Reflection

The Dragon Within

From The Philosopher's Stone by Israel Regardie:

"A vast amount of material exists in early psycho-analytical literature on the subject and significance of the Dragon.  A great deal of this is well synthesized in The Psychology of the Unconscious by Jung.  Briefly it may be said that the Dragon refers to the instincts, to undomesticated libido.  We have already defined the libido not as sexual desire alone as the Freudians claim, but as the sum total of all psychic energy, the life force peculiar to any organism.  Undomesticated libido would therefore represent that portion of psychic energy which has not yet been recognized and hence employed by consciousness.  In consequence, it remains in a crude, undeveloped, unutilized and undomesticated anxiety which so to speak poisons this energy, it comes to represent a source of real danger to the individual.  Whatever within cannot be dealt with invariably becomes a psychic projection, an objective something which the undeveloped psyche can suppress, or from which it may make frantic efforts to escape, or deal with in other ways.

   

All primitive and archaic concepts of the devil, satan, evil, etc., represent just such projected or objectified psychic energy that has not been recognized nor included within the scope of the ego.  Ignorance as to its true nature gives rise to further fear, and this emotion invests the psychic object with innumberable qualities and predicates born and bred from fantasy.  The dragon, which is precisely such a projection of feared because untamed psychic energy and content, is symbolic of the instinctual nature.  It represents enormous power and dynamic energy, the emotional drives and urges which are at the foundation and root of all conscious development.  Accepted and thus brought within the possibility of development and utilization-for denial and repression transforms into a fearful life-rending monster-it serves as a trained and faithful  beast whereupon the psyche may ride and proceed upon its individual evolution."

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What a great couple of paragraphs.   

The energy that we use to create bad and evil or fear and anger is the same energy that is at our disposal for good and altruistic, love and joy.  The patterns must simply be shifted.  All one has to do is admit to himself that he is not the best he can be.  You are not the person you want to be and could easily be.  Stop fantasizing about the great person you are and bring those repressed evils to light.  

Evil is good.  We live in a fallen world.  The evil is the means toward the good or the light.  One doesn't fight the dragon or go against nature.  We accept it and show it love and use it for our own good.  Acknowledge it as part of us, show it love, show it forgiveness and bring it in.

The Christian Scientists claim that there is no evil or sin or disease.  And they are correct in one sense.  In the world of absolute there is none but God's love.  The problem is we are fallen.  We live in a world of duality.  We didn't fall into this world balanced or if we did we gradually lost touch with this balance (God).  One doesn't easily find the good and stay there.  We are pulled from every direction.  We get excited and let our emotions go high and we will at some point be driven back down.  At some point or another one descends into sin.  Most people today are afraid of anything evil and simply repress it, they pretend the boogeyman isn't there.  If you simply admit he is there he will disappear.  Our continual repression of his existence guarantees his indefinite staying power.  The dragon remains to torture us and rear his ugly head whenever he likes.  Our ignorance begets a total lack of control.  Self Consciousness, becoming aware of the dragon and taming it eventually brings control.  Control means one can take over or he can step aside.  This is true development.

Joe Miller - A Mystic

Esotericism with Vernon Howard

"If you look long enough at what frightens you it will get frightened and run away."

"In the absence of self-betrayal, no one can betray you.  If you know a panther when you see one, do you play around with it?"
Self betrayal is careless ignorance of one's own mind.  It means one has not exposed certain illusions which make him gullible to others.  A person who gets hurt in his relations with the opposite sex must see many facts.  Such as his intense desire for the other person closes his eyes to the other person's self serving schemes.

"Running away from a crisis is not the same as running towards reality.  A realization of this allows us to use troubles to end troubles."
This is explained by the man who tries to row out of the whirlpool, he reaches the edge and stops rowing but is still caught and will get sucked back in.  The crisis will end when he refuses temporary comfort for permanent freedom.  He must cross the edge into calm water.  People are more eager to relieve stress than to examine and end its cause.

"If you want to know where you are living from damaging self-images, notice where you are most easily offended."

"A change in exterior circumstances does not change a man's spiritual level, for a pygmy of a mountain top is still a pygmy."

"Hide nothing, protect nothing, and you are as carefree as a sparrow in the sky.  This is beauty in action.  You don't have to take thought about yourself, for there in no artificial self screaming for protection.  You walk in and out of any human situation as you please, having nothing to win or lose.  This is because you won the invisible prize."

"Cause and effect occupy the same place.  Cause is not in another person's rude behavior towards you, with the disturbing effect inside you.  Both cause and effect are within the person feeling the disturbance.  The individuals response contains both cause and effect."

"Tension is caused by opposing desires.  Only an understanding of vanity pleasing desire can end tension."

More "Atomic Suicide" Quotes

From Walter Russell's book "Atomic Suicide":

"When a solid is sufficiently expanded, it becomes invisible.  It also gradually loses all weight in respect to the gravity of the earth and rises into space to seek pressures equal to its own.  When it thus finds and equilibrium of pressure, it will float."

"Electricity is divided into its opposite expressions which term positive and negative.  Positive electricity thrusts spirally inward from without to wind up light into an incandescent ball located at the apex of a cone.  Negative electricity thrusts spirally outward from within to unwind light into space in the direction of the base of a cone.
Positive electricity, gravitation and contraction are the integration of matter, while negative electricity, radiation and expansion disintegrates matter into space."

'Light and darkness are merely a question of contraction and expansion.'

"Sunlight is the result of contraction into intense motion while the darkness of space is the result of expansion into an almost motionless very long wave state."

"All things are.  Nothing new comes into existence.  Universal energy is constant.  Nothing is added to it or subtracted from it.  Its apparent changes are but interchanges."

"Nature multiplies by dividing.  She adds by subtracting.  She re-gives what she has been given.  As Nature, including man, changes its thought patterns existent material forms and combinations are transformed into the forms and dimensions of transformed thoughts."

"Creation is, therefore, a two-way process in which destruction of one form of matter must balance its construction into another form, the form alone being destroyed.  Each is but an opposite phase of the same thing."

Nature says to man:  "I am a balanced, two way reciprocating unit.  Emulate my balanced two-way actions and your works will endure forever; otherwise I shall destroy them as I shall destroy all unbalance."

"If we could see the whole two ways of entire cycles of motion (visible/invisible), God might as well not have created the universe of cause and effect at all.  We would know it for what it is and would see both cause and effect at once.  There would be no actors in the divine drama of creation for we would see the illusion of it and know there is no universe of motion - nor of life and death - nor of good or evil - nor of any of the opposites which comprise every effect of motion."

"If our senses could detect the invisible reaction to every action, there would be no sense of time - nor motion - nor change - for everything would seemingly stand still.  Every motion in one direction would be voided by its opposite.  Even time would stand still.  Its backwards flow would void its forward flow.  If our senses could detect the backward flow of time, there would be no sequence to anything - hence time itself would disappear."

Sigur Ros

What is Love?

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Discover the Real Reward of Higher Truth

What a beautiful man.  Enjoy these videos by Vernon Howard

Peter Gabriel - In Your Eyes

Brings about the the desire to connect with the soul in me.
Quite Inspirational!

Hierarchical/Relative Consciousness

Quote from Vitvan - "A Treatise On Faith" on perception of the objective world

"Here in this world, we are surrounded by and we are also incorporated in a Light-energy world of highly dynamic frequency and we can't see it.  We don't even know it.  "Where is that ocean?" the fishes said.  (You know the fishes held a convention and they argued where that ocean was, or whether there was an ocean.  Some of them got up and said, "There isn't such a thing, no such thing as an ocean."  Others said, "Yes, there is an ocean somewhere; it is omnipotent, it is omniscient, it is all-pervading." "But show us," said the agnostic ones.  Many others sincerely wanted to be shown where that ocean was, and so the arguments went on and on and on.)  And so arguments go on and on and on about whether there is any God, whether there is a cosmic process.  Or, if there is, where is it?  Some say there isn't any such animal or thing, and others say vaguely, "It is everywhere, even up in the sky."  But let us get right down in our respective selves and see how we register rapid frequency received from this energy world and how we make a picture of those frequencies registered as continuous.

