The Donkey's Lot- 6th April 2007, Easter

JERUSALEM used to be the highest point above sea level in the world. All of the plants that breathed its temperate air seized their nourishment from the lofty altitudes. And the voices of the men had bell like tones to them - resoundingly clear into the purest of expirations.

This was of course, a very long time ago.... long, long before - and a long time to come, also.

Can you picture a world that bore the spirit of Man in faithful tenement? This was a time, an age resplendent in possibility and pure joy - a noble exactment of life itself - not a parody of madness it was later to become.

The World was not always deceased of itself. Much began and evolved according to every plan and hope laid out in Heaven. And still we see evidence in the webbing life spiralling into existence upon itself, in the paradoxical biologies succinct unto themselves yet combining in cooperative play.

This World was not always in tension, in fear, holding its breath with dubious surmise. Its people, the people, were not born in doubt of their lives - and even sickness itself had a charity to it, effecting neither pain nor death, but just change.

The World itself paraded the Heavens as the young pride of it all. Look now, look there! The Christly enterprise (like a much loved child) is showing His dance, while the archaic Archai look on with aged affection.

And later when the people sought Tibet and their Shangrila, it was Jerusalem that bespoke their inspiration. And when all men are moved to justice, to striving and to mutual regard, it is to Christ that they cleave, whether knowingly or not.

And so it was, as it had to be, that He came to that place that once breathed for all - to the heart of the World, the broken heart of the World, now dusty and detached, and totally unrecognizable.

He had traveling companions that knew Him well. They were not strangers, but most had living memories of places and realms all far happier. Perhaps to these golden souls, it was accepting a commission in the worst science fiction show - because all of them knew of eternal endurance, each had their purpose happily infected by Him - and they had been prepared in some measure for the trials of the worst.... but were being transported into a time where they were so soon to forget themselves. 

And this was the greatest enemy, as is still is today - Man forgetting himself; entering the gates of the World through birth, and forgetting. Becoming challenged and giving up and giving in, forgetting. Fumbling through and navigating not. Forgetting - this is the greatest afflicting sin of the World. This is something most difficult to prepare for and then work with. Dementia gravitas. Oh dear, my dear, the bleached membranes - where to now?

There is a saying that most times you find something in the last place you looked (because you stop looking after you find it) - but also, sometimes you find something in the very last place you would think to look, for its unlikelihood of being there. Well this was very true and most surprising.

The donkeys had it all the time. If you pat their broad flat furry snout and meet them eye-to-gentle-eye, you can feel it in their presence. They held the memory. When men forgot the times of Grace, and departed themselves and being true to their character divine, when the golden ages ceased to saturate their being, it was the donkey that lived the memory of that time.

And although it is not a working knowledge, there is a living wisdom that followed. Creatures high and low, water sod and in the dirt - beasts, birds and minnow, have the certainty living within their daily consciousness and are appeased by it, as it connects them to a spiritual design they know also.

Yes, hidden in the mountains shoulder, stirring, panting, moving in - this the collective spirit of the Kingdom of Animalia....the deepest recollections brought to currency....of where Self is placed in relation to the All.

Yes, yes, it does not bring 'peace' amongst them or continuity, or community - for that is beyond their homogeneous dissipation. However, and more important than that, this Kingdom realizes much that was then lost sorely to Man.

In a roundabout way too - if you have followed this far - our own bodies also have this consciousness which is current and self-realizing also. The 'animal' which is the body, has this sacredity that the donkey and his fellows share.

From this is a small insight as to why folk try so hard to enter into an animal/body consciousness at times, and the royalties it holds. And there are issues of and around this that in the end go nowhere. Because even though we can understand further how hard a man can press to go back into the animal, he will only come to the animal's knowledge and not that of his own. The mixing of species has never been propitious (a combination of prosperous and auspicious) and in this, the deepest aspect, more terrible than we can know. 

Man must know Man, and whilst the animal has his peace and sanctity of presence, we cannot arrive at ourselves through bestial endeavors, for this negates the very purpose by the definition of its own - namely self consciousness, self realization, self awareness, self recollection and so on.

Yes still, it is glad to know that the creatures were still intrinsic to themselves and bear the memories of the golden times past, having portals into those worlds besides - even though ourselves are dislocated from it all.

