Arterial Self, Problem k, Objective Innocence

Problem k: The Arterial Self and the Objective Innocence

He had been feeling nostalgic as he sprang down that familiar track. Effigies of himself, he espied almost everywhere, for this was his wood, his World and his way. They called him the Christ.

With a sublime confidence our Christ took stock yet again, perusing his fine Creation. He hesitated in the space of one breath, and then, as if with an invisible answer to some ethereal question, He smiled ... approvingly.

Commentary:

The young Christ with all of His idealism and self confidence knows an unwavering happiness returning to Him from all of that He has confided with in soul. The soul life of the entire world springs up in a greeting so bold and completely unencumbered; carefree, completely at trust, with their Christ - their Christ, their God.

The lies of the world are but pizzle piss. How can you conceal our fair Christ? These times may well be difficult, but it shall not be for very long now. Before the end of this century all men will find His face amongst them.

True objectivity leads men to Him. The lesser kingdoms who hold innocence do know Him. Those which are as so self important, and have forsworn their generosity, then they are sullen in spirit and quite interred within themselves.

The 'cold creatures' come from a time when the parcels of being were splintered and left wanting. Humanity has always had the full complement given. As 'old souls' we have, in actuality, known existence with Father God back before the deepest memory. The realms of indifferent beings, those which storm the outskirts of our cosmic trailer, are in part synthetic, and part obscure, and have more recent beginnings to their natures and their knowing. 

The elite Angels are formidably stern and refuse to suffer them. Contaminated men who hold unwholesome investments in demonic inclination suffer their crudeness and encourage their presence in bordering realms. Good men ignore them, or if versed with the divine contradictions, do pray for them, acknowledging that it is men who have the stronger wills and fashionings, and may very well hold the title to these demons' futures.

When asked if there are those things by which a man can help to quicken or maintain that no other being may conjure the same, it is with all of the happy arrogance one can muster which affords the 'yes' to this in reply. The Angels cannot recondition themselves, and nor should they wish to, for adulteration would befall those with sympathetic callings. Christ has vouchsafed the demons as redeemable, in that He has not hurled them from this planet but tolerated their presence... and He would not endure what was to be intolerable to Man, for that would be an oblique acceptance indeed.

There are evil beings in existence who are simply devoid of any sympathy, empathy or objectivity, they do not even understand what it is to uphold their own kind, having no endearments with family or species, no preferences other than that of their own immediate gain. They would and do devour. They are fearless, humorless and characterized best by the dragoons of old who would mercilessly feed on their offspring only moments after their resented birth.

Yet to men it has been given the divine virtues of correspondence; that is, to know by self and also from others, of self. Our objectivities can be shared and then complete, that the pictures drawn from our finest impressionings are made composite of shared realities. Reality is affixed and made stable, this is so. Reality may also be imbued with purpose, fed, just as the rains supplicate the porous ground to receive them. Our purpose is in twain with reality's complex, and this far better done en masse than tried alone.

To the fascination of a few it was discovered that a plant was found to prosper when given a man's loving attention. Whether music was played or praise was enjoyed, men could affect the growth of an earthy green being, with their involvement to fertilize.

A man may interpret plant qualities but is not a plant nor holds the dialect of consciousness to fully participate with a plant on plant matters. As far as a fulfillment to man, plant cannot extend himself this far either. So to man, even the most loving of men, a plant will be plant and be separate to his own internal, subjective reckoning. Here with all the care of the Creator Himself, we can come quite close to Christ in our tendering. To both a greater and a lesser extent this is also so when we find love with other folk, whom the similarities are spread so thin and the individuals are so different.

It is this that the cold creatures hold no essence for; but it is by the active participation Man can lovingly employ himself with, in that which is contrasting to himself, that will eventually impart something of the beginnings of this ability to even the demon.

The prayers are important because they too will help men as well as creature, but of all the instruction it is the act of Christ, the deliberate mixing and association of fellowship with the unfamiliar, that will eventually bring these fellows some measure of understanding.

Not all individuals are so strongly placed within their egos as to withstand these associations without some grave demerit resulting. For example, it can be that children (who are innocent) are at risk with their indiscriminate mixing because they have not the consciousness to fully differentiate themselves from who they are with. They are Christlike in their acceptances though, and perfect teachers of attitude in many respects.

In later years they may shun differences and be markedly outspoken about such. This can occur because of their innate sensitivity which knows that they have not the wherewithal to withstand another's nature upon them, that the young are indeed all too impressionable.

If we are to confuse identity we are not so objective, but rather subjectively projecting from the anterior position. This is why it was maintained earlier that to see in the purest objective is to find Christ. If we only see ourselves in something or somebody, or they in us, then our perceptions are still nonetheless subjective. Were we to see them as they are without our identity we would find Him. And when Christ is subjective He finds us.

Arterial Self, Problem j

Problem j: The Arterial Self & Cannibalism

He looked down to see if he could find what had caused him to stumble. One of his toes was missing; he just caught sight of it as it inched its way through the scrub that lay beside the dirt path.
He made a dive to catch it before it disappeared from view altogether, when to his dismay his arm fell off.

Commentary:

In Man's endeavor towards edification he has come to the blessed but mistaken concept that anything within the world and beyond is merely a consumable for his purpose. This notion is born from the desire to not only endorse signatory keys within his own system of systems, but also from the combining which in turn affects his ego and subsequent perceptions about him in his relations.

