Dear Friends,
As we approach the time of the resurrection—which is a personal resurrection in our lives as well—I am drawn to the Mother and the mission she was left with after the passing of the Master. How in silence and humility she bore the burden of the suffering and the humiliation her Son took on by the hands of men.
I am then reminded of the passing of our teacher Father Paul, and the burden our Mother Ruth took on when she assumed the leadership of the Order, which she did with dignity and grace, and without the support of those left to run the daily affairs of the Order. She lived a simple, quiet life but continued with her powerful presence in the lives of those who stayed truthful to The Way. She humbly accepted an invitation to live very modestly among those who cared about her, and many forgot her and what she had done for them.
As we experience the resurrection of the Christ, let us be mindful that we were blessed to have His servants Father Paul and Mother Ruth carry out His mission–and we have been left with their gifts; as we serve Him at his good pleasure.
Happy Easter.
Rev. Donald
Gandhi’s Seven Deadly Sins
Mohandas Karamachand Gandhi, one of the most influential figures in modern social and political activism, considered these traits to be the most spiritually perilous to humanity.
- Wealth without Work
- Pleasure without Conscience
- Science without Humanity
- Knowledge without Character
- Politics without Principle
- Commerce without Morality
- Worship without Sacrifice
From Father Paul (excerpts from classes):
Conforming to the pattern of the order and the Way is just as important as anything else is, because that pattern is set, not only as far as we are concerned on this set of books or on a printed page, but it is set above in the akashic records, and it will be maintained! And this is what most people don’t stop to think of, regardless of how many times you talk about the alchemy or the sacraments or anything else. They still think they’re [only] on paper down here, and they’re not. Well, they may be on paper down here, but they wouldn’t work if they weren’t up there.
Now what do you suppose was done for the four years after this revelation was brought into being? Well, I’m going to tell you something. It was a most meticulous and difficult task, because for four years we were preparing the idea of the order.
What do you think? It had to be prepared above before it could be prepared below!
Do you think there is an exception to this? Well, I’ve got news for you; there isn’t. And it doesn’t make any difference whether you’re forming an order or whether you’re asking for a job. It still has to — the form has to be there and the pattern has to be there, and the hierarchy works on it, as well as the Word of the Master. And in this case it went a little higher, up to God and the Archangels; or you don’t think this order would have thrived, do you? It wouldn’t have lasted six months, because it would have entirely broken down. (317, 1)
In the starting of this order and its work, we have great demands upon us, and I am perfectly well aware of the demands. But I’m also well aware that regardless of the demands, unless the supply of the right material is put there, it is going to be a useless job. And I will not have it useless. It will accomplish its mission. …
I have laid down what will be done, and it will be done. Not for the next two or three weeks, but for the next thirty years, or twenty years at least, while I’m here on earth. And we will without question raise a standard of priesthood which is an honor to our Lord Jesus. And anybody that doesn’t want to take it on, that standard, why, we’ll do something to help them if they want help. But that standard will be met. Because you cannot help bring others up the ladder unless you are on the rung above. You can’t do it. And when you take those final vows, those of you who have not taken them yet, remember they are not a way to a fraternal organization.
There have been lots of pious organizations. That’s their business, no reflections. But this is going to be truly holy. We’re going to function spiritually as well as materially — both. (311, 4)
Now, if it were just an order and it came out of a church or something of that nature; that would be a different thing. It had originated there; it would be a different thing. It might be a perfectly good order. They can have some wonderful people in it and some wonderful things, all in accordance with God’s Law.
But this is a higher striving, a higher reality, and it is more than just a group of people gotten together. The endeavor of this order, whose Master is the Lord Jesus Christ, is to bring the Light to man. This is our prime purpose, this is our prime focal point. If we accomplish this on the earth, we’ll have accomplished quite a mission…
AWAKENING III
Once, when my alarm clock had accidentally not been set, at the precise hour of the early morning when it should have rung, a soft voice whispered my name, and I awoke, in time to get to a new job. There was no one else in the house, physically. Perhaps a friendly entity decided to give a helping hand, or perhaps my own inner Self took a hand.
When it is time for the spiritual awakening, no alarm has been set, but in the realm of God consciousness it is known that this soul has slept long enough. There is work to be done, and unless he wakes to the realization of this, some Brothers in the higher realm of Spirit may gently nudge the person into awakening.
His Spirit was born of God originally. As it became more and more engrossed in physical activity, and worldly interests, God seemed farther and farther away, until many even have claimed not to believe there was a God at all. Else why all the suffering and sin of the earthly plane?
