The Traveler's Guide- 9th August 2009

OF that which is most prominent about and around one's traveling, is the feature of accelerated karmic interplay that is experienced; for to put one's feet onto a soil far from their homeland, invites an orchestrated and complicated destiny which works double time in its guidance and motivations.

Of course, to stay confined in our homes bears also a syntax of horology ('horology', i.e. how one measures their time) - one whereby our angels and guiding spirits converse our souls; and our step is no less important to be safely delivered and our frames and mind held high, wherever, whenever, we are. Yet both the impressions and navigations are far more awake and intense when we are in an unfamiliar place... and our own sense of self is challenged thus thereby.

For with all things 'new' (even though they can be ancient of themselves) there is a constant contrasting and realigning of what is known, with that which is before you for the first time. And whilst within the soul experience we live the eternal paradox of every moment being new and yet familiar also, we find also that the mind and the ego fight to keep up with the persuasions of adjustments new experience brings.

Some folk go through this, yet albeit unconsciously. What is meant here to say, is that there are those travelers who are never particularly mindful of their surroundings and company, so that the impressions that register and impinge upon them, from their backyards to the Moon, really do not give them pause for thought when different or unusual. 

If you are unused to using your mind or reflective/contemplative reserves, then you really cannot exercise them upon will, want or with need, when the life outside becomes challenging - nor can you after death for that matter, either. This is one very good reason to practice consideration and learning from wherever one is presently, and bring such 'living' abilities into oneself, building up a strength and capability that is durable, and translates into future encounters and experience. 

But for those who live fairly superficially - i.e. stimulated by the physical world and little by an interactive creative consideration of the inner workings around them - these folk are incapable of experiencing much more than the physical realities of wherever they are. 

This is something of an explanation as to why most travelers can relate accounts of what they did and what something looked like, but nothing of the experience within their soul, of the history and travail of any given place; of the grandeur and the striving; of the sufferable and wild climate; of the nature of the nature (crops and forests foreign to them); of the seemingly millions of impinging emotions and stories that are calling out from each hand-laid brick that has weathered the centuries soaking in the voices and cries all around; finding structures and artworks that have outlast their creator, memorializing yet faithfully, the original vision that began their manifestation... when history becomes condensed beside a burgeoning future, when the push into incarnation from the souls and ideas yet to come, wrestle in a tort of the surviving issues from the past.

These things and more are known within the soul of the wakeful individual, and are both marvelous and aggravating to the peace within. It is probably not a thing to ever get used to, for this is the very price of consciousness in its true aspect, rather to learn therefore a strength about it all, than to seek an asylum from true perception. 

To be able to gather one's strength when the influences and voices are altogether too compelling, is firstly achieved by the aspect of humor. Not to make light or discount any given situation, but rather that position within the heart you can feel when a child or animal is endearing to you and creates within, a sense of wellbeing - to find something curiously cute about where you are. To actually look for it - even in the midst of grave necessity; for instantly tension is expelled when this aspect is nurtured. This is sweet when one considers the fears and strife of parenthood for example, because the children naturally inspire good humor and a cheerful response, which act as antidotes to the stress they also incur. 

This is not to suggest a joke for every serious happening, but to go further and explain a position of self within that you can experience. You can actually go to any thought that works for you, which encourages this lightness of aspect. But the key is that sweetness known by something or someone that has appealed to your sense of appreciation in this merry and appealing way.

Desires which are astrally harbored are way too intense to truly alleviate the pressures of serious tensions experienced by us. It is a common mistake of many to believe that such stress is alleviated by the passions, for this wakes intensity, tension and energetic response - it does not diffuse stress at all; a bit like trying to put a fire out with a tank of petrol and about as safe as well. 

But it is easy to understand why folk try - especially when they are caught up within so many impinging stresses, that they are unclear how to escape the pressure of them. Famous folk suffer this immensely; and without gentle humor and a commitment to propriety (i.e. not indulging overtly in astrally inflamed conduct), then either the stress or the behavior itself will defy their strength to survive.