The Arterial Self is his signature key, the one key which stands quite separately to that mix which has shared over and over in relation and with relation to a multitude of beings. In the combining of a man with animal or with plant we have such an experience and subsequent knowledge (astrally, psychically, spiritually, morally) with their inherent characteristics and plan of physiology.

Whenever there becomes a crisis in the evolution of Man there also follows a clamoring in and out of the gates, from beings who wish to either maintain a different status and depart (men included) or those 'outsiders' who have awaited their opportunity and make the cyclic dive to come in. Man has at one time or another adopted a myriad of uncertain entities into his own system, along with the score he has exhumed from times past.

With respect to the animal kingdom we can firstly observe that their hierarchy of being manifests quite differently to the individual incarnating of men with single bodies. The animal and the plant have a limited consciousness manifest within the physical. Although they are self-aware they are at the same time concurrently aware of those fellows to whom they share soul with. As corporate beings there can be an entire herd of beasts belonging to the one governing soul. They may be as one party combined or dispersed upon the Globe. There are groupings of the same species which share their peculiar signature and soul merit, and are not dependent upon the survival of one or of some, in order that their representing incarnation be maintained.

So the piece above is thus explained: that when an animal or plant has withdrawn (deceased from the world) it is not as it is with the death to one man, for there are, whilst others exist, other limbs as it were, of the one remaining body. So the insult of death is not as it would be considered in the instance of a murder of a man. However, and having made that point, we should at the same time examine what it implies to kill anything and to take gain from it.

The statement [by Rudolf Steiner] that killing impedes occult development shows the nature of the man who expressed this and his allegiance to both the truth and to Christ. It is interesting to note that the very opposite is asserted by black magicians of the corrupt persuasion, as they would extract life unlawfully just as their masters do to they.

Once again the critical issue has leveled itself to life and to death and to what may be our own significance here. Some plants and some animals are already inextricably linked to the overall keys in which humankind share. Our natures are not only compatible, but our evolutionary pathways are as dual carriageways because of their service to us - having of their own spiritual volition, given to us, we commit to carry them. (These are to be distinct from those who are 'brothers' in common, who share traits but not the involvement implied to the same level - horses, dolphins, pigs, bears etc.)

To eat of a cow for example (given that our relationship to the cow is so close that we are cow and cow is us) is an instance where the separateness is illusory, in the sense that we are no more morally unusual in this compared with digesting our own ecoli or chewing our own finger nails. (This does not take issue here with the karma of causing pain; it is simply to address the practice of meat-eating itself).

Not all plants or creatures have the physical, psychical, spiritual endorsement with Man. Nor would it become desirable for this to be so. It would be retrogressive for men to adopt the qualities of the reptilian races and others which are equally as foreign, and try to take into him such anti-man forces which they now contain.

Many such creatures have bonded with other entities since their initial extraction from Man. There are reasons for this which are better not entered into, however, if for nothing else than the logic of it, we can observe that Man himself could not possibly find a harmonious correspondence with all varieties of kingdom concurrently as they stand represented today.

The interdependence of the working ecology at any geographical site proves that conditions are mixed but particular, and could not elaborate themselves into accommodating all species conducively, and neither can Man.

But for those beings who are represented amongst the species of fish, animal and plant which have already become enveloped and embraced amongst us - those which have beneficent trait, who are willing to be as part of us, even to the degree of death and consumption - then it is by agreement and karmic settlement for which we combine.

There does come a time when the qualities which a man has formerly drawn for himself from the ingesting of an animal, are not significant to his actual eating, that he may entertain the forces or subsequent strengths without. As the constitution refines itself down it will instinctively refrain from flesh-eating, intuitively knowing which foods are profitable and which are not relevant anymore.

With vegetarianism which is adopted too early - i.e. an individual who has morally preferenced the change but not acted from a constitutional necessity – the person invites a soiree of elemental beings who are given to the opportunity of place-filling so to speak.

The process occurs in miniature similarly as with what was described in the closing and reopening of humanity's gates. When we deliberately cast out something from our system radically there are impeding alternatives which happen in upon us, pushing to sequester a space for themselves. This may or may not be profitable in every case, depending upon the readiness of the man: how strong he be, how apt those forces next in line are. Remembering also that the quality/nature of an elemental being drawn to a man requires a similar cast of quality so known in him. In other words, when we invoke forces of being, we shall draw to ourselves that which is commensurate with our level as expressed of virtue and character - so colored, so told.

Therefore, if for example a man has given up meat-eating (and even if it is for the higher good as the case may be) this desistance (if rapid and not gradual) will create pockets within his astral body which would have otherwise been taken up with the breaking down and dissemination, interpretation and assimilation of the animal qualities. These pockets within his astral makeover will have naught to work upon, and just as their habit has constructed, they shall set about to continue on the same.

During this time the excessive vitalities allowed for this will act within the ethers as a beacon to all and sundry elemental astral form. If the man's nature is completely clean of lower nature tendencies of fault, then he may bring to himself beings who are useful to employ and have on team. However, men who are in this category still most usually make the transition a slow one, either never having eaten meat before anyway (in which case the problem does not exist) or because their development is gradual their giving up was also gradual and therefore did not give rise to the situation so described.

It would be difficult indeed for a man to be bereft of all untoward tendencies. These tendencies anyway, have their countering and conjoining virtues in the first place, and in the second there is always, even in the highest man, potential sin at his highest level. So the risk in such radical change is great indeed.

