be personal power, it can be muscular power or sexual power. There is the saying that power corrupts, though it need not, it often does. Humanity has a bit of a thing for and about societal power; it has a status hang up.
If you wield power in the sense of political or corporate power, it is unlikely that you will have equanimity and peace. This is because people are so often fighting for power. Even if your powerful position is secure, by the very nature of that position you will be required to make decisions. Those decisions are a responsibility of positional power and rarely do they come with serenity and peace. It is not the fate of most people to learn what high positional power means and those so called are in for a bit of a tough time. All societies have leaders, and these are of varying ability and quality. Some seek power with a thirst. And it is many that are so drawn who end up abusing power. Power has many traps associated for those drawn to it.
In the context of freedom, it is useful to figure out what has power over you and then adjust that situation. Things that have power over you can be as simple as arachnophobia. If a simple spider makes you come out in a sweat, then you are not free of spiders. A tiny creature can evoke a massive drama. It is not the spider’s fault, it is your reaction. For whatever reason you have a fear and a drama associated in your mind with spiders. Chances are this is disproportionate. Few spiders attack humans just because there is nothing better on the TV to watch. People have hang ups about a host of things and this restricts their liberty. Anything which can evoke drama upsets balance. If small creatures have power over you, then what does that say about your level of mental control and balance?
Similarly, because of co-dependency, there are many people who have power over you. Some will go out of their way to manipulate you into a dependency and if you are so oriented you might even seek such people out, whether consciously or not. There are a multitude of buttons available to others for the pressing of. If at the pressing of a button off you trot into drama, then that button and the finger thereupon, have power over you. It can evoke drama and lack of control, you are off balance and flailing around. It is in this dependency and co-dependency that people give their power away to others. If you want to be free, then you do not need other beings having emotional power over you.
Many of the things that have power over you are to be found in the truck load of baggage which most adults carry with them. There may be shame, wounds, ambitions, unresolved conflict, grudges, guilt, vengeance, fear, unrequited love etc… The list is often long and until you have clarity on where the button comes from, it will stand proud and beckoning. It is in unpacking the baggage and by examination that one can begin to understand and slowly loosen the power over which is held. To be relatively free of buttons is to have more freedom generally. One is not beholden to the past and the narratives of it, which if we bear in mind the likelihood of selective perception are in any case often inaccurate. Memories and history are prevalent members of the set of buttons which are the indicators of something that has power over. A skilled manipulator can spot these a mile off and press them at will.
If you seek freedom, then you must defend it. This may sound ever so slightly bellicose, but one has to fight to extract oneself from situations in which things, people and ideas have power over you. The past has power over most and reorienting the past in such a manner as to be free of it, is no easy task. The common dream advertises that building memories for your dotage is a good thing, but who can really live in a sepia or rose-tinted world? It is not real. It is imagined and unreliable of recall. To build “memories” is to never be free of them. This is perhaps slightly radical but do consider this. If you live in a mish mash recollection of the past, what do you make of the present, if you even notice it all? To be bound thus, is to not experience the now.
I have used bound, shackles and manacles already in this text, emotive words of slavery and imprisonment. It is up to you to figure out if I am by metaphor over egging the pudding. Until the duvet of illusion is pulled off, there is a cosy familiarity which can seemingly be justified.
Of course, in any material society there will be people and organisations that have temporal power over the circumstances of your life. Short of going off into the wild, this will always be the case. The freedom of complete anarchy is not currently possible in large society, this need not impinge overly on your state of mind, your mental freedom. One can see it for what it is, do the minimum necessary to be a “good” citizen and not feel overly oppressed by the apparatus of state. Within this framework it is possible not to succumb to ideological power over. People will do whatever they do, they will think whatever and opine ad infinitum. None of this need impact on your own equanimity. One does not have to agree, or argue or succumb. If your own mind is clear it is not overly perturbed by the folly and behaviours of others. Unless they are directly intent on harming or manipulating you, they are not direct threats. In keeping your centre, you can rise above it. If you cannot resist the pull of hive or herd mind, then it has power over you, which means you are not yet free of it.