So what are the inflammatory astral behaviors? Well one interesting pointer about going too far into such behaviors is the very loss of gentle humor thereby, when the seriousness itself of the endeavor becomes subterranean - lower than the point it should dive to. Have you ever felt seriousness dive to a point below its usefulness into dread?

Firstly it should be noted for the contrast, that gentle humor is not the babbling of the drug induced, for that is but an empty facade of humor, it has no spirit or substance and cackles like a ghost that is free from the mind within; that is all. 

Gentle humor is an esoteric experience of the heart; it is a perception that takes us right up to the perspective and seat of our Father; it is beauty and wonder in its lightest and brightest of plays. Gentle humor is infilled with a love and consideration, and gives to all around it - not derisive or critical, yet keenly and supremely aware. It is a conscious humor of the highest, because it comes from a serious mind to begin with, and that is precisely what makes it the gold that it is.

The adoption of excessive astral endeavors can range from emotions to indulgences (and cravings/desire). Exhibiting and relishing too much emotion incites and expels a wealth of polluting energy out from the individual, which internally becomes quite poisonous to themselves and all around also. 

Excessive emotions can be: 

• anger,

• temper,

• aggravation,

• neediness,

• frustration,

• complaining,

• misery,

• talking too much (without thinking; in repetition),

• demanding,

• commanding,

• laughing too much (in a negative manner),

• self contemplation,

• desiring food,

• desiring gratification,

• desiring excitement,

• desiring willfulness,

• desiring fate,

• inciting upset,

• inciting romance,

• inciting fear,

• inciting terror (women are good at this),

• indulging in gratifying behaviors (self serving),

• indulging in gluttony,

• uncommitted sexuality,

• narcotic or liquor stupors (and cravings),

• self opinion,

• self flattery,

• self delusion,

• avarice for wealth and

• avarice for acquisition.

The states above are not helpful to the state of soul that is best to live with. In plain and simple terms, to live the 'good' life, is of itself its own reward. 

Too many times folk have mistaken such judgment as condemnation of the mistaken individuals who are still given to astral exploits. But criticism and condemnation are not the point of the matter and in fact deter an individual from realizing the true point at hand - namely that of strength and survival, for excessive astral reckoning depletes and cripples the individual who attempts to live with it. Literally, the etheric vitality is rendered wan, and the soul itself is held in remittance.

Seriousness of soul in the highest context, perceives the majesty of good conduct as opposed to the utter wastefulness of poor conduct. The path of poor conduct - of selfish self-serving lascivious indulging - can appear to be important because of the intoxicating pseudo-seriousness it incurs. Yet this kind of gravity which is subterranean, as mentioned earlier, truly comes from the soul within, knowing the terribleness of the exploits it has ventured into - whereas the Gravity that pins us to God is truly selfless - unweighted by our own concerns.
And so, to wherever we are or wherever we go, let it be the quizzical, endeared, yet most lofty of perspective that lights our guidance and steadies our reactive nerves. And know also, you truly are never alone, not now or ever - you are loved and treasured and cared for.

Christly Humanity- 28th June 2009

The hearts of the mighty

Are weary with regret -

For their laboring for strength

Is a heaviness on the chest.

Whilst the coffers of the wealthy

Are infested with deficit -

Their money has got poorer

And their vaults too big to carry.

Those that try for self and self alone,

Grow a cause too big for one -

And those who live for all in love,

Have the strength of the Heavens,

Their Host and above!

What a marvelous time this is for self consideration and review - whilst the worldly conditions themselves are growing an egoic awareness not experienced before in this way.

Continents are infilling with the hopes and dreams of a Christly humanity. Although not named, not known, not spoke... it is this that moves for the changes all around. And it is a happy change.

Although traditions carry wisdoms of the ages and soulic stories from a far past that echoes the distant memory, there is a lot to be said for those fresh impulses that command certain change, that bring benefit to all and each individually. These changes to the moribund, are waft with conscience and reflection.

We can tangibly, audibly 'hear' it in the thoughts of the people - in all generational ages. It is the growing ability to question themselves and break from the repetitive and selfish thinking.