These opportunistic elementals only understand affinity and are so attracted to a man who displays similar behaviors in being. If the man has just given up his meat-eating and has been prone to a 'bad day' it can happen that he acts poorly - perhaps exceptionally - and yet because this has come right at that time, he may consequently be lumbered with an entire troop of guests that have adhered to those places left vacant. They will go on to thrive from the forces which ordinarily were used to work upon the astral properties in the meat which, depending upon its variety would manifest other qualities and traits that are predictable to a large extent. (This is given to 'clean' meats and not those of incompatible variety.)

These newly adopted elemental qualities can then go on into the man and move throughout his other bodies. Not confining themselves to their immediate trait, they can translate into problems such as the 'egotism' as cited by Dr. Rudolf Steiner. This egotism which becomes accentuated and enfired, is most likely to have been the lesser aspect to the virtue of wanting to become vegetarian in the first place. It is simply more of the same but inflamed. Self-improvement can be a virtue; it can also become a consuming egotism when say in this case, the animal was not the concern of the man at all.

So we may understand that for the Arterial Self to work well with the constitution it is preferable where possible, for the man to make this and other change slowly, consistently, and to be most careful as to his thoughts and behavior during this special period of transition.

As a fundamental law we may regard this: that at some times more than others - i.e. at the changing of the guard - we are required to be ever more vigilant as to what strangers and curiosities there are about us, and deciding well as to who we may truly wish to entertain.
 

Arterial Self, Problem I- 1997

Problem i: Arterial Separateness & Community

As the little boat moored it rocked indecisively. With my anticipation scanning the familiar land above me, I started to perspire. Seaspray and sweat I felt, and more excited to return here now and encounter this than when I had first left...
My eyes searched the cliffs for any sight of them…..my dear, dear people.

The little boat's host eyed me nervously and would not step out to even accompany me as far as the inlet. I thanked him all too briefly and gathering up my parcels of souvenirs and kitchen utensils (these I knew would be well received) I stumbled onto the beach and made my way back to the community.

I had called this place home for over seven years. Thinking back I never really once entertained the thought that I could have left - not alive that is. But when my physician declared full health returning, it was mysteriously almost as if I drew power whilst my companions all failed ... my leprosy had left me, the foul corruption was said gone.

There had been speculation from this that my whole diagnosis had been initially wrong. There had been other skin conditions they explained - perhaps it was mistaken? But who can really understand the comings and goings of a disease? Life ebbs and flows, perhaps so does death as well?

Death took many men in the cots next door - slowly they broke apart - our whole town here is couched under the cloud of one deep and solid moan. I suppose a few have gone now, and a few more new have joined.

Looking back I just catch sight of the little boat as it disappears from view, making its way back to my family that I have had to say goodbye to for the second time now. I had thought that the first parting was all too difficult to bear, but it is the leaving of my children that grieves me the most.

I could have brought them with me; some do. But no, why condemn them to this? Since my condition returned there is no doubt as to what it is. I shall stop and summon myself together; my wits are thin, my melancholy rising.

As I recounted the change that my time away from my parents had meant - what I'd seen - I hesitated to wonder how my friends here had fared. What obscurity and malformation might take me by surprise?

Am I fearful for them or for myself? I think both. I soothed my worries with the thought that deformity doesn’t really seem to be so obvious once you get to know a man…

It doesn't really count for much at all.

Commentary:

The ghost of this man still recounts his sad issue - these the tally of thoughts just before he was to discover that the entire town had been burned to the ground, taking the people with it. Even as they were in isolation they had been thought of as a demonic threat. Centuries ago many people were set fire to as they slept, or torched awake, and this was one such time a whole community was taken.

This man's ghost does not recall the many months he spent there in solitude before his death. If there had been survivors they had departed, and although he managed for himself reasonably well, it was the cold coupled with his ill-health that finally took him in that winter.

What of his soul now? And of the people who were in that town? Do communities migrate even through death? Can he still find them, even though his needs are now so markedly different from before?

There are two conditions which mark a man impressionably, carried over throughout his lifetimes: one, is that of unity with other men, the other is that of sorrow. A joy or a happiness experienced does not stay with a man, being rather something natural in consequence to something else sealing the episode, secondary, resulting and returning from other causes. Predictably a man shall know a quantity of happiness commensurate with his consciousness and capability, and unlike sorrow it will complete the issue rather than make cause to continue it.

Sorrow itself translates into an everlasting spiritual strength composing the soul. Its infliction within a lifetime, becomes indelibly incised upon the ego of that man, in a way which does not carry with it the hardship as first known, but the strength from what came to follow.

One may notice that even in the case of the ghostly recount (the ghost itself being but a living image of the man, and not with self-consciousness) the former self does not over-sorrow, but is with reasoning, and in this case took to a cheerful outlook as well.

What was memorable to him were the partings and greetings of two communities to which he belonged. Whilst he held a fondness and a companionship with the infirm who shared in an illness with him, he also knew of his love for family and home which necessarily extended beyond the years and through separation. What did remain with this individual was the desire to see and return to both.

His family dispersed - during the time of his returning incarnation there were few born to that period, and even fewer within his proximity of years or place. Of his children, one was his grandparent and another his daughter. The four remaining were not born of his century (they had actually died very young and were reborn shortly after).

As a small child he grew quite robust, until a shocking year when he came down with pneumonia. No one could have guessed that he had a weakness of any kind, and when he came to stay in the children's section of the local hospital there were four other small children who he had previously known in the leper community. The disease in these individuals had not enough time given to it to work itself out of their karmic experience. It had been cut short by the murder; and though murder (and death) it was, its significance only provided a postponement as the illness returned this time as leukemia in two, a heart murmur in one and an amputation from an 'accident' in the other.

