Dear Friends,

The Holy Order of MANS touched lives in so many ways that went completely unnoticed.  I wish to share one of these with you.  An acquaintance of mine, Larry (I’ve changed his name in respect of privacy), was diagnosed with prostate cancer a few months ago.  Larry, in the 1970’s, and 1980’s and 1990’s, worked in Northwest Portland.  Larry lived in North Portland and every day of his professional career he would walk to and from work, which was about a five mile trek each way.  When it was time for lunch, Larry would make another short walk to the Wheel of Fortune Restaurant, run by and staffed by the brothers and sisters of HOOM, where he would order a bowl of soup and a piece of bread, (I don’t believe he ever ordered anything else off the menu).

The Wheel went out of business in the 1990’s, which brought an end to his pattern, and Larry eventually retired from his job.  Larry was not a religious man but did have “spiritual” values.

I met Larry several years ago which is how I learned his story.  When he received his diagnosis he was graceful and determined to deal with it.  When I offered to pray for him and put his name on my altar, he was thankful and sent me a message which stated “when I first started eating at the Wheel I was taken aback by the clerics and the seeming religious theme of the place, but then I noticed how bright and shiny these people were, and realized that this was a spiritual place and my eating there was just one part of how I was being nourished.”

In my travels in HOOM I came across the original recipe for the famous Wheel  of Fortune herb bread which was baked fresh every day.  I made a batch of it recently and sent some over to him.  His message back to me was “I enjoyed it, and it brought back warm memories for me.”  Larry faces some tough medical issues ahead, but to offer comfort to him with a piece of bread, touched my heart and soul.  As we celebrate the harvest let us remember, “The harvest is plenty but the laborers are few. “   Please keep “Larry” in your prayers.

Donald Slakie

When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.”

-Corrie Ten Boom, Author of The Hiding Place

From Father Paul – The Christos – August 8, 1968

Tonight we’re going to discuss the Christ which many people have gotten much misled about.  The term “Christos” which has been used for thousands of years and still is by the various faiths of earth…all acknowledge the Son of God as it is spoken of originally this as being the center of Light–so does science…but there is one thing that they have not acknowledged:  this is the three different aspects of that Being, and the power flowing from it, and the nature of it.

…This is a very real, live and dynamic subject.  It is the source from which your life comes, the life force.  It is the source from which you personally are able to grow.  The plants gain their nature and their growth from it;  all the vegetation, the animals, and man.

You might ask the question if we were sun worshippers and my frank and honest answer is “Yes, we are.”  Because no Christian can be a Christian without being a sun worshipper.  Can you truly be a Christian without worshipping the Son of God?  Likewise, we find the Kabbalah where it spells out the son, both the Son and Sun.  And there is no mistake of interpretation here, because the nature of the Hebrew words would not warrant any misuse or misinterpretation.

In defining the nature of the Sun and what it can do–as long as this discussion could be kept on a theological basis strictly, you could go on with it for a long time, but when it gets down to the plain, cold, hard facts of what we have found in science, then it is necessary to start talking facts and what we have found.

We say the sun gives us light and power…It gives us ultra-violet through which we grow and the plant vegetation grows.  With the ultra-violet is carried several octaves of other force which most of the instruments of today do not yet register fully, but we have every confidence  that there is force and vibration here of a wave length in nature that we are not able to understand as yet from a technological standpoint.

We do know that which we call Chlorophyll that makes our plants green–that there is a definite return toward the sun.  The core of the Sun acts as sort of a vacuum and this keeps the chlorophyll in the atmosphere in action and it helps to purify our air and make it breathable.  Even here in San Francisco and sometimes even in Los Angeles, it gets decent.  We have not only understood it theoretically but we have photographed it and we have checked its motion, and there is a very definite flow here and it is also in a corkscrew sort of motion like a spiral.  And this goes back toward the sun.

And there is a force which comes from it which is decidedly like a carrier wave in a radio broadcast or over a telephone line…and this is distinctly another type of force.  We have not been able to fit it in a category because of its fluctuating wave length.  And many of the things which it does would not be able to be accomplished by ultra violet.  Now there is an ultra violet which we can see–or rather, we see its alchemic reactions and note that it does certain things.  It will give you a sunburn if you’re out there on the beach too long.  And it will also cause the plant to wither if the sun is too strong…along with that we find there are traces of a kind of x ray energy.  We can’t quite put our fingers on it, but it is there.  Then if we turn back to some of the ancient teachings we find that the sun was always acknowledged–and this is a rather embarrassing situation after the Christians have for so many years condemned other people for being idolaters because they worshipped the Sun….so sometimes our new children because they’re only a couple of thousand years old sort of get off the beam and don’t understand.

Why don’t they understand?  They don’t understand because they still have been worshipping something which they thought only applied to heaven and not to earth; something which they did not place any cognizance to every day in the week; something which they felt was a very nice philosophy and perhaps a very good insurance policy.  In other words, as one man said to me one time, “Well, I’m going to accept God although I’m not convinced of it.  And I’m not even convinced that it works, but it’s good insurance anyway.  If it’s right I’ll be sure to have acknowledged the Old Boy when I get there.  And if it’s wrong, well I haven’t go much to lose anyway.”  Now this has been the general attitude of a great many thousands of those who went to the Christian churches and were brought up in Christian homes, not literally from their acknowledgement but through their actions.  Because they did not carry the principles in to their daily life.  In the first place, most of them never learned how to pray.  So it is impossible for us to be vindictive of them and we wouldn’t want to anyway.  But this is the cold hard facts of the situation the way it lies..We find that the cell is always fed from the core or nucleus thereof.  And that this energy and this power comes from there…We know the atom is fed from there and we know the molecule is fed from the center in its nature of the power and force.

Therefore it is almost impossible to accept anything else but that the entire life force of this universe comes through the Sun.  Now it does carry special, particular type of vibration which has its attributes…the lack of sunshine is highly detrimental to the individual, to growth of plants and animals…

It has always been acknowledged by the ancient Teachers that there were certain steps in evolution or degrees of initiation–all of the great mystic order accept this principle which has been promoted and which many of us have experienced…The illumination is talked about not only by ourselves, by Jesus Christ and by most every avatar and every great Teacher that this world has ever known…

About two years ago I started to write something about the New Age and since I started to write it I haven’t had a chance to do anything about the New Age except bring some of the New Age kids in.  And they’ve kept me busy all the time.  I think I should have shut up and never read any of this to anybody.  Because ever since I first read this, it just seems that I’ve been busy working on it rather than writing it.  This I’m happy about.

Reading:  Jesus of Nazareth was a Christed One.  He did give over his body to the Christ Being, the aspects, the projected consciousness of that individual..It is the faith that is in the four books of the Gospel which was written in simple words.  Many great truths are written in simple terms if you can accept the immensity of God in His care of His creation.  And this is something we fail to recognize.  The  care with which the Creator laid down the laws so we couldn’t possibly get hurt unless we violated some of them…

The Christ Being was only able to plant the seed in the three years that He was here.  This is the Christed One.  this vibrational pattern was planted in the earth’s spiritual body so that it would be a part of the earth’s atmosphere and would thus affect the mass mind of all…The preparatory work which was done by Christ is evidenced in his statement in the Gospel of St. Luke, when he says that mankind must first become fully ripe for the reception of an entirely different principle in his soul growth.  Now, in this age, this day, we must remember that what we have been talking about was in the past age.  In this time due to the great physical changes taking place to and in our earth, the currents of the earth are vastly different and more powerful.  And as a result a great change is taking place in the faculties of man since the appearance of the Christ was taken on by the Master Jesus on earth…the Christ element is present now for man’s use, and he does not inherit it from his mother and father…it is present and felt now in our earth…the New Earth becoming.

It comes from the Sun…not what you see, but the spiritual Sun.  That part of the sun’s rays you do not see… Christ Jesus said “only through me shall ye see the face of the Father”  That was the Christ Being speaking..

The Christos is the Lord of the Sun.  This is the Son of God.  Jesus was a great Master who came to earth on a mission.  That mission was to salvage the earth through the action that he went through so that man might complete his evolution here.  This is what happened on Golgotha and through the resurrection and the ascension.

This is all part of the same thing of one of the initiations, except it was enacted in real life.  This is the only difference which was an all-encompassing, selfless act.  That he brought his release of error and the release of crystallization from the earth.  Released it so it could be lived on.

A man needs to say to himself “I will understand how to allow this love to flow through me.”  Then I say and will understand the words which came from Calvary, when he said “Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit…” In this opening up, what men formerly received as wisdom now takes on the nature of the soul force motivated by the Christ principle and thus gives the eternal life.

There are many quotations in the Testament and some of these are very potent and they refer directly to this particular work.  Ephesians: And to know the love of Christ which surpasseth knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.  Awake, Oh sleeper and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light…”not in the way of eye service as men’s pleasure, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart…”A crooked generation in which you shine like stars in a dark world and prefer the words of life: thus you will be my pride in the day of Christ, proves that I did not run my race in vain…”

The one thing that I want to bring out here more than anything else is that the great Lord of the Sun, the realizing of this great Being, is part and parcel of the path of Illumination.  And this will not be as difficult now as it was in the days of long ago.  Because this is the Christ Age.  This is the day of darkness which surrounds the earth in the ninth hour.  And now we are crossing the great abyss, as it is spoken of in the great initiations, which is one of the great solar initiations.  And we need this Light for our spiritual and physical protection that we may live out our cycle of life and be here when the peace shall reign for a thousand years.  Jesus said If ye abide in me and my word abides in you, ask whatsoever ye will and it shall be done unto you.  And there is no stronger statement to be found anywhere in the literature of the world, and there is no statement that receives less attention.  But those that know and use it know that it is based on the exact scientific principles, and it works.

This is not to live just a good pattern of life but to abide in these three principles of Christ.  It is to actually live in the Christ consciousness and every part of the mind and soul is permeated through and through with the life force and the fire of this Being.  You are then in a world where things are absolutely mastered by the Spirit, will, and mind, and is spiritualized and that responds perfectly to the power of the will which cometh and motivates from the Self in full action.

Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary.  Adam sinned through the disobedience of one woman; Christ Jesus cancelled out the Fall through the obedience of the woman who gave him birth.  Like Adam, Jesus was tempted, but he overcame.  It is through the work of the Christ that man is restored to the Divine Life lost through sin and error.

The perspective of time gives us an advantage concerning the life of one whose words have resounded with power and authority throughout the centuries.  He has changed countless lives and the governments of nations, but he is not responsible for the regrettable deeds perpetrated by nominal “Christians” using his banner to excuse acts of violence or hatred.  Were his teachings truly followed, peace would prevail.

He taught us, during his brief sojourn, all the laws and principles our present civilization would need in every area of life, and through his acts performed the greatest of all alchemy which transformed the earth itself.  He is our High Priest, though never joined to any sectarian priesthood.

He was a composite individual, the man Jesus living as the mortal human, while Christ was the divine immortal Spirit.  Jesus in his life reiterated a pattern of spiritual attainment which all people pass through to some degree according to the level at which they are functioning.  There is the birth as ordained by the Hierarchy and one’s previous training, the preparation for a new way, the rebirth with John the Baptist, the ministering to others, the crucifixion, death, resurrection and ascension.  What he went through physically, a spiritual aspirant would experience symbolically, in one lifetime or another.                                    -From The Story of Jesus

Rev. Mother Ruth Blighton

The ancients used the sky and the seasons’ changes as both clock and calendar.

On the Comanche National Grasslands at the very south-eastern corner of Colorado exists Crack Cave, formed when a large boulder broke away from the bluff.  Inside, numerous petroglyphs decorate dark walls.  With extremely clever artistry, the etchings illuminate by the sun only two times a year.  the entire ‘show’ lasts from eight to twelve minutes and draws awe-struck crowds.

Another significant structure is located in Chaco Canyon arid valley in New Mexico. Fajada Butte rises nearly 148 yards above the canyon floor and is known to contain a solar marking site that records the equinoxes and solstices. The structure includes three slabs and spiral petroglyphs, which cast shadows and shafts of light to indicate the cycles of both sun and moon. According to tradition, Fajada Butte is sacred ground. Probably constructed by ancient Pueblo Indians, Fajada Butte may have been the center of a complex society of pre-Columbian culture and the site of celebrations and native ceremonies.

Sacred sites abound built by American Indians, Canadian Aboriginals and Indigenous Peoples worldwide. A recent discovery of just such a site has been unearthed in Virginia, the 12,000-year-old Spout Run Paleo-Indian site in Clarke County.

The site features three concentric rings that align with the equinox sun, according to landowner Chris White. But recently he and local archeologist Jack Hranicky made another equinox-related discovery: a triangular rock formation topped by two footprint-shaped petroglyphs that appear to align with the sunrise.

“When stood on, during the equinox, the sun causes a halo effect over the person standing on the prints,” Hranicky told the Clark Daily News. “This is a new major feature.”

He said its 105-degree alignment with the autumnal equinox sun as it crosses the Blue Ridge Mountains make the 12,000-year-old site’s original inhabitants “Virginia’s first engineers,” the newspaper said.

Science of Mind: Healing Affirmations:  Colds, Influenza and Grippe

Those who calmly announce that they are “very susceptible to changes in the weather,” have accepted whole-heartedly the mental impression that the weather is a determining factor in whether or not they experience “colds.”..Mental conflict also cause confusion, and confusion may cause colds… the very life of God flows freely through you.  Every breath you breathe bespeaks your eternal alliance with Life…

A conviction that the God within sustains us now and at all times, in perfect health, will bring peace.  And we should eliminate from mind the duration, symptoms, and frequency of colds, thereby removing a pattern which we no longer wish to use.  We should consciously harmonize ourselves with everything and everyone about us–with people, the weather, with God and spiritual perfection.

In colds, congestion, influenza and grippe, the thought to heal is confusion.  There should be a consciousness of poise, a recognition of peace; when this comes into the individual’s experience, he will have fewer colds.  More colds result from damp spirits than from wet feet.  When we fear and resist the weather, we chill, not from the winds and rain, but from our own coldness of heart.  We should claim our dominion and power in Spirit.  Spirit is not subject to heat or cold.

EVENING PRAYER FOR THE MISSIONARIES

Holy Order of Mans

O Creator most high, I, the messenger of thy Lord Jesus Christ, have tried this day to bring his word to thy children.

Imperfect as I am, I beseech Thee to absolve me of my errors and misgivings so that the Light of Thy first born Son may radiate to this entire community through me.

I ask Thee, O Master Jesus, for Thy personal guidance and wisdom that I may be a better servant on this day to come.

I accept of Thee a perfect body–every organ perfect, every function perfect, every process perfect, if it pleases Thee.

It is done.

I give myself unto Thee that I may rest in peace and rise to go forth in full vigor in Thy service on the morrow.

I AM

You are of the water.  Seek Me to dry thy waters,

For I am the Fire of thy waters, to make thee whole.

I am the snow sliding down the mountain when the sun begins to shine.

I am the stream of water rushing as it melts.

I am the brooding stillness over the mountain peaks,

I am that calm in the midst of a storm.

I am the face above the mountain top when the stars have ceased to shine.

I am the Life which bursts all bonds, embracing thee and passing on,

Leaving My eternal Life in thee, that where I am henceforth thou also art.

Leaving my eternal life in thee,

That where I Am henceforth thou also art.

When you go beyond the Light, there God is.

                     Resh am I, the Countenance and Head

                      Which brings to you the glory of the Sun

                     And melts away all darkness with the Light

Dear Friends,

The entire physical world is an indivisible, coherent, and homogenous entity which symbolizes the Creator of it all.

We are reminded daily that we are on a solar journey through this field of vision; weaving a complex tapestry with our fellow humans; each strand of the web important to the whole. As confused as we sometimes become,  the sun shines throughout this weaving continually, bringing us the Summer Solstice yet again.

The beauty of forests, flowers, and animals engaged in productive activity; the magnificent processes of life unfolding beneath our feet in the natural world, is both inspiring and humbling..  As with the magnificent sunflower, the humble dandelion with its bright yellow petals and web of fine tendrils reflect the beauty of our sun and its infinite possibilities.

Our continual reminders of the benevolence of the universe brings comfort in troubled times–and  a focus upon things that matter and the ability to each day find activity that will bring Light to someone, offer Love to a brother in need, and give Life to the things we value above all else–compassion to all sentient beings.

.  We live in a vast ocean of radiant activity– our contribution to this cosmic sea can be profound, as long as our will to good overrides all other motivations, and we remain aligned with our Life’s mission as we accepted it before our present earth life began.

The Great Being of the Christos shines above and throughout our universe, and our Lord Jesus Christ and our Mother Mary stand as channels of this great Light to keep all of us on the path.  I’m reminded now to look to the helpers; they give us continual messages of profound Hope.   We just have to look.

May our inner Sun shine upon all activities and communications!

                                    In Christ’s Light, Live & Love,

Rev. Mary Anderson

.“To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of years, to see the running of the old eels and the young shad to the sea, is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be”  -Rachel Carson

From Father Paul – Jesus Christ and Redemption – April 7 1970

I’m going to talk tonight about Jesus Christ and the redemption of the universe.  We went into a little of the reality of the Master last night and I want to go a little further, because I think we should learn to look at the works of the Master as more of a reality rather than a historical situation.  We can find many books of the historical side of Jesus’ life and they’re very interesting and very intriguing and very informative.  It places us in the picture of the times, but we fail to get from these sorts of things the true realities of what really took place on Calvary and also what is taking place now.