So it was and became, that the flesh of Man had to become reformed - that our Communion cup does not seek its way to the mind but to the flesh; and this is because it is there where change is needed now; and here also the only place where change can effect.

The receiving of Christ's Body into that of our own, is that way to bring our own self and higher mind into our earthly existence. We cannot piggyback the animal's bliss, or that of our animal body's life and lore - and of ourselves there is little connection into the world, our incarnating stops where it should not - but here in Communion, there is Christ Himself reconnecting the nerves, through His Body and Blood, replacing the Animal.

In Victorian times there used to be 'samplers' where ladies would do cross-stitch pictures - usually of a cottage with flowers, around which would be the alphabet and perhaps numbers. The stitches would be even, the colors bright and cheerful, and a sense of everything being in its place.

Although depthless, these pictures portrayed an infantile sense of placing and place (in a good way) that all was proper, and the image was cheerful. This sense of propriety really manifests strongly within the Animal Host - they live fixed expectations well, and do not venture outside of them.

Men by nature are contrary to this - and the nature of an animal is quite dissimilar to that of a man. This is one reason contributing to their harboring their spiritual keys so well, and also an insight as to why we cannot come to our own through them. 

Men can definitely feel closer to the spiritual through experiences with animals (or their own animal) because there is a link which is closer than they can personally achieve readily through that of their own singular consciousness within the world at present.

And second to that seeking, and equally as deleterious, becomes the combining and communing with those plants which can speak to a man of their relationship with the spiritual worlds - bringing his consciousness therefore up and into the being of the plant's commune with life and beyond.

And it is that both the plant and the animal have very strong callings and persuasions to most men and women who understandably seek out their reconnection with their own true natures and their divinity in recollection. It is no wonder that folk will go to the lower kingdoms when their own way home appears gone.

Beloved Christ we come to you

In our times of morbid Forgetfulness,

In the knowledge and great gratitude,

That You are our Life and Continuity,

Our memory and our Future,

Our Jerusalem renewed,

Our Way to the Father, and so to ourselves,

Forever and in all ways,

Amen

Suffering- 9th January 2007

WHENEVER suffering is usually addressed it is either philosophical and comparative, or requisite to the need.

Perhaps it is too difficult to contemplate the nature itself of suffering - and also the terms in which it dwells; not only here, but in the Spiritual Worlds.

Sorrowing and its suffering comes into being where a consciousness is 'at odds' with something they desperately would seek to change, but cannot. The will is strong, the mind in the matter is resolved, yet the truth of the reality refuses to comply - and this is suffering: an inner tension that struggles with the outer reality that refuses to conform to it.

In this we can sorrow for ourselves or for others, for events cannot be changed because they have come and passed. And for those we see coming, we can struggle and suffer for the largest and minutest of trials. The fighting disappointment that glares, gripes and knifes, is as the lonely warrior who will not concede that the battle's moments are in fact quite gone.

Having said that, suffering itself is born of the will and the mind-consciousness also. We can deter much of its sad poison by learning to extract back our wills and willing out from the experience.

Using our active will is painful to the soul when there is simply no plan for that willing to be directed properly with. Suffering is essentially that exact problem.... that the active will is thwarted and the individual is putting much vitality into a screaming farce.

In this you can see the two parts to Suffering now clearly - the one is the inner knowing and deciding of hardships that you personally argue with - taking on destiny, karma, the elements, death, aging, injustice, men and monsters, lost love, and all injustice; whilst the second part is the inner mustering of will which rises up to effect a change towards the better, but has nowhere profound to go. This becomes a worse aggravation and a suffering in itself - secondary suffering as it were.

Learning to pull back the will is extremely useful; not only in suffering, but in all kinds of daily situations. Whenever we advance ourselves, it always requires a propulsion of will to cut through the inertia within and without.... however, just as we breathe a good breath, we can also consciously retreat our wills and monitor the expense we so give to them. Always better not to overspend.

Internal imaging can help at first with this new discipline - it maybe of dogs on leashes drawn back, light from the hands and wrists pulled in, fire down, going to ground.

Conversely, using will in a constructive way alleviates the suffering. That is why you often see folk who have suffered much, working to bring positives into their life and investing their will in something - almost anything - which will bear fruit. It is not injurious to themselves to do so and the suffering is indeed alleviated.