God made man in His own image. Surely God never sleeps. Yet man has spent one third of his life physically asleep, and most all of it asleep spiritually. He wakes up a little on Sunday, if he goes to church. He lifts up his heart to God when he sees the stars, or hears a bird, or finds a blossom in spring.
He glimpses God in a baby’s eyes, and assumes some of His quality in an act of selfless love. Otherwise, most of the time he sleeps, except when he gets a serious problem — then he wakes up to the hope that God may, and must, hear him, and help him.
Man slept first in the Bible, when God caused a deep sleep to fall on man while he removed a rib in order to create his mate from his own flesh, so that they might truly be one, and not separate entities in nature. Man woke to find himself with a beautiful wife, and she must have given him great joy, but she also diverted him from his one pointed attention to God.
Attention can only serve one master at a time, and if people are giving whole-hearted attention to providing all the things needed to pre-serve, (and to serve) their bodies, how can they be thinking of God?
Our spiritual awakening must be first of all to the realization of God as a reality. We must acknowledge Him in all we do. We must keep in remembrance the first Commandment — Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and soul, and mind, and thou shalt have no other gods before Him.
We awaken to the fact that He really IS, and always has been, and always will be — that He is more than a Being Who once created the earth and everything else, and talked with people for awhile, then got discouraged with that, and finally sent down His only Son in a last great gesture to salvage whomever would listen to him, and believe he came from God. And then went into retirement, letting men learn of His history from books.
When spiritual awakening comes, we know without being told, that not only does God live NOW, continuously, everywhere, but that He loves us, almost beyond imagining — even to the point where He is willing to accept us as His sons (by adoption, as Paul said). He chooses us, when He feels we are ready.
When we are reborn to a new consciousness of Him, and a certainty that we have been given a chance to dwell with Him forevermore, we know He expects us to measure up as His children, as inheritors of His Grace. That we must accept the commission to represent Him.
God is Mind, the totality of Mind, where all things are created. To reach Him, we must elevate our own minds to something approaching His consciousness, else how can He reach us? We must move very close, dropping away the earthly attentions, the concentration on those things which are below us in the sphere of creation.
We have to reach above, as high as we can reach — and that means within as far as we can go, paradoxically. Within, to the point of absolute zero, past all that can be seen or imagined. There God is.In all action, refer first to God. GO to sleep thinking of Him, and on awakening in the morning, present Him with Your mind, letting Him take it over, and thus become cooperative with Him in all you do.
You know that when you think mean or ugly thoughts, you are separating yourself from His presence, and heading for trouble on a downward path. If you can give up concentration of that meanness, and surrender to Him all your thinking, you will eventually become worthy, as He yearns for you to be, worthy to become a co-creator with Him, having conquered your own mind.
To start out all things with God is like starting at the top of the ladder, but we have to place our mind at the top of the ladder, or our feet would never know enough to start climbing, much less reach the top.
We are gods of our own universe. Until we awake, within our minds and inmost beings, how can we wake up the dormant faculties within us? How can we move inert matter, or stir the consciousness of lower stages of life from their comparative stupor, into living function?
Psalm 139:18 — “When I awake, I am still with Thee.”
The night is gone, and the new Day is almost dawned.
We must awake to the fact we are living in a new age — one that has never appeared on the earth plane before.
The new Jerusalem is coming down from God today, not tomorrow.
The words of John the Baptist ring true today:
“Prepare ye the way of the Lord. Make straight his Path.”
The great Preparation can only take place after the awakening of the Self into full realization.
From Mother Ruth (undated)
Dreamed last night that an Order group was cooking a special meal, with all the trimmings, to be served at another location, in a large room which was planned would be adequate to accommodate everyone involved. As I visualized it, it would be a room not quite as large as the dining room at the Ranch, with one long table laden with food, and people rejoicing all around.
When the food was all cooked, it was packed piping hot on a sizeable truck, along with several of the people, who then headed for the location designated.
I walked over after they had left, a few blocks perhaps, to meet them there. When I arrived, they were not there, and the room in which the food was to have been served was empty and filthy, something like Fillmore [the Order’s San Francisco shelter for men] before we moved in, but not as bad, and with no furniture or junk—just empty and dirty, having been unoccupied for months or years.
A couple of our sisters who had recently moved in the building were in an adjoining room sewing, and when I questioned them why the place wasn’t ready, and where were the others, they seemed to know nothing of it, and kept on sewing as I tried to get the idea across to them.