These children did not know consciously of their former life and their being together, but their closeness was as apparent as ever. Prior to their suffering, in lifetimes preceding the leprosy, all four individuals had in one time or another achieved great victories on the battlefield - all talented soldiers who had carved and cut down the flesh of hundreds of men, taking women and children into their war too.

The dissemination of the forces which usually correspond to a healthy organ life within the physical system, does not have to karmicly result from one injury caused by another, who then loses the same body parts in consequence. It can come from a variety of causes, for example: there may be too much or too little activity in conjunction with the corresponding planetary forces pertaining to that organ; too much or too little vitality given to other centers, detracting from those otherwise healthy regions. It may be that whole communities are delivered with a weakness in an area internally and geographically. For at the time of their birth the planetary influences concentrated in that part of their country, excel a bacteria which was prevalent to overgrow and degenerate the tissue of that region (this too may happen chemically as well as bacterially, as also with radiation exposure). 

Breakdown can come from a whole community's immorality whereupon the children who are born into that environment (even though their parents were not) have missing parts if you will. The physical organs might appear to be there, and traces of their subtle counterpart, but there is an etheric weakness whereby the forces cannot correspond well and will eventually cause further breakdown in their efforts to promote life.

When children are so affected it may be that the water itself outlying their community's region has been infiltrated with the sin of its people. It becomes a slow poisoning with an indefinite corruption which goes on to weaken the new system, and correspondingly even at times, their own morality as well.

This may or may not be the case for bottled water! Certainly a collection of freshly collected rainwater will be the purest, most angelic and beneficial (not to forget remedial) quench there is. The problem of contaminated waters comes from wherever it has been drawn from underground away from the forces of the light and has been exposed to other contaminants (not of a mineral nature, but borne in the mineral nature), and impressed with the psychic slag which is pooled from the overall natures of the men surrounding. Dam water may be similarly infused; it all depends upon the time, place and people.

 

However, returning to our little soldiers: as children it does appear markedly unkind that they would suffer their karmic results as innocents. Yet sometimes this is the gentlest outcome for such people, as it is interpreted by the consciousness and the soul of the child in a way that is far more accepting and appreciative than with the adult.

Although physical sickness and malady is uncomfortable, painful, debilitating and demeaning, it brings with it some virtues which cannot be obtained by the ego and soul of the man without. It also is, in spiritual terms, short-lived and nowhere near the threat to the individual as is their health or lack of in soul-life and egohood.

So if it appears that we are insensitive to our observations it is not because we are unsympathetic to the human condition, which one way or another will fail physically as it currently sits. It is rather that we must overview the whole man and unravel the underlying causes which go beyond the immediate and outer concerns.

Before leaving this subject it has to be said here that the endorsement of Christ into a man's life does alter his etheric body and its resilience remarkably. If there was ever a tonic which helped all of his bodies correspond and comply, if there was ever a rejuvenating pick-me-up it is the adoption of our Christ open and receiving.

There is always work a man can find to do on himself. It is a little like the house renovations which continue on - different house, same cleaning up and decorating - whereas Christ Himself becomes our very location. (And as they say, position is everything.)

Of the five children in the hospital the two with the blood disease did die, the amputee lived a strong life, the heart child suffered a sickly constitution throughout a reasonably long period of years; and our man overcame his pneumonia and was discharged back to his family whom he loved so very much.

Throughout his lifetime he could not escape the thought that he should find a 'group' to whom he belonged. His search for being reunited with the leper community had been exaggerated merely because it had not panned out. The community was important to him and the signature of it as a corporate body of men remained with him also, however in his case his ghost would linger and maintain that he must climb the cliff and return to the group as planned.

There were a handful more that he was to find, and indeed one later on that he was to marry. His wife he had known formerly only as a child, for whom he had had great pity and admiration for in all the charming ways a child could compel, but also because there had been past life shared between them before that encountering at the community of sickness. She did return in his current time to be with him - of this there was no doubt to him inwardly either - and even when he had cared for her in the previous life when she was but small, there was a love between the two that was clearly present.

The question as to gender is often answered in parameters, but this does not explain the mechanism of how one may go into the other and back again. It is possible for an individual to have six straight incarnations as a male, five, four, three, two, or only one, before reincarnating as a female and vice-versa, but it is reliant upon those degrees reached (apart from the karmic requirements for that age) before they are given to the shift. Once the scale has filled with every bean of maleness for example, the transition into femaleness will be obligatory; and once the female aspects are all accounted for and realized within the woman who is manifesting physically as a woman, she shall make cause then for manhood in future lives, and so it goes. For some it may take one incarnation, for others it may take three up to six.

With every change back into a different gender we take the aspects of the previous and enhance what it is that we are to live and encounter a'further again. There are ways in which the dormant gender still works within our being in relation to that which is discharged and active. Every time we favor one upon another, it is still remarkably a combination of the both arterially.

We can swing in and out of these aspects as the soul and the ego are most comfortable in both, yet the Arterial Self is prone to a confusion only because of its indifference to either. The identity of self is neither female nor male unless activated, and when it is activated it is for purpose, not preference. Arterial deciding is exact and qualified by its aptness rather than predictability.

It is the Arterial Self that has cause to develop these aspects, but at times there are forces circulating within a man which are so powerfully overwhelming that the Arterial Self becomes denied. Intrinsic to life is the equation of the two; and were that Man was to manifest this 'two-ness' in a wholeness, he would create a living vortex of a kind to which the universe could enter. He would also negate himself by opening to this process. That one is not two is very much a blessing for that one. That the Cosmos requires the fitting together of two otherwise deficient aspects, offers us a key to events rather than everything becoming just one great never ending event, we have a stop and a start, quiescence and resistance, comings and goings with rests in between!

