Sense & Sensibility- 30th November 2008

IN all the towns in all the world, there is only one true currency - it is that lifestream of fortitude itself - fortitude that enstrengthens, enlivens and commits to all around it.

Before the energies there was Virtue. Virtue predates and pre-lives all streams of energetic translation. Virtue is the purest form of energy known to gods or Man - or beast besides. Virtue motivates and virtue sustains. Virtue supports the upper realms, disentangles the lower planes of life and non-life, divinely sorting, compelling, disassembling and moving through time, space and place.

In spiritual speak we honor virtue in its goodness and often concentrate on those properties and elements which we ourselves can cultivate.

The science of its action and manifestation may be alluded to, however this is taken largely to be fanciful or poetic, rather than actual and germane. Yet if you can catch the idea with a solemn consideration you can perceive with a clarity just how safe and justified the spiritual worlds are - and that we are contained always within this noble sensibility, rather than just tossed and turned by the indiscriminate waves of universal vitality.

Firstly we can consider the divine reckoning, the intuitive working and the virtuous element that all energy has. If vital energy did not have its own reckoning (discernment), intuition (pneumatic mind), and virtue (properties of palpable goodness), then it would be reckless, disorganized, incoherent and erratically destructive - or inert. And we know this because within the chemistry of man himself, there are very short instances where vitality has been summoned or produced and it has been 'stunned' in such a way that its effects appear without the core properties, or pervert into the nemesis of their causality.

The divine vitality which drives everyday vitality is virtue. Virtue empowers, motivates and enspirits all 'gravitas magna'.

And here's the thing - if you were to burn wood from seven different trees, the warmth from their fires could give you one of seven different virtues. When a tree grows up and then takes on the vitality it needs to sprout leaves or fruit or flowers or seeds, it brings into itself the exact vitality that is coherent with that of its own nature. Its own virtuous properties are sustained by a similar energetic vitality, which permeates its physical burden; and even later on in the burning of its wood, or the consuming of its bounty, will give off the same properties that are akin to its kind.

Virtue itself attracts virtue and its signature vitality. It is never just one kind of 'chi' or energy you yourself will manifest and know, for Nature herself is imbibed with distinct variety, and seldom is one thing ever the same as another. All life has a history to it and a consciousness of that history - even energy. Energy is not generic or impartial, nor is it coerced through like force. This cannot be.

If you are performing some physical exercise this can be an opportune time to become prayerful or meditate upon what goodness you should like to be manifest within yourself or in the world - not to summon up negative self doubt or derision, but to find in a bare and obvious manner something you should prefer to take on.

You can also contemplate a fruit or a herb that you might need. For example, pineapple might be in short supply but you intuitively know that pineapple would be very good for you. At the special time of exercising, when vitality is being summoned through the virtue of effort, and your vitality's levels are heightened, you may also hold the concept of pineapple - or of persistence (which could be needed in the moment) - or of charity, humility, benevolence, patience, reverence, obeisance, compassion, courage, kindness, tolerance, truthfulness, discipline, loyalty, brevity, modesty, service, generosity, dependability, or love. These divine and actual properties are all about us and can be drawn in far more easily than we imagine. They are living in the ethers, streaming in from the highest of emanating Divinity and supporting us daily in more ways than we consciously realize.

When emotional energy is evaporated out from a man, that is negative and born of frustration or anger or both, the given virtues which would ordinarily inhabit the energy coming to him are repelled. He will deplete his own reservoirs and future gatherings by this. Any behavior which is 'anti-virtuous', as it were, i.e. not patient, not humble, not kind etc., actually aggravates future depletion. This is why an individual can morally deteriorate quite rapidly - and also why it is so important to assume virtues that you might not be strong in until that time that you are; at the same time feel shame and repentance in that anti-virtuous behavior you have performed.

The shame need not last, but it is a good warning that something has gone wrong. Often the 'dread' we feel of shame is the very energy draining from us. We all know it - yes, even teachers, and perhaps especially teachers. Repentance, amongst a good many other things, serves to draw into us very quickly the notion of that virtue we should wish to bring back and hold within ourselves. Whilst we might have repelled it by our words or our actions or even our thoughts, we can open the doors to it once again by a call from the conscience. Our conscience knows that which we have blocked or repelled - by definition, that knowing is what it is.

Nature is guided very quickly by us - responsive to our wills and our consciousness in full regard. Unwittingly we might partake in behaviors that literally make ourselves ill, yet by the same token we can repair this for ourselves; and the world in record time also! In this there is great forgiveness.