So long as the pictures remain in your consciousness, wholly and totally unconscious to your objective, mentalized-self, or mental concept of self, you will then accept the images or pictures as reality; and to those images or pictures so appearing--which are generally identified with that from which the frequencies are received--you give values and create values about them.  (The you here means the whole race, from the awakening of consciousness from animal state to the awakening of consciousness in wave-frequencies.  In the animal state, the so-called objective world exists as a dream picture exists to man, where the man awakening from the dream says, "Those pictures that I saw in the dream were real, so long as I not awaken, but they were only dream-pictures.")  So, when a given individual really awakens and sees this world AS IT IS, outside of or other than his private world, then he will look back to that old objective state and say, "What a dream!  What a dream!  We were sound asleep and walking dreamers!  Giving values to images in our own respective private worlds that looked 'out there,' that appeared so substantive""

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These two paragraphs are very full of wisdom.  What I take from it is this.  Think about yours dreams while sleeping.  When you wake up and re-orient yourself to this objective world does the dream not become foggy in your mind?  Do your memories from earlier years in your life seem foggy?  For me they are, but that could be the effects of heavy drug use I don't know, maybe people see their past experiences clear as today.  Some are quite vivid still I guess.  Anyways, I can only go off of my perceptions.   It could be that the reason the dream appears foggy to us in this world is because our consciousness in this material world is foggy.  It would seem that the dream world is closer to reality than this material world and all spiritual schools of knowledge support this.  Our consciousness being so attached to this waking life flips it around on us.  So everything seems to point to us simply not having evolved the correct faculties and instruments to function correctly in that world.  Nor have we evolved the faculties to function with efficiency in this world either.  The reality is that we are still beings in our infant stages, having recently (relatively speaking) crossed the threshold from the involutionary stage to evolutionary (racially speaking).  We have built the form up, now we must learn how to manipulate it correctly.

What Vitvan seems to say is that if we were to see this world as it TRULY IS, then we would see that this is the true dream world.  It is not really the ENVIRONMENT to concentrate on, but man's CONSCIOUSNESS and how he uses his consciousness to perceive the objective world.  From my own experience of consciousness evolution I can say this.  That when I gather a mental image of myself and my mind from a year ago as I was new to my personal journey, I see a lot of cloudiness.  I see someone who thought he was at the forefront of knowledge and was becoming enlightened.  How foolish I was.  Even if I were to look at myself from three months ago or read what I wrote, I say to myself how dumb I sound.

The point is that everything is relative to your position.  You look out into this objective world and you project out into it and attach and identify with "things".  Is dreaming really any different from 'waking' life?  The reality is that it isn't.  When I have sex in a dream it feels just as good (if not better) as it does on this plane.  You are simply using a lower level of consciouness on this plane, a little more crystallized.  Your subconscious (closer to source and thus truth) controls the mind in the dream world while the conscious mind (farthest away from source/truth) operates in the objective material world.  I've seen it put this way, 'in the physical world, space is real and time is imaginary and in the etheric world, time is real and space is imaginary'.

The two planes are merely different levels of consciousness within yourself.  Just as you a year ago and today are simply different levels of conscious WITHIN yourself.  This is why the case for humility must be made.  If you look at yourself a year ago and think about how dumb you seemed, what did the illuminated man or person who is at your stage of consciousness (back then) think of you?  This pridefulness then bars you from receiving the teachings of the illuminated man most likely as well.

What Vitvan is trying to say in my opinion is that this light energy is moving too fast for our level of consciousness to perceive it.  We do the best we can with our current evolved faculties and identify it as we will.  What we see is not reality.  When we become aware of this fact by raising our consciousness we will see just how asleep we were.

Again this is why identification must be done away with.  One can never see truth until he opens his mind and heart.  One can never be free unless he opens himself to new ideas.  We must bend ourselves to see the truth.  There is no spoon (there is no material world).  There is no other way.  This is the very reason why we should be so concerned with how we expend our energy.  Put our energy into whatever it is that helps us to evolve.  One's current level of energy might be low, but he must fight this.  Realize that the conscious work that we put in will raise our level of energy allowing us to push the envelope further.

It might look bleak as of where we stand now.  We don't see the road to paradise.  But we must realize that the road is treacherous and meandering.  It must be taken slowly.  Going fast not only does one no good, it is detrimental.  We are all builders and the freemason must lay one brick at a time to build his temple.  If the fire burns bright enough within we will find the truth.

I've got a bunch of new books by this illuminated character Vitvan.  I'll be diving into them and most likely posting some more of his ideas and concepts.  Please take these interpretations of this Vitvan's gnosis simply as how I see it.  This type of knowledge is hard to translate and using the wrong language can completely skew the teaching.  Please know that I am trying to be careful and that I am still learning myself.

Path to Eternity

Thomas Bromley poeticizes:

Now the motion of the Soul through the Gate of Death towards Life Eternal, is the motion of a Spirit, which is to be looked upon as ascending or descending, as it comes nearer or removes further from God the Center, as Bodies ascend or descend in relation to their Center, by their tending toward or fromward the Visible Heavens. Upward therefore to a Soul, is Inward; Outward is Downward. The Center is the Highest, the Circumference the lowest. God is in the Center being the most Inward; Matter in the Circumference, being most Outward; yet God is in the Outward, as his footstool, but in the most Inward, as his Throne; filling both, though in both, not manifest alike. In the Inmost, he shows himself wholly in the Love; in the Outmost, in Love and Wrath, Life and Death, Generation and Corruption: But in the Inward dark World, altogether in Death, Darkness, and Wrath; as in the Inmost, all in Light and Life.

Therefore our Progress is from the Outward, through the Inward to the Inmost. The Outward is the place of Good and Evil, and as to its corrupt State, the Kingdom of the Beast. The Inward is two-fold, either the Dark or Light World. The Dark, is the Kingdom of the Dragon, the Center of Evil and Wrath; The Light World is the Paradisiacal Sphere, or that Garden of Eden, which is also situate in its Mesopotamia, or betwixt the two great rivers of Wrath and Love. The first of which is called The Lake of Fire, burning with Brimstone; the last,  A pure River of Water of Life, clear as Chrystal, which proceeds out of the Throne of God, and of the Lamb. The Inmost, is the eternal Sanctuary, or true eternal Tabernacle of God, and that spiritual Land of Peace, where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and all the glorified, departed Saints live and inhabit.

But none can ever reach This, but through the perfect Death; and as we die daily, so we rise nearer it, Death giving us a gradual passage towards this Eternal Kingdom of Life.

And is it so, that Death must waft us ore,

The Sea of Nature, to the Heavenly shore?

Then bring thy Boat, blest Death, that thou and I

May sail together towards Eternity.

A sweet Companion thou wilt be to me,

Till I imbosom’d am in Unity.

What Makes a Life Significant

An excerpt from a lecture by William James entitled "What Makes Life Significant"

A few summers ago I spent a happy week at the famous Assembly Grounds on the borders of Chautauqua Lake.  The moment one treads that sacred enclosure, one feels one's self in an atmosphere of success.  Sobriety and industry, intelligence and goodness, orderliness and ideality, prosperity and cheerfulness, pervade the air.  It is a serious and studious picnic on a gigantic scale.  Here you have a town of many thousands of inhabitants, beautifully laid out in the forest and drained, and equipped with means for satisfying all the neccessary lower and most of the superflous higher wants of man.  You have a first-class college in full blast.  You have magnificent music - a chorus of seven hundred voices, with possibly the most perfect open-air auditorium in the world.  You have every swimming, bicycling, to the ball-field and the more artificial doings which the gymnasium affords.  You have kindergartends and model secondary schools.  You have general religious services and special clubhouses for the several sects.  You have perpetually running soda-water fountains, and daily popular lectures by distinguished men.  You have the best of company, and yet no effort.  You have no zymotic diseases, no poverty, no drunkeness, no crime, no police.  You have culture, you have kindness, you have cheapness, you have equality, you have the best fruits of what mankind has fought and bled and striven for under the name of civilization for centuries.  You have, in short, a foretaste of what human society might be, were it all in the light, with no suffering and no dark corners.