Yet for some individuals they may call in upon themselves forces which are related to their fiery centers of reproduction in such a way that within the one individual both the feminine and the masculine meet together. This makes for an inverse chaos. There are no realistic channels for these forces to emanate to and manifest with. There are only the aggregates of activity which are dangerously vital and stimulating to the man/woman who now entertains them.

This is brought on by an over-activity foremostly. It is not that the imbalance lives in genes or chromosomes, in body parts or mistaken parts. It has very little to do with physical makeover, but rather moreso to do with the psychic relations an individual has established between himself and the nature around him.

Mentally and morally an overdeveloped sense of independence can well lead in to this kind of confusion of pooled influences. Whether manifesting as spoken of, within the genital centre and corresponding to elementals of desire thereafter, or in other centers as well, both the male and female can be brought at the same time to similar chaos. With the forces of the head it produces a kind of senility, an obscure and thoughtless madness. With the forces of the heart it produces a cruelty, i.e. a capability of complete and ruthless corruption.

It is best that these obtuse developments are not given our attention for very long, for unfortunately the contemplation alone of such psychic deformities encourage the irregularities also. Although it is fair to say that it is unlikely that any man comes to this condition through the simple study of it. The merits of knowing this to be the cause, may also help to inhibit such an action, whereas the peculiarities of the very few in this regard must be reckoned with and therefore reconciled as preventable.

The imbalance of the sexual order is generated by employing both forces within the one body - it is consequential to activity. The imbalance of employing both forces with the heart comes from voraciousness to evil, for every force has its anti-force which astrally entertains the opposite. That love and all good virtues can come through the soul and enter the heart and then spill into the body, there is also an astral force of vile cruelty, that unfortunately, some can actually lust for and bring in instead. It is an independence of a sort which does not love or endear itself to others. The expression becomes inverse and brings to it an astral enterprise which is the very opposite in action and nature to the loving of others.

Equally so becomes the 'independent thinker' who has prided themselves upon an outstanding and unique system of logic which has no tangible foundation or support in faith, myth or wisdom. The price of such independence requires a closed circuit rebutting outer influences, relationships and realities, and the consequence to this is that the forces destroy their creator (the individual) rather than bring more life in from our Father God.

The very notion of independence denies Father God His Presence in our lives. The ideal and effort that is brought to Man through community, works his talents and abilities developing those centers which he shall arterially navigate.

Arterial Self, Problem h

Problem h: Enthusiasm & Joy in relation to Arterial Self-deciding
A man has two balloons. One balloon is inside the other. If he inflates the interior bladder it enlarges the outer also. If he were to inflate the outer balloon first, he could then expand the inner balloon to a smaller dimension, resulting in a space existing between the two walls of the two spheres.

Commentary:
When a man feels happy he expands. With a joy experienced or with a laugh rising up and out of him, an inner truth just realized, an ecstatic recall, or in a jovial interlude to an otherwise soberside day ... he experiences within his many bodies of being, an expansion.

One could even come to view the ballooning universe as a similar joy which pervades the cosmic ethers in this period - the same with the opening a flower as it enlarges the bud and increases its swelling. This happiness pushes the outer boundaries and works the spaces…those spaces which are as the deciding pause through which the happiness may increase and expand out further.

The physics of happiness and joy in relation to arterial deciding is different to that happiness which is obtained without self-effort. By this it is meant that we can distinguish the experience differently from the natural joys abounding which we ourselves have had little or no conscious working upon.

Arterial deciding means that we have involved our ego along with our personal signature, and that our relationship with whatever has produced the happiness now made unique by this our involvement. It also implies that we are consciously far more aware of the properties and qualities and so forth. If my soul appreciates the artistry of nature and the ego is enveloped in a beauty, then there becomes a very small requirement in my active participation, for the experience itself largely rests upon the impression and the receiving, not the deciding and the doing.

The 'pursuit of happiness' as a God-given right is suggesting from the outset that the happiness requires an effort to be striven for - a 'pursuit', rather than it merely happening upon us and teeming around most naturally.

So it is to the arterial experience we look further to, returning to the question as to why it is that our happiest responses may become blocked or unfelt when we release ourselves to those choices which correspond best to its desire and deciding.

If I place a balloon within a balloon, and the inner bladder is expanded so far as to meet with the wall of the outer (which has already been advanced) then it shall be where those edges meet that there is an acknowledgment occurring. If they do not touch, one does not meet with the other, even though it is that one does contain the other and do both share same stem regardless. Thus with the swelling it is the inner skin which advances up to that of the outer, and once reaching the extremity it pushes the outer skin yet further. If there were no inner skin strength there would be nothing to take up the outer layer beyond itself. This example is crude in concept, but suffices in the explanation of this process. It is at the point of their first touching that the experience of awareness would take place. If, on the other hand the inner balloon expanded the outer from the beginning, the two membranes together would move as one without the distinction that was in the experience.

Within the many substances of a man there are these ballooning peripheries. Our astral experiences which unite our bodies here in the physical world, as too our etheric forces which combine and circulate around the physical also, do so with this balloon within balloon (within balloon) conjunctures. Periphery touches periphery. Men shrink and men expand. Above all there are times in the expansion when momentum carries them outward, but there cannot be an experience of this until it has gone to where it can go no further; and contacting, literally contacting, it then it is felt. If you stop to consider something which invokes a sensation of happiness rising within you, you will know of this description then, feeling the expansion and meeting in gentle experience.