And here of course again, is one of the common mistakes of the Christian faith in general–that we celebrate those events of the past which of course are truly great; but from a universal standpoint, take place in our life every day, everyone of us.  We miss the true realities which are very little spoken about.

Redemption is something that is not spoken about so much and which really isn’t much understood. It’s one of those things which we look to as “well, it happened and I got the grace from it, so I guess I won’t have to worry about that one any longer.”  But we forget that there is no such thing as time in the reality of this universe, and so we miss the perpetual re-enactment of the redemption which is something going on all the time.

Reading: “The indwelling spirit that Jesus Christ sends us not only imparts to our souls the ontological life of God through grace, but he exerts his influence on our bodies as well.  And if the spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, then He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also bring to life our mortal bodies because of his spirit who dwells within you…Christ’s dominion over the whole universe is pictured most clearly in Paul’s later epistles, those written in captivity, especially Colossians and Ephesians…
I want to go over one thing and ask one or two questions here.  How could man and his error, or sin, or whatever you want to call it, and his lack of taking hold of his destiny affect the animal kingdom?  Anybody have any answers on this?  Student:  “Man’s vibration would affect everyone and everything that was around it.”

Father Paul:  That’s right.  In other words, it’s a pretty good bet that the reason we have such persistent visitors here in this atmosphere is because we’re not behaving ourselves and keeping things straight and they want to make sure that they are kept straight in some way or other, so’s not to affect their planet and their life.  You see what I’m talking about?  That if we change the influences on this planet, we’ve changed the influences on the whole Solar System.  Because the relation, our relation to the Sun, the First Born, and its polar attraction to it affects all the other planets, because they have a definite electro-magnetic relation and spiritual relation to us–and this definitely changes the relationship of all of the planets and the people as a whole. Let any one of these planets become extinct of people, and we would have a radical change in the rest of this solar system or in the Body of God.

It is so hard for us to get down to the cold reality of the fact that what many of the things that Jesus was talking about, as far as redemption was concerned, are definitely very real and not something up here in the seventh heaven.  Our playing around with atomic bombs and one thing or another–sure they are terrifically small in comparison to the size of the earth but there is a definite field relationship between ourselves and the sun, and the other planets.

Now this doesn’t change for one minute the tremendous feeling and potential of what the Master did.  Because we bring something down to cold hard science doesn’t belittle the greatness of this man or any man or any Teacher or God Himself, because we have a scientific reason for it.  For it seems to be the general contention of most teachers that as quick as you have a reason for something and it is proven to be scientifically accurate and correct and you put it in this category, it is no longer part of your religion and faith.  And they seem to feel that your faith and knowing; the beauty of it is cut off and that you have lost something if you have broken open a mystery.  To me, it is absolutely the opposite.  Because to me to see God in action and see what our Lord has done for us here and see how precisely it works, how precisely these things and orbs function, gives to me a greater joy, a greater confidence, and greater faith in God and in our Lord Jesus Christ, because I see it works.  And it works right along every day without having to be wound up each day…

[reading from Colossians]: By sending his son in the likeness of sinful flesh as a sin offering, he has condemned sin in the flesh.  Christ condemned sin in the flesh through his death and resurrection, whereby he passed gloriously from the state of flesh–‘sarx’–to that of spirit: ‘pneuma.’  Confined to his flesh body Christ was not able to share his divine life with other men.  After his glorious resurrection he, the last Adam, because a spirit imparting life.  The first representing man failed to resist sin; the second Adam would be man in the fullest sense by triumph over sin, destroying death and its sting, and bringing all men at least the possibility of leaving their carnal conditions and estrangements from God in order to put on the spirit of light in God.”

Here is where we speak of the removal of the carnal sin though the absolution from the priest, of course.  The point is that this is all a very distinct and an orderly path.  But we have gotten to the point as in…well, Christian Science is one, and then the religious science is another:  they have utilized the Law as a foundation of a faith, and it becomes very, very mechanical, very mechanical.  So much that they lose the opportunity of the grace and the beauty of this, the seeing of it, and the appreciation and the joy of it, so that they have lost the zest of the Spirit, you see, because of their mechanical actions and approach to the Laws of God and Jesus Christ.  Quite true, it is very definitely orderly, quite definitely there and quite definitely it will function so and so.  But though it does function so and so, that should not take away from you the fact that this was done by love and sacrifice, that was ordained and set up, and it was not an accidental happening.  It was a definite gift.  And this is taken care of in the actions, as far as the Law is concerned, but people get cold so that they don’t react to these things in what the yogi would call bhakti yoga…

On the universal level Jesus is saying that he came here as Lord of Earth and he is making corrections to the earth’s atmosphere, to the earth’s magnetic fields, to the amount of the pure sunlight that he’s able to let in, so as to bring us back into balance.  This is redemption because it makes it possible for man to go on living and get his experience and his joy out of life.  (Now, this is not the atonement)  This isn’t forgiving the past sin.  Atonement is those things of the past; this redemption is an existing thing now, a redeeming of the physical being into the spiritual reality and into the spiritual heaven world–rebirth, being born again.

Student:  “Is it a restoration?”  F.P.  Yes.  Student:  This the remission?  F.P.”yes, it’s there, but this is a worldly thing now.  This is the world itself we’re talking about.  This is universal…

It’s pretty hard to get hold of this.  This is why I keep dwelling on it.  Because as soon as you can hold this idea of the universal things and their function, then you can open up and get away from your littleness.  Because you can see your extreme smallness in its greatness; you see?  The is the answer of redemption; bringing man into his own greater reality.  And thus, the power and the force brings on the regeneration and you become what you should be–a spiritual being.  The flesh becomes of the Light.  It says in Revelations that the sun shall be needed no more, for there will be internal Light on the earth.  That’s what they’re talking about…the steps toward it anyway….what the people think and what the people do and bring into reality is going to determine what the influence of the planet is and what and this is what the Master has brought to a head, you might say, because we’re coming into a New Age…

            Solar Eclipse: There is no more awe-inspiring event in nature than the majesty of a total solar eclipse. In those brief enchanting minutes, the natural becomes the supernatural. Day shifts to night, the temperature dramatically drops and stars magically glow in a rapidly darkened sky. The ancients marveled at this miracle of the Sun being swallowed in the heavens. Its mystery and appeal are timeless.                                                                   Some are calling 2017 the year of the great American eclipse. On August 21 at 18.30 UT (Universal Time), a total solar eclipse will move right across the US, from west to east. It will attract as much publicity as the great eclipse of August 1999, which it is related to. Earlier in the year, on February 26 at 14.58 UT, an annular solar eclipse, when the Moon moves across the Sun yet the rim of the solar disk is still visible, will cross the southern tips of South America and move into central Africa.                                                                                         Historically, the recording of eclipses is a cross cultural phenomenon. Such is recorded in the annals of Chinese astronomers, who kept meticulous records dating back to 2400BCE. The Sun represented the emperor and the earliest Chinese word for an eclipse was shih, meaning to eat or consume. The Sun being devoured by Rahu, the famed dragon’s head of Hindu mythology, or the Sun Dogs of Viking and Korean legends, are part of cultural eclipse traditions                 By the 6th century BCE, Chaldean astrologers had perfected a method of identifying the precise eclipse path. It involved identifying specific families of eclipses, which began at either the North or South Pole and gradually made their way toward the opposite pole as they traversed the globe in a longer 1000-plus-year cycle. Each successive eclipse in a particular family occurred 18 years, 11 days and eight hours apart, and was part of a numbered series called the Saros cycle.        The August 21, 2017, solar eclipse is associated with Saros series number 145. This extremely important family of eclipses started in 1639, but this family didn’t produce a total eclipse until 1927. Since then, each one has been associated with breakthroughs in aeronautics, television and satellite communications and the political division known as the Cold War. …The August eclipse will be the first to go coast to coast across the U.S. since 1918.                  Location is essential for viewing the totality of a solar eclipse, which occurs in a relatively narrow path or band approximately 100 kilometres wide. Cities such as Idaho Falls, Lincoln, Nashville, Columbia and Charleston will all experience eclipse totality on August 21, 2017, with Kansas City and St Louis at the edge…. Depending on where along this pathway you are, the moon will cover the entire sun for up to 2 minutes and 40 seconds.                                                                     The path begins in Oregon and crosses through portions of Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina before ending in South Carolina. This August 21 eclipse occurs near the fixed star Regulus, one of the four royal ancient stars of Persia.    The fall of important leaders or statesmen must be factored in with this star near the eclipse.

Buddhist nuns from the Drukpa lineage pictured in Ladakh during their cycle across the Himalayas to raise awareness about human trafficking of girls and women in the impoverished villages in Nepal and India August 30, 2016. REUTERS/Live To Love International/Handout via REUTERS

Buddhist Nuns on Bicycle Treks

Clad in black sweatpants, red jackets and white helmets, the hundreds of cyclists pedaling the treacherously steep, narrow mountain passes to India from Nepal could be mistaken for a Himalayan version of the Tour de France.         The similarity, however, ends there. This journey is longer and tougher, the prize has no financial value or global recognition and the participants are not professional cyclists but Buddhist nuns from India, Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet.                                                      Five hundred nuns from the Buddhist sect known as the Drukpa Order, on Saturday complete a 4,000-km (2,485 mile) bicycle trek from Nepal’s Kathmandu to the northern city of Leh in India to raise awareness about human trafficking in the remote region.                                                                          “When we were doing relief work in Nepal after the earthquakes last year, we heard how girls from poor families were being sold because their parents could not afford to keep them anymore,” 22-year-old nun Jigme Konchok Lhamo ….South Asia may boast women leaders and be home to cultures that revere motherhood and worship female deities, but many girls and women live with the threat of violence and without many basic rights.                                                                From honor killings in Pakistan to feticide in India and child marriage in Nepal, women face a barrage of threats, although growing awareness, better laws and economic empowerment are bringing a slow change in attitudes…The bicycle trek, from Nepal into India, is nothing new for the Drukpa nuns.   This is the fourth such journey they have made, meeting local people, government officials and religious leaders to spread messages of gender equality, peaceful co-existence and respect for the environment.   They also deliver food to the poor, help villagers get medical care and are dubbed the “Kung Fu nuns” due to their training in martial arts.                  Led by the Gyalwang Drukpa, head of the Drukpa Order, the nuns raise eyebrows, especially among Buddhists for their unorthodox activities.”Traditionally Buddhist nuns are treated very differently from monks. They cook and clean and are not allowed to exercise. But his Holiness thought this was nonsense and decided to buck the trend,” said Carrie Lee, president of Live to Love International, a charity which works with the Drukpa nuns to support marginalized Himalayan communities.”Among other things, he gave them leadership roles and even introduced Kung Fu classes for the nuns after they faced harassment and violence from monks who were disturbed by the growing shift of power dynamics,” she said.Over the last 12 years, the number of Drukpa nuns has grown to 500 from 30, said Lee, largely due to the progressive attitudes of the 53-year-old Gyalwang Drukpa, who was inspired by his mother to become an advocate for gender equality.

Twin earthquakes that struck Nepal in April and May 2015, which killed almost 9,000 people, left hundreds of thousands of families homeless and many without any means of income, led to an increase in children and women being trafficked.
More than 40,000 children lost their parents, were injured or were placed in precarious situations following the disaster, according to Nepali officials.
The Drukpa nuns said the earthquakes were a turning point in their understanding of human trafficking and that they felt a need to do more than travel to disaster-hit mountain villages with rice on their backs.
“People think that because we are nuns, we are supposed to stay in the temples and pray all the time. But praying is not enough,” said Jigme Konchok Lhamo.
“His Holiness teaches us that we have go out and act on the words that we pray. After all, actions speak louder than words,” she said.
(Reporting by Nita Bhalla, Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst. Thomson Reuters FoundationVisit news.trust.org)

The Last Barrier – Parable of the Olives

…”Listen, for God’s sake.  You are here to learn, so go and clean out your ears and stay awake.  Any story that I can tell you can be understood on many levels.  If you were just on the level to hear how to make good olives, that is one thing; but you should be able to go beyond that, and anyway I would not have told the story unless I knew that you could understand.  Now listen carefully.

The salt that preserved the olives in their sacks is the conditioning of your life.  It must be washed away before any true work can be done.  In order to obtain the best results, you must choose the best olives, of the finest quality.  The olives may be seen as the many aspects of yourself; or, each olive could be said to be one person who is potentially useful to the Work. They say that ‘many are called but few are chosen.’  The jar, which must be carefully cleaned in all ways, is either your body or the space occupied by you or the group.  Water takes on the color of the vessel that contains it, and we want this water to be as clear as a mountain stream.  That is why ritual washing is so important….

The olives are very delicate after the cleaning away of the preservatives so they are place into a jar carefully and with loving kindness and of course, awareness.  Next comes the boiling water.  That is the first baptism, the baptism with water.  It is a total immersion which is, in one sense, in the relative world, very painful.  You must understand that this path requires conscious suffering.  Remember that the rose bush can produce a perfect rose only through correct pruning.  The pruning may hurt the plant temporarily, but if the plant were able to understand the necessity, then it would be filled with joy each time the gardener came with the knife.  If we enter this path, then we must recognize the necessity of the suffering.

The water is left in the jar only long enough for the olives to swell.   The skin must not break, for if one olive spoils, the others will be ruined.  The cook must know how long the water should remain in the jar, and at what temperature.

Now the cook adds lemon and mint.  Such a good blend of flavors!  You should try it with roast lamb–delicious!  It is a perfect blend of acid and alkaline, positive and negative, yin and yang.  With the final addition of olive oil, the olives come into balance.  The last part of the operation is the second baptism.  It is the baptism of the Spirit, the essence of the olives themselves.  This is alchemy, you see, and it is a great riddle.  You must add something to the melting pot, the cauldron, that is the very essence of what you are cooking.  Then you screw the lid on tight, and leave it for forty days and forty nights, the length of time necessary for certain aspects of the creative process to take place.  At the end of that time everything should be in balance and blended nicely together.  The lemon and mint will have blended with the olive oil, and the flavors of the flesh of the olives and the oil, mixed with the other ingredients, will have become as one.  The cycle is complete, and everything is returned to its source.

Then he smiled at me, acknowledging my amazement. You see, it is necessary to look beyond the appearance of things.  There are indeed some real cooks in the world and, if you could eat the food that they have prepared, you would receive all that is necessary for the growth of the un-awakened man who sees with the eyes of the universe and hears with the ears of the winds and touches with the hands of God.

“In normal life we hardly realize how much more we receive than we give, and life cannot be rich without such gratitude. It is so easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements compared with what we owe to the help of others.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

HUMILITY

Sometimes we must admit to knowing nothing.  We may think and conjecture about great Truths, and admit to having been shown certain glimpses.  But unless this is given from above, we must take care not to strongly state our opinions or momentary insights as though they were The One Truth, lest we be guilty of misleading someone.

~~

Humility is different for everyone. For some it means sitting in a corner and keeping quiet; for others (who prefer to sit in a corner) it means standing up to be heard, even though the experience may be humiliating in the extreme.

~~ Father Paul said, you’ll never get anywhere until you can look an ant in the eye.

-from Pondering R. Mother Ruth Blighton

Easter, A New Beginning

Over the past year or so I have had the time to study some history. Ancient Egypt really caught my attention essentially because there is so much evidence that has survived the ravages of time, and that evidence is profound. Aside from the question of how they moved and quarried 100,000 ton blocks of granite and aligned these megalithic sites astronomically with a precision that rivals todays abilities, are the questions of why would they go to such an effort and how did groups of primitive hunter gatherers demonstrate  such a high degree of skill and knowledge  to achieve such monumental tasks . These are some of the questions confronting modern day Egyptologists of which they have no sensible answer and are in almost complete denial of the fact that there is a remarkable living message embedded in these sites speaking to us today. What we have In fact found in Egypt seems to have been an entire nation founded on the precept of “Man Know Thyself”. One great Mystery school laying a spiritual foundation that lives on in the sacred sciences and chambers of initiation.  Just compare that to what the focus is in the world today with our mindless video games, heavy metal bands and quest after things.

Modern day archeologists and anthropologists see man and civilization as developing and evolving very slowly over millions of years from primitive life forms into what we are today. Most modern day academics date modern man to not much beyond five or six thousand years ago. Recent discoveries however are blowing this pyridine into oblivion.  Human remains dating back 200,000 years have been unearthed that are not unlike modern man, along with magnificent cave art  dating back tens of thousands of years, revealing a greatly expanded time line for modern humanity. And then came the great Flood. It should be noted that there are over 300 flood myths across the globe. A few bold and brilliant geologists are now validating mounting evidence showing that a great global cataclysm did indeed occur around ten to twelve thousand years ago at the end of the last great ice age. Some cosmic event it is believed instigated unprecedented rapid melting of the massive icecaps. This hypothesis  is now gaining scientific credence. Miraculously following this great cataclysmic event we find the emergence of massive construction projects of megalithic temple sites emerging all over the planet, almost overnight in geological time; the greatest of which are in Egypt, all of which were constructed with near perfect  astronomical alignments and a skill unmatchable by today’s standards.

One thing is very clear: and that is alignments, solstices, equinoxes and precession were extremely important to the grand architects of the temples. Their knowledge of high mathematics and cosmic cycles embedded in their temples is remarkable and undeniable, to say the least. Wisdom literally  written in the rocks of time. So what is the source of this knowledge and wisdom? Mythology tells us of a great teacher known as Thoth to the ancient Egyptians and Hermes to the ancient Greeks. Legend tells us that Hermes Trismegistus or Thoth was the Father of all the sacred sciences including astrology, alchemy, geometry, writing, ect;  and was the guide of the soul through the afterlife. He is also said to be the author of the Emerald Tablets, a profound treasure of mystic knowledge. He was a Teacher of Teachers. From this tradition do we find the emergence of a glorious nation, and the home and birthplace of the great mystery schools and temples of initiation.