It should be said also here, that you cannot attribute all illness to a lack of virtue - even given the above and what we might learn from it. For it is the nature of the physical world to eventually desist and die, and all men are given to this happening within a certain time. There is no shame in illness itself, just in unvirtuous behavior. And whilst some things are beyond immediate repair in the physical world, the strengths that virtuous living does bring, carries over past death into the real forms and forces beyond.

This too is important to contemplate, so that effort is not just perceived or looked for in the short term. Spirit endures, and is carried into the most luxurious of realms by cultivated virtue... not by a false paradise which has been too easily won, but by the work and will and want of the good hearted, whose words are strong, whose conscience is unlabored, whose virtues are rehearsed and made permanent. This is Heaven!  ☺

Reality Games- 23rd November 2008

WHEN we invest ourselves in the truth, we take on a relationship with reality. When we invest ourselves in deception, we lose our very footing in the world and our own sense of selves.

Honesty sets the parameters to proper conversation. Truth itself contains parameters of its own beingness. Dishonesty confuses both the speaker and the listener until neither can see the other one.

Untruths are like vagrant viruses that will find a host in vacant minds.

Self truth is not supreme truth or ultimate truth, but it is a clear voice and clear thought, uncontaminated with pretence. Self denial is the worm that eats at the Tree of Life itself... the cold and poisonous snake of a tongue out of order.

Accuracy brings pleasure - the very certain pleasure of correctness, of completion, of fulfillment, of endeavor's wins. Inaccuracy brings with it the delusion that everything else is as chaotic and nonsensical and its only happiness lies in dilemma.

Truth is central, untruth is peripheral.

An untruth can never find its way closer to the company of divine reality - for there it has no friends or commerce. This law is important, because it decides many unseen happenings of who knows who and what becomes of them.

Truth is not unkind, because in truth we are all one and the same. Unkindness creates dissent and disquiet, and feeds the worm and the snake of the same. 

Every moment gives us this deciding - to refer to the truth we know, or defer to the common thought. The choices are, as all choice is, significant. 

Truth endures and is ever pressing to be recognized. There before the mind's eye and soul's window, it stands before each man and woman and repeats what it knows, begs to be heard and pronounced above all.

It is not a question of punishment or harm that decides that untruth is so condemned, it is just the imperfect foreknown result - the ingredient of failure that all deception has. There is no life to sustain it, because life requires a central line, one that is connected through to the higher realms that support it so. Without this life the peripherals diminish.

Some things you know to be true, and it is exceedingly helpful to recite or write some of these truths to help substantiate yourself. Truth telling is a tonic to the mind and the 'I am' in that it reinforces one's sense of self that it might find itself anew.

It is the fastest way to find bearings throughout the afflictions of nervousness, anger or sorrow. Truth restores stability and puts an even ground to the feet that walk it. And it especially does not have to be a complex truth or an emotional confession.

For example:

The Sun comes up in the morning.

Today I had breakfast.

I love the warmth of my blanket.

I never felt right about eating an egg.

When I was young I made many mistakes.

I have often wished I could do better.

I do not feel pretty.

Boats float in water.

Water feels wet.

Rain feels wet.

Wet feels wet.

Whether you recite your mathematical tables, i.e. "one plus two equals three" - or go to those truths that are more personal or complex, the effect will give you stability both without and within. At times folk love to sing songs or say verses, and it can be just the very action of getting the word or the note 'right' that brings them to an ease because of it. And of course, the truth that the words inspire also will give over a strong and healthy effect.

Equally so, false words and thoughts create inner conflict and outer tensions. These do not have to be complex or emotional to cause terrible results. There is no good reason to list them as it would cause you to contemplate them, however if you spend just a week trying to cite those 'hollow truths' (untruth that has no center, no heart, and is just peripheral) then you will make great progress in relation to personal confidence and even general health.

The point is to find out those emissions and omissions that decry our true selves, or the humble and kind truth about another - to find them and make a conscious correction. To stop saying things we do not know and to stop thinking unkindly. 

All of this might sound as if it is an impossible task, however such vigilance eventually returns to instinct as the heart is given back its rightful discerning place above the intellect, and the thinking is refreshed by the new life it now has.

You might find that you have a keener interest in receiving the truth and less tolerance for the chaos that untruth does bring. Irritation from this is quite normal because you are becoming more honest with yourself in this process and will know what afflicts you more readily. This is a small price to pay to feel what is going on - far better to know a reality than contribute and put up with a false reality. For the false reality derides the self and negotiates misery for all concerned. If you truly do not belong somewhere, then you simply do not belong.