Now to add to this just a little bit further: when a man concentrates his activity and attention upon an explicit deciding (a refusal is usually more exacting than an affirmative) he goes through the action of contraction by the very concerting involved. He temporarily narrows down to whatever it is requires his full consciousness; whilst also the consciousness itself involves something of a contractive effort as well. For this it might be said therefore, that the opposite to happiness is consciousness, implying then that consciousness is unhappiness. However, this is not an instance of an either/or. It takes one to know the other, just as simply as it also takes one membranous wall to meet with another and forge through the spaces between before there can be validity and experience given to either.

The nature of the arterial decision so told, is one that is deliberate and true to the constants of that individual. If we are told that our own fleece is to be removed from our backs (skin and all) we are not necessarily going to experience a great happiness because it no longer will happen. This is not a causal factor to an arterial happiness. If someone wishes to take from you what is yours to begin with, it is more of a relief to refuse this happening than a joy.

The question then goes on to ask, if it should be that we may so entirely partake in what we have chosen to do, may we then also rejoice and fully enter into it. With time, this is most perfectly effected, because of the concentrated deliberation which has taken place originally within the arterial nature. For the man who invests himself in deliberateness - prudent or passionate - there is a concentration of mindful reflection before the will is exacted, and he shall contract and expand with a far greater action and periphery than the individual who has not the conscious working or contrast afforded him.

Intention becomes in-tension. The contraction back from the world and all of its influences drives us down the arterial highway to our Father, that we may return with the determinative velocity of further happiness once the decision has been released and then executed.

Arterial Self, Problem g: Refusal to Others & Guilt

Problem g: Refusal to Others & Guilt
A conglomerate of sheep stood huddled atop a windswept hillside, when one moonlit night they were happened upon by a group of mangy wolves. The wolves slinked and sidled up to each one offering to purchase their fleece. Each sheep was asked and each sheep said no, because their coats weren't yet full grown and besides which they did belong to the farmer.

"Bah!" said the wolves in disgust.

"Baah!" trembled the sheep.

Then the wolves persisted. "What use have you for all that wool?" they asked, “When we, flea bit and scruffy, could do with some of that warmth? Do we not feel the cold too? Do we not need some of that wool?" they pleaded with a sour note of innuendo.

The wolves persisted, "Let us have your fleece and we will promise that you shall never feel the cold again." Their eyes glinted red with desire.

The wolves persisted still further. "If you do not comply we shall return and take your young and then raise them for our own. If it is not to be your coats it will be theirs!"

To this the sheep murmured fearfully.

Triumphantly the wolves urged once more, "Just follow us down to our cave by the valley. It won't take long we assure you. It will be all done before you know it."

All but one followed them down.

The one who remained felt the dread of the lone decision he'd made. He circled the top of that hill until the sun rose high, and all the while regretted that he too had not gone along with his friends. The promises and the threat was still fresh in his mind. Perhaps, since it was that they had not yet returned, he still had time to do as they have done, and so he decided anew to follow on down.

He came to the bottom of that now loneliest of hills and he found the cave as they had described; but not his friends, just piles of bloodied bones strewn all over, lying haphazard in the grass.

Within a day or so our little sheep had found a flock to relocate to. He was accepted well enough, and though they were not of his family there was comfort in his kind. Now and then he would journey back out to the hilltop in hope of their return, but every time he would venture back with a heavy heart and disappointment.

One night when the moon was full-swollen but hid behind a mass of silver-lit cloud, our little sheep was surprised to see a flock in the distance coming up over the next paddock to greet them. This was unusual for sheep, to find them traveling at night, but oh! his heart jumped at the thought that it might well be his family out searching for him. As they drew closer he looked hard and thought to himself that he did actually recognize the fleece of one to be that of his dear cousin! Oh joy!

But alas it was not, it was instead a group of wolves, same wolves, in sheep disguise. All at once our maverick sheep felt the dreaded truth about this and that night. He called out to his newly found friends, "Save yourselves and do not trust these wolves!"

But the sheep blinked sleepily and ignored what they thought was his silliness. Our little sheep was all in a tremble and sick with upset. He turned and fled the paddock leaving the field just as the band of deceiving dogs tore upon them.

From his hillside home he could hear their cries and he wept feeling his helplessness and the shame of having left them. Once more he was alone and more alone he felt than ever, this time with an immeasurable loneliness, a condemning, unreasoning sense of self-darkness. He cried at the cold moon and the shadows that it cast.

Just then there came out from the darkness a luminescent glow that grew as brilliant as sunshine itself. With the Moon still high this could not be so, quizzed the sheep to himself, and forgetting his upset he began towards the light.

A figure stepped out from this brilliance and came towards him. Extending His hand he beckoned for the sheep to advance. This gracious Shepherd drove the very fear of the night away by His presence; and behind him our sheep could see with ethereal splendor his own family, all huddled together amongst the glow.

The Shepherd then led our little sheep through further fields until he arrived at a paddock which was fenced quite high and right beside a sturdy, well kept farmhouse, with many sheep there besides.

"You will be safe here" He said, "and" he then added, "if you are ever lost or in trouble again I shall be there to save you".

He then disappeared and the ethereal flock vanished away with Him also, and our sheep remembered His parting words ever on, and was happy.