I went in curiosity for a day.  I stayed for a week, held spell-bound by the charm and ease of everything, by the middle-class paradise, without a sin, without a victim, without a blot, without a tear.


And yet what was my own astonishment, on emerging into the dark and wicked world again, to catch myself quite unexpectedly and involuntarily saying:  "Ouf! what a relief!  Now for something primordial and savage, even though it were as bad as an Armenian massacre, to set the balance straight again.  This order is too tame, this culture too second-rate, this goodness too uninspiring.  This human drama without a villain or a pang; this community so refined that ice-cream soda-water is the utmost offering it can make to the brute animal in man; this city simmering in the tepid lakeside sun; this atrocious harmlessness of all things, - I cannot abide with them.  Let me take my chances again in the big outside worldly wilderness with all its sins and sufferings.  There are the heights and depths, the precipices and the steep ideals, the gleams of teh awful and the infinite; and there is more hope and help a thousand times than in this dead level and quintessence of every mediocrity.

Such was the sudden right-about-face performed for me by my lawless fancy!  There had been spread before me the realization - on a small, sample scale of course - of all the ideals for which our civilization has been striving:  security, intelligence, humanity, and order; and here was the instinctive hostile reaction, not of the natural man, but of a so-called cultivated man upon such a Utopia.  There seemed thus to be a self-contradiction and paradox somewhere, which I , as a professor drawing a full salary, was in duty bound to unravel and explain, if I could.


So I meditated.  And, first of all, I asked myself what the thing was that was so lacking in this Sabbatical city, and the lack of which kept one forever falling short of the higher sort of contentment.  And I soon recognized that it was the element that gives to the wicked outer world all its moral style, expressiveness, and picturesqueness, - the element of precipitousness, so to call it, of strength and strenuousness, intensity and danger.  What excites and interests the looker-on at life, what the romances and the statues celebrate and the grim civic monuments remind us of, is the everlasting battle of teh power of light with those of darkness; with heroism, reduced to its bare chance, yet ever and anon snatching victory from the jaws of death.  But in this unspeakable Chautauqua there was no potentiality of death in sight anywhere, and no point of the compass visible from which danger might possibly appear.  The ideal was so completely victorious already that no sign of any previous battle remained, the place just resting on its oars.  


But what our human emotions seem to require is the sight of the struggle going on.  The moment the fruits are being merely eaten, things become ignoble.  Sweat and effort, human nature strained to its uttermost and on the rack, yet getting through alive, and then turning its back on its success to pursue another more rare and arduous still - this is the sort of thing the presence of which inspires us, and the reality of which it seems to be the function of all the higher forms of literature and fine art to bring home to us and suggest.  At Chautauqua there were no racks, even in the place's historical museum; and no sweat, except possibly the gentle moisture on the brow of some lecturer, or on the sides of some player in the ball-field.  


Such absence of human nature in extremis anywhere seemed, then, a sufficient explanation for Chautauqua's flatness and lack of zest.


But was not this a paradox well calculated to fill one with dismay?  It looks indeed, thought I, as if the romantic idealists with their pessimism about our civilization were, after all, quite right.  An irremediable flatness is coming over the world.  Bourgeoisie and mediocrity, church sociables and teachers' conventions, are taking the place of the old heights and depths and romantic chiaroscuro.  And, to get human life in its wild intensity, we must in future turn more and more away from the actual, and forget it, if we can, in the romancer's or the poet's pages.  The whole world, delightful and sinful as it may still appear for a moment to one just escaped from the Chautauquan enclosure, is nevertheless obeying more and more just those ideals that are sure to make of it in the end a mere Chatauqua Assembly on an enormous scale.  Was im Gesang soll leben muss im Leben untergehn.  Even now, in our own country, correctness, fairness, and compromise for every small advantage are crowding out all other qualities.  The higher heroisms and the old rare flavors are passing out of life.





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 I've never seen a utopian society myself except maybe on the television and the way William James, one of the most learned man of his times, describes it sounds as if it lacked soul.  This speaks to why we are here struggling through each life.  If we wanted a cozy, divine life we would have never fallen.  It's that itch to choose whats behind door number two.  When someone tells you they have bad news, but they don't want to bring your day down, what do you do?  You insist that they tell you.  We get a morbid pleasure out of the darkness just as much as we bask in the joys of the light.


I'll sleep when I'm dead.  Heaven is a place of rest and relaxation where we can drink from chocolate rivers and eat candied ice sickles.  If you are here on this earth and unless you can call yourself the Son of God himself, you have work to do.  In time there will be a New Jerusalem on earth, that time has surely not arrived.  Look around you.  What do you see?  I see pseudo-savages who refuse to think.  I see mediocrity or worse.  I see planet of people who have become so afraid of the dark or death that light has ceased to shine nullifying the darkness along with it.  Everyone has ceased to move, they lie motionless on their deathbeds.  A purgatory preceding purgatory that never seems to end.  


A world lacking soul.  What does this imply?  A lack of connection.  Fear breeds disconnection.  Not only from oneself and the source but all other beings.  Walls built upon walls.  So afraid to open one's heart to let anyone else in.  You know not pain but most assuredly know no love no matter if you call it so.  You've already given up.  You tell yourself you are successful because you have a wife, family, job, and car - but are you really happy?  


Why did you come here?  You came here to know the light and the dark.  To climb the ladder and possibly soar like the eagle.  Maybe that is asking a little much, but now as you are, you're wings are clipped and you're left relegated to your cage.  A parrot who can talk for days and days about everything you know.  You have the world in your hand yet you know not yourself.  Your pride covers any weaknesses that might slip out.  Your pride is your prison.  Do you want to repeat this life over again?  Could you stand the monotony of it all again or would you even understand?


Amongst all the mediocrity beauty remains.  It's in struggle.  It's in the light just as its in the dark.  The dark pushing us forward into the light to create one.  To experience redemption you must first take the fall.  The cycle cannot be completed unless you experience both sides.  Love is the complete openess to experiencing all that this world has to offer.  Love is not just loving the good, but loving the good and the bad.  It is unbiased.


When you have seen all the darkness and light this world has to offer and perfected your soul then the Utopia will be what it is to the idealist.  Once you have obtained absoluteness as you have upon death to this world in heaven the Utopia or heaven on earth will suit your soul as you envision.  If you lack something in your self you will not resonate with the utopian society.  


My writing is pretty bad.  I'll try and stick to information and quoting people like James.  Just read him and you get a beautiful message about what life is. 

Beautiful Surrender

I surrender it allllllalllllll
And o I surrender it allllallll
Oh I surrender
Ohh Ohh I surrender
There is no better loss than to lose myself in You
There is no better loss than to lose myself in You
There is no better find than to find myself in You
There is no better find than to find myself in You
Such a beautiful surrender

Quotes from Jacob Boehme

"The regenerated, new-born soul in Christ has not only a new spirit, but is a new creation, with an everlasting (spiritual) body. . . . . He is not of this world; he is a stranger to this world, with no understanding of it. . . . He is in the paradise of God, and desires nothing else but that which Christ within his soul desires. . . . This soul must die to letters, reason, scholarship and knowledge, to enter into the only one true life — Jesus! . . . For hard thoughts, high fancies and conceits are not necessary, but the love and mercy of God — to be one with him. . . . This soul must keep plunged in the humility, love and patience of God; . . . go every hour out of death, and into life!


"He must learn how to go out of discussion and vanity; . . . break the power of the selfish will, which no man can do by his own human power. . . . He must give up his self-will as dead, that he may be submerged in the love of God. . . To every self-centered desire this soul must die; for all that doth vex and plague is the self-hood. . . . In all the world there is no such cruel beast as that which is in the heart of every man and woman, — self-love!