Of course there are work situations and some social situations where you have to be in the company of false talkers that compromise your own sense of honesty just by their very presence. What are you to do in that moment? Or in that place where you cannot leave?

"Your truth is not my truth.

I cannot be the judge of you.

But I can be this of me -

my values, my words, made whole."

If a man or woman is asking for your agreement to something - whether by consenting silence or word, and it is something you do not recognize to hold truth with - you can firstly remind yourself mentally that their truth is not your truth. What this does also, is repel by your will within the thought, their thoughts directed at you. You can always repel an untruth with a truth. Truths are supremely powerful because they have life to them which comes from many sources. Untruths are merely powered by the momentary voracity of the person putting them out there.

And so, in a fair and balanced and very 'true' way - when you say: "Your truth is not my truth", it acknowledges the boundaries you put there around yourself to be contained from that which you do not choose to receive. And of course, they may be right... or they may be untrue... yet if you do not know it for yourself to be true, it can even be damaging to take to yourself a truth before you are ready to understand and know if for yourself.

Too easily a truth can become contaminated with a false comprehension and become an untruth because it is mixed and mingled with poor thinking etc. And so you see this process is deeply personal also and very relative to where you stand at any given moment. It is unoffensive to simply say (inwardly) "your truth is not my truth".

Secondly: "I cannot be the judge of you". This is essential to come to terms with, even though our own personal discernment for our own truths will beg that we do assume and characterize every one we meet with and see. However in truth, it is not within our power or permission to judge another, and it goes very badly because it will assuredly arrive at a false idea, lacking the full truth, and only cause problems for ourselves.

We can discern for ourselves what appears to us in part, that we do not accept or value. This is well within our means to decide and imperative to our own development and interactions. But what it ultimately acknowledges also is, that I am not my brother's keeper in relation to his faults and flaws - only his needs and humanity am I responsible for. Once we enter into become judge and jailer we become entangled in a karmic contrivance that is best not to enter into. For that reason alone commonsense can steer us away from assuming we are in a position high enough to view all and judge it so.

"But I can be this of me..." - most definitely! This is a call for self appraisal with an honest eye and humble account. Once again kindness is essential to this perspective. Be kind but be fair, is a marvelous adage. This line calls for the right, the cosmic right, to be one's own judge and to get used to this. Do not expect or assume perfection in yourself, because you are either deceiving yourself or trying to deceive others by such hopefulness.

Being true to oneself first and foremostly, means that with a kind spirit you can accept that works that are worthwhile take much time and striving. Merit is won through striving; and whilst in truth we can all feel quite perfect in any given moment (and this be true also), we all have imperfections to work upon and weaknesses that require strength-building. If you cannot admit to failings you have nowheres to go.

Nobody else can tell you the truths you know yourself. If you refuse to acknowledge them, the loneliness you feel will come from the separation of your own self from self; and then with the curse of such deception come the 'peripheral' relationships you have as a result of this.

"My values, my words, made whole." When we personally measure reality by our own truthfulness to self and to the world, we can go on to share in moments that are blissfully truthful and bare and real, with others who are doing the same. These moments build a life and a world that encases a spiritual future.

Reality has a heart. So often the word 'reality' is derided and put into doubt by those who do not accept the goodness inherent in real truth and real life. 

Yet do not be disheartened, because every individual can find their way back to what is real and whole through exercising their values with a sense of correctness - beginning with just that which they themselves know to be real. Everyone can do this. The whole truth and nothing but the truth, will bring one into the blessed state of communion that is Life itself.

Riding the Wind-16th November 2008

AEON after aeon,

We are carried through,

The realms of time

And the places of time-not,

Just to be present

Here right now.

As long as the journey was,

With perils known and battles fought,

Through dawn and dusk and dawn again,

Ever back to the home of a thousand reunions

Then on the road alone once more,

From here to there,

Beginnings and ends-

"Hello" in this moment to you.

If only we could but know just how true the truths we know are so. So much gold, yet not the strength to lift it!

Great and profound truths are medicinal to the soul - and even though only ever in part, they are whole.

And conundrums are round like balls.

When a dog barks he is being a warrior. The dog has four feet and a rudder.

When a man barks he is being a dog. The man has two feet and a rudder.