It is believed that out of this great tradition, as this high civilization drifted into chaos, there emerged a great spiritual community whose mission it was to prepare the way for the coming Messiah. They were called the “Essenes”.  From the EssenneSpirit newsletter we have this.

“The Essenes considered themselves to be a separate people–not because of external signs like skin color, hair color, etc., but because of the illumination of their inner life and their knowledge of the hidden mysteries of nature unknown to other men. They considered themselves to be also a group of people at the center of all peoples–because everyone could become part of it, as soon as they had successfully passed the selective tests.

They thought, and rightly so, that they were the heirs of God’s sons and daughters of old, the heirs to their great ancient civilization. They possessed their advanced knowledge and worked assiduously in secret for the triumph of the light over the darkness of the human mind.

They felt that they had been entrusted with a mission, which would turn out to be the founding of Christianity and of western civilization. They were supported in this effort by highly evolved beings who directed the brotherhood. They were true saints, Masters of wisdom, hierophants of the ancient arts of mastery.

 They were not limited to a single religion, but studied all of them in order to extract the great scientific principles. They considered each religion to be a different stage of a single revelation. They accorded great importance to the teachings of the ancient Chaldeans, of Zoroaster, of Hermes Trismegiste, to the secret instructions of Moses and of one of the founding Masters of their order who had transmitted techniques similar to those of Buddhism, as well as to the revelation of Enoch.

They possessed a living science of all of these revelations.”

It is from within this great spiritual community that we find the young Jesus preparing for his mission, A mission that would literally transformed the Earth itself.

As this most sacred and glorious Orb transits through the cosmos, we are beckoned to resonate with our Mother earth and participate in the mysteries of our Lord Jesus as he leads us through the Crucifixion, resurrection and Ascension, that revivifies the Soul and transforms the Earth itself. I feel so Blessed to be part of this great cosmic process.   Happy Easter.                    -Rev. James Kalstad

…

Excerpt from class by Father Paul, 3/16/74

…We are only interested in what power is moved, only, because we know that only through that can man be prepared to know God and the Lord Jesus Christ.  I have tried many times to relate this to students, and I’ve got through to a few of them and they have sat back gasping sometimes, when we’d analyze certain things because they have never, even though they have been here three or four years, really never learned even what the commandments were, because they had “read the commandments, I assure you”.  They had learned by heart the commandments but they didn’t hear them.  They didn’t really know what they said, because you don’t know what a thing says until you know what it does.  If you don’t know that, you don’t know anything.

And this is one of the big blocks that many of the students have, at times, because they try to absorb something else that’s way beyond them, and what happens?  They’re stopped, right there; and there’s a block in their way.  And here they come trying to learn something that’s down on the lower level and here’s the block they’re trying to climb.  Until they learn what’s on that lower level, and you might say, put a foundation under themselves, they aren’t going to reach up.

You see, some people say to me, “Oh, well, aren’t you kind of afraid somebody will steal these teachings?”  Ha!  There’s no place safer than down at the corner, to keep a secret.  All you’ve got to do is just broadcast something.  It’s all forgotten about right away.  Nobody will ever remember it.  It’s perfectly safe for a long, long time.  But if you want somebody to learn something, put it on a piece of paper and put it down beneath the concrete blocks someplace and, boy, how they’ll dig.  And that was a system – it may sound comical, it does – but that was a system that was used, and that was why things were so mysteriously put.  That was the reason why they didn’t put things out in plain English, or whatever the language.  They knew that if they revealed them simply, they’d never learn.  They’d never be interested in even reading them.  That’s why many things here are a complete blockage to the student, because they are simple.  They’re written right out there in plain, simple English.

Now if you really want to know, and I’ve had many students come in and say, “Father, I try at the altar.  I want to know Jesus.”  You know, that’s the same deal.  There’s nothing, there is no “way”; you either want to know him or you don’t, that’s all.  If you want to know this young gentleman over here, you go up to him and ask him what his name is, and shake hands.  Go ahead.  The same thing with Jesus.  All you’ve got to do is call for him.  You can’t expect that he’s going to be there waiting for the last ten centuries, you know.

Now it’s literally silly, but it’s part and it shows and it proves you haven’t got it yet.  You haven’t got it yet because you haven’t learned; you’re still mass-minded and you don’t want to learn.  …Now, I mean it.  You’re just  not going to be priests and brothers if you don’t see the Master and don’t get next to him; that’s all there is to it, and there’s no excuse.  There’s no excuse, because all you’ve got to do is want him and go for him; you’ll get him.  But you’re going to bend your egos, that’s for sure.  And the reason you don’t get him is because you’ve meddled with all kinds of teachings, and that’s what happened when the order first started.  I’d have somebody come in and, “Well, is it all right to read this book?  Is it all right to read this book?”

I said one simple thing:  “There’s nothing wrong with the book; it’s just wrong with you because you’re not ready to read it.”  If you leave them alone, later on, why then, if you want to read them, all right.  And they never came back.  They weren’t interested after they’d gotten involved.  Why?  Because they’d already learned that and a lot more, you know?  A lot more.

What we’re saying is you cannot beat or short-cut Nature.  You can’t beat God and His Creation.  There are no shortcuts so don’t try to find them.  If you do this you will find that day by day by day you will learn.  And your realization of Creation and God will flower right out with the days passing.  But if you don’t have the realization of what you have heard, then you are not going to make it the rest of the way.  There’s going to be a block, because you have got to have a foundation under you or you won’t be able to reach the level on which those words are written.

“For unto those who carry my Word shall all things be opened to in this day and in this way.”  You know, that is a definite promise, so why don’t we learn, gain a realization of what we are – the place we are living in?  Many, many people – people not just those in the order, but outside also – are there and are in total darkness, after studying for years, because they haven’t gotten the realization, that’s all, and they can’t get that realization until they have also absorbed, little by little, and really seen how Nature is functioning.  Because if it isn’t functioning it isn’t living, and it has to live in order to be of any account to us.

I’m going to read one little statement here, which I think should be a motto of ours, really:

“For wherever the Sun and the Moon rises, there am I also on this earth”; and the Holy Order of Mans, both.

Eight Teachings from the Torah on Immigrants

You shall not wrong nor oppress a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. (Exodus 22:20)
You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt. (Exodus 23:9)
You shall not pick your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger; I the Eternal am your God. (Leviticus 19:10)
When strangers reside with you in your land, you shall not wrong them. The strangers who reside with you shall be to you as your citizens; you shall love each one as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt; I the Eternal am your God. (Leviticus 19:33-34)
You too must befriend (love) the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. (Deuteronomy 10:19)
You shall not abhor an Edomite, for such is your kin. You shall not abhor an Egyptian, for you were a stranger in that land. (Deuteronomy 23:8)
You shall not subvert the rights of the stranger or the fatherless; you shall not take a widow’s garment in pawn. Remember that you were a slave in Egypt and that your Eternal God redeemed you there; therefore do I enjoin you to observe this commandment. (Deuteronomy 24:17-18)
Cursed be the one who subverts the rights of the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow. And all the people shall say, Amen. (Deuteronomy 27:19)

Matthew 25:31-46 – “…I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

Whenever you advise a ruler in the way of Tao,

Counsel him not to use force to conquer the universe,

For this would only cause resistance.

Thorn bushes spring up wherever an army has passed.

Lean years follow in the wake of a great war.

Just do what needs to be done.

Never take advantage of power.

                     Achieve results,

But never glory in them.

Achieve results,

But never boast.

Achieve results,

But never be proud.

Achieve results,

Because this is the natural way.

Achieve results,

But not through violence.

Lao Tzu – 500 B.C.E.

But lo, Thou requirest truth in the inward parts: and shalt make me to understand wisdom secretly.” ~ Gregorio Allegri

Writing down ‘Miserere’ by Italian composer Gregorio Allegri, was punishable by excommunication, but 14 year old Mozart committed it to memory…

Miserere, by Italian composer Gregorio Allegri (1582-1652), is a setting of Psalm 51 composed during the reign of Pope Urban VIII, probably during the 1630s, for  use in the Sistine Chapel during matins as part of the exclusive Tenebrae service on Wednesday and Friday of Holy Week. It was the last of twelve misereres composed and chanted at the service since 1514, and the most popular. The Vatican wanted to preserve the music’s reputation for mystery and inaccessibility so it was forbidden to be transcribed and was only performed at those particular services. Writing it down or performing it elsewhere was punishable by excommunication.

According to a popular story (backed up by family letters), the fourteen-year-old Mozart was visiting Rome when he first heard the piece during the Wednesday service. Later that day, he wrote it down entirely from memory, returning to the Chapel that Friday to make minor corrections. Some time during his travels, he met the British historian Dr Charles Burney, who obtained the piece from him and took it to London, where it was published in 1771. Mozart was summoned to Rome, but instead of excommunicating the boy, the Pope showered him with praise for his feat of musical genius and the ban was lifted.

MARY

The Lenten meditation, “O Glorious Father, reveal within me the mystery of our holy Mother Mary”, leads to the thought that Mary is not just “our” mother.  She is the mother of Christianity, through her bearing of him who brought Christ into the world.  Jesus couldn’t appear in a physical vehicle until one such as Mary came first, worthy to provide the pure medium needed to nurture the holy Child.

But Mary represents more than the vehicle for a divine incarnation two thousand years ago.  The spirit of the divine Mother is also that which nurtures the Christ child born within each person when the soul has attained to a certain level of realization.

~~

“O Glorious Father, reveal within me the mystery of our holy Mother Mary.”  Is this the Spirit which receives and nurtures the seed of the coming Christ?

~~

“O thou great Master Jesus, channel of Light.”

Mary provided the physical vehicle for that channel of Light.  She was the means of bridging the gap between God and humanity through bringing us the Master Jesus, and he became the bridge between heaven and earth, as our direct means of contact with the heavenly Father.

~~

Mary’s fiat was her acceptance of the mission to act as a channel for the Light to come into the world.  She must have agreed to this in the heaven world before coming to earth, and to have accepted there the role for which she had been well-prepared.

~~

Her response at the Annunciation seems to reveal that such an attitude must be achieved before the Christ can be born in any individual.  The trusting acceptance and humility that says simply, “Here I am Lord, ready to do Thy Will.”

We must first attain a state of consciousness similar to that of the Virgin Mary before we can enter into the spirit of the Christ.  Thus is the Son born of the mother.                                                                                                                      ~~

My soul glorifies the Lord
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has been mindful
of the humble state of his servant.
for the Mighty One has done great things for me –
holy is his name.
His mercy extends to those who fear him,
from generation to generation.
He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
remembering to be merciful
to Abraham and his descendants forever,
just as he promised our ancestors.

THE RESURRECTION

(The Story of Jesus)

[brief excerpts]

Spiritual realities cannot be proven by physical facts; one dimension cannot account for another.  The essential importance is found less in outward details than in the unseen current which flows through them.

It probably makes little difference now on what day of the week Jesus was really crucified, except in trying to be accurate in observance of holy days.  Some say the crucifixion could not have been held on a Friday, because the Lord had clearly prophesied that he would be three days and three nights in the earth before rising again, and from Friday before sundown until Sunday at sunrise would have given him only two nights and one day in the tomb.

Possibly the first day of Unleavened Bread referred to in the Testament occurred during the week, for it was called a “high Sabbath,” (not necessarily Saturday).  It was clearly stated that Jesus rose on Sunday, “the first day of the week”.  It seems fitting that the day kept holy to the Lord of Light was changed from Saturn’s day to the Sun’s day.

It is fitting too that Easter should be celebrated in the spring, at the season when the whole earth renews herself after the apparent “death” of winter.  In his resurrection, the Lord was demonstrating that mankind, and not Jesus alone, has dominion over himself, over nature, and at last over even the mysterious doorway called death, so fearful when seen from only one side, though it can swing both ways.

Jesus had walked in the desert forty days before beginning his ministry, and he again passed forty days among the disciples before ascending on high.  Our Lenten period is a copy of this, being comprised of forty days, or literally forty-six, with the intervening Sundays being exempted….

Paul did not mention any women in the Lord’s appearances, but has stated in I Corinthians 15 that, “. . .Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that

he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.  Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren all at one time . . . then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.”

(Certain rumors have claimed that he afterward appeared in other lands where under different names he taught the people.)

Paul continues:  “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain – your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins.  If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied.  But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead.  For as by a man came death, so by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.  For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.  But each in his own order – Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.”

Through Jesus’ giving of himself man can now fully associate with God without interference, for he removed the veil which had existed between the Deity and man.

The very fact that some sought to destroy Him created a stronger image of Him through their negation.  Because, as Father Paul has said, when a negative power is spent, when it has spent itself, there comes out of it a more positive power than before.

Opening Letter:

“Out on the edge of darkness there rides a peace train.”

As we come into the Winter Solstice and the Christmas observance, the powerful experience of radiant darkness enters once again into the earth and into our physical bodies, or as much as much Light as we are willing and able to carry.

Our story of the birth of Jesus has become so sentimental and ornamented, and much of this is quite beautiful–but the stark reality of the story is that the parents were forced to register even in the late stages of Mary’s pregnancy, traveling through rough terrain where many robbers waylaid such strangers.  Walking and riding on the back of a donkey, Mary found no place to give birth when they arrived in Bethlehem except a primitive cave used as a stable.

Soon after the birth of Jesus, the family was in grave danger and had to flee to Egypt to escape the murderous ruler who called for the slaughter of innocents to protect his reign from the Messiah, which imminent birth his astrologers foretold.

And yet, Jesus the Christ was born into a stable environment — and this Light was protected, as His parents were initiates who listened and heeded the voice of the Spirit.

Times have always been hard when it comes to the Light of the world. 

In modern times, we’ve been told by our Master that “the New Age is being born under your feet” and this is happening despite the efforts of the worldly mind to kill it and continue the old ways and old days of clinging to power by any means.

Now I’ve been smiling lately, thinking about the good things to come
And I believe it could be, something good has begun

Now come and join the living, it’s not so far from you
And it’s getting nearer, soon it will all be true

Now I’ve been crying lately, thinking about the world as it is
Why must we go on hating, why can’t we live in bliss

Cause out on the edge of darkness, there rides a peace train
Oh peace train take this country, come take me home again*

-Rev. Mary Anderson

*Yusuf Islam

The Middle Path–  Love:

“When you reach the place where you can begin to understand Jesus, when you can listen to him and feel his presence, then you can really begin to understand what love is, because you will know what it is, that it isn’t this sort of thing that most people are talking about.  No, it is the kind that, when it is felt, sets you into action.  You’re ready to get going and do something about it, not sit there and go ga-ga.  That’s not love; that’s just laziness, plain and simple.  Because the moment you have it, you cut off everything around you and become lazy.  Now just think about it.

In 2 John 6, he writes:  ‘This is love, that we walk after His commandments.’

And this is the kind of love that expects nothing in return.  It is the kind of love that gives without expecting, and it is the tough kind of love to attain, because you know the truth, that you can’t give without getting.  But if you can obliterate the last part of that and really give without really expecting anything back, honestly, then you will know true love.  This is the love that gives and says and does because it is right.  It is truth and it is real.

You love nature, and you love the Master, surely you do, but you’re here to love the people with all their perfections and imperfections.   Don’t leave out the perfections!  And this is what you do, very often.  You leave out the perfections and look at the imperfections.  But see the perfections in that person.  Sometimes you have to look awfully hard, but they’re there; and you’re giving that person comfort.  That’s what we’re here for.  That’s what I’m here to teach you for, until a greater Teacher comes.  That’s what you must learn to do, because if you dwell only on the imperfections, that is the only thing that will have life.  And this is not what we want.  The first message that any child understands is the love that is given, and he gives his love back.”

Ring!!!  [click]  Christmas Calling…”Who do you wish to speak to?”  YOU…”Yes?”  I WONDERED IF YOU WERE COMING?            “Coming?  Where?  Who is this?”

THIS IS CHRISTMAS CALLING, AND WANTED TO INVITE YOU TO JOIN US THIS YEAR BY HELPING TO WELCOME IN THE NEW CHILD OF THE CHRISTOS.

“Oh, sure.” NO REALLY, SERIOUS!  ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS SACRIFICE!…A LITTLE OF YOUR PRECIOUS TIME.  DEEPLY CONNECT WITH THE NEWBORN (IN GRATITUDE, JOY, SORROW, SELFLESS SERVICE, FORGIVENESS AND WONDER…AND…ABSOLUTE WORLDLY HELPLESSNESS.  GO IN AND SEEK THAT BRIGHT STAR.  YOU’LL BE GUIDED AND LIFTED…AND SIFTED.

  “Oooh-Oooh-Oooh”  AND THEN WE’LL ALL BE TOGETHER TO BASK IN HIS GLORY.  SOUND OKAY?  “Yup”  SEE YOU THERE…[click]

                                             Love, Christmas

The Full Cold Moon; or the Full Long Nights Moon – December 13th:  During this month the winter cold fastens its grip, and nights are at their longest and darkest. It is also sometimes called the Moon before Yule. The term Long Night Moon is a doubly appropriate name because the midwinter night is indeed long, and because the Moon is above the horizon for a long time. The midwinter full Moon has a high trajectory across the sky because it is opposite a low Sun.