"What hinders men from seeing and hearing God, is their own hearing, seeing and willing; by their own wills they separate themselves from the will of God. They see and hear within their own desires, which obstructs them from seeing and hearing God. Terrestrial and material things overshadow them, and they cannot see beyond their own human nature. If they would be still, desist from thinking and feeling with their own self-hood, subdue the self-will, enter into a state of resignation, into a divine union with Christ, who sees God, and hears God, and speaks with him, who knows the word and will of God; then would the eternal hearing seeing and speaking become revealed to them.

"Self-will cannot comprehend anything of God. It is not in God, but external to him. If we live in Christ, the Spirit of Christ will see through us, and in us. We will see and know what Christ desires.

"Christ dwelling in the soul, causes his light to become a holy substance, a spiritual body, a true temple, in which the Holy Spirit dwells. . . . Self-hood hath not true substance, in which light can be steadfast. It desireth not God’s meekness.

"In meekness and lowliness consisteth the kingdom of heaven. . . God’s substance is humility. He who came to rescue us from the evil power, described himself as ‘meek and lowly’; and he could announce, when quit of coarse flesh and blood disguise, that to him was given ‘all power in heaven and in earth’. . . The mysteries of God are revealed to the meek. Let the soul lose no time in trying to clothe itself with humility. . . .Humility is the throne of love; unless this throne is firmly established, love is quickly deposed by every spasm of self-will. . . .It is more blessed to continue under the cross of Christ, in patience and meekness, than to bring down ‘fire from heaven’! . . . There is no contention in Christ, but love and humility.

"The flowers of the earth do not grudge at one another, though one be more beautiful and fuller of virtue than another, but they stand humbly, kindly, one by another, and enjoy one another’s virtue; so we all please God, if we give up ourselves into his will; if we all stand humbly in his field.

"Our trance of selfishness must end, for we are all being organized, by the one only life, in the one body. In the body of Christ, self-seeking is a monstrosity! . . . The whole body must be ‘fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint (or joining) supplieth, . . . unto the edifying of itself in love.’ The second manifestation of Christ to his people will be in their bodies. . . . Our Lord hath need of each one in his great, mystical body; and they must all be one in him, the Anointed.

"There is a life, this world comprehendeth it not; . . . it hath no fire to consume, but a mighty fire in light and love and joy; a fire of brightness and majesty, no pain therein. . . . It hath a body without defect, want, misery, anger, death or devil. . . . The Holy Spirit is its air and spirit; it is filled with love and joy. . . . This life has been from eternity. . . uprising and blossoming! . . . . It is not of this earth, but substantial, — the eternal life! . . . and all who have received this life, at the end of the age, will be presented pure and without blemish, . . . one body in Christ!

"In the time of the end, the time of the Lily, these writings will be sought as serviceable . . . to all such who are shooting forth into the fair Lily in the kingdom of God, who are in the process of birth, are these lines written; that each one may be strengthened, and bud in the life of God, and grow, and bear fruit in the Tree of paradise; . . . that each branch and twig in this fair Tree may contribute, help and shelter all the other branches and twigs, that this Tree may become a great Tree! . . . Then shall we all rejoice, one with another, with ‘joy unspeakable and full of glory’!"

Quote from Walter Russell - Atomic Suicide

"God's Mind centers all things, all minerals, all vegtables, all animals, and every cell which constitutes their bodies.  He gives life and purposefulness to all things.  Bodies acquire awareness of purpose only through electrical messages of command from Mind which centers them for no body could otherwise move, survive or fulfill its purpose without being centered and polarized by Mind"

So now I want to look at this from the standpoint of man.  Obviously man is not balanced.  He has free will to separate from God's will but he also has his source in God.  I look at it as though God sends his perfect message to us and we must send our's back to Him.  We inevitably send him an unbalanced, selfish picture which he in turn must work to balance again.  There is constant struggle within because one is going against the will of God.  If there was no centering from God we would instantly die.  The circle is whole and balanced.  The square is the crystalized cube.  It as if it has broken off from the whole.  When we are against God's will and fight against Him this is when we become crystallized or compartmentalized.  When some cells start working contrary to the ultimate purpose disease springs up.  Disease brings death if it is not re-balanced.  So crystalization is essentially moving away from God and the divine purpose.  The lack of fluidity or ability to move brings death, which is returning to the stillness of God.  The ideal goal is for this crystalization to happen at the end of a complete cycle.  If crystalization occurs early in life it is usually due to one becoming selfish and veering off away from God.  This is an unfinished cycle which logically means it must be repeated to see if one has learned from the mistakes made previously to move further along.

Moving from from animal to man is like a young boy taking off the training wheels on his bike.  He is getting to be free for the first time.  With this freedom comes risk and the posibility of pain.  The animal only feels physical pain.  Man feels physical pain along with the pain of consequence due to attaining self consciousness.  As he becomes more self conscious he begins to learn right from wrong.  The animal only relates to the body, man has his mind and can effect others with emotions as well.  The animal cannot transcend, he is what he is.  He cannot become genius.  Man has the ability to become as much as he desires to be.  This can only be done though by coming in line, in balance with his source, the still magnetic center where God resides.  In my mind I see it as God sending a straight line to man (from his centered domain) and man must transcend the poles finding the center sending back a straight line to God.  However, unbalanced man finding himself somewhere between the two poles but not in the center would send a beam of light that was off center (or 0).  God always sends out a balanced thought but man unless he finds the center is sending unbalanced thoughts to God.  He must find the objective center.

Another way of looking at it:  Man is separated from God as a circle and eventually becomes wholly separate with no connection becoming square, completely crystalized.  This is what you had in ancient times when man was a literal beast.  Today you will still see many a beastly man but you also see some geniuses who are shedding the crystalized body, the crystalized thinking that the body is man and he starts to revert back to the shape of a balanced perfect circle.  He understands that the electrical, material world of motion that he sees is but an illusion and that the true nature is one magnetic stillness, empty and full at the same time.

PD Ouspensky - The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution

Below are some of my paraphrasing and quotes from the text:

'Man is a machine - this means that he has no independent movements, inside or outside of himself.  He is a machine brought into motion by external influences and external impacts.'

"We must understand that man can do nothing.  But he does not realize this and ascribes to himself the capacity to do so.  This is the first wrong that man ascribes to himself."

"Everything that man thinks he does, really happens.  It happens exactly as "it rains" or "it thaws"."

"But from the psychological side lying has a different meaning.  It means speaking about things one does not know, and even cannot know, as though one knows and can know."

"Imagination is almost as bad as lying, it is, in fact lying to oneself.  Man starts to imagine something to please himself, and very soon he begins to believe what he imagines, or at least some of it."

"If knowledge outgrows being or being outgrows knowledge, the result is always a one-sided development, and a one-sided development cannot go far.  It is bound to come to some inner contradiction of a serious nature and stop there.
Some time later we may speak about the different kinds and the different results of one-sided development, ordinarily, in life we meet with only one kind, that is, when knowledge has outgrown being.  The result takes the form of a dogmatization of certain ideas and the consequent impossibility of a further development of knowledge because of the loss of understanding."

The Heritage of Man is Man Himself

Quoted from the book, "The Wind of Spirit" by G. de Purucker



The heritage of man is man himself. Each man is the builder of himself, and the destroyer maybe. Each man is his own regenerator and savior, and each man undoes the work upon himself which mayhap for aeons in the past he had been building. This statement may sound recondite, difficult to understand, a dark saying; and yet I wonder that anyone could or might doubt so self-evident a truth. Is it not clear enough that what a man is, he is; and that what he is, is the result of his former lives, the resultant of his thoughts and his feelings, the resultant of his previous willings and thinking and feeling? We make ourselves, we fashion our own characters.