As you begin to see though your own façade, understand your self and get close to your true nature, you will be acquiring power in the sense of knowledge. That knowledge pertains not only to you as a being but to other beings. This knowledge then opens up choices, possibilities for you which were hitherto not available, you have more personal power and more freedom. Freedom is in your choice as to how you respond to whatever life throws at you. There will be a reduced rigidity and an enhanced flexibility of living. With more personal power comes the temptation to exploit that power and perhaps use situations and others to your “advantage”. With all growth in personal power comes temptation. In the absence there are few choices. When there is a plethora of choices available some will not be life enhancing. If you are so inclined, you may use your personal power to exert power over others. As alluded to above that way is not freedom. How can one be free if one enslaves? It is not possible.
I have briefly touched on power here. Learning to handle new found personal power is a part of the walk to freedom. Keeping oneself grounded and developing humility offsets the temptation of power, which can enslave. In this sense knowledge is power which without wisdom and discernment can be a dangerous thing.
In Connection with the Council Chamber of Sanat Kumara, the Lord of the World
As this subject concerns one of the seven goals towards which the Masters aim after They have attained the fifth initiation, it will be obvious to you that there is little that I can say about it. One of the seven Paths for which the Way of the Higher Evolution prepares the senior initiates is the Path of Earth Service. This Path, as you know, keeps the Masters attached to service in the three worlds for a period much longer than the average. It involves tremendous sacrifice. Just as the disciple has to live a dual life, with one part of his reflective nature and awareness centered in the life of the Hierarchy and the other part of his mental responsiveness equally centered on life in the three worlds, and this simultaneously, so the Master, when He chooses this Path, forms a constituent part of the Council Chamber of the Lord of the World and at the same time works consciously in the three worlds, via the Hierarchy (of which He remains also a part), and with the human and subhuman kingdoms in nature. As evolution proceeds, He will work increasingly via humanity because humanity will be shouldering its responsibilities as the Macrocosm of the lesser microcosm. This dual activity entails much specialized training, and as the initiatory process becomes exoteric and men everywhere recognize it and participate in it, the training which Members of the Hierarchy also undergo will not be so secret and mysterious as it is today. But the time has not yet come to publicize it.
Only certain further generalizations are here possible, some of which are already known to you because they are so broad that their inclusions and implications are obvious. This, for instance, concerns the “center where the Will of God is known”. Here at Shamballa work Those Who have unified Their personality will and Their spiritual will with the universal will, and such a unification inevitably brings knowledge. It is, however, not knowledge as you understand it. It is a blend of wisdom based on knowledge, understanding based on intuitive perception, and identification based on alignment, esoterically comprehended. For this peculiar condition or awareness we have no word in any language, and only the utilization (the trained utilization) of the abstract mind can possibly convey to you even an embryonic factual conception. But that type of imaginative conception will become more common during the next two centuries, and my words here will therefore serve an ultimate purpose. Those Who form the Council Chamber of the Great Lord are under no misapprehension as to His will because They see it whole. Paul, the initiate, hints at this when writing one of the Epistles; he is in touch then with certain Members of the Hierarchy and is concerned with the theme of Love, which is the fundamental hierarchical theme and motive. He says to Them: “Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face; now we know in part, but then shall we know even as we are known.” He there points towards the future progress of the Hierarchy – a progress which remains as yet only a vague promise, lacking form and shape. But he wrote for initiates to whom love was a growing, vital concern, and to whom love and its practice meant light and the basic motif of all living, divine activity. It is not possible to reveal the will of God and the motivating Purpose of His manifesting Self, except to Those Who have demonstrated perfected love and Who register no sense of disunion or the faintest reaction to separateness.
At Shamballa, the Great Lives Who function there not only see manifestation whole and apart from all the limitations of time, but They feel all the major evolutionary impulses which are bringing the developing world into line with the divine Will. They embody those impulses not in terms of progressive movement, but in terms of one great divine and spiritual reaction. This idea can perhaps be best understood by you in terms of the Eternal AUM which is the symbol of the Eternal NOW. You have been told, and it has been demonstrated, that the AUM is composed of one major Sound, three minor sounds, and seven subsidiary vibratory tones. So it is with the Will of God which is embodied and held in synthesis by the Members of the Council Chamber. To Them, as They “hold the Will of God in solution, it is one clear note; as They see that Will in motion, it is three abiding chords, carrying outwards into all the worlds the Purpose of the ONE Who for aeons will abide; as They impel that Will to demonstrate, it is seven vibratory tones, drawing out into the reflected worlds the structure of the Plan. And thus the note, the chords and tone produce the Plan, reveal the Purpose and indicate God’s Will.” This is a quotation from certain of the ancient Archives which constitute the study of the Masters; they relate to the nature of Shamballa, its work and emanating energies.