Martin Luther King Excerpts from A Christmas Sermon on Peace 1967

Peace on Earth…

This Christmas season finds us a rather bewildered human race. We have neither peace within nor peace without. Everywhere paralyzing fears harrow people by day and haunt them by night. Our world is sick with war; everywhere we turn we see its ominous possibilities. And yet, my friends, the Christmas hope for peace and good will toward all men can no longer be dismissed as a kind of pious dream of some utopian. If we don’t have good will toward men in this world, we will destroy ourselves by the misuse of our own instruments and our own power….

Now let me suggest first that if we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective. No individual can live alone; no nation can live alone, and as long as we try, the more we are going to have war in this world. Now the judgment of God is upon us, and we must either learn to live together as brothers or we are all going to perish together as fools…

It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality. Did you ever stop to think that you can’t leave for your job in the morning without being dependent on most of the world? …. And before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half of the world. This is the way our universe is structured, this is its interrelated quality. We aren’t going to have peace on earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality.

Now let me say, secondly, that if we are to have peace in the world, men and nations must embrace the nonviolent affirmation that ends and means must cohere. One of the great philosophical debates of history has been over the whole question of means and ends. And there have always been those who argued that the end justifies the means, that the means really aren’t important. The important thing is to get to the end, you see.

So, if you’re seeking to develop a just society, they say, the important thing is to get there, and the means are really unimportant; any means will do so long as they get you there? they may be violent, they may be untruthful means; they may even be unjust means to a just end. There have been those who have argued this throughout history. But we will never have peace in the world until men everywhere recognize that ends are not cut off from means, because the means represent the ideal in the making, and the end in process, and ultimately you can’t reach good ends through evil means, because the means represent the seed and the end represents the tree…

If there is to be peace on earth and good will toward men, we must finally believe in the ultimate morality of the universe, and believe that all reality hinges on moral foundations. Something must remind us of this as we once again stand in the Christmas season and think of the Easter season simultaneously, for the two somehow go together. Christ came to show us the way. Men love darkness rather than the light, and they crucified him, and there on Good Friday on the cross it was still dark, but then Easter came, and Easter is an eternal reminder of the fact that the truth-crushed earth will rise again. Easter justifies Carlyle in saying, “No lie can live forever.” And so this is our faith, as we continue to hope for peace on earth and good will toward men: let us know that in the process we have cosmic companionship…

My friends, do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people.

You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times. Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is that we were made for these times. Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.

I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able vessels in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind.

Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though your veneers may shiver from every wave in this stormy roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. That long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold its own, and to advance, regardless.

In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a tendency, too, to fall into being weakened by dwelling on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails.

We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear. Didn’t you say you were a believer? Didn’t you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn’t you ask for grace? Don’t you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater?

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.

What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.

One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these – to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity.

Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it. If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.

There will always be times when you feel discouraged. I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it. I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate.

The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve, and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours. They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall: When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.                                           –Clarissa Pinkola Estes

From Father Paul:  Sermon:  Arise and Take the Child – Matthew 20:2, 12/21/69

I go through this every Christmas:  experiencing the sorrows that our Master experiences.  …  As we are approaching that time of celebration of our Lord, we today also are approaching the reality of this; for the new heaven and the new earth is being born.  Out of the 2nd chapter of Matthew: 

“Arise, and take the young child and his mother and go into the land of Israel; for they are dead which sought the young child’s life.  And he arose and took the young child and his mother and came into the land of Israel.”

These two verses are so appropriate today, because we whom have sought the way of Christ in the reality:  not just a group of words, but the reality of it, and who take upon ourselves the spiritual cloak of one of his sons and daughters, are being told that we are citizens of the Most High.  And this is what we in these two verses also are being told in this time:  to take those who will come to arise and take the child:  take this spiritual being within the body that we look at and take it into Israel; that place, the promise, the reality.  For we this day look all about us and see the many things which are going on in the world, and we know we have seen and we have watched the walking dead.

And this text not only speaks to us of the times of old, of the celebration which we are celebrating now in the Advent, as the approach of the birth of our Lord Jesus to the Blessed Virgin.  But it also speaks a great and powerful message to us.  For this too is our message from the Spirit:  to arise and take the newborn reality–that which has been seeking to come out for 2,000 years– into the people.  To take the rebirth through the Illumination and the receiving the reality of the Christ, the Christos and the Light; and to go into the land throughout the world.  For they whom sought to kill, to squelch, to hide, and to keep away from God’s children the Great Truth of the true salvation of the complete giving of the body and the soul to God, and how the transformation would take place.

And we have seen this here; and all around us we see where they have tried to kill the child.  They have tried to squelch the words of Jesus Christ by interpretation.  They have tried to tell and whisper into your ear, and those whom have fallen are the ones that have listened to the things which are contrary to the teachings of Jesus and the ancient sages.  For the teachings of the ancient wisdom and the ancient sages were not contrary to those of our Lord.  And those whom have fallen away or who have gone their way in an attempt to do it their way–they have listened and the child is not dead.  He lives.  And you whom have come into this Order, or you whom have come here as visitors to our chapel service, have come to where the child is revived.  They may have sought to kill it, but the words have lived on and the reality is here.

We are citizens of that new race, that new world into which the Light shall spread.  And it shall be in accordance with the teachings of our Lord.  Buddha tried–he tried too; but they defiled his teachings also…One of the old teachers who comes here occasionally said why, the teachings that they are trying to teach are no more like his teachings…  it is just like they have tried to defile those teachings of our Lord Jesus.  So let us not consider ourselves as just someone who has accepted the word of the New Testament and the teachings of our Lord Jesus, or the teachings of Paul, or John, or Matthew.  But let us know that we are the citizens of the new risen world.  We are part of the heavenly reality and as long as we stay that, so will the regeneration and the rebirth of that reality within us take place.

You are all part of the great Soul and Mind of the Father.  You have been given a piece of this Great Reality and what you do with it is up to you; whether you live or whether you go like those whom sought[to kill] the Light of Our Lord Jesus at his birth.  And these too will die.  For ye cannot destroy Truth; for they have tried it down through the ages; and every time it is tried, some suffer, but the Truth survives, and the reality and the Spirit survive, and the power of Creation and its reality lives on.  I ask you a question:  Shall the Child be reborn in reality in you?

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Thanksgiving

We return thanks to our mother, the Earth,
which sustains us.
We return thanks to the rivers and streams,
which supply us with water.
We return thanks to all herbs,
which furnish medicines for the cure of our diseases.
We return thanks to the moon and stars,
which have given to us their light when the sun was gone.
We return thanks to the sun,
that has looked upon the earth with a beneficent eye.
Lastly, we return thanks to the Great Spirit,
in Whom is embodied all goodness,
and Who directs all things for the good of Her children.

~ Iroquois ~

“The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Taka (the Great Spirit), and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.

This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this. The second peace is that which is made between two individuals, and the third is that which is made between two nations. But above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is known that true peace, which, as I have often said, is within the souls of men.”           Black Elk – Oglala Sioux

Reflections in Autumn:

As we again approach the time of the harvest as well as the time of balance of night and day,  I share with you my experience of meeting my first Teacher.  As I was never blessed to meet Father Paul in the flesh, (not in the flesh is another story) my first Teacher was Master Isjesian.

She came to St. Pete when I had been in the Order for a matter of months, she was 20–I was 20;  she had acne, I had acne.  I remember being in awe of her, and when I was around her there was so much power that my body would shake.  She had a love for the Master that just was overwhelming to me.  How could she could be so alive and in tune at such a young age?

She spoke to me once about Father and described him as this old man who had tobacco stains down his chin and on to his robe, and she could sit with him and see this, yet know that he was the channel for the Master here on earth.  I struggled at times with her, just as all good students do, but I knew she was the real deal– when I could just let go and let the Light shine.

I was taught how to cook by her–as I was assigned to the job the day the former cook was loading her things into her mother’s car and leaving.  During a time in my life when I was facing a serious health issue she pushed me into trying to heal myself.   Finally, when I had tried as best I could, she called upon Father Paul and I received the most miraculous healing of my life.

She administered my life vows, had me sew my house robe,  assisted when I was ordained into the Priesthood, and continued to be an influence on my life through hard times and good.  Though the Order when off in another direction led by her husband, it is my understanding that she did not go that same way, a voice of silence as I understand it.  About two years ago I was in Forestville and had her address, and drove up to her home on a long windy, steep road that was not paved. Her car, (I believe), was parked next to the house. I approached and knocked several times but there was no answer. On the porch there were child games, probably for grandchildren.  I was disappointed, but as I reflect on it now it follows the pattern of just missing Father Paul as well as just missing her as she transitioned recently.

Her passing was shocking but somehow logical as she always spoke of her physical body being in tune.  Her illness must have been a surprise,  but with grace and silence she moved on.  When it’s all said and done I am grateful for her presence in my life, for her work here and her love for the Master and her teacher Father Paul.   May the fruits of our labors be overflowing; spilling out to all.                       Rev. Donald

Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood
William Wordsworth, 1770 – 1850
(excerpt)

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature’s priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day…

The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears…

From Father Paul:

excerpt from a  class on Initiation

This lesson tonight is really going to be a lecture on the ways of man in this solar system, and a little bit of the understanding of initiation. To begin with, let’s first evaluate the ways of God, and His action with man.  God draws us to Him in three different ways, more or less:  first by being His creatures, second by His voice–which is really the voice of the Word and authority used in creation, the voice in the soul which you ofttimes call consciousness, conscience, when an eternal Truth mysteriously suggests itself to you.

You say, “Well, I thought of it.  This is something that came to me.”  This is a reality, this is true, but it comes out of your Self from the eternal Mind, the Mind of the Father.  What triggers that might be most anything that might trigger this.  It could be–what triggers it could be good, it could be something which is not good–but many things are triggered through evil acts, even, which are good.  That is, not the evil act is good, but it brings out something good in the individual.  It is not necessity to have an evil act to bring out something good, but sometimes this happens.

When the eternal Truth mysteriously suggests itself, as happens frequently, and very often this happens during morning sleep, in that period in which you are, you would call just about to awaken but you really aren’t awake yet.  You’re not too conscious of things around you, you’re not too cognizant whether you are awake or asleep, but you’re kind of betwixt and between, you might say.

And third, without resistance or means, when the will is quite subdued.  By this we mean that when you go into meditation voluntarily, for instance, and you have taken instructions or you are doing it because you have been instructed to do it.  You are doing it because you are a brother in the order, for instance … and you might be working with a Buddhist monk or a Buddhist teacher.  It wouldn’t make any difference to the laws and the ways of God, as long as you were seeking and in need of this, whatever it might be–this idea, this rule, this law; it would work just the same.

Because God’s laws and rules and the Truth are not made just for Christians, as they call themselves; they’re made for all people regardless of what the faith, what the approach, what the school is.  They’re made for that, because they are made for His living creation, and He created all of us, whether a Chinese, Japanese, or white or black, that doesn’t make any difference.  So therefore His laws and His regulations, His ways and His methods are for all people.

This is why, in this order, we say we go through the center, through the center path to God and to attainment.  We follow neither the occult school nor the mystic school, but a combination of both of these, a straight path through the center.  We use that which is applicable to the day, and the thing which we are trying to attain or the initiation which we are trying to attain.

…..Because the cosmic has a habit of, once you have come into this earth and declared what you are going to learn, of seeing that you get there.  And the Brothers will see that that’s done.  It may be to put somebody in your path that will oppose  you.  It may be to marry a woman that will make you wash the dishes every night, and it may be that you will have six babies that are squalling constantly.  But I assure you that the physical people and the physical things not only which work to build obstructions that are hurdles that you have to go over, but other things that will help you to go over those hurdles, if  you will to do it.  And this is the way with initiation, in the life sense.

There is a higher form of initiation in the lower heaven world, or the world beyond, and this takes place also.  Now these aren’t fantasies.  And let’s get this home:  you’re living in a world of reality.  There is no such thing as an unreal world, so let’s get that cleaned out of our mind.  There’s only one difference between heaven and this place, and that is that it is not as dense and it does not have the imperfection to it that this does down here.  And it follows the laws of creation and it’s just as real, it’s just as fundamental, it’s just as materialistic as this is down here, when you speak from that standpoint.  It is just as solid when you’re there, as this is down here.  Life is continuous.  We have spoken, the Master has spoken about continuous life, life eternal.  He was not just “flapping his gums”, as they say here on this earth.  And that’s just about the size of what you people sometimes take it for, and it isn’t true.  This is a realistic place, where there is realistic living in another form, and I want that truly understood.

… because many times people have these ailments or acquire a condition that has an ailment that serves as a hurdle for them to get over, because there are things within them that doesn’t want to hear what is said about certain things.  They may not be conscious of it always, they may not be, but they exist.

I know that I’ve seen many students that when I talked in a certain vein about certain things, that particular thing, they’d always get drowsy; and when they’d, anything else, be totally wide awake.  And they’re really sincere seekers.  They weren’t conscious of it until I broke it by working with them personally; that’s the truth.

You’d be surprised what that inner man, that ego and the will, how they gain control of the physical side of an individual.  And that’s what initiation is for; and one of the things that happens in initiation is control of some of these things.  These are the objectives that you are trying to gain.  And the initiation, when it happens, is to open the door so that you can manifest and gain this particular thing as you climb what is referred to in the Testament as Jacob’s ladder.  Just as a, one of the degrees of initiation is to learn the direction of the will-power in one of the initiations, to understand it and learn its use, and then to get over that hurdle by actually doing it willfully yourself, by your own determination, not affected by other things around you, you see; I mean circumstances, all these things, you see.  This is all part of what you might call the life-stream of initiation to the average individual.

Then we go to those people who, like the Masons, try to learn the purpose of the Masonic order, to learn the uses of the law and the Word, both in the material world and to manifest this and to help other people learn these things, to help man to help himself.  That’s one of the great slogans of their order.  Which is very fine, because if you don’t help man to help himself, he isn’t going to get anything out of it. We’ve seen that in today’s world, that actually giving money to people for charity in emergency is all right occasionally.  But when you’re put on the poor list or whatever they call it, this is no good.  Because that will not help him not to be poor.  You’ve got to teach him.  It’s ignorance that makes a man poor, nothing else.  You see what I’m driving at?  This is part of initiation.  You have will, or you will be at some time at a place where you will have to pick yourself up by your own bootstraps, so to speak, to raise yourself up.  And this is part of it, you see.

Q:  Next time I get sleepy, Father, I’ll stretch.

A:  All right.  O.K.  Now–

To the Christian church-goer–now this isn’t saying anything against them.  I’m just saying what they miss.  To the Christian churchgoer, the mystic, the occultist and so forth, these strange people, this is something  up here in the “gobbeldy-goop” or the magician’s way, and so forth, this is an unreal sort of thing

that is only for those that wish to take command of other peoples’ will and use them.  Oh, I’ve been accused of this, many times.  You see, I know.

But this is not so.  It is part of cosmic initiation; it is part of the cosmic plan.  And it’s far older than the Christian church, or any church, as far as that’s concerned.  And people were worshipping Christ long before Jesus got here.  That doesn’t say we shouldn’t look to the Master, no.  That says that what he was teaching had been a proven reality for thousands of years before him.  But he brought to us, in the physical manifestation and in the seeable way the proof that these laws and these forces were controlled by these laws through his ministry of the three years, and through his work in Jerusalem, and his crucifixion on Golgotha, and his resurrection and his ascension…

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.                 –Soren Kierkegaard

A little over a year ago, a state commission on place names in South Dakota recommended that the highest peak in the state — Harney Peak in the Black Hills of southwestern South Dakota — be renamed Hinhan Kaga, the original Lakota name for the mountain. The name means Making of Owls and comes from rock formations that look like owls.

But that recommendation was set aside by the state when it was supposedly determined that there was no public consensus on whether to rename the mountain. In South Dakota there is a strong current of opinion that names (as well as things in general) should be left as they are and that changing them is just political correctness.

But today the US Board on Geographic Names had the last word on the matter and decided to change the name to Black Elk Peak after the legendary Lakota visionary and spiritual leader.

Black Elk, who lived from 1863 to 1950, prayed often on the mountain, which was central to a vision he had while he was extremely ill and near death as a child. As he described it:

Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all , and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being. And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy.

Hinting at the Grail legends.
=======================================
(Notes from one of Father Paul’s classes, June 1972)

In the Middle Ages they quested for something hidden; they must secure their own soul (maiden in distress, and so forth.)  The legends of chivalry are valid accounts of man’s search for truth.  Hero tales are sacred rituals belonging to secret societies for esoteric teachings.  Names of things or people were deliberately screened in falsity
The ancient ones were six or seven.  During the enlightenend ages they have appeared as Teachers.  Civilization is unfolding though a predestined plan; no creed or doctrine, with disciplines only for internal growth.

SOUL

Father Paul said in one of his 1971 classes:

“An old soul pattern is just like a filter on your camera.  It allows certain things to come through.  The soul is the atmosphere which has been created out of many actions.  A memory tape of what you have experienced in the body you were in before.  If you want to change the body for a different type of incarnation, you change the tape.”

~~Re theories of evolution and creation, both might be true.  If man evolved, having been created long before Biblical records claim, he may possibly have lacked a soul other than the more instinctive or animal-like group-soul consciousness.

God breathed into Adam (already a man) and he became a living soul, an individual with a conscience and powers of intelligent choice.