This is one of the commonplaces of human experience. But just think what it means to grasp it in fullness. We make our lives shapely from day to day and year to year and from life to life; or we make them very ugly; and no one is to blame on the one hand, and no one is to be praised on the other hand, except the man himself. Think how just this is. We have nobody, naught outside ourselves, to blame if we have made ourselves unshapely and ugly and full of sorrow and pain; and there is none to be praised when our lives become shapely and beautiful in symmetry through our own efforts, save we ourselves. A man by thinking may change his character, which means changing his soul, which means changing his destiny, which means changing everything that he is or becomes in the present and in the future. Why blame the blameless gods for our own faults, for molding us in the patterns that we ourselves have shaped? It is the old idea of passing the buck -- slang, but how expressive! -- throwing the blame on someone else. This is the surest way to go down instead of going up; for the recognition of truth and of justice and the cognizance of responsibility in a man, by a man of himself, are the first steps to climbing the path higher; and what hope there is in this. Think of the mistakes we have made in the past, the wrongs that we have wrought on others and on ourselves. Only half the story is told when we say that we have made ourselves and that we are responsible for ourselves. The other half of the story is what we have done upon others: how we have helped to shape their lives in beauty, or to misshape their lives in ugliness.

This recognition of man's responsibility not only to himself, but to others, is the lost keynote of modern civilization which seems to be infatuated with the idea that things will run themselves, and that all that men have to do is to get what they can from the surrounding atmosphere. I think that is a hellish doctrine, and can but produce its harvest of misery. Let a man realize that he is a man and that what he sows he shall reap, and that what he is reaping he himself has sown, and see how the face of the world will be changed. Each man will become enormously observant not only of his acts which are the proofs of his thoughts and his feelings, firstly upon himself, but perhaps more important, of the impact he makes upon others. I think it is the lack of this feeling of individual responsibility and also mass responsibility in the world today which is the cause of the many, many horrors which are growing worse instead of better. It fosters the belief that violence can right a wrong. It never can. Violence never has perished by adding violence unto it. No problem ever has been solved after that manner. It is against the laws of being, against the laws of things as they are.

What is a man's heritage? I say again, it is man himself. I am myself because I made me in other lives. And how ashamed I am of myself at times that I have not made me wiser and better and higher and nobler in every way; and how I bless the whispering intimations of divinity within my heart that I can say I am not worse than I am! You see, this is the first realization of my responsibility to all -- and the all includes me. And here is a wonder-thought: when a man does right, no matter at what cost to himself, he strengthens himself and he strengthens all others. It is a work of wonderful magic. And when a man does evil, is it not obvious that he weakens himself? First there is the weakening of his will, then the soiling of his thoughts, and then the lessening of the strength of his genuine inner feelings. The very contact with such a man, provided he follow the downward path long enough, causes the self to be soiled. Even as one rotten apple, they say, will ruin a whole barrelful of sound fruit, so will an evil character adversely and evilly affect not only himself, but all unfortunates who may be near him.

We can save ourselves from this very easily, because there are few things so revealing as evil. It has naught to stand upon except illusion. Leave it alone and it will vanish like a mist. Do not strengthen it by pouring more evil into the illusion from your own energy. If it has naught to stand upon, no source of vital activity within itself, it falls, it goes to pieces. How different is good, which is health-giving and strengthening and cleansing. Such simple truths, and so profound! I suppose the most simple things are the most beautiful and the most profound.

So this doctrine of the heritage of a man which is himself is simply the doctrine of another chance for the man whose life has been spoiled by himself. No other man can spoil you unless you yourself cooperate in the spoiling. None other can make you evil unless you conjoin in the suggestion or in the doing. Blame not the other for your fall. It is yourself who fall, and you will never fall, you would never have fallen, unless you had preferred that which brought about the fall. Such simple truths, and yet they comprise a code of divine conduct for us men on this earth. A child may understand these things because they are so clear, they are so obvious.

The doctrine of another chance! Think of the man -- any one of us -- who has made a mess of his life and wonders why ill fortune and misfortune and unhappiness and misery and other terrible things come upon him, until sometimes in the agony of self-reproach he cries, "Lord, deliver me from this hell." It is the old weak appeal to something where no help lies, for help is within. The divinity lies in your breast, the source of all strength and grandeur; and the more you appeal to it the more you exercise it, the more you strengthen your own self, advance in truth and wisdom, rise above all the planes of weakness and sorrow and pain brought about by evildoing.

So you have made yourself; and in your next life you will be just what you are now making yourself to be. You will be your own heritage. You are now writing, as it were, your last will and testament for yourself. When a man realizes this wonderful fact, he no longer blames others, no longer sits in judgment upon his brothers. He no longer says: I am holier than thou -- an attitude which is the sure mark of the weak and of the poor in spiritual life.

There is a wonderful French proverb which runs thus: Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner: "To understand everything is to forgive all." To understand all the hid causes, the results, the past destiny, the present strength, the temptation, the virtue, whatever it may be -- to understand all this is to have divine knowledge, and it means to forgive. It is a wonderful proverb and must have been uttered first, I venture to say, by some human being who had a touch of illumination. I know myself by my own experience that when I have been hurt, or am hurt and think I am unjustly treated, I say to myself, even when it seems to me that the wrongdoing unto myself is obvious: If I could read the heart of my brother who has wronged me, read back into the distant past and see what mayhap I did to him to wrong him, perhaps I would realize that he now is as unconscious of the wrong he does me as I was then of the wrong I did to him. I shall not increase the treasury of virtue and happiness and peace in this world by taking up the gauge of battle and injecting more fury and hatred into a hatred-ridden world. But I can do my part in strengthening myself, do my part in getting some illumination from above-within, from the god within me, by doing what I myself have taught: practicing what I preach. Peace and happiness come from this, and the sense of increased self-respect and the growth of pity.

Do you know, I sometimes think that pity or compassion is one of the most celestial visitors to the temple of the human heart. The old sages used to say that none but the gods really pay men exact justice, or what they think is justice and flatter themselves that they are right. The gods hear all, see all, feel all, understand all, and are filled with pity. Think, if any one of us human beings were weighed in the strictest scales of karmic justice untempered by pity and wisdom, what chance do you think any one of us would have to escape condemnation? Does any one of you think that you are so spotless in virtue and holy strength that the scales would not fall against you? If so, you are very, very happy -- or very, very blind! I think that if such spotless purity of past karma were yours, you would not be here as a man on this earth working out your own heritage -- yourself.

True it is that in the future all the human race are going to be gods, and there is no reason on earth why we should not begin in the present instant of time to grow towards godhood. You win all, you gain all; you lose naught. From driven slave of past karma you become the orderer in time of your own destiny, for you are your own heritage. What a doctrine of comfort! What light it bestows!

Vernon Howard

The Snow Walker

Watch the movie first and then you can read my interpretation of the movie and what I took from it.  I will spoil the movie for you so stop reading now if you desire to see the movie without knowing how it unfolds.




This movie taps into the soul of the world.  It is what life is (or should be) all about.  It is the story of a fall from grace and the chance at redemption.  Charlie is a brash, cocky pilot in the Northwest Territories in Canada.  He is a good guy and he has lived a successful life.  But he is also quick to temper and quite prideful.  He is attached to material life.

He is goes on what is supposed to be short journey to do business with some Inuits, but in the course one of the tribe's girls is sick and he is bribed with ivory to take her to the hospital.  On the way back the plane fails and crashes.  They are stuck in the middle of nowhere with no radio and little supplies.  This is his fall from grace.

He decides to leave her behind and seek help promising to send back help.  On the way he finds thath it is tough going.  He loses parts to his gun leaving it unusable and his boots are wearing away.  He wakes up one day to a swarm of mosquitoes or some type of pest.  One could look at this as a sign of darkness relative to the locusts swarms in scripture.  I would call this his false journey, one that is full of pride which is deemed to fail because of his blindness to reality.  He is at the mercy of nature and must not fight it.  He looks as though he is soon to face death when the Inuit girl he left behind comes to save him. 

She growing up in a culture that uses the earth and all it provides to the fullest potential begins to heal him.  She is the spirit that will help him walk the path back to grace.  If he opens up to her and they work together she can bring him redemption.  When he sees all that she is capable of as in hunting, fishing, etc. he begins to respect her and they start to bond.

They end up getting to a point where they think no one will see them and decide to go back to the plane crash.  She is in her element but yet she is sick so they both must co-create.  They both take care of each other.  Even though she is sick she pushes herself to go the extra mile.  She labors for hours on end to make him boots and skins to protect him from the elements.  She is the epitome of selfless.