Finally I gave up and was about to leave, walking back out through the dirty room. It appeared the truck had lost the way. The room was on the second floor, and I glanced out the window to the street below, and there was the truck which had just pulled up, but they didn’t know where to go, and were gesturing and looking all around. I called to them, and then woke up, and found myself wondering if we should let the food get cold while we cleaned the place (which would probably take a week to do well), or whether we should just eat the food picnic style somewhere.
Thoughts after waking:
If this was a lesson, it could mean that it is a waste of time to hustle about preparing beautiful spiritual gifts for those who are unheeding, or unprepared to receive them, as they require a clean consciousness, and cannot be delivered in a filthy life. (not physical dirt, but that of mind and heart). The groundwork must be laid, the person prepared, before he can receive gifts, and that means scouring and scraping, though it hurts, to get rid of the debris and grime.
There’s something else to—perhaps it’s communication. Anyway, you cannot skip the part where Jesus sent certain of his disciples to find and follow a man bearing a pitcher of water, who would lead them to a large upper room which they should then prepare.
Father Paul: Book of Judgment, 1:11-13 February 9, 1974
This morning I’m going to take a couple of passages from the Book of Judgment. One of the things that we need to learn these days because of the difficulties and the things that are going on in the purging of the world – the purging of the world is no different than the purging of a man himself – is the learning to be willing to judge correctly. This does not mean just judging someone else. That means judging yourself. For judging yourself is a much more difficult job, one might say, than judging someone else. But this is not entirely true, because we get in the habit of looking at the face of someone, and as long as he’s not broken out with a lot of pimples and some sort of a rash, why, you’d say he looks pretty healthy. Well, I’ve seen a great many people who were ill, and a lot of them looked extremely healthy. And judging yourself – and the Father says, or Jesus said this:
“For if thou misjudge thyself, surely thy judgment shall come upon thee and hold thee.”
Well, this is true, because of course it is your word and you have made the decision and therefore you are going to live by it. If you do not look surely upon yourself and see yourself as others see you – no, I can’t say that can I? – see yourself as the Master sees you, then you surely will be misjudging yourself. Because as you look at yourself it is few people that would dare to look at themselves truly, because what they would see would surely not be what they wish other people to see.
We – one of the greatest businesses in the world is cosmetics, at least dollar wise, and this is so to keep other people from really seeing you…as you see yourself in the morning…
Somehow or other, people have gotten – I know how the phrase is used, but we’ve gotten to think of people as needing to be good solid individuals. Well, that’s what’s given me most of my trouble in this order is good solid individuals. They’re so darn solid that they can’t move when the Spirit comes to them, and that’s what’s wrong with them. For the solid individual has his mind all made up and he is so dense that he isn’t conscious of the Spirit when it does move.
Another little statement by our Lord:
“Treat ye with kindness all that earth puts in your charge, for thou are lord and master of my animals.”
…most people have no, absolutely no mastery of themselves because in the first place they don’t know themselves.
As we were just talking about judgment, and these two statements certainly live together. You’re not master of yourself, usually, because you don’t know yourself, because you’re not able to judge yourself. And what’s more you, most of the time don’t want to judge yourself because then you’d have to do a lot of things that you don’t want to do. So you see these two statements of our Lord certainly come together, and they certainly work together.
There’s a very interesting thing, and this sort of goes along with the first statement: “if you misjudge yourself surely thy judgment shall come upon thee.” You know, the place that I like to meet a man is when he’s alone; and I mean there’s no one else in the room. Sounds strange, doesn’t it? How did I meet him when nobody else was in the room? Well, it’s only when he’s alone that I can really know and really tell what he’s like, because this really shows his state of development, state of living, the conditions under which he thinks and what he really is, what his life really is. Because it is only when he is alone, usually, that he is not acting to satisfy someone else or to not be misjudged or to try to show your “putting his best foot forward”,…. So honesty is not considered the best policy, is it? Really, honestly down deep we don’t consider honesty the best policy.
You know, very often you hear and you listen to someone describing a book and all that sort of thing, oh, how beautiful it is, and it’s beautiful poetry and all that sort of thing, and people have an appreciation for poetry and I think it’s wonderful. But really, how many times have you looked at that person, and know that they would rather be reading a dime novel than they would have been reading what they were talking about. Because down deep you knew that individual really did not enjoy what they were reading but they were reading it because it was a good thing to read. That’s when I can tell, when I’m alone with a man, alone, when he is alone, where he stands, where he stands with the Bible, where he stands with the teachings of Jesus Christ. And where he stands with himself. Because as he stands with himself, so does he stand with Jesus Christ, and that is his true life.