Shamballa, as it constitutes the synthesis of understanding where our Earth is concerned, is also the center where the highest Will of the Solar Logos is imposed upon the Will of our planetary Logos, Who is, as you know, only a center in His greater body of manifestation. With this item of information you can have no possible concern; the Masters Themselves are only learning the Will of the planetary Logos; the objective of effort in Shamballa is, however, the apprehension of solar Purpose, the Plan of which is working out on the highest levels of our planetary system, just as the Will, Purpose and Plan of Shamballa work out on the three lowest levels of our planetary system. Again, this item of information serves only to indicate hierarchical objectives, and those objectives extend away from time and space into the Mind of God Himself.
There are certain synonyms which here may serve to develop your synthetic thinking and so bring in a definite measure of enlightenment.
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SHAMBALLA
HIERARCHY
HUMANITY
Synthesis
Unity
Separation
Will
Purpose
Plan
Life
Soul
Appearance
Spirit
Consciousness
Substance
Livingness
Organism
Organization
Apprehension
Polarization
Focus of Activity
Power
Momentum
Action
Energy
Distribution
Forces
Direction
Transmission
Reception
Head
Heart
Throat
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It will be apparent to you how little you can understand of the Shamballa intention when you realize that it is not easy for you to see any true distinction between unity and synthesis and, at the same time, how impossible it is for me to make the distinction clear. All I can say is that synthesis is, whilst unity is achieved and is the reward of action and effort. As you progress upon the Path of Initiation the meaning of unity clarifies. As you direct yourself towards the Way of the Higher Evolution synthesis emerges. More than that it would be useless for me to say.
This problem of the apparently impenetrable darkness of intention as grasped by Shamballa, of meaning, of inscrutability, of a spiritual imperviousness which holds, in spite of all fluctuations in the three worlds of human evolution and the remaining two of superhuman unfoldment, provides a situation to which the Hierarchy has to make adjustment through alignment. You are, in your small way, making your adjustment to the Hierarchy through a steady construction of the antahkarana, and in so doing are aiding in the construction of the antahkarana which unites Humanity and the Hierarchy – the first few strands of which were established through the sacrifices of certain of the Sons of God when the Hierarchy was founded on Earth. Today, the Hierarchy is working at the establishing of the linking strands between Itself and Shamballa, and good progress has already been made. It might be said here that for the past seven hundred years the chain of Hierarchy has been complete; by this I mean that the planetary rainbow bridge uniting the three major centers has existed. The task ahead of all these three major centers, working in alignment through adjustment, is to strengthen and beautify (if I may so express it), to electrify this bridge, thus producing full planetary inter-communication between the three centers and the four minor centers, so that “the weight of the Will of God, the momentum of the Purpose of Sanat Kumara and the Plan of His Representatives may progress unimpeded from point to point, from sphere to sphere and from glory to glory.”
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It is this complete establishment of relationship between Shamballa, the Hierarchy and Humanity which brought about the planetary crisis through which the world has just passed and, from some standpoints, is still passing. Shamballa, as I have told you, can now reach Humanity, the third major center, directly, and therefore has two points of planetary contact: the first, via the Hierarchy, as has been for long the case, and secondly, in a straight line, carrying energy direct to Humanity, without any transmission and consequent modifying of impact, as has also been the case hitherto. When this direct line of spiritual, dynamic, electrical energy made its first impact on earth (after the Great Council held in 1825), it first of all awakened men’s thinking in a new and comprehensive way, producing the great ideologies; it aroused their massed desire, and registered obstruction on the physical plane. It found its course impeded and discovered it was faced with barriers. This energy from Shamballa, being an aspect of the ray of the destroyer, proceeded to “burn up” in the fires of destruction, all such hindrances upon the planes in the three worlds. This was the deeply esoteric and unrecognized cause of the war – the beneficent bringing to an end of the impediments to the free flow of spiritual energy down into the third center; this was the factor which called “evil from its hidden place” and brought the opposing forces to the surface of existence, prior to their “sealing”. To the extent that this was so, mankind in the World War (1914-1945) was the unhappy victim of spiritual circumstance; however, from the angle of man’s historical past, humanity was the engineer of its own fate; but it took both the esoteric activity of Shamballa and the exoteric activity of humanity over a millenia of years to precipitate the conditions which made this new alignment possible and brought about the sealing (still being carried slowly forward), and plunged mankind into the vortex of war. This impelling downpouring energy from the highest center penetrated not only to the heart of humanity, but into the very depths of the mineral kingdom, implicating also the animal and the vegetable expressions of divine life.