Towards the end she becomes too sick to walk and starts throwing up blood.  This is where he shows his new found spirituality and selflessly builds a sled to drag her behind him as they seek to find civilization.  She becomes resigned to the fact that she will die.  She is not scared as she knows this is simply part of the cycle of life.

At home Charlie is pronounced dead just around this same time when he is taking care of her.  His boss gives his eulogy with a poem by a fallen soldier (he was also a solider).  The symbolism here is that Charlie is indeed dying, he is dying to his old self.  His selflessness in trying to save this girl brings about a whole new person.  I also love the symbolism as she dies.  The moon where the God of Death reigns supreme is shown but subsequently the sun is shown as well.  This is symbolizing the darkness of death and re-birth of light that the sun brings.  He buries her in a tomb of rocks as they had previously done for a pilot they found crashed.  He leaves her tools with her body as she will need them in the afterlife just as she taught him to do for the fallen pilot.  He is showing his new found love and respect for life.

Being reborn he goes along on his own (you cannot reach heaven unless you leave mother and father).  The journey home must be one in solitude.  He reaches a Inuit settlement and the picture you get with him and his gear horizontally across his back is one of a cross.  As in the Christ is coming home.  When he approaches the tribe they embrace in a circle.  This is the atonment or becoming one with the Father.  He completes the journey from prideful, materialistic man, shedding this with the help of the spirit of mother nature (the teacher/mentor/guardian angel), and from his hard journey through the wilderness where he developed humility and selflessness becomes One with all that is.


In the beginning after his fall he had a false faith that was in himself.  Because his faith was errantly in himself he falls even farther to the brink of death.  With lost faith in himself he resigns himself to death.  If he cannot do it himself (selfishly) then there is no way in his mind.  The girl comes along and bestows a different type of faith on him.  The faith in the spirit.  You must not fight nature but work with it.  As in we cannot make the journey out of death (as in the material world detached from God) unless we have the spirit working with us.  Everything is a co-creative process.  If you work in self then you are already dead.  If you work with/in God you have eternal life.

There is a part in the movie where another pilot who is jealous of Charlie says as they are searching for him that Charlie is dead to his co-pilot, that anyone who crashes out there is as good as dead, end of story.  So you can look at the Inuit girl as God.  Without her he would have been dead and that is essentially a fact.  With God on your side you can never count anyone out.

She is the Christ.  She died so that he could have his salvation.  This is her selfless act to him.  The process started because he agreed to take her to get medical help.  It wasn't selfless as he did it for monetary gain, but he could have said no altogether leaving her to certain death.  In the process each of them needing each other become one.

To find salvation for himself he must take the cross upon himself and die to self as well.  Her dying is as if to say that because of his selfless act he is now worthy to bear the cross and carry the message on to the rest of the world.

It's just a really great movie that I didn't expect much out of.  I hope you can enjoy it as much as I did and look at it from the perspective of the journey of the hero, Christ's journey through matter back to heaven.

Esotericism with Vernon Howard

These selections of text come from "Esoteric Mind Power":

If you fight against the established system, you are part of the established system.  If you are part of the system, you are attacked by it.  If attacked by it, you are really attacked by unseen negatives within yourself, so fighting the system is like giving ammunition to the enemy.  Stop fighting the system, which is pointless, and start fighting for yourself, which makes sense

Emerson (out of Esoteric Mind Power): "Society never advances.  It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other."  Only individual consciousness can uplift anything.

A wild bird imprisoned in a cage still possesses its capacities for natural happiness, but cannot use them.  Likewise, we possess natural capacities which are blocked by unnatural psychic imprisonment.  As shocking as it may be, admit your actual confinement.  This defeats self complacency and arouses a drive for naturalness.  All human neurosis and unhappiness consists of an unnecessary contradiction of life energy.  It is the pull of inner forces in opposing directions, with the person caught between.

Happiness resides in the mind which does not divide life into opposites of any kind, including today and tomorrow, security and insecurity.

A conscious man is protected at all times, but his protection is utterly unlike anything known by a sleeping man.  It is the protection of having no protection at all.  If you protect anything, perhaps your reputation, it means you are protecting a human label.  So this kind of protection provides nothing!  It just makes you nervous.  But if you have no reputation at all - which is a wonderful way to live - there is no need for protection and there is no nervousness, for you are yourself only.

Love and intelligence and goodness reside in the hypnotized person just as much as in the awakened man, for "the kingdom of heaven is within."  But only the awakened man can enjoy them.

The wise individual uses his exterior affairs - whether labeled a success or a failure - to build interior fortunes.

Unhappiness is caused by comparison.  You feel unhappy only when you unconsciously compare your present state with another state, perhaps when you were younger or healthier, or perhaps when you had a certain companion or possessed certain public honors.  Where there is no comparison, unhappiness is impossible.  Happiness exists where the mind does not move away from itself, when it remains in the present time zone, when it declines to contrast self with another time or another condition.

Hope, so highly prized by many, has neither value nor meaning to the truly happy man.  See how hope creates you and an objective, causing painful self-splitting.  So strangely, hope produces the very feelings of hopelessness one seeks to avoid.  The man without hope is self unified, and so can never feel hopeless!  Self completion has no more need for hope than a healthy plum tree needs to hope for plums.   

Effects

I wrote the other day about effects.  How along my journey that I got caught up in the desiring of effects.  In turn when these effects started to blossom I started to feel proud of myself and what I had accomplished.  I now understand how foolish I was.  To have the base of my learnings in cause creating effect, inner determining outer and in turn worrying about what effects I might be creating is complete blasphemy.  Below are some passages from William Law's book "Grounds and Reasons for Christian Regeneration."  They speak to outward Christians (deists) and worrying about the outward effects that come along the path to regeneration.  My errors are very much starting to come to the light of my attention.  I am grateful for teachers such as Law and Boehme.  Without them I would surely get lost or veer off the path and waste valuable time.  I think we must always stop and take account of where we are in life and what is driving us.  What are our motivating factors?  It is easy to begin to lie to ourselves about the progress we are making and the state of our inner being.  I now personally see the pride I continued to develop even though I had thought I had recognized and began to remove.  When it is put in terms of personal or self will versus God's will it makes it easier for me to to stay on track I believe.  We shall see I suppose.  I want this to happen right away and it is just not possible.  The inner selfishness, pride, wrath, and envy is not simply going to disappear.  It must be gradually worked away.  The Philosopher's Stone is not built in a day.  When I become hasty this is when the problems like pride and self aggrandizement arise.  Let the process happen on it's own.  Let God's will take over and I cannot help but reach the Kingdom of Heaven. 

Unfortunately (or fortunately) there is much richness in the teachings that I have trouble condensing it more. 

William Law - "Grounds and Reasons for Christian Regeneration" -

[Reg-162] The old, natural Man, or the rational Man of this World, is the dark fallen Nature, enlightened only, and solely with the Light of this outward World; it is the diabolical Nature, only softened with Flesh and Blood, quieted and comforted with the Light of the Sun; by this Light, he can only see the outward Images of Things, whether Divine or human, and can only reason, dispute, and wrangle about his own shadowy Images, but can know no more of God, and the Things of God, than such dead Images can represent unto him..


[Reg-163] The old or natural Man, may be an Historian, a Poet, an Orator, a Critic, a Politician, or worldly wise Man, &c., all this Skill and Art lies within his reach; the Fire of his Soul, kindled only by the Light of the Sun, may do all this. But notwithstanding all these Trappings and Endowments, he is wholly shut up in his own dark Prison of Selfishness, Envy, Pride, and Wrath; his Virtues, Piety, and Goodness can be only such, as give no Disturbance to these four Elements of the fallen Nature.

[Reg-164] He is an Animal, full of earthly, sensual Passions and Tempers, and can only favor such things as can gratify their Nature.

[Reg-165] Here, and here only, lies the true, solid, and immutable Distinction, between the old and the new Man, and the plain Reason, why the Life of the one, is the Death of the other.

