Question:
We refer to part of the Elder Brothers' Lord's Prayer: "Lead us not into temptation, and if put to the challenge, may we walk in the shadow of Your example to find the light home".
As further background we considered the previous question and consequent teaching 'The Articulate Man'. The truth that we learnt from 'The Articulate Man' was that rather than Christ having a Double to enhance His higher self by the dynamic of contrast, like all other human beings, His Passion and Crucifixion was the contrast by which we can know Great Joy, as did He.
It also seemed that if the passion and crucifixion of Christ were to be the way in which we meet and defeat the challenge of temptation, then this would have very little to do with Sins of Commission such as greed, gluttony, lust, etc. - the question then arose - could the greater temptation and challenge be to simply to do nothing?
- J.W.
In tangent to this becomes the ethereal forces of thought about his person and surrounding his developing ego - those which cling from memory incitements, those that are imposed from without. This uppermost primary nature - the stronghold, the instigator - is rational and true to the soul and the soul's desires.
Phases of egohood and mandatory commiserations are parallel or at times distinct, depending upon the power of 'truth' being placed as a permanent reality and honored in self as such.
The nobility of all men within their innermost spirituality is apparent, for the true selfhood is equal to Christhood. Even though there is distinction and individuality prevailing, those uppermost traits are as true to Him, as they are true to the nature of each man, woman and spirit. A person's selfhood is sacred to them and to God. The insignia of that individuality, the traits both rare and common, the right within to make choices regarding their own destiny as it accumulates in the forming of the present also, the protection of the ego in the honesty only self can know within - these precious components of the Arterial Self make for a man to continue being a man, rather than just an image, 'forgery' or apparition of self.
And, apparitions there are! - Men who have forsaken themselves and their consciousness in a variety of ways, in an omission of self from the world they merely act in. A semblance does not suffice however, for although the physical actions guesstimate a goodness, an illness or even an indifference, the spiritual actions which expire from a man emulate his true self and all that it trembles with.
Now this is not to say that there are split entities living a coexistent reality; and may we also add to this in pointing out further that there are in fact many aspects to a man and his consciousness other than this also. Yet what is attempted at here is an understanding that the personality may or may not cooperate or oblige the Arterial Self (the 'I am'), when it may in fact negotiate its properties with other 'serfs' whose wills or wants cry louder.
The qualities of sacrifice, submission and surrender are inherent in Man from the instinctual domain (the Pneu), to the inclinations from Christ as currently alive within his heart and psyche. However, the terms of sacrifice and submission must be afforded by the Arterial Self and not required, nor demanded or assumed to be a given. If the man's personality-self contradicts his true inclinations and thereby betrays his Arterial Self with false representation, it begins in deleterious action to literally 'unmake' the man, in both physical and subtle reasonings (bodies).
"To thine own self be true" was and is prerequisitional to living the spiritual realities. Conscience is hierarchical, but may only become formulated if the honesty of a man translates without him, in his life as well. By this it is meant, that a closeted truth about one's own true nature not only unravels the man, but also prevents his ongoing into either further development or to change.
Too often a person may warrant an obscurity, or beset himself with outer judgments that deride his initial and signatory self. Dilemmas may continue on for hours because of this, in an invisible exchange of disagreement, where the inner man requests to be acknowledged and is frustrated. The personality may take the least line of resistance and offer its assurances to the wanting world - for example:
The Arterial Self - Problem a
A man is shopping with a friend and happens to pass by a window which has electric trains displayed. He falters before the exhibit, entranced by the memories which this begins to awaken, memories which largely are consisting of wanting and marveling and so forth.
The friend who is beside him is preoccupied with an itinerary and uninterested in the toy trains, and so urges the man to continue their walking. He intimates, but the friend presses with some words which cajole him with a mock affection and a dismissal of his interest. He gives way and then does follow - although for the rest of the day he will be disturbed but not know why.
Commentary:
Immediately we may all understand this type of event. It describes the anomalies which exist even between good friends whereupon one may have no understanding of the other in a particular regard. However, in all peopled transactions there are further events conspiring and no simple occurrence is insignificant or without its outfall.
When we urge another or pressure for their agreement it is worth noting that even enthusiasm can injure if we are asking for a dishonesty from them, expecting a compliance. The variations of this are difficult to gauge however, because there are differing moods and frequencies of health and all manner of considerations which may well affect a man on any given day. So then the question is how best are we to interact with each man and woman affording their true natures without also compromising our own.
Firstly, we may view this problematically, and in the personal this is both necessary and articulate. If we can understand the transactional differences underlying soul-honesty we may then begin to see the insult to Christ when we forfeit our selves, and then how to avoid such decadence.