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Excerpted from:
The Externalization of the Hierarchy – Section IV – Stages in the Externalization
It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.
Atr. Mark Twain
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To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.
Nicolaus Copernicus
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To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.
Marilyn vos Savant
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I think we risk becoming the best informed society that has ever died of ignorance.
Ruben Blades
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The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.
Albert Einstein
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Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.
Confucius
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Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.
Karl Popper
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All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.
Leonardo da Vinci
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Without self-knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave.
George Gurdjieff
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Science is the father of knowledge, but opinion breeds ignorance.
Hippocrates
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The degree of one’s emotions varies inversely with one’s knowledge of the facts.
Bertrand Russell
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Knowledge without justice ought to be called cunning rather than wisdom.
Plato
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The true method of knowledge is experiment.
William Blake
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Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
Bertrand Russell
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There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.
Albert Einstein
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Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.
Brian O’Driscoll
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The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
Isaac Asimov
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Some people drink from the fountain of knowledge, others just gargle.
Robert Anthony
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Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
A Fremen dies when he is too long from the desert. We call this the water sickness. Frank Herbert, “Children of Dune” Gollancz Orion Publishing Group, London. Page 127 ISBN 0 575 074906
Eric says that today we should talk about rain, beautiful rain. For today is not a day of fire and orange red suns, not yet. He says that we should wait for one of those spectacular sunsets before we talk of fire, today is a day of water. He suggests that before we get started I should open the door so that I can hear the rain and the birdsong because it will help me to remember that I am a being touched by the desert and the bush. My relationship with rain is different from the English. Only those who have lived with cloudless skies and scorching desert suns can love the rain as much as I do.
Today it is comfort rain, soft downy and close. The earth is drinking and all around things are growing, you can almost see them. It is getting heavier now and in the wet slabs of stone I see the shadow of a bird flying above and I look up to see a heron, its wing feathers slightly tatty around the edges and the sound of those wings is soft on the wind. He is taken to the wide rivers of Africa and the parchment creeks of the Australian desert. For his life has also been one of rivers and of mountains. He was born of stock from the foothills of Snowdon and taken as a child from this green and pleasant land, far away across the seas, to the Southern hemisphere. There he was marked by a different sun and saw panoply of stars that truly put the sky into, sky.
Eric says that there is an urban legend; that Eskimos have many words for snow and wonders why aren’t there quite as many for, rain? He says that when rain comes to him in his dreams he understands it as meaning the process of life and a reminder to be aware that the vis viva is always busy; that we should trust whatever it is that the power within has for us to do. He says that now we have got started on this Chautauqua he feels that the time is right for us to be doing it and that the I Ching has agreed, Sheng {Pushing Upward}, and he has noted the text there.
Today then he says that we should talk about relaxing into the process of life and that although this is linked to the journey motif what we should discuss is water and actions, those that yield and dissolve making life more fluid than sand. He says that action without condition is the means by which one walks the path with heart and that for him there can no longer be any other way.
Eric reckons that most people never truly listen to what others say, most lives are spent and he is sure that this is the right word, fighting for air time and clamouring for attention. I agree and am pretty sure that most people use words and phrases they have borrowed from others and spout truths which they themselves have never checked the validity of.
Life then is not about a reactive and hurried knee jerk to the world; a cause and effect, a reason and a justification. There is more than this. In order to be able to do this, what one needs to do is to, stop the world, to……….
Pause.
In a helter-skelter mad-dash dog-chasing-its-tail way there is, whether you believe it or not, still plenty of time to pause, step back and look at the process of life to get some clarity on what is actually going on and then to respond intelligently to what transpires. Yes one can always meet force with force, yet often to yield is so much more powerful, and here I mean power in the sense of learning and knowledge and not the other way. He says that most people have buttons that are easily pressed and initiate a knee jerk reaction which he calls a control drama.
These control dramas are there because the so-called rational mind likes to protect what it holds as sacrosanct behaviour patterns and thoughts, learned at mother’s knee. He reckons the only way that one can begin to unpick them is to first take an inventory of ones doings and then, don’t do them any more.