~~Daily we look into a mirror to groom and make ourselves generally presentable to others.  But how often do we look at ourselves in a spiritual mirror to think how we look to the eye of spirit, to God Whom we seek to please above all else?

~~When we reach the heaven world, there should be no problems relating to dress or appearance, no exteriors to worry about.  But then we have to be presentable inside.  We must be prepared for that time when the Master knocks at the door to come in and sup with us.

~~It is assumed that records are being kept in heaven of everything that is said, thought or done by you and me.  Don’t suppose that the Host sits up there and writes in a little book everything that millions of us are doing, every minute.

No; the records kept there are not “books in the sky”.  They’re not spelled out in English, French or Chinese.  The heavenly record of each person is indelibly imprinted on his own soul, that part of him that will live on after the body is gone.  He carries with him not merely facts concerning his actions.  God is more interested in his heart, the thoughts and intentions, as well as the deeds.  For he may make many mistakes, but if he means well, it is the inner intent and consciousness that count more than statistics.  In the greater picture, perhaps after a very long time in other states of being, as we progress to higher consciousness, any unnecessary imprints may gradually fade into obscurity.

                                                                                                ~~It is supposed that our souls are made up of the distilled essence of all that we are and have been, and will grow as we progress from life to life and more is added.

From Pondering, by Rev. Mother Ruth Blighton

There’s a tradition that Muhammed said,

“A wise man will listen and be led by

a woman, while ignorant men won’t.”

Someone too fiercely connected to animal needs

lacks kindness and the gentle affection that

keeps men human. Anger and urgent desire

are animal qualities, while a loving

tenderness toward women shows someone

no longer caged in with his wantings.

The core of the feminine comes directly as

a ray of the sun. She’s not the earthly figure

you hear about in love songs. There’s more to her

mystery than that. You might say she’s not

from the manifested world at all,

but the creator of it.

Letting Go

If we have any desires that are evil, they are a result of our own wrong understanding and wrong attunement with conditions around us and not of any evil spirit within us.  The more we attune ourselves with the higher and beautiful things of life, the less the sordid or unbeautiful will appeal.  Temptations to yield to the negative things will not come to the one who is highly attuned, and he will not have to attempt to suppress the desire.  If you find there are urges or tendencies within your personality that are undesirable from a Cosmic point of view, do not attempt to suppress them, for that is like hanging a blanket up against the window in order to keep out the light.  As long as you attempt to suppress the light, you may not have any of it; but you do not affect it one iota by shielding yourself from it, for it never diminishes in quality or strength by being screened.  Rather than suppress undesirable tendencies, give no thought to them at all.  Do not yield to them but neither fight them.  Center your mind upon the more desirable things in life and let them grow so strong and great that they will keep you occupied and hold the center of your attention.

Now analyze your present day self and see wherein there are little traits of character, little traits of personality, that you are suppressing.  Take them out of the trunk in which you have tried to keep them prisoners and air them well, and look them over; and then instead of putting them back into the trunk of suppression, send them on their way out of your life, just as you would do with any intruder who came to your home.  If you found your home suddenly occupied by some undesirable persons who appeared to be evil tendencies in your midst, you would not think of locking them up in a closet and trying to suppress their activities while you went on with your affairs, but you would try to find out why these tendencies or these characters had come into your home, and then after acquainting yourself with them, and perhaps making it plain that they were undesirable, you would have them dismissed from your presence and sent on their way.

 I vow to set my thoughts upon things I value and spend my strength in the fulfillment of noble purpose.

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor.

 — Psalm 8:3-5

 Another Fine Orbit

Our human nature is so complex and powerful that our expression of it can range from wonderful and beautiful to terrible and ugly.

As we journey through life, we have all been drawn to the Light that casts out darkness, and to the Love that overcomes fear.  We have come to understand that fear is a tool that can help us avoid dangers to our physical and emotional welfare, but if it is not kept in balance its grip will make it very difficult to enjoy this journey we are on together.

With the mass media of this day so focused on the terrible and the ugly, it is inevitable that our cultural mind is suffering from the dis-ease of unbalanced fears.

How can we be a part of the blessing and healing of this deeply rooted dis-ease in ourselves, and fellow humanity?

The core of every true spiritual teaching conveyed to us reveals that fear is a product of the illusion of separateness.  Overcoming this illusion takes a vigilant seeking out of experiencing our oneness with our benevolent Creator’s selfless love.

It’s our choice–accepting an illusion that seems so real–or seeking a truth that seems so illusive.

It’s not an easy path; One-der and Beauty.  The messengers and guides give implausible directions:  love God and love thy neighbor as thyself.  Love thine enemy.  Live beyond the illusion of possessions.  Judge not, lest ye be judged.  Give.  Serve.  Eat My Body.  Drink My Blood.  Fear not.  Let go and let God.  Seek and ye shall find.

Only faith in a greater Power than our own can lead us to experience and know the way.

May the power of the Sun/Son at this Solstice re-awaken our recognition of Your Wonder and Beauty, and may we take on more fully a oneness with Your image.

Navajo Path of Beauty Prayer:

Beauty before me I walk

Beauty below me I walk

Beauty all around me I walk

In Beauty is all restored

In Beauty is all made whole.

From Father Paul

Excerpts from class on Flesh Body from January, 1969

how much more is there to man and his vehicle than what we understand? Now this is what we try to reach, is to endeavor to understand the body that we are driving.  And many people today are doing just that without really knowing how to do it.  They are driving a vehicle which has tremendous possibilities and a tremendous and unlimited source of power, but they don’t understand it.  And so they put it in high gear when it shouldn’t be in high gear and they wear it out pretty fast.

Instead of understanding and learning about their vehicle, and learning how to refuel it, not just food but otherwise learning how to take care of it, learning how to use it and its unlimited powers, they go on blindly shoving it into high gear when it should only be running in low gear and letting something else do the rest of the work.

Then there is another very strange and very interesting part of man’s body, when we look at the circulatory system, and that is the fact that every man and woman–because when we speak of man here, we mean man and woman both–a great deal, about 99 percent of the function of the entire human system, is an electro-chemical function; not just chemical–electro-chemical.  For around this body–I’m not talking about auras now–around this body the electro-magnetic fields circulate, that come from the functioning of this vehicle.  This was not taken out of books; I have measured these things myself.  I know.  This circulatory system that we see here which is the distributing system, you might call it, is the part of man that when it is not functioning properly, some organ of man within the vehicle is going to pay the penalty of working below normal.

Now, if  you do not get enough air in the lungs, you are going to first of all not be able to carry in these small cells of the blood the amount of oxygen and some other qualities which are not always definable chemically but can be defined electrically, and some through other means, to the cell system of the body so that they can be recharged, so to speak.  Not from what’s in the blood.  But they will set up and stimulate the system so that from this other structure that holds this together–and it does–it will be recharged, the cells will be, and brought back into strength and vitality, and as we would say, the body is then rested and ready for use.

The condition of man’s body is the mirror of his mind, 80 percent, at least 80 percent; I’m being extremely conservative when I say this because I believe in staying on the conservative side of things.  If I have a fact I will declare it, I will prove it.  But if I do not have a fact, and this fact is unknown, what, how the percentage, how far the percentage of it works.  If I were talking to my students alone I would say this is in totality that man’s body is controlled through his mind.  But I know also that we live in a strange world where we live in the midst of tremendous electrical fields.

This building, for instance.  It’s a rather small and insignificant place, but there are numbers of wires and cables running through the walls that are radiating electrical fields of energy that we are exposed to at this moment.  Of course when you are here you are exposed to some other things too, but we won’t talk about that; we’ll talk about the things out here in this physical world.  When you go down the street, you’re exposed to millions of volts of electro-magnetic force, and each one of these cells are exposed to it, so that is why we have to say that the body is [only] 80 percent reactive to the mind.  Because there is another quantity here that it reacts to because of the external conditions that we are passing through.  These external conditions, of course, can be controlled, but that is another story.

The circulatory system of man, if he is in a state of depression the pulse of the heart changes and the metabolism which is the breaking-down and rebuilding of the blood system, allowing the food energy and, oh, like  your vitamins–we’ll call them vitamins–and things of this nature go into the blood stream.  And due to the fact that our entire physical vehicle, as we learned last week, functions on a basic principle–that is, it’s motivated, the function of the body itself is motivated by either external or chemical shock, in reality.  Come down to the fine points of function, all things function from this basic form….

Now what has this to do with our, well, let’s say our attainment, our godliness, our ability to know God, our ability to receive the light of Christ–and I mean light as it is spoken of in the Bible?  It is simply this:  that when a person and his body is not fully functioning, neither is his own spirit functioning normally.  I’ll call it spirit.  I’ll call it Self, because it is the Self.  It is the you part, the part that is you.  It is the part which does not die and never will.

And after all, anyone who comes to a church certainly should be seeking to know a little bit more of themselves; and the ultimate goal is to prepare yourself for that long trip later on after you’ve dropped this vehicle that we’re talking about.  Because if it isn’t for that purpose, then a person is wasting their time.  They actually don’t need to worry about anything else.  But when …we start to worry, we start to get depressed, we start to slow down this circulatory system, then we are inviting all of these diseases which are derived from this.

Now you can call them dozens of names, such as arterial sclerosis, arthritis, old age, cell deterioration, as they might say, in a person that has got to be, oh, sixty, a real old man, and I could dig up probably ten more names in the book, but fundamentally they are only one thing:  they are the lack of circulation and life in your body.  They are the lack of coordination between your mind and your function of your physical being, for it does control the physical body….

Jesus said, “Thy word shall become flesh; as the Father said it and gave it unto me, so also I give it unto you.”  Now this is not a parable; this is a reality.  This is a strict straightforward statement in the gospels.

There’s another very interesting general statement and a very accurate statement, and that is the fact that many people talk about the Tree of Life, many people talk about how this Tree of Life looks or what it represents and all of this sort.  There is also the Tree of Life here, and it can be traced in the body, and we’ll do it one of these evenings before long.  But the principal thing that I want to bring to you this evening in the first half of this lecture is the fact that every single part of your physical being is adequately supplied with channels to maintain and keep it alive, keep it alive.  Foolish statement, isn’t it.

Maybe some of  you people have studied some physiology; I hope you have, because this will only help.  In the first place, the nerve system–which we’ll see next week, along with the rest of the lecture–is constantly pulsing with life and energy.  This arterial system is caused to function, not by the driving force of the heart pump alone, but also the motion that’s within the body itself.  The light motion and pulse that is within the body itself, and it is there….

Life is a strange and beautiful thing, and it is as scientific as anything that you can find.  Because life is; there is life and this is a force and power that comes from the Son of God.  And that life-force isn’t something which runs just down, like this, through the various blood cells and the lymph and so forth that feed through these arteries.  But there is a distinct electrical pulsation that moves across the trunk of this body, in where the principal organs lay, and that pulsation is just as regular as can be.  And that is an electrical pulsation, and it goes about seventeen beats a minute–in the neighborhood of that.

This is a thing that throughout this body, as I spoke of, is the electrical reactions and electrical fields.  Now these fields are created by the spiritual body of man and its reaction in the physical, in what we call metabolism.  It is the breaking down of cell structure and the use of this energy in motivating action and heat, for light.  It is through this and the cross-pulse of the physical body that we have a constant awakening and a constant rebuilding of cells.  If we will let it!  If we will let it; and this is the sad part, that we do not believe many of the things that have been taught us for thousands of years, or should have been taught us–at least they were there in the Bible–and therefore we suffer the lack and are unhappy because this body of ours doesn’t function properly.  And of course then we have to, and it is necessary that we should, if we do not know how to take care of this body then we should go to a doctor and get emergency help.

And then the next thing we should do is go someplace and start to find out if God really provided a way for us to be healthy.  And of course this brings a big question.  First of all, do you believe in a supreme Power, and a supreme reality?  And second, if you do, then it is time to get with it and start to study something about it, and start to learn some of the things that control it.  Because your mind does control energy….

… Man’s vehicle is three-fold and there isn’t any question about this.  We also have here in Romans 12:1-3, Paul says, “I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as living sacrifices holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.  For by grace given unto me, I bid every one among you not to think of himself more highly than that of his thoughts.”  Now, this is just one tiny quotation.  There are many, many quotations in the Bible regarding these things…

Now this form, therefore, this form as I pictured it here before, like this, if we were to look back and see some of the ancient hieroglyphs, we would find that … the letters of the English language, for instance, evolved from pictures of men and their action.  And …, if traced through the, well, we’ll say from the Semitic through to the Chaldean, down to the Hebrew, and so forth, they actually depict what that letter represents ….  A combination of letters, forms, represent–put together, mean a certain thing.  We pronounce certain vowels, certain sounds, and they represent certain things, but they will stimulate certain actions too.  And they will do this through the power and the spirit existing; because He said, “thy word shall become flesh.”

Now I believe this implicitly, because I know it to be a fact.  I’ve experimented with it.  Man has a primary purpose of lifting up his whole being toward the Son.  Many people make this mistake when they say “toward God”.  Yeah, toward the Son.  He said only through the Son shall you find the face of the Father….

Another thing is, if you’ll notice the spine of man, which is back of this, and I don’t have a skeleton form here, but the spine of man is back of this. Also the arteries run, the main stem runs right along in this same formation.  The other answer

is that man walks upright on the earth and he takes out of this and feeds up through.

We take, for instance, the sciatic nerve that runs up through here and comes back, goes through here and connects at the base of the spine just above the bone here.  This is a feeder of electro-magnetic energy as well as the spleen here, that picks up the electro-magnetic forces of the earth.

And down through the head comes the force through the great chakra, as the Hindus call it- .. it comes through the head and down through the entire body.  This way it feeds as it falls through, as it drops through, it feeds the whole body with the forces of life.

Now this is not an imaginary thing, get that out of your head, because this is a real thing and can be demonstrated.  It can be demonstrated.  And that primarily is the reason for this form.  It not only is possible to feed it with life-forces, but it is also possible to feed every part of it so that man is independent in his choice and he has something to use, and stand up, climb, sit down, lay down, do any of the things that he pleases to do.  And at the same time, one step further, the Master said that this body, if it is full of light, becomes eternal.  And I mean it like I said it, that this flesh is everlasting.

Now  it turns in its nature, that’s true.  He went and ascended; he told us.  ..”all these things which I do, so can you do also”–Buddha used different words, but he said the same thing–“and even greater than these”.  Because he knew that two thousand years later man would have evolved to a higher state of being, with greater power and greater possibilities.  And he would be living in a world where there was more force, more energy in the atmosphere that he was living in.  And in the last fifty, last twenty years, last fifteen years, ours has increased tremendously, over 600 percent.  Yes?

Flowers generate weak electric fields, and a new study shows that bumblebees can actually sense those electric fields using the tiny hairs on their fuzzy little bodies.

“The bumblebees can feel that hair bend and use that feeling to tell the difference between flowers,” says Gregory Sutton, a Royal Society University Research Fellow at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom.

People used to think that perceiving natural electric fields was something that animals only did in water. Sharks and eels can do it, for example. The platypus and spiny anteaters were the only land critters known to have electroreceptive organs, but these have to be submerged in water in order to work.

Then, a few years ago, Sutton and his colleagues showed that bumblebees could sense electric fields in the air.

“There is, all the time, a background electric field in the atmosphere,” says Sutton. “Any plant that’s connected to the ground will generate its own electric field just by interactions with the atmosphere.”…

But how were the bumblebees able to sense them? That’s what the researchers tracked in their latest study, described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“We used a laser beam that could measure small motions of an antenna or a hair, and that’s how we measured how much the air and the antenna moved in response to an electric field,” says Sutton.

They also stuck a very fine electrode wire into the nerve at the socket of the bottom of a hair to record the activity of nerve cells there.

“They’ve got these really fuzzy hairs all over their body, and when they approach something with an electric field, that electric field will bend the hairs on their body,” says Sutton. And that bending generates a nerve signal.

The results suggest that bumblebees can sense an electric field produced by a flower that’s up to 55 centimeters (nearly 22 inches) away. But that’s under ideal conditions in the lab — Sutton says 10 centimeters or so (about 4 inches) is more likely in the real world.

“I’m very excited by this because these little mechanically sensitive hairs are common all over the insect world,” says Sutton. “I think this might be something we see in more insects than just bumblebees.”

“Basically this just adds to the long list of incredible things that bees can do,” says Robert Gegear, who studies pollinating insects at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Mass.

He says it’s unclear if bees really use electric fields in the real world, where flowers have a ton of other compelling features, like color and smell.

“And so the one question I have is: ‘What is the functional relevance?’ — not just from the bee side but from the plant side as well,” says Gegear.

For all we know, Gegear says, bumblebees may detect electric fields for something that has nothing to do with flowers, like navigation or communication.  NPR All Things Considered

            Beekeeping  Inside a small bedroom of a palatial home in Orinda, California, a suburb of the San Francisco Bay Area, Khaled Almaghafi climbs a ladder and draws a rectangle on the ceiling where it meets the wall. His assistant takes a saw to a chunk of plaster, a flap of ceiling drops and thousands of honeybees escape — flying through the room, clinging to the curtains in clumps. H doesn’t look like your typical beekeeper. No mask, big white suit, or gloves. This 52-year-old father of four looks like he’s heading to an office job, wearing pleated pants and a button-down shirt. “If they attack me badly in the face, I will wear a suit. I don’t mind getting stung once or twice, it gives me the energy!” he says.