• To review one's own conduct within a worldly frame.

• To question past behaviors and look for a high intent and content.

• To be honest in such reflection - and genuinely caring.

• To become so incorporate within the context of Humanity itself, that it is both experienced and acted upon.

This certain change is moving around and within every culture, every race and every mind right now. And because it has entered in and begun its task, it will not stop. For this is Christ incarnate in the world.

Bottled Fruit- 24th May 2009

LAUGHTER itself is a form of 'knowing' - and not the 'unknowing' that it is often deemed to be.

The 'laughter of a fool' has been used to characterize all laughter in the main, giving it a reputation to be the lowest of reactions, with base causality. However it is our reasoning that the laughter by its very action provokes thought within and without the individual. And it is not a solely responsive activity but one that has consequence and meaning.

Animals do not laugh. They can be playful and express merriment, but they do not catch a humorous idea in its truest context. One might argue that it takes a self-awareness to enable such humor, yet the infant can laugh without being old or aware enough to self reflect upon this action directly.

Plants fail to laugh - they are stern and serious creatures that would not know how - and are oblivious to the elementals' gaiety (the faerie folk that party on around them). They perceive laughter as a noise, or at best, an energetic discharge that might encourage a bloom or a fruit to expand, but never actually conceive that a joke or an observation or a high jinx might provoke the outbursts within and about them.

Rocks do not laugh. They are intent - at least what there is of them here within this World, is intense and compounded. A fellow from the mineral kingdom would fail to see the funny side of anything - it is not in his nature to be anything other than what he is. The minerals are graced by the influences of many individual beings which can be stellar or elemental. These beings exhibit a 'gentle' humor, rather than a slapstick comedic play that the plant beings exhibit.

A gentle humor can really take in the moment, when particularly, by loving observation, one identifies something quite wonderful and endearing within that which we are watching. This disposition is given to the Angelic realm and beyond - that their entire perception of Creation falls into this regard - in constant revelation and adoration of the All.

To have a good nature often means a good humor. Criminals do not have a good humor - their laughter is cynical, dismissive, critical and cruel. It is not the laughter that comes from a healthy soul. It is neither funny nor energetic, but rather an extension of a snarl. For the criminal is but breaths away from their animal-hood, manifest by their behavior and indulgences.

Philosophers laugh well; as do clerics and clergy. Yet dancers do not - they and others who live a physically disciplined and challenged life invest their energetic wills so much within their bodies that they are drained of laughter, and prone to hysteria or similar outburst.

The child who is physically trained to excess will have a sorrowful countenance and but few moments of happy jubilation, as discussed. For although it is commendable to exercise, there can come a point when the athletic routine drains the will and the consciousness of its independence. And without independence, one cannot laugh.

Similarly a strong indication of a strong and enduring sense of self and awareness of self, comes with that of being able to enjoy true humor and find a laugh. It might sound obvious to note that 'broken' individuals - adult or children - lose their ability to laugh. Yet it goes to consideration here because once again the true value of laughter itself is being contemplated here.

Masters and teachers laugh - with both the gentle and the comedic. Their laughter is for twofold purpose. It is for themselves and for others.

Laughing for oneself is not dissimilar to preserving fruit in glass jars. Straight knowledge that we acquire, holds very defined relationships to past knowledge we have accepted. We are often brought to the gates of knowledge many times daily, and that which is accepted and taken into ourselves, goes into its respective attraction. The egoic knowledge is like that; although all new thought is originally acquired through the imagination and the imaginative cognition (i.e. if it is not self-consciously already known, it needs the imagination to bring it before our reasoning). However, the ego itself is progressive and connected, and tends to link and refer by way of its thoughtfulness. It cannot know what it does not know; it does not attach that which it has no resonance with.

Yet when we come to that point of a clear clean laugh, taking in the humor of a point or a moment, it does not necessarily (and more often than not) have to be a part of our expectations or progressive referential knowledge. It is 'outside' ordinary happenings - or at least our expectations of them. Essentially most humor is characterized by this alone; and when we laugh it is as though we can take the thoughts that come from the situation as bottled fruit.