[Reg-166] (35.) Now in this essential Difference, between the old and the new Man, we may at one View, see a clear and solid Ground of Distinction, between what is called a bare historical, and superficial Faith, which cannot save the Soul, but leaves it a Slave to Sin, and that living and real Faith, which effecteth our Salvation, and sets us in the glorious Liberty of the Sons of God.

[Reg-167] Human Reason, or the natural Man of this Life, can believe and assent to this Truth, that Christ is our Saviour, and that we are to be saved by a Righteousness from him, as easily, as it can assent to any other Relation, or Matter of Fact. But whilst it is human Reason only, that assents to this Truth, little or nothing is done to the Soul by it; the Soul is under much the same Power of Sin as before, because only the Notion, or Image, or History of the Truth is taken in by it; and Reason of itself can take in no more.

[Reg-168] But when the Seed of the New Birth, called the inward Man, has Faith awakened in it, its Faith is not a Notion, but a real, strong, essential Hunger, an attracting, or magnetic Desire of Christ, which as it proceeds from a Seed of the Divine Nature in us, so it attracts and unites with its Like, it lays hold on Christ, puts on the Divine Nature, and in a living and real Manner, grows powerful over all Sins, and effectually works out our Salvation.

[Reg-169] And therefore it is justly called a Divine Faith, not only because of its Divine Effects, but chiefly because it arises from that, which is Divine within us, and by its attracting Hunger, and Thirst after that Fountain of Life, from whence it came, becomes essentially united with it; breathes by that Spirit, and lives by that Word which eternally proceeds out of the Mouth of God. Of this Faith alone it is, that our Lord speaks, when he says, "whoso eateth my Flesh and drinketh my Blood, hath eternal Life.

[Reg-170] When this Faith is thus awakened, and sprung up in the inward Man, then we may be said to have a strong saving Faith, or a saving Knowledge of Jesus Christ.

[Reg-171] (36.) From these two Sorts of Faith here mentioned, we may very plainly see and perceive, why there is such a Misunderstanding between two Sorts of Believers, and why they speak a Language so unsatisfactory, and disgustful to one another.

[Reg-172] Busy inquisitive Reason, learned enough in its own Sphere, grammatically skilled in Scripture-Knowledge, looking no further, or deeper into the Things of God, than a Dictionary can guide it, cannot bear the Language of the regenerate, inward Man, but condemns it as fanatical, and enthusiastic; not considering, that this rational Man, which is made the Judge of Salvation, is that very individual old Man with his Deeds, that we are by the Religion of the Gospel, to be saved, and delivered from; and that we should have no occasion for a new Seed of a Divine Life in us, no occasion to be born again of God, but because this natural Man of human Reason, can neither see nor hear, nor feel, nor taste, nor understand the Things of God, as they are in themselves.

[Reg-173] (37.) From this Difference between the new, and the old Man, which is a Difference as real, as that between Heaven and Earth, several Lessons of great Instruction may be learnt.

[Reg-174] When Religion is in the Hands of the mere natural Man, he is always the worse for it; it adds a bad Heat to his own dark Fire, and helps to inflame his four Elements of Selfishness, Envy, Pride, and Wrath. And hence it is, that worse Passions, or a worse Degree of them, are to be found in Persons of great religious Zeal, than in others that make no Pretenses to it. History also furnishes us with Instances of Persons of great Piety and Devotion, who have fallen into great Delusions, and deceived both themselves and others. The Occasion of their Fall was this; it was, because they made a Saint of the natural Man. My Meaning is, they considered their whole Nature, as the Subject of Religion, and Divine Graces; and therefore their Religion was according to the Workings of their whole Nature, and the old Man was as busy, and as much delighted in it, as the New. And hence it was, that Persons of this Stamp, all inflamed, as they seemed to be, with Piety, yet overlooked in their own Lives, such Errors of moral Behaviour, as the first Beginners in Religion, dare not allow themselves in.

[Reg-175] Others again, perhaps truly awakened by the Spirit of God, to devote themselves wholly to Piety, and the Service of God, yet making too much haste to have the Glory of Saints, the Elements of fallen Nature, Selfishness, Envy, Pride, and Wrath, could secretly go along with them. For to seek Eminence, and Significancy in Grace, is but like seeking for Eminence and Significancy in Nature. And the old Man can relish Glory, and Distinction in Religion, as well as in common Life, and will be content to undergo as many Labours, Pains, and Self-denials, for the sake of religious, as for the sake of secular Glory. There is nothing safe in Religion, but in such a course of Behaviour, as leaves nothing for corrupt Nature to feed, or live upon; which can only then be done, when every Degree of Perfection we aim at, is a Degree of Death to the Passions of the natural Man.




[Reg-181] (39.) If it be further asked, What are then the certain Marks, or Effects of a highly advanced Degree of Regeneration, which Christians are to look for?

[Reg-182] It may be answered, this Question is not useful: First, Because there is no Obligation upon anyone, to know and feel the Height, or Advancement of his State. Secondly, Because the Inquiry after such Knowledge, and inward Feeling of it, is very dangerous. Thirdly, because it can be no hurt to anyone's Piety and Holiness, to take it to be lower than it really is. Fourthly, Because nothing keeps up our Progress in the Way of Regeneration, let it be in what Degree it will in us, but our constant Fidelity in conforming to the Doctrines, Life, and Death of Jesus Christ. Fifthly, Because this Question directs, and turns People’s Minds to the seeking after certain Effects, merely from Ideas and Descriptions of them, when their Minds should only be set upon the Causes that are to produce them.

[Reg-183] Thus, supposing it to be true, that an Assurance of Salvation, or Continuance in Grace, was a genuine Effect of a certain Degree of Regeneration; Christians should not be directed to seek for this Assurance, as a certain Mark or Effect of such a Degree of Regeneration, for this is directing them to seek for this Effect from their ownselves, and not from the State of their Regeneration.

[Reg-184] For their Minds and Imaginations will be naturally upon the Stretch, how to work themselves up into this Pitch of Assurance, and so it will be something, that they have seized upon by their own Will, and not received as the genuine Effects of their State in Grace. Whereas, supposing (but not granting) this Assurance to be the proper Effect of a certain Degree of the new Birth, yet it is an Effect that is not to be sought for beforehand, but only to be received when its proper Cause has produced it.

[Reg-185] (40.) It is a great Error, to fix any certain Marks or Effects to such a Degree of Regeneration; for its Effects will be various in different Persons, from a Variety of Causes, both on the Part of God, and Man.

[Reg-186] The truly pious Christian, in whom the Holy Ghost dwelleth as in his Temple, is indeed in a State of high Acquiescence in God; but he wants no more to have this Acquiescence turned into an Assurance of his own Mind, that he cannot fall from his State of Grace, than he wants to have the Promises of God made sure to him, by the Promise of some mortal Man.

[Reg-187] And if it pleases God to impress strongly and plainly upon his Mind, that his Salvation is secured, he receives it, as he does everything from God, with a grateful Mind; yet will he not rest in it, or receive it as a Sign of his high Regeneration, but rather as a Sign that God saw his Weakness stood in need of it; and so will pass over it, and return to an humble, total Resignation of his whole Soul, Spirit, and Body, both for Time and Eternity, into the Hands of God, through Faith in the Merits of his Saviour Jesus Christ.

[Reg-188] Least of all can such a one call peremptorily upon others, for such an Assurance as he has had, or condemn their Resignation and Peace in the want of it; he will be more afraid of thus meddling with the Things of God, than of being a Busy-body in other Men's Matters.

[Reg-189] (41.) The only useful Question in this Matter, is this, How a Man may know that he is in the Way of Regeneration, that he is spiritually alive, and growing in the inward and new Man?

[Reg-190] It may be answered, Just as the State, Nature, and Life of the natural Man makes itself to be known, and felt. The Soul of Man, or that which is the Subject both of the old and new Nature, is not two, but one Soul. The Fire of the Soul, or that spiritual Fire which is the Soul itself, is kindled or enlightened by the light of the Sun; this makes the natural Man, and from whence the Imagination, Will, Desires, Thoughts, and Inclinations of the natural Life arise.

