The Holy Church & the Holy Man's Trials 2

What is experienced in Man is also experienced within the Church. The inner experience of Man is inseparable from the efficacy of the Church and the trials it attempts to meet with and put to reform.

We have come to expect that in all probability and with due hope, that the Christian man who strives spiritually will be rewarded with a greater strength and depth of egohood becoming evident within his character. However and for all to come to understand, there also exists a set of heightened problems perceived around him, which are naturally difficult and at times incredibly oppressive - made all the more apparent because of his efforts to incorporate the spiritual realities, dedicating himself to higher concerns.

Out from an honorable and almost ridiculous courage the Church has withstood the sorest of these realities - well informed of the shades that so inflict Man, defending and maintaining those places where the darkness cannot dwell, prayerful about its presence, bravely trying to do something it cannot achieve alone. The Church itself can really not be held accountable for any failings that it might suffer, for it can only be as real or as abstract as the living souls may make it be. Sincerely let us gather these souls in.

Consider the points mentioned and take yourself into regard with much charity and carefulness. Never believe that harshness is a safe approach to yourself or to others, because there are already so many degrees of sadness accrued and so few reprieves out from the heaviness that follows. Sternness can surely be more thoroughly served with joy.

The Promise of Christ was that we could come to Him to find rest in our souls, that the burdens, such as have just been named above, will be relieved from us.

Dearest Christ,

I call upon You in this moment and for always…

To become my chief defender,

To enlighten and infill every empty space needing You,

In those alley-ways in between ego and soul;

Where my knowing cannot meet,

Where my sensing is inflicted,

Where my charity is incomplete,

When I have no answer for what is asked or is needed,

Please be with me in every failing,

When I hesitate and doubt myself,

When I fright at the faces of evil,

When I tire with the contests about,

In the unknown realms I seek to charter,

Through complexities and ill-designed woe,

In amongst the pressures from others,

And the hardships I cause, though unknown.

As my innocence exchanges for wisdom,

And I try and I strive for a freedom,

As I pledge to love greater and yet greater still,

Yet I pray for His way, that I know His Will.

As I speak this for all of my brothers,

And I plead this for each part of Hell,

Giving over to You now the trouble,

I thank You for soothing me so.

Amen 

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40. Leaving the Group Soul and distinguishing ourselves from the animalia.

With the awakening of the egoic forces within our beings, the individual withdrew his consciousness out from the corporate reality into a self-determined focus and viewpoint. 

Nowadays all 'external' life is perceived as an accessory rather than an attached portion of the consciousness. At the very first separation there was a sorrow experienced, and this sorrow still travels with us. 

Oddly and wonderfully enough, there is a period we all experience in which we return to the old consciousness and combine yet again - and that is during the time of ingestion, when a soul is attached to the infant as it develops within the physical womb of its mothering soul and splendid auric cover. For this special time we experience the world as ourselves, and our combining once more with all.

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39. Loneliness in religious thought.

The path to Father God does, in actuality, bring us to the love and understanding of others through His Love and His Understanding. There is a combining comprehension, which can only enhance our own natures into a maturity, enabling a greater companionship with others to follow.

Having said this, there becomes also three coinciding aspects which occur - the one being that the individual who refers, defers and walks with our Father firstly (before all other men or women), does this at the exclusion of others. This relationship between an individual and their Father is impenetrable, and does disregard and leave out all others.

Others, understandably, have their own indissolvable relationship with Him. They, by Divine Right, walk alone and confer alone with Him also. No two spirits will ever 'walk the same walk'. This is loneliness number one. It is not so much a painful loneliness in itself, rather quite the opposite (I am sure you will agree); but when the individual is amongst other people and yet feeling strong in his or her relationship with Father God, it can happen that there is a secondary loneliness discovered, simply in point of the awareness of the first. 

Thirdly, when our faith causes us to depart ethically, thoughtfully, reasonably, philosophically, spiritually, fundamentally, from the behavior and thought-world of our friends and associates, there does become a further pain of isolation as we feel ourselves more distinctly defined away from them, rather than close; though the desire may be for that closeness and humanity.
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The Holy Man's Trials 38

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 38. Sadness at death and for loss, e.g. at each sunrise as it dissolves into day.

Although it may be hard to imagine, there are all kinds of depressions which affect us in ways so small they are hardly recognizable. Yet they occur in a fundamental and elemental way.

Our egoic processes expand when we are curious and happy and they contract when we are met with a cautionary upset. You can see the vitalities pull back a little; the contraction appears to be a deflation of sorts, and the brilliance of emanation momentarily dulls a little. All of the conditions so far described, visibly pass over, pass through the ego in such a way - little depressions, little sighs of the ego, sometimes little sighs of the soul. 

Things which delight the soul - like a sunrise - capture its attention and it is genuinely surprised and disappointed when the experience passes. The soul itself cannot grasp death in any way. One can picture the reality which it firstly and lastly lives in, a reality richly studded with all of the treasures it has ever acquired, lastingly remaining in a connective perceptible manner. 

For the soul itself, through the ego, to come to a cessation of that which it takes pleasure in, there is (understandably) a set back in morale, and a sigh of sadness in the perplexity of it all. Watch a little child when something they are so absorbed in is taken from them… their reaction of surprise and then the wailing! Our internal reaction (once again on a daily basis in just shifting from one thing to another) is one of the same.

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