If I put my fruit into a jar I can carry it around with me, and if preserved properly it will stay intact within the jar for some time to come. But if I do not put my fruit into the jar it will disintegrate quite rapidly and I cannot take it for long or for far - unless I eat it and thereby assimilate it into myself.

So the point here is that there are two types of knowledge that we can experience directly - and that is the egoic progressive knowledge where we might take the fruit and eat it and assimilate it, and it becomes within our own makeover part of us thereby. Or alternatively, we can hold the fruit and carry it around in a jar for observation - not eating it, nor dismantling it either - and this is a type of knowledge that by its action teaches us a form of individuality - a conscious dualism - that identifies separateness (separateness in a good way).

You see, a lot of men and women are only drawn to know much about things they already know or identify with. This is the ordinary way of knowledge and in itself is useful and to be expected - that it can grow furthering itself - and so it goes. It is also very much a consuming mentality - it can even be voracious.

Acquisition into self or by the self is fundamental to most creatures. See something you know and like - must have it, eat it, keep it, etc. And even with 'higher' knowledge, this simple ambition of acquisitiveness can go on likewise.

Yet with the profound gift that laughter can bring to ourselves and to others within the human context, we find that even as with the small child, the knowledge of something does not have to be within our realm of immediate experience or preference to be caught, held and understood. 

Now there is a catch to this, in that there are prerequisites to having a humorous thought - and firstly, one is that of an active intelligence. Our point is taking form here when we think of children and imbeciles who lack referential knowledge, but still have an intelligent cognitive awareness that can realize certain happenings in order that they can laugh. And the fruit in jar experience of knowledge means also that we ourselves are not retaining that knowledge either - not in a contextual or personal sense. But what is being experienced here is an aspect of empathy and then separation.

For example - do you remember the joke about the dwarf who had his walking stick chopped off at the bottom without him knowing, and he thought he was growing taller? There are several parts to this humor and so it goes:

1. When we realize the connection between the walking stick and the sense of getting taller being possible.

2. When we think it is a dwarf, who is already short, going through this.

3. It is not a joke, yet we dare to laugh at it (i.e. makes it more funny).

4. It is an unexpected happening. The dwarf did not expect his walking stick to be chopped at the bottom and we did not expect to hear about it. We also do not expect this to happen in ordinary life. We do not even expect to laugh about such things. Our sensibility of expectation has been disturbed (in a positive way).

5. We are relieved this could not be a real story.

6. We are relieved it is not ourselves.

7. Although the image is sad it makes us smile. We are relieved that we are not sad.

8. Because we know it was all nonsense, we have returned to a stronger sense of self than we enjoyed a few moments ago. We find ourselves intact, and as before, hold a stronger sense of this.

Contrary to how it may seem, Angelic beings have a supreme sense of self in relation to what and who is about them. And although they work in unity and to some degree conform (although their love extends throughout, and most of their employment is selfless) they still, nonetheless, hold an all-powerful sense of who they are.

If you are endeared and amused and jovial when watching something or someone who makes you laugh, you are clearly not confusing yourself with what is before you. You are, if anything, extracted out from the situation - much more than if you were directly engaged in it.

For most folk, when they are active doing other things (other than laughing), their concentration links them in the moment and they are not as separately self-conscious because of this. You know the feeling, especially when the time goes ever so quickly, when you seem to dissolve into the activity, the day, or the discussion, and are very much a part of it. There is a certain commitment as it were to living.

Yet by contrast, a humorous episode brings a feeling of clarification to the mind, and takes, for one moment or so, the personal out of it. There is a sense of being an onlooker - more from the soul's own perspective, rather than by being directly engaged in it.

The teacher finds humor for others as well as for himself, to help bring his student (or colleague) into that disposition that is of the kindly observer, who learns that knowledge can be very good without being necessarily something directly taken to benefit only ourselves.

