Tolerance- 8th March 1993

Surrender us to beauty, Oh Lord,
That we may be ineffably altered accordingly. . .

I pledge to never forsake the pitiable,
To never despise the enviable,
To bear all weight as delivered unto me,
By the strength of God's constancy.

I ask only to be smiled upon -
And to know it: the grace of Grace,
And ne'er to be frowned upon, cast down upon
Turned out without, this Radiant Face.

Turn not from Beauty, oh soul of Man!
Lest she find you not ever again!
Once come, she gives to every son,
The jewel to fit the heavenly crown!

PLEASURE provides the aftertaste of beauty but is not of true exquisiteness, and has not the essential quality. Secondarily men seek out pleasure, for it is reminiscent to them of great contentedness, of harmony, be it simple or great. But pleasures indulged in to excess, milk the soul and devour the constitution. Therefore we may not rely only on capricious pleasure to link our happiness with the world without.

To be tantalized is to come through expectation's doors and be confined to a waiting-bay, wherein one window presides, displaying a sought-after longing. This waiting-bay is but the frame of the mind, wherein truth a man may come and go freely - would that he knew it. There is mystery in this.

Then there are delights: such as the birdcalls of the early morning, of which we partake in the revelling, but are not part of- the simple magnificent joy to be experienced from which nothing is to be personally gained but the appreciation of. How splendid it is to forget all worldly care for those moments and embrace a moment of Creation!

Much has been said of returning to the silence, of knowing the quiet within and of the discipline of nihilism. What for, oh Grasshopper, if it is not for that which we may come to see and hear, within and without, without the flurry and fluster of overactivity? Great beauty lies behind the veil of tired and expectant eyesight.

Also, yes, how wonderful it would be if a man might go out of his way just once in a day, to offer something to the altar of Beauty. It need not be much, but the intention would of itself hold good and grow. And it is Beauty in actuality that all men spring from and live by.

As said before, the ascetics were not without Beauty: they did indeed hurl themselves into creationism, and drank of the nectar firsthand. It was only those who came after who gave stern interpretation, to splinter the doctrines of disciplined life and immoderately present such viewpoints. Many brothers, for example, who silenced tongues, knew the language of mind to mind; as indeed the whole order. An outsider or a pursuant of empty tradition however, sees but the external splinter of the reality.

Similarly, the hair-shirt was not as punishment or towards perverted flagellation, it was because the holy and pious of the time were very much apt to lose 'sense' (as in sense of the world). Their devotions, their raptures, expelled them from their earthly bodies, and expelled their bodies from earthliness. Many accounts of unusual and unnatural consequences from pious living are given account of, and in order to remedy the temptation of excarnating through the bliss of Godly consciousness, the monks devised all manner of irritants to reawaken the senses accordingly. One might add too, that the experience to them was not as it would be to a man who had not their problem. It should be torturous - as is interpreted - and of misery, to no good purpose.

Not all reliquary was fraudulent. The clairvoyant perception was clear enough in those qualified, to know if an object had profoundly significant emanations. And with the blessing of their presence, such holy objects could inspire in such men, magnificent insights and visions. We may have television today, but it is nothing to be compared with some of these visions concealed within those artifacts! They could be interpreted and experienced just so! It is without exaggeration to suggest this; just as there have been primitive equivalents which also hold stores of picture/experience representations locked-in by masterful forefathers of devotion.

There is a marriage between sense and savor, whereupon we are not usually offended. If the light were brighter it should offend the eyes; if odor were more pungent it should offend the nose and throat, and so forth. We should not be able to come to the experience of Beauty if we could not withstand the powerful impressions she yields. By this happy union and balance of interaction, we come to the word tolerance. It is but the marriage of two perfectly suited, complementary interactives.

For the most part this is life in such conjunctions! So too may we order those fields and forces which stream into and through our being - and they too needs be tolerated. However, the larger meaning is that we may meet with life and all that is contained, perfectly; furthermore, hold ability to adjust as conditions presented do change.

At present we live life attuned to a leeway of variables. This is grace that we should do so, and as refinement proceeds within we come to measure more accurately the span of our 'beingness' in relation to the gradients before us. Not only may we become skilful in readjusting the 'lens' of our being, but also are we offered greater cooperation from Wisdom's divinities without. There is a hierarchy of twelve major influences of Wisdom, and it is for us to decide who should be preferred by our sentient beings. We may 'go over' to one such influence or, as is prayed for, receive a relationship with all twelve.

Beauty - God's Providence
Scholarly Wisdom - Precision
Philosophy - Conjecture/Imagination
Strength - Will/Determination, Forthrightness
Prosperity - Charity
Nurture - Motherhood
Creation - Father-principle
Devotion - Obedience
Humility - Revelation
Constancy - Cosmic Law & Lesser Law
Agility - Evolvement
Compassion - Selfless Love

"That which I do take for myself, unto myself -
That which does sustain me:
Be it filled with the fire from the Twelve,
And so Divinely imbued,
That I may tolerate life,
And life shall tolerate me."