This is the way – of course, it isn’t everyone that’s able to watch somebody when they’re alone, but it can be done. But this shows his life, his way and his approach to life. It shows whether he prefers the Testament to a novel, or whether he prefers a few moments of prayer to a cup of coffee. These are rather – these are things that you can enjoy, but where is your preference? Where is your preference?
“Act ye”, note: “Act ye accordingly [in accord] with the life which you lead.” Act according to the way you live. In other words, don’t act at all. “For a false act in life is like a false finger; it gaineth thee nothing.” Because it is not going to impress anybody that is able to see. And because you have assumed a role does not make you that, and people are not entirely blind. “Act ye accordingly with life which ye lead, for a false act in life is like a false finger; it gaineth thee nothing.” In other words, you can’t bend it, you can’t use it, it won’t work. It won’t work and neither will the false act work. It is too evident. It is too evident, and if anybody thinks that they are gaining something by putting on a false face, they are greatly mistaken in an organization such as this, because you’re going to a lot of work for nothing, because it means nothing.
You know, some way or other, many people, many brothers and sisters, when they come in the order have some idea ……have some idea that they’re all supposed to look like saints and they try to put on this act. Don’t do it. What if I was to come up to you and demand that you obey like a saint? Hm, that would be kind of a sad story, wouldn’t it? You want to look out; I’m liable to catch you someday in that situation. No, be obedient; don’t act like that that you are not, and you’ll find that you’ll soon get rid of that which you are not, and become that which the Master is looking for. Because your acting takes up too much time and gains you nothing, like the false finger.
Did you ever stop to think what it would be like if you’d just behave like you are? How easy it would be for a priest or teacher to straighten things out? Be quite easy. And after all, in the ultimate, any teacher that is going to be fooled by what you put on hasn’t graduated yet, that’s for sure. Be yourself and enjoy your life and let the words of the Master change you. Let the power of the Spirit change you; and it will. And this is an excellent thing to take a good look at, and don’t try to impress people with something that is not real.
I’ve seen brothers and I’ve seen sisters here, priests too, that are always giving off some very beautiful words of folderol, just beautiful folderol, that’s all it is. It’s about as phony as a three-dollar bill. The Master spoke very simply because he wanted people to understand him. But of course if you haven’t got it and you don’t know, then you’ll try to feed people these beautiful words, because that will help to confuse them. They won’t be able to judge you. That’s what it amounts to, just exactly what it amounts to.
Now this, I’m not talking about such people as some of the great poets and that. That’s a different thing. Poetry is strictly poetry; but words that do not come from within you, words that are not really yours, they are not a part of your life and your breath, and they are an act, are merely the food of evil, and that evil is what’s keeping you from being what you really are supposed to be, because you are feeding lies and falsity, and you therefore have it breed within you.
I have seen people in my life – I won’t say they’re here though, but I have seen people and I’ve known a couple of them, worked with them in fact, who just could not tell the truth. It is given a name in psychiatry, but they couldn’t tell the truth. They got so in the habit of lying that no matter what you said, they had to change it to something else before they repeated it, and they’d say, “You said that”. Now of course this wasn’t true. Then we have the other one that doesn’t say that you said it, but he can’t repeat anything either because he’s got to get his three cents in – and that condition we do have. Most of you people are really genuine and sincere, that’s for sure. But learn to repeat the Master’s words, learn to say it just as he said it. Learn to be able to teach other people as he said it, not what you want to say. Learn to teach the lesson as it was taught, not what you want to say. Then you can tell the person what they need afterward.
You see, this is all, these are all things where you’ve got to get your three cents in and make it a little different at the expense of somebody else and their teaching, their desire to know. So throw away the false fingers, teach the truth as it is and you’ll have no more troubles with meeting people squarely, honestly. You’ll have nothing to remember that you have to do this or that because that will be just you, and you haven’t got to cover it up. You haven’t got to remember what you said because there’s only one way to say it.
You know, a person that gets to be dishonest with their speech – and that’s what it is – it’s a real difficult thing because he always has to remember how he said it the last time, and personally, I’m not going to worry about that. I’m just going to say it.
Throw away your false fingers, throw away your false faces. Live your life in the image of Christ.
AROUND AND AROUND –Memoirs of a Mystic
As the clock of time turns ‘round and ‘round
New friends are made, new faces found
But the beat and rhythm of my heart
Is not disturbed as new friends part.
But a light appears: Ah, it’s the light
Of another soul, as it approaches
A new exalted feeling; it’s fine
For this soul seems to be part of mine.
The night, the day, it cycles on along
But your light it does not leave,
Your love and my love is only one.