To lament or to sorrow is to grieve at the deepest level. It begins to mourn the primeval injustices, the causal iniquities and the sadness of all. With this there is no strength for the will, and it appears as if the soul who grieves thusly is bereft of any sense of self thereby it - lost amongst just one eternal cry. These very sad lamentations are audible all throughout the Heavens.

Not only are these bleak remonstrations coming out of the one soul that is Humanity, but also echoed by the attending angelic and archangelic soul-mates to Man.

There are so many numerous splendors in the Heavens of rich expression - and experience for all. Yet underneath that lively hemisphere of dancing worlds is still the ineffable contrast of primeval woe.

This subject touches upon the flip flop reasoning which can be in the practice of esoteric thinking. Because having entered upon this level of the topic, we now need to press further and ask "to what good purpose can this essential sorrow prove?" and "why, when we are promised so much joy in Heaven, should there be great grief as this, as well?"

Somewhere in the halls of fakery is a place of serenity without end. Serenity that does not alter becomes inertia, and inertia is a greater death and therefore sadness, than any death by change could cause. All misery and upset, even cruelty by those who are yet to learn the consequences of those acts, is better with time, rather than committed to a ceaseless void of no change and no improvement.

To be static even in bliss, is annihilating. Life which is powered by the Holy Spirit, by this Divine Will, and is exaggerated into Creation by those inspired by Him - such Life is ever moving and seeking new forms to infill new episodes, to become and new futures to behold. And whenever change occurs - be it here or elsewhere - that change, for some, will be too early or too late and therefore struggled with.

Yet it can be said also, that there is forever a striving to improve such conditions so that these margins become less, and the general swerve of Creation moves together with a satisfied timing throughout.

Of course all periods of time do cease, and with that cessation prayers are answered. There is always a gathering in of souls where individuals are reunited and hopeful imaginings can become more possible with the new opportunities to follow.

Past sorrows are truly forgotten in the shift, and the transitional woe dissolves in the dewy morning of Eternity's herald.

The Conductors- 6th January 2007

TWELVE Spirits were born, one each day [of the Holy Nights], heralds of the months ahead, guardians of the microcosmic world.

Every year is differently characterized and every month of every new year has one shining being at the head of it - appearing out from the planetary expirations, which go to infuse their sphere with that of our own.

These great beings, the Conductors, are intermediators between this World and their own sphere of being. In light, in force, in property, in council, in dialogue and epilogue, they are working ambassadors of planetary acumen, overseeing and discharging their great wealth.

In so many respects our worldly embassies and their country's representatives have been modeled on the Conductors' charge. 

They have a region within, that is specific to their astrological league, yet travel out and permeate the rest of the world in kind. They can appear to have animal heads, and during certain periods there have been countries which have deified or mythologized their planetary chaplains. And even though year by year it is a different individual from the one preceding, they have appeared similarly, and so the stories have lived vividly for centuries in the past.

The Minotaur for example, was popular in Crete during a time when Taurus was strong in that part of the world. He was seen at festivals, he was out in the marketplace and then in the hills - he was one of the more flamboyant ambassadors.

As the year unrolls its successive play of force and frolic, there becomes in the World a cooperative patterning that manifests itself most everywhere. The ordering of these cosmic forces reintroduces to our own systems (not only geographic but biological), the ordering of all.

And this might seem simplistic, if not obvious, except for the fact that the actual beings who are responsible for this impulse month by month, are exchanged for different ambassadors after the course of one entire yearly cycle.

This is intense, because the Zodiac as a whole shifts its own bearings constantly - one step to the side in its own progressive movement. Therefore the Conductors, who by their presence help to manifest the cosmic influences into every detail within our worldly sphere, do so in a slightly altered and varied state from the previous.

Christmas

Memories & the Pearls

Once there was a very wise woman who knew the value of her memories. She treasured them so much that they were carefully kept secure in a little box tied to a silver chain, anchored in the deepest of seas. 

One day (a day like any other), this dear woman could not find her way back to her treasure box... and she became so very distressed. "What will become of me if I do not have my memories?" she wept.

Just then, three angels appeared before her: one from the past, one from the present and one from the future. In their hands were beautiful pearls, each.

The angel from the past brought the blanched white pearls of pure times.

The angel of the present bore flesh colored pearls, which shone with life itself.

The angel of the future had pearls a darker and mysterious color - for these were the memories not yet illumined by fact.

"Wear these" they said, "and remember also, we are never far away."