In the case of the man and the railway train window we know that he was experiencing something which was then important to him. It was not what one might call a religious experience, but it was arterially speaking, important. It caught his attention to the exclusion of all else, it worked in upon him and began to release thoughts and feelings which were submerged within his memory and even his longings.
Curiosity was stimulating his astral body and there was a subsequent tingling at all of his junctures and points, to fingertips and toe-tips. The adrenaline worked most naturally around this and so too his etheric body began to liven up, drawing about itself the forces which concentrate around the chest and head (or wherever there is such interest manifest).
A sensation of timelessness alleviated and elevated his time-consumed consciousness, absorbed and quite drawn out from his ego. Yet also participating with his ego, he had managed to direct his attention to the colorful parts moving around and around before him. This was a longing from the past awaiting to be answered. When he was interrupted in this experience his first reaction was to pull back and continue the fixation. But alas! He was sorely interrupted and imposed upon.
The insult added to the injury here, was not that the friend dismissed the interest as being unimportant, but that the man himself gave way and did not determine there and then his true feelings upon the matter. Men become so used to this effort of congeniality that they mistakenly believe that there is no consequence, and one could certainly set about to please all others before self and maintain that the higher good was concurrent, however it is not. No surrendering to another's ways and wants is beneficial unless it has been ordained by the Arterial Self as a natural act.
The Arterial Self is not a 'Higher Self' as described by the yogis or mystics, it is rather the preferential deliberating nature which has choice before it, and all choices can be good. The higher attributes could rightly select a poverty that requires a man to serve charity, and when his body deteriorates from hunger and overwork the 'higher' soul could be well satisfied, and yet the Arterial Self may protest this with good reason.
Here then is a distinction therefore between the two. It is not a case of the Arterial Self being immoral because it does not always choose the most righteous course of action, it is moreover because it knows its capabilities and what it can and cannot afford, and its preference.
Here we can see also that the spirit may dismiss the physical world's requirements, almost as unlawfully as the physical world's persistence upon the soul…. and deliberating the two is given to the over-ego, the Arterial Self, as opposed to the developing ego and its experiments into the bargain.
There has always been the question about instantaneous purity as sanctioned by the moralists, as becoming possible. Such a 'perfected' man who has contradicted his Arterial Self and with an immature capability that has forced himself beyond his means, may invoke the very opposite to that he has set out to achieve.
One of the reasons for this lies in the consequence to all actions depending upon their origin rather than their physical set sequence. A 'good' action from an inadequate man is moreover interpreted lastingly from the initial motivation as experienced within the Arterial Self, and if the Arterial Self is out of agreement with this action it shall become null and void. This is because there is a protection afforded the core self of a man, that he is liable moreover within his true nature and not out of it.
Conversely, if he were to suffer the dictates of his acting conscience (social conscience, spiritual guiding, whatever) and abstain from his favorite foods in order to diet, but the purpose was not agreed upon by his Arterial Self, he will not take advantage of any long-lasting health result. Also he will go back to preferring those foods he instinctively hungers for, and seek to satisfy that particular hunger. Here we can also suggest that the hunger and the foods themselves are not the critical issue. We can respect the man in his desires - and yea, the point is in that very respecting.
Goodness is its own reward, however insincere goodness is spiritually impotent. The significator has to remain with the core person and what they may achieve out from there; all else is superficial and of little lasting importance.
It may be that the individual’s Arterial Self comes to want for a complete change in diet, because out from their being comes the recollections of such relationships and interactions to foods, alongside a knowing that maintains what is required and needed for future sustenance. Then we find that the dynamics between that man and his nutrition give pleasures which can be experienced even in the simplest of foods. The first pleasure known is in the honesty of self and the compliance to need. Similarly, if not in the advanced relationship, then one can know this simply in the experience of eating the very foods you want the most. The pleasure comes in pleasing yourself, not so much as the substance of the food.
If taken incorrectly these passages may appear to promote an utterly self-centered and self-fulfilling lifestyle. This is not the reasoning of the meaning, but it is moreover a guide to understand what it feels like to be agreeable to oneself. Overindulgence is actually symptomatic of a soul who is not answering their Arterial Self, their true I Am, but living in compromise to it. So the most effective way to reestablish a pleasing of that self becomes prominent in basic codes, expressed in ways which otherwise would not be so excessive.
The importance of 'expressing oneself', albeit truthfully, has been maintained largely amongst the people who are habitually having to come to choices which seem to present and represent over and over begging their attention. Expression from a man does not have to be indicated by grandstanding or imposing around others, but communicating a genuine aspect that is in line with his true feelings and thoughts coming from the core.
Self-expression is creative, skilful and intuitive. Those who have poor vocabulary quite often improvise with an immediate honesty of gesture and face; and for those who are articulate the meanings implied or given, when genuine, are pleasing to those who receive them. There is a great pleasure in the giving and receiving of true genuineness.