Commentary:
Beast fables have long provided us with some certain knowledge concerning distinct attributes given to a man, whether these attributes be within the outer world or in latent virtue or simply perhaps in kindred quality pertaining to cosmic forces which are common to both.

There is nothing which is known to Man that is not of Man in some part, some measure, therefore the enterprise of any soul-picture story is that it will work upon an individual with an explanation that is inherently known as a truth in the way that it is given. The beasts to this extent may not only allegorically provide an imaginary key into the esoteric reality involved, but also in the contemplation simply of their form itself, bring about an understanding of the nature that they have come to stand for as well.

Children decipher these forms with delight. Not only with animals do young people grasp the 'nature' of the nature that is contained in them. They are intuitively happier to wear the image of the Sun for example, instead of the abstract symbol of the Cross - which in later years shall come to hold more significance (consciously and unconsciously); which is a direct change from youth into maturity.

Pictures translate into symbols, words into the alphabet. The inner-sight draws from form to create the words, as the soft round lines of a child are later given to the more angular protuberances of the defined man.

The question which begins to set upon the guidance and advice from other beings or people, states that there is a risk of the Arterial Self becoming inflicted sorely by those who should wish a control over us. Firstly we may say that the two do not imply each other, i.e. the giving of good guidance and advice does not imply the wish of one to control another, in point of fact that would be then to dual purpose. Good guiding advice is enstrengthening and liberating (through being informative) and a service to those to whom it is offered to.

However the issue is that of those who have overplayed their roles and so confused identity as to will or want a man to become as they; and this occurs so frequently in manifest attitude and behavior that all men are quite used to this subtle oppression.

In addition to this, there does become the difficulty in forever pushing back from ourselves these recommendations and askings which have cause to contrast our own desires. Another man can never be truly qualified to interpret the needs of his brother over the reasonings of that brother, and nor can he reasonably ask for anything which is hesitantly given.

This comes of the law once again, which has to protect the distinctions of each and every individual, and there can be no two ways about this in the principle, because it is by such divisioning we may endure with our continental (separate) selves.

Were that men and women were the same, there would be no defining contrast to know and love them by. The price of sameness would be death to that which was imitated. That is why in true redemption we do actually maintain our composites, only to requisition them with a work-perfected detail.

We began the issue of the refusal of others, with a story so old you have probably heard it many lifetimes before. Certainly you would have known of the properties of the oily wool, perhaps woven the thread or pounded the felt - regardless, we have all, in one way or another sequestered the fleece from the sheep for our own garb.

The unity of the sheep was broken by the one who did not choose to give in to the promptings which came from the evil-natured dogs of the Moon. The wolves represent remarkably, the carryover from the past, the olden times, which should have been laid to rest but rather comes over to steal from the future.

In a manner alike to all standover persuasionings, the wolfish dialogue offers firstly a ploy, a pleasing, a promise and then a threat. We can note, that when men go to the length of finishing up their requests of us in threats, veiled or maintained, we may be apt to realize that this is indicative of past forces which are pushing to relive beyond their given time.

The action of forceful negotiation proves that the powers are weakening, so that they need draw from unlawful means for their prolongment. Here is where our dear donkey becomes a wolf - when the habitual patterns as ghostly remains, continue on with a persistence to survive, outlasting their usefulness and then turning evil when continuing on, out of the context of their value.

This problem occurs throughout the Cosmic wars. We find patterns also of this in bacterial onslaught, when that which was once rightfully useful in its role, demands a continuance which is not relevant or needed, and thus becomes threateningly dangerous to the new birth begun.

Even moments age. Our Arterial Self must determine exactly what is relevant in time, to our time and our being. The refusal to others who would have us do otherwise brings about the same depressive shame our sheep did feel in leaving his party behind.

If you are to go forward you may well have to leave some things behind you. As we progressively move into further thinking and to higher reaches of aspiration beyond the commonplace thought, it is with the sufferance of all pioneers who know the sadness in leaving behind the familiar home from which they've grown. Yet there is small comfort in this home as it has become, for it too has changed has it not? Our memories can savor the innocent and uncomplicated, the golden age, the uncorrupted; but in truth even the familiar can turn foreign to us in time. What brought nurture to the soul has found its place elsewhere to go and what remains in time is seeming only.

However, Christ is always waiting in the Future there for Man, for all men. Whatever the ways that wend towards the future, He holds the outcome as the only security we'll want for. He maintains our futures, so that the wolves of past ways can never come to claim our days to come.

Arterial Self, Problem f

Problem f: Self Refusal & Guilt

"You have never complained before about it."

"No, I know that… it's just that I don't want to continue on.”

"But I need you, we need you - everything depends on you" he sighed.

Commentary:
This passage alone incites a heaviness of heart we have all encountered, a reticence, a crossroad when our own wishes are specifically put aside in preference for another.

The Arterial Self can decide upon a sufferance and joyfully reinterpret the meanings of its own importance to projects and people. However if a man denies his true inclinations of heart, and of the choosing of the man within constantly, he will be brought back to the same experience repeatedly until he heeds his own soul requirements. In other words he will be called upon time and time again to forfeit himself in same or similar manner, until he recognizes that this is not to be so.

Men repeatedly sacrifice themselves to a substance or a god of that substance, to an elemental which has further license over the usefulness of their habitual behavior than they have. They lend themselves to material and worldly desires; so ambitious that their spirituality is wrung out in the clamor to gather. They spend themselves with much 'wrong change', as in the example of the shop assistant where he (the Arterial Self) stands in judgment amongst the woman (his soul); the righteous man (his 'Higher Self' determining); the thief (the elemental nature which accompanies him); and the manager (his Higher Ego/self-reflection).