That’s one way of looking at it. But also consider that Almaghafi has worked with bees since he was a kid, growing up in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen. “Most of my childhood was with my dad, watching him raising the bees,” he says.                     In Yemen, beekeeping is respected and often family-run work. Almaghafi’s relatives raised bees the traditional way, in hollow trees and with hives made from bamboo. “But my dad, he was the first one to bring the modern style hive from Egypt to Yemen with the tin frame box. The American style hive,” he says

. “If you go to the honey shop in Yemen, it’s just like you’re going to the museum,” he says. “The floor, the walls, everything, like you are inside a beehive. Imagine you go there and you smell the honey from all over the country.”

But there’s one special Yemeni honey that’s coveted worldwide. It comes from Yemen’s Do’an Valley, in the country’s south, where the beekeeping tradition dates back thousands of years. There, the jujube or sidr tree flowers once a year. When it does, beekeepers from all over Yemen move their bees to that region.

“You can smell the honey from a distance,” Almaghafi says. “It tastes different, smells different.” Like perfume, he explains. People add herbs to it and use it as an aphrodisiac and a cure for various illnesses.

Honey shops in Yemen are also abundant. “Every corner has a honey shop, like here every corner has a liquor store. A lot of competition,” Almaghafi says.

He thinks about this in California, as he puts buzzing bees into a bucket, like coaxing a genie back into the bottle.     He also thinks about faith.

Almaghafi’s work is spiritual. He’s Muslim and the Quran says God told bees how to make honey. For Almaghafi, they’re proof of a higher being. “You see how they dance, how they collect the honey, how they work,” says Almaghafi. “You feel deep inside there is a creator, created all those things and created us and the whole globe.”  It troubles him that some can see bees, like Islam, as dangerous. “They benefit us for pollination, for medicine, for the environment. If it wasn’t for them, we’d be stuck,” he says. “They do all this for nothing!”   And when he thinks about the war in Yemen, he remembers his father and how he took an old box from his military days, once filled with bullets, and converted it into a beehive. Almaghafi hopes that, soon, more people in Yemen will do that too.                        –From PRI’s The World

From Mother Ruth

Jesus does not personally leave all his other work to appear to one person.  No one knows how the Lord can appear to numbers of people all over the world, and many at the same time, but he is not contained in a body.  He is a Spirit and is not confined within any form or place.  Spirit is everywhere and can flare up here or there, without moving or diminishing the central Source.  In other words, all of him does not come, but he sends some bit of himself.

Everyone who seeks long enough will eventually find, all in different ways, some in visions, some with a change of heart, some will be divinely inspired speakers or healers.  Some may have found him in a previous life and only need a bit of cleansing to renew that state.  Others may be preparing now to enter the Path in a life to come.  Somehow Spirit knows best what the soul needs, and how and when.

Dear Friends,
Among the many healings recorded in the Gospels, there is the story of Jesus healing the blind beggar by spitting on some clay, putting the clay on the eyes of the blind man and telling him to wash at the pool of Siloam, which John mentions means “sent.”
There are many interesting aspects to each healing that our Lord performs. In many descriptions, he requires the person to actively do something to affirm their healing; in this case it was to wash his eyes in the pool, whose water was used by the priests as part of the feast of Sukkot or Tabernacles, in the Fall of the year.
Water from the pool was drawn and placed in a vessel in the Temple, then returned ceremonially back to the pool.
When the man washed in the pool, he could see, although he was born blind.
In yet another reference to reincarnation, his disciples asked whether he had sinned or his parents to cause this condition. Jesus replied that it was neither but to show the glory of God.
The remainder of the story shows yet again how grievously the religious officials missed the mark in their questioning the healing and the healer. They were fixated upon what the person did to cause his blindness, rather than be glad for the glory of God, in blessing the man and his family.
Sometimes it’s hard not to wish that Jesus was here in the flesh, performing these wonderful healings in our modern day. And yet, he brought us Easter, and the Resurrection. He is continually sent and has become the pool of Siloam, the lamb of God, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, closer than hands and feet.
No matter what karmic condition exists in us or in our brother, we are shown by our Master that the law of Grace and Love supersedes all.
May the healing power of our Creator, through Lord Jesus Christ, stir the waters and pour blessings upon the Earth and all its peoples, and upon you.
-Rev. Mary Anderson

Jesus
-taken from classes by Father Paul
… If you have any question in your mind as to whether the New Testament is the handbook of man on this orb or not, then you’ve got a problem. Because Jesus Christ came here, and he has returned, as he said he would, already; and his power and his mantle overshadows this earth and permeates it. We have a problem right today with certain spiritual teachings. Why? Not that the teachings are wrong, but the fact that they won’t admit and they won’t acknowledge the Lord of earth. This you can’t back away from. This has to be maintained, because it’s through this that you are functioning.

I have said, “Look and concentrate and meditate on your atmosphere. And as your atmosphere is set up, this will declare what shall come through it.” So you can think, for the time until you get a true vision and true sight, of Jesus as having an atmosphere which surrounds the earth, and you wouldn’t be too far wrong. But I’m not going any further with this to confuse you.

As Jesus came to us and experienced the great Initiations that we might be brought into his Light, so also did he experience them for the fulfillment of the pattern of the Host and so those things which had been prophesied would also be fulfilled. For in this he gave unto the world those things which were necessary, as time moved on.

He reenacted the grand play of iniitiation in this earth, in order to bring about to the conscious mind of the masses the forgiveness and the ladder, Jacob’s ladder, the ladder to heaven.

Question from class: And this was the initiation for the illunination for the whole earth?

This was a demonstration of the initiation. It is the same as – I have a man here who is a past Master, and he’s having his consciousness of this brought back to him. He’s very rapidly accelerating, and has gone through these experiences again so that he can teach. Except that Jesus did it in a greater way.

Take into consideration the whole human race. If you went into some orders you would go through ceremonies and act parts in plays, so to speak, in the temple, that would demonstrate some of these things. You wouldn’t have any spiritual experience, necessarily, but you would see the enactment of the plays. Back in the time of ancient Greece, these same things were enacted. All of the teachings, pretty nearly, were given in the form of plays. Here’s where our opera and stage plays come from, you see.

When Jesus went into the Garden of Gethsemane, or into the desert to pray for forty days and forty nights, he experienced the great aloneness, the great crucifixion in reality. Of course, the actual crucifixion was held on Golgotha, but in the desert he became crucified of the Spirit and was tempted, and then he found himself alone in the world: this is the next step. Then the crucifixion came, then the ascension. Now these are all parts of the initiations, the solar initiations. He experienced them all and went through them all, but he went through them consciously, and didn’t have to, having had his own personal experience long ages before. Therefore when he went through these things voluntarily, he did it for the people of earth. Just as a master Teacher might take on somebody’s karma, if they were important enough, so he took on the world karma and transmuted it. THE EARTH.

If you ask a minister somewhere what Jesus did, he might say, “Oh, he brought salvation to the people. He is our saviour; he caused people’s sins to be forgiven.” They leave out the earth entirely. Well, people couldn’nt have had any experience if the earth had gone kaplop. It’s absolute inconsistency. You have to get used to thinking just as it is, taking both the unseen and the seen together. “And for those who sat in the region and shadow of death, light has dawned.” (Matt. 4:16) The Path has been illumined, you see. Now, this doesn’t say anything about understanding, or all the other alibis that people can think of. This spells it out, and there could be no mistake.

Question: What is the meaning of the crucifixion?

At the crucifixion the Master gave his blood and allowed the Christ, the personality of Christ which he had taken on at the baptism, the whole power and personality he took on was then emptied into the earth through his blood.

What does that mean?

Well, in the blood of man is his experience, deposited in the soul – the experience, the vibrational patterns.

What was wrong with the physical condition of the earth?

The vibration of the earth’s atmosphere and the vibrations here in the earth were in such condition that it needed just that. He brought the atonement. He wiped away the past from man and gave him a new break, a new start. He paid the supreme sacrifice, in other words. Don’t forget, a thing doesn’t become a reality on earth until it is both a pattern made in heaven and then manifested on earth. I use the word “heaven” as meaning “the upper level of vibration”, higher frequency.

We approach getting acquainted with Jesus as a very difficult thing, because we feel we’re reaching about five miles into the atmosphere someplace, trying to grasp into something. Well, that isn’t where it is; it’s right here. And if we can simply say to ourselves, now I’m going to talk to Jesus, and just talk to him. Say, “Jesus, Master, I’d like to ask some questions. What about this problem of mine? How do I get rid of it? How do I do this?” You know, you’d be surprised. If you expected an answer, you’d probably get one. You might even see him.

MARY
The Lenten meditation, “O Glorious Father, reveal within me the mystery of our holy Mother Mary”, leads to the thought that Mary is not just “our” mother. She is the mother of Christianity, through her bearing of him who brought Christ into the world. Jesus couldn’t appear in a physical vehicle until one such as Mary came first, worthy to provide the pure medium needed to nurture the holy Child.
But Mary represents more than the vehicle for a divine incarnation two thousand years ago. The spirit of the divine Mother is also that which nurtures the Christ child born within each person when the soul has attained to a certain level of realization.
~~
“O Glorious Father, reveal within me the mystery of our holy Mother Mary.” Is this the Spirit which receives and nurtures the seed of the coming Christ?
~~
“O thou great Master Jesus, channel of Light.”
Mary provided the physical vehicle for that channel of Light. She was the means of bridging the gap between God and humanity through bringing us the Master Jesus, and he became the bridge between heaven and earth, as our direct means of contact with the heavenly Father.
~~
Mary’s fiat was her acceptance of the mission to act as a channel for the Light to come into the world. She must have agreed to this in the heaven world before coming to earth, and to have accepted there the role for which she had been well-prepared.
~~
Her response at the Annunciation seems to reveal that such an attitude must be achieved before the Christ can be born in any individual. The trusting acceptance and humility that says simply, “Here I am Lord, ready to do Thy Will.”
We must first attain a state of consciousness similar to that of the Virgin Mary before we can enter into the spirit of the Christ. Thus is the Son born of the mother.
~~

Sri Ramakrishna said: ”Everyone is under the authority of the Divine Mother, Mahamaya, the Primal Energy. Even the Incarnations of God accept [her help] to fulfill their mission on earth.”
-Excerpts from Pondering by Rev. Mother Ruth Blighton

Science and Religion
Science is about the process of asking questions. The attempt to answer our questions about how things work leads to a deeper understanding of the world around us, but it always raises more questions. Science is a human response to the unknown — so as long as there are humans to ask questions, there will never be an end to science. By the same token, we shouldn’t be afraid to embrace the unknown — the gaps in our knowledge of the divine — as a way toward understanding God. In faith as well as in science, asking questions when faced with mystery is human nature. It’s naive to think that we have the capacity to diminish God’s power, love, or scope of action simply by asking questions. In fact, I submit that a questioning spirit ought to play an important role in the faith life of a Christian. Far from discouraging inquiry, the Bible urges it: “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened,” says Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. [Matt. 7:7-8]Our questions take different forms. We may use our faculty of reasoning to probe the physical universe God has created; we may challenge God for answers in times of pain and grief; we may read Scripture and ask what it means for our lives. Of course, nowhere are we guaranteed concrete answers. There is an Orthodox Christian saying (whose origin I’ve not been able to track down) that says, “God is unknowable, but you have to know him to know that.” More often than not, God does not give complete answers, but instead responds with more questions. The Book of Job is a deep exploration of this questioning dynamic. When Job challenges God, demanding an explanation for his afflictions, his friends each offer different reasoning. When God replies, he sweeps aside their answers as simplistic, and responds instead by interrogating Job, “I will question you, and you shall declare to me. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.” [Job 38:3-4].
The creation narrative that follows, in the form of questions directed to Job, is one of the most breathtaking passages in Scripture. When God has concluded, Job doesn’t really have an answer to the original question — Why am I afflicted? — but he has a new and deeper understanding of God.
“I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.” [Job 42:5]
We had seen the universe with the seeing of the eye, but now our ears hear it. Gravitational waves raise more questions than they answer, but their discovery gives us a profound way of understanding the cosmos that we didn’t have before. If we fear the gaps in our knowledge, we hold back from asking the questions that lead to discoveries like this, and we miss out on the opportunity to know God a little better through creation.
Jenna Freudenburg in Sojourners Magazine

New images returned by the Planck telescope (right) begin to rival the complexity and beauty of a great artists imagination – Starry Night. A visulization of the Planck data represents the interaction of interstellar dust with the galactic magnetic field. Color defines the intensity of dust emisions and the measurements of polarized light reveals the direction of the magnetic field lines. (Credits: Vincent Van Gogh, ESA)

The Pool of Siloam
(Hebrew: בריכת השילוח‎, Breikhat Hashiloah) is a rock-cut pool on the southern slope of the City of David, the original site of Jerusalem, located outside the walls of the Old City to the southeast. The pool was fed by the waters of the Gihon Spring, carried there by two aqueducts.

From The Story of Jesus
Hebrew regulations for sanitation and ritual cleanliness prevented many of the problems of disease which plagued the surrounding nations of Jesus’ time. Eye diseases were one of the most common in Palestine, caused by continual exposure to dust and glaring sunlight. The Hebrews like all early peoples used natural remedies, but only they used them in conjunction with certain complicated procedures which minimized the direct importance of the remedy and transferred the balance of power to the accessory rituals.
The disinfectant property of saliva has long been known, as can be seen from animals instinctively licking their wounds to heal themselves. Greek and Roman physicians wrote concerning the use of sputum, and ancient rabbis taught that diseases of the eye should be treated with sputum of the first-born of a father…
Again, on his last visit to Jerusalem, as Jesus passed by he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him. We must work the works of Him Who sent me while it is day; night comes, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”
As he said this, he spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle and anointed the man’s eyes with the clay, saying, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.” So he went and washed and came back seeing. (There is also an ancient rite wherein the novitiate candidate had his eyes anointed with clay, then washed with holy water, to signify the opening of the spiritual sight.)
The neighbors and those who had seen this man before as a beggar said, “Is not this the man who used to sit and beg?”
Some said, “It is he.” Others said, “No, but he is like him.” He said, “I am the man.” Therefore, they said to him, “Then how were your eyes opened?“
He answered, “A man that is called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to the pool of Siloam and wash’; so I went and washed and received sight.”
They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I know not.”
Then they brought to the Pharisees this man who had been formerly blind. Now it was the Sabbath day when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes. The Pharisees again asked him how he had received his sight. And he said to them, “He put clay on my eyes, and I washed, and I see.”

Spring Equinox
…At this time of year a new life, an augmented energy sweeps over the earth with its irresistible impulse of the spirit through the many arteries and veins of the earth and its living body.
Infused by its Lord and Master Jesus Christ.
Inspiring and instilling new hope and new ambition, washing away of the old errors and starting anew.
We are impelled to the activity of reaching toward God the Father, that we may learn the new lessons in the school of experience.
Consciously or unconsciously, we will reap the benefits of the out welling of the vigorous impulse of life in everything that lives; in the plant kingdom, in the animal kingdom, and in the kingdom of man.
Once again we seek through the multiplication of the many life forms of earth, to glorify a higher state of consciousness of the Father’s creation.
Once again, through the wonders of the transformation of the elements and minerals and forces of earth manifested; physically change the waste of forms past and dead, in the rebirth of new forms to come, into the wondrous bloom of the gardens, of the fields, and of the forests.

The breeze at dawn
Has secrets to tell you
Don’t go back to sleep
You must ask
For what you really want
Don’t go back to sleep
People are going back and forth
Across the doorsill
Where the two worlds touch
The door is round and open
Don’t go back to sleep
-Rumi

Dear Friends,
As we approach the time of Christmas and the return of the light in the northern hemisphere’s darkest time, I am reminded of the great gift that our Creator and our Mother Mary gave to the earth with the birth of the Christ Child. I am reminded of the pilgrimage that Joseph and Mary made as they journeyed to Bethlehem to be counted. Many of our dear brothers and sisters are journeying to lands unknown at this time to escape famine and persecution.
With that said, I wish to relate a story to you. When I was living in Georgia in a small community just outside of Atlanta, Joseph Handman was living with me for a time. On a Monday as we were in the living room, we both heard the crying of a little child coming from the house across the way. There was a Muslim day care center located there and this little girl who was dressed in full Muslim attire had been dropped off by her mother, not knowing that the day care center was closed that day. Joseph and I approached the girl and asked her name; she spoke little English and of course was very fearful. We checked the house and no one was there. We then walked her over to our house and asked her to sit in a chair we provided on the front sidewalk to our house. We checked her backpack and discovered she had no ID. As time passed we attended to her; we saw that she had some lunch in her back pack which she ate.
She became more comfortable with us as time passed, but we became concerned that her Mother had not returned–so we called the sheriff and a wonderful female police officer arrived and took charge of the girl. She was taken away to a safe place and we waited for the mom to show up which she did some hours later. She was frantic as you can imagine, and we informed her where they had taken her daughter and she left.

About a week later, again Joseph and I were sitting in the living room when I looked out the window and saw a large group of women and children dressed in full Muslim attire approaching our house. They arrived with plates of sweet bread and drawings from the other children, and a card from the mother with a check for $100 in it. Also there was the little girl who was beaming with light, happy to see us both again. The grand-mother, mother, sisters and brothers were all there to thank us for helping their little girl.