There are times when we need to bottle fruit to have later on. Can I stop what I am doing and observe a curious behavior that I personally have no need for or can recognize? And does my heart warm with the contemplation of it?

Small babies have to bottle fruit because their referential knowledge before a certain time is so small and disconnected. In a similar way we can gather all kinds of knowing to ourselves before our time of truly reasoning with them and understanding them; and the way into this is via humor - or more correctly, the disposition that it brings to us.

We are not saying that everything obscure is funny, or that we are to laugh at everything we do not understand. But that the path to seeing the lighter side of something is the heavenly way. Of course Heaven itself has the advantage of knowing that all is well at the end of days; that Life is uncanny, mysteries abound and Divinity smiles.

Christ as a Tree- 10th April 2009 Easter

LEAVES breathe for the tree, and when the leaves are gone the tree excarnates. Its spirit withdraws back into the timely place of its beginnings; ever present, but agone, its consciousness of here, now there, manifesting within the life-filled realm it sprang from.

And should it breathe again with new budding green and living lung, its presence will stir and awaken again. And what was tree within the world will now return.

Our beloved Christ is as a tree and His Life's Leaves are the faith of this Humanity by which He Breathes; for to enter fully into this Worldly Life there needs to be the living aspirations by which He can come.

At the time of Calvary, the tree as it were, was bare. Not since the Golden Age of Man long past, had its wintery nakedness known life. For you can have a tree without leaves and a life without life, in appearance and in form, in the ghostly manifest of the worldly silhouette that has but a fine film of presence to it. 

Many men appear present but have so withdrawn. Many values seem to be fine and worthy, when they are but shells - as truths also that have no bearing or petition, can appear to make sense when they don't.

More often than not, the things that happen within this World have long before occurred in spiritual pretext. Those events that bring with them a finality, also too are often the summary of a spiritual story whose time had concluded. Not the least which, our dear and Holy Christ entered into His worldly death at the summation of a very slow and painful spiritual one. For He had been so cut away from this World for many eons before - from that which He so Loved - that this trial of Incarnation was that synthesis which blended past sorrow with the now obvious.

His sadness and His outcast had parleyed a slow and decadent dying. Not as violent as the end did show, but as perilous. For this World and the one before, had itself begun to wither back and die - no leaves, and then soon to be, no tree. One by one the hearts of the people had forgotten who they were. The material seduction had encaptured their souls to the point of their dismissing their heavenly values. 

Even before the egoic awareness, a selfishness pervaded and infected their hearts; and whilst some retained their goodness, they fell back under the pressures of the fear and hardship to follow.

Added to this, the veils separating our World and the Spiritual Heavens became impenetrable, and men and women became ever more afraid, for they thought in truth that this life was their only sanction, and their desperation the only way it was.

People get used to being downcast and despondent. They very quickly adapt to depression and disappointment. And the spirit soon withdraws - individually and collectively, into a wintery death.

And so you see that although events might have been a very long time coming, it is not until their summary and conclusion do we recognize and accept the causality. It can take until the end of the chapter for us to review and interpret every word that led us there. It is peaceable to know this.

In many respects it is simply symptomatic of consciousness itself. This is the true meaning of the expression: "the end justifies the means" - not to say that you may do as you wish to get to a desired outcome, but rather to say that it is only at the end we see the qualification and reality of what has led us there. Not always is this good - most often it is mixed at best.

The conclusion of Christ's Life, offered so upon the dead wooden Cross that did hold Him, was a poor ending to a terrible story of hardship that spanned the eons and the lives that went before - the suffering of a spiritually disconnected peoples and the subsequent suffering of the very Being who had heard every anguished word...

This was not just a three day pantomime. In truth, it had been a very long time coming. And Christ knew that it was only by summation could there be a time of change to follow.

To end and then to begin again.

To end but then to live again.

And this was so.

See now the tree with its mane of countless leaves! And the breathing becomes one sweet breath, as new life daily springs from each laden branch, as each dear heart is connected now, not only to the Heavens that support them, but to one another as well; and, to our Living Christ who is verily strong enough to hold all of us so.