He rather liked Luke Rheinhart’s “The Dice Man” for this but doesn’t recommend that as a way of being. What he means is that once there is a little clarity about behaviours one can do an exciting experiment on oneself to find out where they all came from and get some freedom, by not responding in such a Pavlovian way.
He says that if there is intent to change one can initiate this in an intelligent way and that one of the best ways to do this is to be like water. That is to yield and dissolve and flow and eddy; to absorb and to treat everything for its potential as a gift of learning and new knowledge. Which as we have already discussed allows the power within to guide our development imbuing us with a vitality which is that capacity to live life to its full, so that the vis viva, imbues the power within to organise the form into living the challenges of physical plane existence to the max.
People have barbs, he says, and some of them are so emotionally charged that they wound, a few words spoken with malicious intent can damage as much, if not more than, a knife. They can cut people down. He reckons that it is the quality of the e-motion which is linked to the underlying intent, that has a sound and the sound is what damages. We will come back to colour and movement perhaps another day he says.
If one listens to both the face value of the words and the tonal balance of their delivery he reckons that you can learn quite a lot about what is actually going on. It is the battle of one-up-man-ship that most people try to exert over each other, that maintains a mis-guided sense of control over life and that this is the basis of the construct we appear to live in. Here competition is against and usually for some form of pecking order. Eric reminds me of Terry and how we knew that despite all his brouhaha and forceful manipulation what he feared most was a simple hug from another man.
He says that he finds it ironic that rational mind has inherent in it the quality of ratio and the quantity of ration. Hinting that it attempts to balance whilst limiting the scope of what it is considering. He says he much prefers the irrational as this is much less limited and full of possibilities; that the worst insult you could give him would be to call him rational. Rational is nearly always tied up to justification and presupposes right, that there is only one answer.
He reckons since we are now here we should look logic up on Wiki.
Logic is the philosophical study, or the formal science, of the principles of valid inference and demonstration. The word derives from Greek λογική (logike), fem. of λογικός (logikos), “possessed of reason, intellectual, dialectical, argumentative”, from λόγος (logos), “word, thought, idea, argument, account, reason, or principle”.
As he has mentioned people do not truly listen to each other and often, before a person has even half finished a sentence, others are preparing rejoinders, whether witty or otherwise. He says that in terms of quality, logic which derives from logos, has perhaps become disconnected from its true source, because the logos is the word or the very first sound echoing out of the void, the first thing which is becoming manifest as a vibration within the nothingness, there and then giving evidence of existence and non-existence. Before the first stirring there was only no-thing. In the act of stirring, awareness came into being as a separation. The first word is not quite ineffable and is so much more than the intellectual pissing contest that people think of as debate and conversation. Who then within the rations of the rational mind defines what is valid and what is right?
Eric says that until one has a working knowledge of the second attention one cannot appreciate the quality of words properly or get a feeling for what is left. This left side or feeling is perhaps heart and not mind. In a very real sense the ratio of rational is therefore incomplete in any case, because this left side knowing or inner tuition is left out of the equation. Thus the rational is therefore, if I may use a reasoning word, in a rather odd sense irrational as the referential framework is so limited; and limited to what is in effect and affect concrete thought. What people call rational is all air, mind and lacks. It is not water.
So the rain of this Chautauqua has taken us of down a side tributary of metaphysics and rhetoric in order to describe and discuss rationality. It has been raining now for hours and the pace of it varies. He says it is drawing us back to rivers and streams and to Annwn and perhaps the Celtic salmon of wisdom that features high in the other world journeys, the journeys into metaphor. For whilst the other world journeys beckon one can never step in the same river twice, the world moves on and we cannot step out of the wardrobe from Narnia into an unchanged world. Time’s arrow as perceived on the physical plane is real enough.
He reckons that if you choose you might see life as a river, perhaps sourced high in the broad mountains of mist or from a small limestone spring in the bucolic vale of a shire. Soon that river meets others and they influence each other flowing urgently and precociously over the mossy rocks of life or perhaps more largo over the broad and leafy floodplains. He reckons you can hear brooks chuckle if you listen carefully enough. These streams become rivers and flow towards the wide seas and oceans of life, where man perhaps makes a mark on the world. There the currents are stronger and deeper; within the depths are hidden treasure, perhaps of the abysmal and perhaps of long lost tropical isles where undiscovered pirate gold lies hidden beneath the sing-song dreamlike palms and hammocks.