So if he continues on denying his Arterial Self's choosing, there shall come the time when what is asked of him becomes disproportionately horrific to his mind and fills him with a trepidation; and it can be, quite sadly, that breakdowns occur in consequence during the simplest of tasks which were proceeding with those requirements which he reluctantly fulfilled.

This resistance set about within his Arterial Self will manifest through illness or anxiety eventually; and simply put, with either death or gibberish, he shall make his final escape away.

We can appreciate demands in the context that most men inherently desire to serve and fulfill a service. It is natural for Man to wish to please those about him, and instinctual for him to be protective, endearing and beneficent. This does not, on the other hand, mean to say that he be required to be any one of these things by another - unless it be a child that does ask this regarding an immediate need.

Our artery to God affords us any noble enterprise as a natural desire, and when it comes to pass that the man, through necessity, needs to decide also to care for himself, this too is most realistic and necessary. If he does not know the virtue of serving his true self and being obedient to his needs as well as those of others, then he shall not have the composite to understand. If we ask a man to comply with something which runs contrary to his inner deciding, then we are corrupting him for future usefulness in this particular way.

In other words if he goes against his self to live as yet another one would, he will nonetheless go against them also eventually, as this is the 'skill' he has adapted in the sin against himself. If he learns to ignore his inner callings he learns also to ignore the calls of others; and so it is beyond reason that we should believe this form of sacrifice to have a healthy outcome. Often it is also, that the man who cares not for the world comes to expect as a consequence, the same veneerial [as in 'veneer'] lifestyle from others. Unless we acknowledge that there are decisions to be worked upon from time to time, our wills will become flaccid and anemic in their action.

The wills of men are as essential to the Holy Spirit as it is to they. It requires a great confidence of self and in self, in order that we may execute our wills rejoicingly. There is a distinction to be made within the Arterial Self as to the difference between vain and empty indulgences as opposed to the higher action of will committing with perfect action.

We have regularly maintained that there are always the two basic choices to go by: that which is of life and that which is of death. All decisions and subsequent motivations may be simply weighed in these terms - choosing behalf of life (within me or without me), or whether or not it leads to death.

Some activities are worse than fruitless and a hindrance to the man who might spend a lifetime endorsing them. If he has engaged in subjecting his consciousness to a death (intoxication); if he has learnt to 'waste' time for the very purpose of it; if he has deliberately derided another and worked for their downfall; if he has given himself to gambling and the subsequent recklessness it requires; if he 'martyrs' himself to a cause that he does not believe in for a secondary concern (monetary gain for example), then these and the many other concessions, will cost him his overall enthusiasm to life; for death soon dissolves our great enthusiasm.

Having said that there is also a measure of consternation experienced by those who proceed to do what they have weighed within themselves to be right to execute. For some there is a self-doubt or a guilt which may carry over, spilling into even the happiest or pronounced of decisions.

If the self-doubt provides no good purpose after the arterial deciding has been done, what then, we may ask, is the reason and the remedy for it?

Arterial Self, Problem e

Problem e: Others' Impressions of Us
There is a man serving behind the counter of a shop. Three people stand waiting as he is talking to the customer he is giving change to. As it turns out he mistakenly gives back the wrong money, and the customer then tells this to him.

The person beside him is a 'good living' man who is quick to mentally check all others' incongruities. He immediately assumes that the shop assistant meant to pocket the money if not caught.

The young chap beside him waiting, is an unashamed thief who enjoys the drama and excitement of suspicion. His estimation of the shop assistant grew in that one moment, surmising that even though the fellow was 'caught', he handled himself marvelously anyhow.

The third was a little further away from the happening and did not see the transaction at all. This was the manager, the overseer, who would reserve just a little doubt about him ever after.

The person to whom the wrong money was passed had not thought ill of the shop assistant at all, but took it to be just a genuine mistake, largely because she was enjoying the conversation so much with him, flattered by his attention. He had not been flirting as she had interpreted it, but had rather been nervous for it was his very first day, and he was after all, trying to create a good impression.

Commentary:
From this example we can get a very clear understanding of the unreliability these subjective impressionings can offer. Often as not it is the unusual which stands out as a noteworthy recollection and is so imparted to the man himself, rather than that which he may truly be known by.

The man behind the counter in the shop assistant’s uniform may be a man of any vocational caliber. His personality, open and good humored, he may be any man who could fumble the currency, but in the minds of the onlookers he is tinged with the dispute of his very worthiness.

Intuitively, men know just how far wrong these judgments are apt to be. They personally indulge in such assessments daily; and for good reason also, as it becomes a means to future discrimination as to their own behavior and needs of refinement. So it is, as they say, unavoidable.

We are showered with opinion and rarely is it of the strengthening variety. However, if indeed it is, and has come from such a person who perceives you to hold the most wonderful and admirable attributes, then it becomes an etheric enhancement which then brings about a vitality into the immediate aura of the man, assisting him with his further applications of true selfhood.

In contrast to this we find that the more negative the conjecture (whether it be true or false in its surmise) brings about the general feeling within the sufferer that everybody and everything is accusing him - just as baby Orpheus understood the Moon to condemn him, and the argument with the Wind and the Grass. The result is that there are many ill-tempered souls who are viewing each other suspiciously, feeling each other's unrest.

The Arterial Self is painfully aware of these mismatched affections and kinships. Fortunately a true love, a true knowing between one and another may arterially link both souls and they to God.