With our world in so much turmoil now I am mindful of our Master’s Words: “As you do unto one of my little ones you do unto me.”
Merry Christmas my brothers and sisters everywhere, and may we open our hearts to those in need.
-Donald Slakie

From Father Paul: Sermon:

To a Brother in the Service of God, Rev._____of the University of Loyola in New Orleans…
He wrote me concerning their new movement, and what they call the charismatic or Pentecostal approach of the Roman Catholic Church. And I want to say to you, dear brother____that this dedication is a message to you from our Lord Jesus, as given unto me in my study. It is not challenging the Roman Church, the Protestant Church, or any other church. For this Order is not interested in a church, but the truth as it is and has been always.
And so it is, I take my text this morning as the composite text of the whole of the New Testament. For in this is the Word and the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ.
This Order is dedicated and has received our Lord as Master of its Order, and has accepted that there is but one way, and that is the way of the New Testament and our Master’s word. There may be many schools of a different nature, but basically, they are all fundamentally at the very foundation, teaching the same few basic, principled truths, which the Father in heaven created this solar system handed down unto us. And in the finality, we only seek to bring the truth which has been the worship of the Christ, the First-born Son of the Father, unto this world. that it may be truly added by all of us here, and by all of us in this world, into the doctrine and the teachings of all churches. And that the truth and the law and the mysteries may be revealed and may be taught to all men. We have no ambition to build churches. We have no ambition to destroy churches or teachings. Our only ambition, our only striving is to teach those whom are teaching that they may fully give unto the youth of the world and anyone else who is seeking the teachings of this New Testament, and the teachings which have gone before it that support it, the true worship of the Christos and the Father in heaven through our Lord Jesus Christ.
For somehow or other, man, through these hundreds of years since our Lord was here as the great Messiah…Now lord of this earth, and so close that his very breath is our breath, his very life is our life…somehow man has always sought to have his way, either in the material world or in the spiritual world in one way or another. And somehow, as in the ancient Hebrew rituals of the sacrificing of the fatted calf, man has not understood. For it is not until we are able as a body of dedicated brothers and priests, able to make that same sacrifice that was in the Jewish temple, the fatted calf—the over-filled mind. Until we have put our mind upon the altar, until we have laid down our whole being, can we listen to the voice of the Almighty God, and our Lord Jesus Christ from within our holy temples which have been prepared for him.
I am not a professional theologianb, so to speak. And I claim no degrees in that particular aspect of theology. I am a doctor of divinity, rightfully earned. But I know and I have been shown one particular thing. And it is supported by our Lord Jesus and His words. And I have often thought of it as I have read the lengthy works supporting some particular little passage or phrase of our Lord’s teaching. I have understood their writings. I am very appreciative of the great number of hours and the great effort that they have made in order to get to the point where they could read and understand the many languages, and the hours of dedication in giving these interpretations. I do not belittle them, nor do I belittle any man who acclaims or does assume the robe or the way of the ministry in any form or any church.
But as I read their works and listen to their discourses, I am so convinced that the Master Jesus Christ, our Lord of this earth, was so right when he said, “Unless ye be as little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.” For unto this work, it cannot be of yourself. And ye can only be of our Lord. There are many things in this day that are attracting the young people in their search for good, to satisfy that appetite that comes from within. And it can only be supplied through the true and the truths of our Lord Jesus. Not something interpreted, but the reality.
And you know, it is an interesting thing. When we study back through the annals of history, that we find that Christians existed long before our Lord and Master came here. But he sure had a big job to straighten things out in the formal church and dogmatic teaching. For Christ was worshipped thousands of years before our Lord came. And He’ll be worshipped thousands of years before. Why cannot we use, why cannot we appreciate as Christians, the very word which we annex and take as the title of our sect…catholic, not Roman, not Russian, not Parisian, but just catholic. Catholic in the way of the universal teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ. Is not this sufficient, with all of the realities which back it up? With the practices of thousands of years prior to his coming, in the ancient wisdom teachings which explained the mysteries? And did he not tell us that in those days…in these days which we are now going through, that the mysteries would be revealed?
…I see you searching, and I see every brother of the Order of Jesus, searching for the great truth. But it is not in Pentecostal or speaking of tongues. It is not in the analysis of the truth. It is not in one part of the Word of God. It is in the whole word brought both in all its beauty and reality. And I say to those whom are seeking to bring the Spirit into its reality…into manifestation, as the old Pentecostal and the old free Methodist used to do…and I know these and understand these religions because I was brought up in a free Methodist home, and I have been taught by some of your theologians as a Roman Catholic; and I have worshipped at the Temple of Giza; and I have walked the water and the fire, and I know from which I speak, and I speak the word of our Lord Jesus. Come back to the teachings of the Testament as they are, and seek to know and to acquire the Light. And look within thyself and accept and find thine own being. And when thy mind is still…and thy mind has been placed upon the altar of God Almighty,…through our Lord Jesus Christ, then will you hear his true voice, then will you hear the true Word, and then the Spirit will motivate the realities of creation unto you, and there will be no mysteries.
For there is a pitfall in the Pentecostal approach; when the ego goes on its demonstration. “Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven within you, and all of these things shall be added unto you.”
…
Come, Brothers, let us follow the teachings which you have declared as your motto of that order, the Society of Jesus. Let him speak through you. And may God bless you throughout the world. AMEN

“Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter.

Who would think that those branches would turn green again
and blossom,

But we hope it, we know it.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Monday, December 21, 2015, is the Celebration of the Winter Solstice – And this is the announcement of the official start of winter in the Northern Hemisphere.Winter Solstice is also known as Yule.

More precisely, winter solstice will take place at 12:47 pm EST (1747 GMT) on Dec. 21. It is a date that will also mark the shortest day and longest night. Daylight will only be around 9 hours.
Yet, the good news is that starting Tuesday, the days will start getting longer.

Throughout history, solstices have been accompanied with countless cultural and religious traditions. Our ancestors lived in a world where everyone believed in mystery and magic. Every year, they gathered together to celebrate the seemingly miraculous return of the light after the longest night of the year; in this celebration of the triumph of the Light winter Solstice festivals were born. To this day, people all over the world celebrate Winter Solstice as a time of rebirth, a new beginning and a chance to marvel at the power of transition from darkness into light.

DARKNESS

The world seems small to those dwelling in the darkness, restricted by the limitations of their own consciousness, able to see only a little way into the surrounding gloom. Go not into the darkness of night without the Light of your Self, for the pit is deep and wide.

The dark days of trial are those where each is driven to his inmost center alone, there to reassemble himself in what is good; there to step clear of the old garments worn before, and to leave them behind. When one gets to the depths, where “hard pan” is struck in digging a well, only then, at rock-bottom, with all the soil shoveled out and walled away, can the pure fresh water flow in.

Some of the difficult and shattering experiences in one’s personal life may be part of a clearing out process, necessary before something better could have room to grow.

Terrible as some things may seem, they usually force one into taking needed steps for betterment. The darker and deeper the depths, the higher and brighter the mountain.

Christ is the star of promise and hope which comes only at the nadir of experience. As Christ was born at the darkest season of the year, at midnight when days were shortest and nights most long, at the bleak time when winter begins and vegetation sleeps — so also do the finest experiences of the human soul come to one at the bottom of the dark well of despair.

It is only too often through soul-rending experiences that our outer shell of self-sufficient busyness is softened enough to enable us to open up to Him.

“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.”

His purpose is not to slay me. He is the eternal Will-to- Good. He merely wants me to realize something, that I may be freed from one more chain. He is giving me every opportunity to see Himself in this — beyond the outer frightening semblance.

I was too cumbered about to come willingly, so He had to force me through love and consideration for my eternal, not just momentary, good. Then here in the depths, stripped of all other possibilities of comfort, I come fully to Thee, to return myself to the Creator who has cared enough to call me here. -Rev. Mother Ruth Blighton
It is said there is one Way but many paths that lead thereto, and we have seen different routes that souls have traveled to find spiritual illumination, each according to the nature or need of the individual.
Looking at the lovely and literal story of Jesus’ birth, one may glimpse a symbolical pattern suggesting different paths whereby the seeker might come to the newborn Light of spiritual illumination.

Those of the inn, which is overly filled with material concerns, have no room to spare and pass up the opportunity.
The shepherds, in their quiet simplicity, are receptive to angelic vision and trustfully obey instructions to find the Light.
Those more learned or highly-placed, through occult wisdom and study of the universe, travel a longer and more arduous route to the Light, but give freely of their goods.
Mary and Joseph have been previously initiated and are already there, as chosen channels to bring the blessed Light to humanity.

-Rev. Mother Ruth

You may be capable of great things, / But life consists of small things.

Big things seldom come along. One should know the small as well as the big. We may all yearn to make lasting achievements and to be heroes, but life seldom affords us the opportunities to do so. Most of our days consist of small things — the uneventful meditations, the ordinary cooking of meals, the banal trips to work, the quiet scratching in the garden — and it is from these small things that the larger events of life are composed.

We rarely have the occasion to make grand gestures. The champion gymnast’s greatest moment is but an hour out of an entire lifetime. The works of great artists are viewed for very short times. The master musician’s best composition is but one work in a sea of musical tones.
If we want to be successful, it is the small things that we should pay attention to.

We must not fall into the trap of waiting so long for the big things that we let numerous small chances slip right by us. People who do this are always waiting for life to be perfect. They complain that fate is against them, that the world does not recognize their greatness.
If they would lower their sights, they would see all the beautiful opportunities swirling at their feet. If they would humble themselves enough to bend down, they could scoop untold treasures up into their hands.            from _365 Tao: Daily Meditations_ by Deng Ming-Dao

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

-Rumi

Greetings Brother & Sisters,

As I contemplated what to address in my letter the obvious topic to reveal itself was the Autumnal Equinox. However, following the Spirit and disregarding the obvious, I have chosen a different but somewhat similar topic: Thanks. I was reading Mother Ruth’s book, Pondering, on a day that I was not feeling very well and came across her thoughts on the topic of Thanks. She insightfully writes, “Giving thanks often during the day for whatever good comes your way helps to build up a positive attitude.”

Who in their right mind is going to argue with a simple yet profound statement like that? 100% accepted by the whole of humanity except for maybe a few. Well, like I said earlier, I was not having a very good day. My cancer was giving me a lot of grief. I’ve had prostate cancer for nearly 10 years and I’ve cultivated an intentional attitude of gratitude. Where that intention gets tricky is giving thanks for not only the good things that come my way but also for the not so good things that come my way (i.e. prostate cancer) as oddball as that might sound. Why the not so good things?

Well, in those experiences I encounter a reveal of myself that I otherwise would never have had. In some of my experiences with illness and loss I have encountered what I would consider to be important lessons and teachers in my life. So by giving thanks for even the not so good things it helps me to integrate them into my life in a positive framework and experience the support and the love of God internally and externally through a loving community of family and friends. So I guess what I am saying is: “Under all the s..t, is a pony”, to quote a very dear friend and teacher who shared this sentiment with me after we discussed the topic of Thanks.

Thanks for all your love and support. I give thanks for all of you each and every day. And thank you God, for all that you have given me and for all that you have taken away.

Rev. Hats-N-Jackets

“I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the universe.”
― Dalai Lama XIV

From Father Paul
Brotherhood II – Lesson from May, 1970
What is this man…this creature, your brother. There is nothing more worthy of his being than the right direction and his following it: being employed, moving, doing and carrying out his thoughts, since upon this depends his usefulness to God, to his brother, and to the public which he serves. Man the creation of God, through his own present and future, may benefit his own place in the next life. In all these aspects he is concerned.
The consideration of this has often obliged us to lament unhappily about the condition of those outside–the unhappiness of mankind. But after all, that is what we are here for, to turn this unhappiness through its transmutation and the transmutator, into the knowledge of God, the Christos and our blessed Master.
Through the great mixture and confusion of thought, sometimes we are hardly able to make a right thing out of the material judgment of man. But through our work we are attempting to bring further the real Light of the Christos; that beacon Light that cuts through the fog of confusion and the intemperate zeal of some people in the outer world to do the wrong thing.
It is difficult at times to bring ourselves to think of some as brothers also–God’s children. Of our brother who is next to us; also in the Order, this is not so difficult because we see him at prayers. We see him in the morning at Communion. We know he has faults, and of course we see our own in him. To this also we attribute the imperfect knowledge that we have of things and the slow progress we feel we are making in attaining a better level of consciousness.
Like the children of Israel who were 40 years upon their journey from Egypt to Canaan, which might have been performed in less than one year, sometimes we feel as if we were doing the 40 years. But in reality it is a few days, comparatively speaking.
Clearly therefore, we see that we must clear our heads and rally every once in a while in managing our thoughts rightly. We will have saved time, saved our efforts, saved our brother’s feelings. We will see and do those things which we are instructed to do to give us better judgment, better understanding. We will free our mind of the confusion and make our faculties stronger, more steady and steadfast.
I would advise you at all times to be particularly careful of the many bombastic books that you will see advertised with glaring titles…You will probably find that they have a lot of very nicely written words, but no real information This precaution will save you money and us time, to get rid of the ideas which are of no use to you. Many new books are merely compilations on well established writing rearranged with showy covers to make them enticing to the public…
In our series of lessons you will always find that they will cover distinctly those things which are needed by you. They will be given to you as tools, not as theorems and not as a dogma or a creed. But their functions you will find sooner or later drop into place and become the tools of man. You must keep this in mind when you read them. Know that we are not selling you a new book. As a matter of fact we are not teaching you anything new.
Just as an exercise in accordance with your teacher’s work, we suggest that you learn to eliminate from your conversation for a period of time the personal “I” in your daily relationships with others. This process is not an elimination of yourself, or an attempt to make your selfhood secondary. Self is so real and is so closely related to what we can see with our individual eye that it is hard for us to think other than the relationship of this other being. But actually that is not what we are interested in. It is the true man, the true being, that accomplishes the great things without being forgotten about. And the more attention you give it the more work it will do for you.
To think first of self, the outer man, is to promote selfishness. This is a word derived from the same source. In the belief of many eastern religions, there is a continual inference that until man can think of himself other than as an individual and an isolated physical being, he can never partake of his true nature and feel and express the true movement of God and the power of Christ within. Or to express it in familiar words: we cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
A prerequisite to man’s fuller life is considered in the light of these teachings as being a renunciation of those things which tend to cause the individual to be selfish. God may be conceived as one who manifests Himself purely for the purpose of service or for the creation of better things.
God is described as synonymous with love. This is because God, the Creator, the Father, is too great to describe. But He is ever giving and so we use the term love as an active expression of description.
Also with selflessness, God creates according to this theory. Not for his own pleasure, but according to His own nature and according to the needs of all His created beings.
God is selfless because alone He senses not. Through the mutual interchange of His giving and the receiving and giving on the part of man, God realizes Himself through Man. All things in nature give that they may live, for life is in the giving and not in the withholding.
In selfless giving to others, we are becoming what we are, because we have provided the channel through which those qualities given us may manifest.

Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year observance, begins at sundown on September 13 and ends at night fall on September 15th. Yom Kippur (day of atonement) begins in the evening of Tuesday, September 22nd and ends in the evening of Wednesday, September 23rd.
Shanah Tovah, Shnat Shalom
(A good and peaceful New Year)

Feast of the Fall Equinox (excerpts from ritual)
Equinox is the point of balance between light and darkness. We receive the power of the Spirit and the Light both of which we seek, both from above and within, and below this holy orb in which we live. This is the time of the Fall, which is a point of equinox, the time of the sun crossing the great solar equator of this orb. The enlightened student, who is searching for higher Self and reaching for higher life through service, will find this day important.
We can only make ourselves a sacrifice in the temple when and if the fire that burns within, what you might call conscience, is activated and we realize that this offering must originate itself within us. For we are offering up ourselves to the Holy One, which tells us right from wrong and holds us accountable for all errors more strictly than the laws of man.
Every night during retrospection we stand before this One and judge ourselves according to the needs of the body; we stand in humility and we look only to the Light, that we may see the true way.
The rich young man asserted he kept the law, but he was not ready to follow the Christ: to give up, to let go, the content of the world. Too many are content to escape condemnation; they are lukewarm. They fail to seek commendation such as the diligent merit of service. To gain and to have that “well done, good and faithful service” from the God within.
Let us now consider this night in the holy temple within and search for the Light, and keep the fire that has kept the Light burning as admission in the temple, that Solomon in all his glory could not hold one tiny candle light to the great Light of the Christ in you.

For love is ever the beginning of Knowledge, as fire is of light.
Carlyle—Essays. Death of Goethe.

Excerpts from “What the Father Wanted of Jesus” by Father Paul
“Some 12-14 years ago, I was given information to the effect that the psychic world and stuff was in the act of uniting with earth and, that at about this time as the new heaven and the new earth were forming, so would man’s sight become much more evident.
It is also becoming quite evident that right now students are seeing and hearing things without normal development and without having been trained in the sight of the psychic world.
They are seeing manifestations of people who have passed on and other psychic phenomena of negative nature. This is not insinuating that the students who see are negative or evil, but only that they have in some way accidentally opened up to the psychic realm or are seeing those things which are trying to manifest on this plane.
As I have told you before, as this time and age manifest in consciousness of change, many people without necessarily any training will see people manifest out of the psychic realm and some, or many, will be frightened at the unusual sights and, therefore, wish to leave or ask for help. Leaving will not change the situation at all, neither will panicking change anything.
What is needed is a little comprehensive understanding that they do not have to take looking or watching or doing anything about it. This is something that the Holy Order of Mans cannot stop for it is part of the change of earth and so if you see your long lost brother or wife or husband who has passed through transition prior to this come walking down the street–don’t be shocked….”
[Later in this lesson, Father gives instruction on calling upon the living Christ Jesus, nearer than hands and feet, to enter safely into this psychic world and its union with the earth:]
“Now on the first day of the week all the brethren were gathered together, and John began to speak to them, saying “My brethren, my fellow heirs, and my partners in the Christ Jesus, our Lord, know ye that unto you hath the Lord given from His hand power, and that He hath wrought for you very many mighty works, and miracles, and acts of grace…He hath never made Himself manifest unto you through the eyes of the body, neither have ye hearkened unto Him through the ears of the body, but He hath made Himself visible unto you through the integrity of your heart, and by visions, and by works which are Holy. Strengthen ye yourselves, then, in Him, and ye shall remember Him at all times; moreover, ye shall also remember the mystery and the associations which hath come unto you, and which our Lord hath fulfilled.”