On its path to the sea the rivers may come across beaver dams constructed by the auspices of the mind that stem the flow of developing consciousness and block it with the tyranny of fear. Perhaps from time to time the river disappears deep into a sink hole or becomes barren and dry, the flow of life vanishes into the desert of a temporary despair. Like the salmon of wisdom we all leave our redds to begin a process of transformation perhaps from parr to smolt and salmon, before we die returning to the source of our birth and as legend has it, reviewing the wisdom gained during our lives. Eric reckons that if we step back and pause to look at our lives as they happen and not afterwards, this magnificent journey is all the richer.
He says that the most important thing he learned during the days of his descent into the underworld of darkness, is to remember that life is a process. He says that no matter how bad things get and how impossible things seem because of rational mind, provided that you are still breathing, the world doesn’t actually end; and that a good night’s sleep nearly always brings a fresh perspective with the rising of the sun.
He says that back then, it really helped him to visualise his life as the course of a river and that rather than seeing footprints in the sand, he sees the moods and themes of the river that is the expression of the vis viva flowing and that it is the quality of flow that allows us to synchronise, synch-chron-ise with the universe, to be in time with it.
He says that when he is a little lost for direction in life he always asks himself what his river feels like, right here and right now. What has the rational mind beaver been doing that stops the flow, how must he be to break out of a corner. What then is needed to move the logs of consciousness that are blocking the flow? Or, isn’t it perhaps now time for a gentle eddy in life, to sit back in the late summer sunshine and let the mayflies dance upon him; to feel the fish turn and break the surface for a well earned meal.
When he finds a barrier in life he asks himself; what is he trying to force? He says that he tries not to force anything but he has a mind too and that desires. It is that force which depletes the vibrancy and makes his brain ache. Time then to dissolve all that is around into the river of his being and take that new knowledge, time to yield and change direction, time to wear slowly down through the matter of the mountain valley and not scrape as a rock filled glacier might; time to pause and eddy and reflect the sun and then because the rain is falling and this process feeds the river, onwards and to the sea.
Eric cautions that until one has lived in the desert of despair a river may seem just a river, he knows then that the rain is precious and it is the contrast that reveals potential. If there is too much water then a man gets complacent and that is what the Fremen call the water sickness, for without some challenge there is no contrast and it is these challenges that help us to be free and most of all, that is what he wants.
The question anent initiation is one that is coming more and more before the public. Before many centuries pass the old mysteries will be restored, and an inner body will exist in the Church – the Church of the period, of which the nucleus is already forming – wherein the first initiation will become esoteric, in this sense only, that the taking of the first initiation will, before so very long, be the most sacred ceremony of the Church, performed esoterically as one of the mysteries given at stated periods, attended by those concerned. It will also hold a similar place in the ritual of the Masons. At this ceremony those ready for the first initiation will be publicly admitted to the Lodge by one of its members, authorized to do so by the great Hierophant Himself.
Four Words Defined
When we speak of Initiation, of wisdom, of knowledge, or of the probationary Path, what do we mean? We use the words so glibly, without due consideration of the meaning involved. Take, for instance, the word first mentioned. Many are the definitions, and many are the explanations to be found as to its scope, the preparatory steps, the work to be done between initiations, and its result and effects. One thing before all else is apparent to the most superficial student, and that is, that the magnitude of the subject is such that in order to deal with it adequately one should be able to write from the viewpoint of an initiate; when this is not the case, anything that is said may be reasonable, logical, interesting, or suggestive, but not conclusive.
The word Initiation comes from two Latin words, in, into; and ire, to go; therefore, the making of a beginning, or the entrance into something. It posits, in its widest sense, in the case we are studying, an entrance into the spiritual life, or into a fresh stage in that life. It is the first step, and the succeeding steps, upon the Path of Holiness. Literally, therefore, a man who has taken the first initiation is one who has taken the first step into the spiritual kingdom, having passed out of the definitely human kingdom into the superhuman. Just as he passed out of the animal kingdom into the human at individualization, so he has entered upon the life of the spirit, and for the first time has the right to be called a “spiritual man” in the technical significance of the word. He is entering upon the fifth or final stage in our present fivefold evolution. Having groped his way through the Hall of Ignorance during many ages, and having gone to school in the Hall of Learning, he is now entering into the university, or the Hall of Wisdom. When he has passed through that school he will graduate with his degree as a Master of Compassion.