[James 3:3-12]

Divine Humor is the Cosmic Wind that carries us through the pages of each solitary biography.

It is not mean or cruel or false, but rather delightful and loving; it is the best part of the moment to glimpse a happiness of sorts.

Divine Humor is the unseen wind, the breath of a laugh from the Father Himself.

There was the Word,

There also was the Laugh,

And the Word became all substance,

And the Laugh became the driving force,

That empowered the motion,

The move, and the thought.

Planning Ahead- 2nd November 2008

TO most folk there is a concept common that 'time moves forward' and that all things of the future are 'up ahead' so to speak. Whilst this is true to say of course, it can be equally true also to say that time as we are used to it, in reference to aging and decay and subsequent change, is completely different when you are in the spiritual worlds in episode (and whilst there you might find a flux and flow of dissolution and resolution). There is not the process of death itself in every sphere or realm, only in the few extreme places that deal with the garbage of expired souls and castaway plans.

However, in practical terms we have the idea of time moving forward in the world, simply because once things change here we can never go back. With everything that becomes or desists here in the world, it remains so until more change affects it - but we cannot revisit any state, condition or life that appeared as it was before that change. And so from this we assume we are moving forward, simply because we cannot travel back to revisit those very conditions and apparitions.

The concept of going forward also implies that there is an evolutionary improvement - a progression of sorts and a change for the better. This is of course is correct in the overall pattern of life within the World, that generally speaking the human condition is gathering a conscience and awareness and a deciding that is becoming worked upon with each and every incarnation.

And yet, if you were to base your entire premise about the future on the evidence of Mankind's evolutionary improvement, it might be questionable if history were to be perceived fairly and in merit of the incredible achievements and thinking over epochs long gone with no actual record remaining. Many expired civilizations have had held magnificent merit.

There is an expression to say that we are 'getting somewhere' which is interesting because it implies of course that one is on their way to achieving a goal. However, longterm within the world, the only final 'somewhere' we are all making our way towards is death. 

And so if you were to try to qualify the future in this thought of 'moving forward' or of 'getting somewhere', in truth it is not a measurement that brings any real confidence in the final result. These concepts have no real and lasting consequence within the material world. Spiritual achievement is enduring, but material conquest and gathering is not.

This may appear as but a petty argument, but it is not the intention of the exercise at all. It is helpful to be able to logically disassociate from such prior ideas about future happenings and their course, that we might then reasonably examine what it is we can hope for and why.

There is a certain arrogance that denies the existence of mortal death and failure. This arrogance is not just simple blind-sight but goes to the very foundation of false thinking - the same that portends advancement merely with the passing of time - false expectations that investments will increase, banks will ever fill, fortunes amass and enlarge. Yet all the while the evidence of time's impositions, show if anything, the silo depletes and all fortune dissolves.

The very few dynasties that have managed to secure their hoardings have done so with an amalgamation of corruption and the most terrible karmic repercussions resulting as well, for the reality is that men were never meant to procure wealth whilst their fellow men starved. The Heavens do not look forgivingly upon this.

And if you have ever aspired to keeping millions of dollars for yourself for selfish enterprise alone, it is important that you are aware of the forfeits this then entails. For every individual upon the globe today that has wealth beyond their needs and more besides, for those that make cause for other men to labor for their whims and indulgences, men who have more excess than is given to charity - these are the accursed, bemoaned and truly haunted.

The men of wealth cannot find rest in sleep because their beacon of greed draws the very ghosts of those who have passed over impoverished without consolation... The men of wealth cannot find peace within their ever turning minds, as the whispers of the wanting world plead through their thoughts, calling for compassion.

The men of wealth cannot find the joy when it comes to their death - whilst the poor see the stars, men of wealth have but dirt; dirt without gold, without light, without warmth.

For centuries the wise have asked us to invest in our spiritual wealth, rather than in the very short-lived transitory riches of this world. This is a time now when men and women are capable of understanding the practical nature of this request and becoming all the better for it, whilst beginning to give back to those that are in need right at this very moment.

Material wealth has the most wonderful propensity to effect positive and life-giving change when put to good use. Individuals are finally questioning how disproportioned the gifts of this earth have been. More than this, the actual Brotherhood of Man is becoming more evident. The gateways to understanding are open, hearts and minds are finding community through communication and values are shifting.

This time right now - not then or when - is our worldly future. If you are given the opportunity to help someone and it is within your power to do so, and you fulfill this task, you are doing the work of God. And therein lies both our permanency and our certainty, for all time.