Children Often Have Strong Memory Of The Time Before They Were Born
As you read these stories, I encourage you to practice something that I learned from a 10th-century scholar in India named Tilopa. His advice was to “have a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing.” Allow yourself to turn in peace to the memory of God, which is possibly still shining in your own quiet mind. -Wayne Dyer
One night at dinner, our younger foster/adopted son(he was around four years old) started talking at great length about his life “in the stars” and how he had all these brothers and sisters who lived there. He said he’d seen my husband and me from there and tried to get our attention many times but we never could see him, so he decided to be born through his mom so we could find him.
My husband and I were floored to say the least. I’d had a few miscarriages after my first son, so once my younger son told us what he’d seen, I knew his soul had been trying to come in through me even though my body was not able to do it.–Longmont, Colorado
My son was around age four when we were playing our game of “I love you more because…”
I told him, “I love you more because…I love you beyond infinity, around the moon two times, around Mars, and touching every star on the way back to you.” Pretty great answer, right? I had him beat. Or at least I thought I did. Very seriously, my son placed his hands on either side of my face, locked his crystal blue eyes with mine, and said, “Mommy! I love you more because I picked you while I was in heaven.”
Needless to say, he won the game.–Taft, California
At the age of five, my younger son announced out of the blue that he had chosen my wife and me to be his parents. Intrigued, my wife asked how he had done this. He matter-of-factly stated that while he was in heaven before he was born, he had been allowed to go through one door to pick his parents, and through another door to select his brothers and sisters. We were not churchgoers, and have no knowledge of his having obtained this idea from any external source. –Orthez, France
I had just returned from a weekend retreat in which I was totally immersed in Spirit, when my four-year-old grandson climbed up on my lap. Snuggling as close as he could, he looked me in the eyes and very seriously said, “I am forgetting how to fly.”

It was a profound moment in my life, and I have never forgotten it. My grandson taught me the truth of where we come from and who we are within. This truth is so easily forgotten in the business of living on this planet. Consistent meditation and prayer time help me to remember “how to fly.” O’Fallon, Missouri
–Excerpts from Memories of Heaven by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

Brothers and Sisters,
Again we have arrived at the time of transition and the harvest of the fruits of our labors. With this in mind I got a message a few weeks ago about a friend in Georgia who had passed on. He had fallen down a flight of stairs and passed quickly. Mike was a mentor as well as a friend. He taught me how to be a good care taker of those with mental illness as well as those with substance abuse issues. At one time in his life he had been chosen as Social Worker of the Year in Georgia, but this is not what I’m writing about. Mike was born with Cerebral Palsy which affected both his speech as well as the gait of his walk, also at a young age he had fallen out of his parent’s car in the driveway and got run over by it. Mike was a dedicated worker who worked long hours both in his work at the state, as well as his own private practice. We had long talks about life, sometimes sipping single malt scotch to bring clarity to the conversation. I remember one conversation with Mike when he told me he was looking forward to the day when he could rest from his body. When I got word of his passing I reflected on this conversation. Several night ago I had a dream, in it I was standing in a hallway when Mike came in, he walked up to me and hugged me, he did not speak but there was a smile on his face, he then turned and walked down the hall as he walked he had his same CP gait, but as he continued down the hall his gait became more and more normal till he reached the end of the hall and was walking perfectly, he turned toward me and waved and passed through the door to his right. I am mindful from this experience how temporary each experience is in this life and that we remain whole as souls and spirits in the mind of God. Happy Fall (no pun intended) to us all. God’s blessing to my good friend Mike, walk in peace. -Donald

Even after all this time
The Sun never says to the Earth,
“You owe me.”
Look what happens with a love like that.
It lights the whole sky.
-14th century Sufi poet Hafiz

Dear Friends, One of the first lessons we’re taught in spiritual training is Concentration. “Let thine eye be single, and thy body will be filled with Light”
Having a single eye focused on our elder Brother, the Master Jesus, we learn discernment of what the person next to us is all about–the essence or Being, of this soul. That is really the basis on a real relationship and what being a “brother” in the universal sense, is all about.
Being a friend is all about seeing the essence of a person, the center, rather than the cloak that the individual puts on, and supporting that which is real and true. Mother Ruth writes about how God views each of us in Pondering:
BEING
I wonder if God sees us, not with arms and legs, but as an essence – which is basically how we react to others once we have gotten past the initial impression based on outer appearance. One feels something about a person which has nothing to do with the external, but a reaction to some essential quality of the inner being. What if persons were reduced to a simple expression? What would I look like as a flower, if all that I am were compressed into that? What would I sound like if my soul’s essence were reduced to music – a different song, a different flower for every soul?

Happy Summer!
Rev Mary Anderson

From Father Paul
Brotherhood Lesson from April, 1970
Man, for a long time, and always, has sought friendship. The word “amour” is that of love. Love is certainly the prime mover in contacting mutual affection, mutual relationship. But, in this Order, we seek first the kingdom of God. In so doing, we will find that it is much easier not to be critical of the other fellow, our brother.
Even in the everyday life of man in the social world or what we call the outside world, as far as the material advantages are concerned, it often happens that those who are obtaining more friends and are courted more by people, are those whom are interested and motivated by a common cause.
Thus it is in the brotherhood of the Holy Order of Mans, we seek first the Center – of God. Those brothers around us are also seeking the same. Here we have a friendship which is a fraternal friendship in the fact that we are dedicated; most of us have taken on the nature and admit to the fact that we are seeking to serve the Great One and the Master of this Order, our Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore, we gather that the friendship springs up between us from a natural impulse rather than a wish. And so it is eventually, as we move along and become more central minded, with our eye single (that which our Master spoke of); we then look upon the other fellow wondering what we can do for him.
Out of this comes one of the things which is most difficult for the Teacher. For as the student learns a little information he seeks to relate it to another, perfectly innocent of any need to correct himself. But his relations and his relating are not always the best for the other fellow.
This is from an inclination of the heart – a love for the other man, and a love for what he has learned and wishes to show; combined by a certain instinctive feeling of love rather than a deliberate calculating of the material world. We have sort of shed this world now.
This strength of feeling and the noticing of other human beings, other living things, become sharpened as we go along the trail. We become more conscious of life, the unending march and movements of life.
When our brother often shows us such love, it is a sort of love that we might almost expect from a blood brother. At certain periods he shows it; sometimes he doesn’t. These are the varying periods of change, correction, and the reaching of new levels of consciousness and understanding as he gives up the past, as he gives up the world outside, as he seeks a greater love – the love of God, the love of Jesus Christ – that he may be so beloved by Him. He doesn’t really know why yet. He hasn’t sensed or seen the Master. He doesn’t see God. This is too big. but, he still seeks to have favor that he may clearly share in this neutral, instinctive affection of a Christian following the path, one with another.
…It is almost as if we felt sometimes that we were talking to another child and were their parents occasionally; especially to a neophyte just coming in or one seeking entrance. This is not always an ego thing; it is not always an ulterior thing or aspect. But there is a certain passion to share what we have learned, the strength we have attained, feel, and find a little more of each day–even though there is a little ego there.
Some people by character of nature have greater sympathy, greater emotion. They think they perceive in the other fellow a strength, something like a beacon light of virtue, so to speak, in another’s action. For there is nothing so inspiring as the attention of another person. There is no conciliation between people that will bring about greater sense of living being. In a certain sense, we may be said to feel an affection for those we have never seen, owing to their honesty and virtue. ..
Some come in, for instance, frail of body and ill of mind. But this does not seem to make a difference here. There is an everlasting bond. It seems as if it were passed to us from the past ages of many other orders which had been before.
Then we come across the words in our studies of Light, Life and Love, symbolized by the Egyptian characters of the ancient temples. We use them today. They are characteristic of the Christos. At first, they seem to represent the three great principles in the universe.
A little study of them will reveal that there is something more, and yet, they are one. There is a unity about them that is striking. Somehow we sense through our consciousness that through the light comes life, before physical manifestation comes into view. We see it from a scientific standpoint, or from a metaphysical standpoint, that from light comes the life, and then love. For there is action here. One is to give to the other. this holds true even if we reverse the order and say that love begets life and light.
In the Holy Order of Mans, this formula means that first of all we must come into the light if we would have life – that the whole body will become alive. When we say life, we do not mean mere animation. We mean the real life, the immortal life, the eternal life, sole existence – the moving and presence of the Spirit.
We do not know eternal life while dwelling in darkness, ignorance, superstition, skepticism, fear, hatred and intolerance. These are all curtains which draw and close out the Light. The Light of knowledge, the Light of God, the Light of understanding, the Light which gives eternal life, the real Light. When one has such light and life, one has great love; great power of the Universe within him. For love with love- God’s love- is the supreme love, and man’s love for God is the reflection of that love.
Man’s love for mankind is the principle of divine love made active and manifest through the activities of the brotherhood. To be a brother means to have love dominating all our thinking; that ever reaching out, that ever trying to serve, that ever trying to do: we live. Even when we lose sight of all other laws, forgetting man-made laws, forgetting business principles, material thinking and common practices–we give way to the impulse that says God is love, love is the Law. Therefore, be merciful, be tolerant, and be forgiving, even to the sacrificing of some of our own best feelings, and especially, our most dressed-up ego.
This is the spirit that I know will animate all our disciples in this Order. It means being considerate, even too generous at times. It means sacrificing much of our time. It means giving when we feel like receiving. But it has its rewards, and those rewards are the function of the Law in action.
If we look close, we will find living symbols. They are there. And so were they also in the ancient times of the Pharaohs, kings of Egypt, whose celebrated persons appear in the hieroglyphs and characters on the old walls of the tombs and temples. In ancient times, these scripts, forms and symbols were made into seals of many kinds in the manner by which we use business calling cards or trademarks.
This particular seal is of a pharaoh, who formed the Councils Twelve, from which the nucleus, so tradition informs us, our Order originally sprang, about 1489 B.C. The hieroglyphic sides in the ovular signature literally translated means, “Man, the ancient man; the keeper of the Order and the Word; the protector of the Ancient Law.”
This as our mind is busy working with our problems while we are moving up in vibration, moving up to greater levels of consciousness and higher levels of consciousness, we are also conscious of the great reality – we have a brother.
Our brother is always around, whether we are in San Francisco, Chicago, or wherever. We have a brother in the field, who is going out front doing the front-line work. We have a brother whom we do not care for in some of the things he does, but we do care for him in reality. We know his dedication is the greatest of all principles and that he is seeking to become that of which we have written and pictured.
So let the whole of our being become a brother – a brother to you, a brother to me, and a brother to our Lord Jesus Christ. This we ask in His name, and in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sound Healing
Many years ago, I had an unexpected encounter that introduced me to the power of sound. It happened in December of 1959, when I was 17 and midway through a year’s study abroad with a traveling school called the International School of America. That month my classmates and I were in Calcutta, India. On the night of the full moon, a friend and I walked to the banks of the Hooghly River, where we came upon a small Hindu temple. An old sadhu with a long beard–the caretaker of the temple–suddenly emerged from the shadows and put his hand on my shoulder. Then he made the most amazing sound I had ever heard. When he finished, he explained that this was the sacred sound aum, which, he said, encompasses all sounds in the universe and is a healing vibration. I remember that the night was very still and clear, and the moonlight shone radiantly on the man’s face. When I closed my eyes I could still feel the vibration from the sound he had made…
Cultures around the world have long recognized the power of sound and music. Ancient Egyptian documents prescribed incantations for physicians to intone to the sick. In African religions, drumming is a highly developed art that can produce trance, sexual excitement, spirit possession, or even loss of consciousness. I was once quite stirred by Indonesian gamelan music (played on gongs and other percussion instruments): A concert I attended included a traditional piece for rousing warriors to battle, and by the end I felt such an adrenaline rush I was ready to fight.
Why do sound and music have such a strong effect on us? One answer has to do with a process called entrainment, whereby various bodily processes–respiration, heart rate, and brainwaves–synchronize with the frequencies of what we hear. For example, a stroll along the beach becomes deeply relaxing as body rhythms entrain to the lulling sound of the ocean’s waves. The concept of entrainment is important to music therapists and sound researchers, who experiment with rhythmic and tonal combinations to find those that best induce states conductive to healing…
In 1996, the American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care published an analysis of numerous reports linking music to the alleviation of pain. some studies suggest that listening to music you find enjoyable may facilitate an increase in endorphins, the body’s natural pain reducing hormones…Rhythmic auditory stimulation has also been used successfully to treat patients with Parkinson’s disease. In one compelling anecdote, noted neurologist Oliver Sacks, M.D., tells of a Parkinson’s patient named Rosalie who remained transfixed and motionless most of each day–except when she played the piano, at which time all signs of the disease disappeared…Researchers suggest that singing long-familiar tunes may be an effective way for caregivers and family to engage with Alzheimer’s patients.
-excerpts from Dr. Andrew Weil’s Self Healing Newsletter, Feb 1998

Music is a miniature of the harmony of the whole universe, for the harmony of the universe is life itself, and humans, being a miniature of the universe, show harmonious and inharmonious chords in their pulsations, in the beat of their hearts, in their vibration, rhythm and tone. Their health or illness, their joy or discomfort, all show the music or lack of music in their life.
And what does music teach us? Music helps us to train ourselves in harmony, and it is this which is the magic or the secret behind music. When you hear music that you enjoy, it tunes you and puts you in harmony with life. Therefore we need music; we long for music. Many say that they do not care for music, but these have not heard music. If they really heard music; it would touch their souls, and then certainly they could not help loving it. If not, it would only mean that they had not heard music sufficiently, and had not made their heart calm and quiet in order to listen to it, and to enjoy and appreciate it. Besides music develops that faculty by which one learns to appreciate all that is good and beautiful in the form of art and science, and in the form of music and poetry one can then appreciate every aspect of beauty.
What deprives us of all the beauty around us is his heaviness of body or heaviness of heart. We are pulled down to earth, and by that everything becomes limited; but when we shake off that heaviness and joy comes, we feel light. All good tendencies such as gentleness and tolerance, forgiveness, love and appreciation, all these beautiful qualities come by being light; light in the mind, in the soul, and in the body.
What is wonderful about music is that it helps us to concentrate or mediate independently of thought – and therefore music seems to be the bridge over the gulf between form and the formless. If there is anything intelligent, effective and at the same time formless, it is music. Poetry suggests form, line and colour suggest form, but music suggests no form. It creates also that resonance which vibrates through the whole being, lifting the thought above the denseness of matter; it almost turns matter into spirit, into its original condition, through the harmony of vibrations touching every atom of one’s whole being.
Beauty of line and colour can go so far and no further; the joy of fragrance can go a little further; but music touches our innermost being and in that way produces new life, a life that gives exaltation to the whole being, raising it to that perfection in which lies the fulfillment of our life.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

Symbolism is a universal language which communicates directly to the inner self. It is a picture of some aspect of universal order which, through its accuracy, teaches us. Symbols are alive; they are the forms in which energy moves along the paths of life.
They are a universal language of the spirit through which we may communicate things beyond the power of words. To understand symbols, one must perceive the reality behind them, through experience, as this is the essence of all symbols.

Feeling the Earth Beneath your Feet
Walking on the green grass, beach, or in the dirt barefoot on a sunny day is a delightful, refreshing joy that brings back childhood memories. Now science is all on board with the health benefits of going barefoot, and the practice is called “Grounding” or “Earthing” The sense of energy, life and well-being rise up from being in direct contact with the earth–or, reconnecting with the healing energy that flows from the earth. Whether it be dirt, grass, sand or concrete (especially when humid or wet) walking barefoot is proven to boost energy, enhance your immune system, promote faster healing and reduce stress. Our bodies are designed with conductive systems that deliver electrons from your feet to all the other parts of your body. When you walk on the electron enriched earth, you are allowing your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems to balance. This happens through the transfer of negatively charged electrons from the surface of the earth into your body. In the body these negatively charged electrons neutralize free radicals that are positively charged. As we know, free radicals are directly involved in chronic inflammation. The Earth provides the negative charge and subtle electrical fields required by the body for proper functioning of our immune system, circulation systems, biorhythm synchronization, stress reduction and many other physiological processes.
Father Paul used to talk of wearing leather-soled shoes–leather naturally conducts electrons and so maintains a conductive contact between your feet and the earth. Grounding actually decreases your exposure to potentially disruptive electromagnetic fields, which in our modern world are practically everywhere. May your soles get grounded on our mother earth today!

O Great Spirit, whose voice I hear in the winds, and whose breath gives life to all the world, hear me
Let me walk in beauty and make my eyes ever behold the real and purple sunset.
Make my hands respect the things you have made, my ears sharp to hear your voice
Make me wise, so that I may know the things you have taught my people, the lesson you have hidden in every leaf and rock
-Lakota Prayer