It might be of benefit to us also if we studied first the difference or the connection between Knowledge, Understanding, and Wisdom. Though in ordinary parlance they are frequently interchanged, as used technically they are dissimilar.
Knowledge isthe product of the Hall of Learning. It might be termed the sumtotal of human discovery and experience, that which can be recognized by the five senses, and be correlated, diagnosed, and defined by the use of the human intellect. It is that about which we feel mental certitude, or that which we can ascertain by the use of experiment. It is the compendium of the arts and sciences. It concerns all that deals with the building and developing of the form side of things. Therefore it concerns the material side of evolution, matter in the solar systems, in the planet, in the three worlds of human evolution, and in the bodies of men.
Wisdom isthe product of the Hall of Wisdom. It has to do with the development of the life within the form, with the progress of the spirit through those ever-changing vehicles, and with the expansions of consciousness that succeed each other from life to life. It deals with the life side of evolution. Since it deals with the essence of things and not with the things themselves, it is the intuitive apprehension of truth apart from the reasoning faculty, and the innate perception that can distinguish between the false and the true, between the real and the unreal. It is more than that, for it is also the growing capacity of the Thinker to enter increasingly into the mind of the Logos, to realize the true inwardness of the great pageant of the universe, to vision the objective, and to harmonize more and more with the higher measure. For our present purpose (which is to study somewhat the Path of Holiness and its various stages) it may be described as the realization of the “Kingdom of God within,” and the apprehension of the “Kingdom of God without” in the solar system. Perhaps it might be expressed as the gradual blending of the paths of the mystic and the occultist, – the rearing of the temple of wisdom upon the foundation of knowledge.
Wisdom is the science of the spirit, just as knowledge is the science of matter. Knowledge is separate and objective, whilst wisdom is synthetic and subjective. Knowledge divides; wisdom unites. Knowledge differentiates whilst wisdom blends. What, then, is meant by the understanding?
The understandingmay be defined as the faculty of the Thinker in Time to appropriate knowledge as the foundation for wisdom, that which enables him to adapt the things of form to the life of the spirit, and to take the flashes of inspiration that come to him from the Hall of Wisdom and link them to the facts of the Hall of Learning. Perhaps the whole idea might be expressed in this way:
Wisdom concerns the one Self, knowledge deals with the not-self, whilst the understanding is the point of view of the Ego, or Thinker, or his relation between them.
In the Hall of Ignorance the form controls, and the material side of things has the predominance. Man is there polarized in the personality or lower self. In the Hall of Learning the higher self, or Ego, strives to dominate that form until gradually a point of equilibrium is reached where the man is controlled entirely by neither. Later the Ego controls more and more, until in the Hall of Wisdom it dominates in the three lower worlds, and in increasing degree the inherent divinity assumes the mastery.
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Excerpted from:
Initiation, Human and Solar – Chapter II – Initiation Defined
Yesterday I got absolutely soaked finishing off mowing one of the lawns. I was only in the rain for five minutes or so, but I got wet through. I had forgotten how much I liked being out in the rain. As a consequence of riding the sit on mower I had John Wayne cowboy hips last night. “Get off your horse…”
This morning I had a very weird dream.
In that dream were my dead parents and J. He too is dead. He came into my office carrying with him a bird of prey. My desk was cluttered with my patent application. The bird of prey looked to be part eagle, part owl. It stood on the table.
I picked up my camera with the telephoto lens on and went to take its photo.
{In “real life” my camera is on the table to my right on top of my patent application documents.}
The bird, in impeccable English, said to me that it did not want to have its photo taken. It said that the flash hurt its eye, specifically the left eye.
I put the camera down.
It walked along the table and then stood directly in front of me.
It leaned forward and touched its beak to my nose. The feeling was not of threat but of a kind of camaraderie. We were in tune.
I asked if I could take its photo without flash.
It said yes and stepped back.
I picked up the camera, now with a normal lens on it.
It let me take several pictures…
The dream ended and I felt invigorated.
This is the closest image I could find on the internet, an eagle owl.
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Nose is the dreaming symbol for personal power
Birds of prey except owls are the symbol for power as in knowledge
Owls are death of the old / wisdom
Dead people – death of the old…patent thinking is old? Perhaps.
Photography is the need to recapitulate the contents of the image.
Eye is sobriety / clarity
Left is left side knowledge / feeling
This is about my relationship with power, knowledge and wisdom, methinks, peut-être…
Traou an Dour 
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