So in this conveyance between souls we find perhaps the greatest vitality - there is no other interaction which moves the ethers so! Here too, amongst the real conjunctures where expression runs freely, there is a promotion of Christ, for literally He lives in those very conjunctures of Man.
Now we come to the thought which suggests that it surely pains the World and the soul, when a Christian compromises their love for Christ in their expression or lack thereof, of Him. The being which inhabits this planet has very much an arterial nature also, one which according to its singular evolution has formed coinciding with that of our own. Earthquakes, tremors and eruptions are not merely allegorical to the human condition, they are expressions of a tension which has collectively imposed itself upon physical life. This tension comes from the differences between Man and our World's Arterial Self. The natural disasters as brought upon by wind, tide, flood and tempest, are tensions of angelic proportion, which cannot absorb the conflictive thought which denies our Christ.
Our earth, our sky, does vomit because of our disregard and our indifference to Christ, and similarly we too, tremble and revolt when imposed upon to make a denial of Him.
On the hearth of all physical warmth sit the cold creatures who know not the Sun, nor touch. Reptilian and blind, these demons who oppose our Lord do not know warmth for they have not the spiritual metabolism or sympathetic reasonings. We are too often silenced by conspiratorial influences who would deny Man his very nature borne inherent in him. One of the reasons that men are imposed upon to deny themselves and deny their Christ comes from the overall contest of all beings.
The very first truth is that of the Warmth - the warmth of Christ, bringing the warmth to Man. Here is a primary and undeniable pleasure each man recognizes similarly: that our Arterial Self craves warmth; and as indisputably, we do also crave Christ - to speak out with a perfect expression and to not be quashed or put down in that expression.
The tension here must be perfect and commensurate with the force compelled outwardly. Central to this a man lives amongst a continual contest of his own very concepts and statements which he has prized so dearly as to keep a compendium upon his core self (core statements if you like) and weather the consequences. You see nothing can remain if it is static or stagnant. The concepts are perpetually reinforced by the exercise afforded them by this law. Everything travels backwards and forwards in perpetuity.
The denial of Christ in our conscious living however, is tantamount to the same denial as aforementioned with our arterial selves, and yet with this difference: He suffers because of it. If our affinities were at one with His within our arterial selves and were overchosen for a lesser demand, one contrary to the core, then quite also He pains.
Wherever love is refused He pains. If a child is aborted and scorned from the womb, He pains. Wherever He is refused, the World pains. Wherever a man refuses his true self, He weakens himself because he sets about a contest in the ethers of opposite equals.
Activities within the outer world are dealt with in karmic repercussion, to the end that the consequences involved will eventually form a man's character and answer his needs for interaction. In this sense it does tend to look after itself. Good deeds are rewarded explicitly and bad deeds are magnetic to much learning. The world and our activities in it upon that level have ultimately preordained consequences.
More devastating than doing is not doing, because the action of the 'doing' is always guaranteed to have a consequence for the better, whereas the result of the 'not doing' is of death. Not doing = death itself - Man the creator has been given the opportunity and has dropped it, and for whatever the reason, it spills a finality. Whether it be the desisting of an elemental who is no longer repleted or a good act passed by, a charity unanswered, it is in those moments, months or even years when we deny life, we are signatories to its death.
Yes, many profoundly spiritual enterprises have fallen so, because good men have withheld their true opinions and not come forward to voice them rejoicingly. Whenever there becomes a force or a person who seeks to prohibit an enthusiasm or joy manifest, there is a clear indication that they have not the right to do so, and nor should it be heeded. For without the indications that the enthusiasm and the joy provide, we should not know of our whereabouts in becoming so inwardly true. The man of charity needs be empowered with a great joy in his giving.
Christianity must foremostly provoke enthusiasm, great love known and great desire answered, so that the accordance with life itself be felt, known and welcomed. We need not maintain that this enthusiasm must be joined in upon; but we do maintain our own right to hold it; otherwise we should be lusterless and coddled in sin, or perfect and sour, resulting in further and greater sin to come.
One need not petition happiness, for it will come. The knack is to know it when it does, and to not refuse it. For all those men who have dismissed their opportunities to delight in Christ and welcome His Being further into the World, they do in a small way, become Anti-Christ. For in all things we are either one or the other.
By what we do,
Do we become,
Mistakes and all,
By this we learn.
By what we don't
Brings certain death.
Pray Christ our lives
We’ll live as best;
For in Truth
We are,
We are.
Do we become,
Mistakes and all,
By this we learn.
By what we don't
Brings certain death.
Pray Christ our lives
We’ll live as best;
For in Truth
We are,
We are.