[Reg-191] The same individual Fire-soul, enlightened by the Son of God, makes the true new Man, from which Soul thus enlightened, the Imagination, Will, Desires, Thoughts, and Inclinations of the New Man arise. So that the same Proofs are to be expected in both Cases, the spiritual Man is to know that he is alive in the same manner, as the natural Man knows and feels his Life. In these things, in the Imagination, Will, Desires, Thoughts, and Inclinations, consists the Life of each Nature; and what are more than these, are to be considered as the outward Fruits and Effects of each Nature.

[Reg-192] (42.) Now though the natural Life in all Men is one and the same, yet there are under it a Variety of Complexions, which makes Men of the same Nature, almost infinitely different from one another. Now the Matter is just thus with the spiritual Man, or in the inward World. As many different Complexions arise in the Soul, enlightened by the Son of God, as in the Soul, enlightened by the outward Light of this World.

[Reg-193] For the outward World is but a Glass, or Representation of the inward; and everything and Variety of things in temporal Nature, must have its Root, or hidden Cause, in something that is more inward.

[Reg-194] It is therefore a well-grounded, and undeniable Truth, that the new spiritual Man hath his particular Complexion, as sure as the outward and natural Man hath. Hence it is, that there has been so great a Difference, in the Form and Character of the most eminent and faithful Servants of God; one could think of nothing but Penitence and penitential Austerities; another all inflamed with the Love of God, could think or speak of nothing else; some have been driven into a holy Solitude, living as John the Baptist; others have been wholly taken up in Works of Charity, loving their Neighbour even more than themselves. A great Variety of this kind, has been always found amongst those, who were most truly devoted to God, whose Variety, is not only not hurtful in itself, nor displeasing to God, but is as much according to his Will, and the Designs of his Wisdom, as the Difference between Cherubims and Seraphims, or the Variety of the Stars in the Firmament.

[Reg-195] Every Complexion of the inward Man, when sanctified by Humility, and suffering itself to be tuned, and struck, and moved by the Holy Spirit of God, according to its particular Frame and Turn, helps mightily to increase that Harmony of Divine Praise, Thanksgiving, and Adoration, which must arise from different Instruments, Sounds, and Voices. To condemn this Variety in the Servants of God, or to be angry at those who have not served him, in the Way that we have chosen for ourselves, is but too plain a Sign, that we have not enough renounced the Elements of Selfishness, Pride, and Anger.

[Reg-196] (43.) From this Variety of Complexions both in the inward and outward Man, we may make some useful Observations. And the first may be this, that every Man whose Complexion is strong in him, as to one particular Kind, is vehemently inclined to imprint the same upon others, and that others of the same Kind, are naturally disposed to catch and receive it from him. But I shall consider this Matter only with regard to Religion. Let it be supposed that Men of a certain Complexion, have taken upon them to try the religious State of others by these Questions: Are you sure that you should be able to die a Martyr? Do you find certain strong Resolutions, not in your Head, or your Brain, but in your inward Man, that you would not refuse a Martyrdom of any kind? Have you the Witness of the Spirit within you, bearing witness with your Spirit, that you are in this State?

[Reg-197] Now, it is beyond all Question, that an Examination of this Kind, or a Demand of such a Faith, can have no better Foundation than Complexion. Who do you think would be most likely to come into this Faith? First, it would be those that were most unlikely to keep it. It would be those who knew the least of themselves, and whose Piety had more of Heat than of Light in it. It would be those, whose outward Man was of the same Complexion, that was Sanguine, capable of a false Fire, and willing to have the Glory of Resolutions, and fine Persuasions at so easy a Rate. Let it now be supposed, that People of another Complexion should put Questions such as these: Do you know and feel that all your Sins are forgiven you? Do you know when and where, or at what Time, and in what Place, you received this Forgiveness? Do you know when and where you ceased to be one of those Sinners called to Repentance? And became one of those Whole, that need not a Physician? Have you an absolute Assurance of your Salvation, and that you cannot possibly fall from your State of Grace? Now who may be thought the most likely to come into this Religion?

[Reg-198] First, Not he who is deeply humble, that abhors Self-Justification, and truly knows the Free Grace of God. Such a one would say, I believe the Forgiveness of Sins, with as much Assurance, as I believe there is a God; I believe that Jesus Christ does now to all those who have a true, and full Faith in him, that which he did to those who so believed in him, when he was upon Earth. That he forgives their Sins, as immediately, as certainly, as fully, as when he said by an outward Voice, "Thy Sins are forgiven thee." I believe that in this Faith lies all our Strength, and Possibility of growing up in the inward Man, and recovering that Image and Likeness of God, in which we were created; that to this Faith all things are possible, and that by this Faith, every Enemy we have, whether he be within us, or without us, may, and must be entirely overcome. I believe, that to Repentance and Faith in Christ, Salvation is made as secure, and as absolutely assured, as Paradise was made secure to the Thief upon the Cross, by the express Word of our Saviour. I believe that my own Sins, were they greater, and more than the Sins of the whole World, would be wholly expiated, and taken away by my Faith, in the Blood and Life of my blessed Saviour.

[Reg-199] But if I now want to add something of my own to this Faith, if this great and glorious Faith is defective, and saves me not, till I can add my own Sense, and my own Feeling to it, at such a Time or Place, is not this saying in the plainest Manner, that Faith alone cannot justify me? Is not this making this Faith in the Blood of Christ defective, and insufficient to my Salvation, till a Self-Satisfaction, an own-Pleasure, an own-Taste, are joined with it? Might it not better be said, that Faith could not justify me till it had Works, than that it cannot justify me without these inward Workings, Feelings, Witnessings, of my own Mind, Sense, and Imagination? Is there not likely to be a more hurtful Self-seeking, a more hurtful Self-Confidence, a more hurtful Self-Trust, a more dangerous Self-Deceit, in making Faith to depend upon these inward Workings and Feelings, than in making it depend upon outward good Works of our own?

[Reg-200] Secondly, No one who was truly resigned unto God in all things, would come into these Questions; for to be resigned unto God in all things, and yet seek to be not resigned to him, in these great Matters above mentioned, is a Contradiction.

[Reg-201] Such a one would say, I seek not to have an inward Sense and Feeling of the Certainty of these things, because that would be departing from that pure, entire, full, and naked Faith in God, and Resignation of myself to him, which alone can justify me in his Sight, and make me capable of the Operations of his Holy Spirit. He can only then, do all his good Pleasure in me, when I have no own Will, no Self-seeking; this total Resignation of myself to him, is the one only immediate Disposition, or Capability of enjoying God himself with all his infinite Treasures, Particular Impressions, sensible Convictions, strong Tastes, high Satisfactions, though they may be often the good Gifts of God, yet if they are much sought for, or rested in, they minister Food to a spiritual Self-love, and Self-seeking, and lay the Foundation of spiritual Pride; and so become a Wall of Partition between God and the Soul. For the Soul may be as fully fixed in Selfishness, through a Fondness of Sensible Sweetness, pious Motions, and delightful Enjoyments in spiritual things, as by a Fondness for earthly Satisfactions.

[Reg-202] Thirdly, no one, whose Heart was truly touched by a pure and perfect Love of God, could come into these Questions. For this Love cannot seek for Self-comfort in the Answer of such Questions as these.

[Reg-203] Such a Person would say, My Religion consists in living wholly to my Beloved, according to his Satisfaction, and not my own. What God wills, that I will; what God loves, that I love; what pleases God, that pleases me. I have no desire to know anything of myself, or to feel anything in myself, but that I am an Instrument in the Hands of God, to be, to do, and suffer, according to his good Pleasure. I am content to know that I love and rejoice in God alone, that he is what he is, and that I am what he pleases to make of me, and do with me.

[Reg-204] (44.) Seeing then it appears that the truly humble Man, the Man that is wholly resigned to God, and the pure Lover of him, are not likely to come into the Religion of these Questions, let us now see who may be supposed ready to receive it.

[Reg-205] First, All young Persons, whose Passions had not yet been much awakened, or spent their Fire; who had but little Experience of themselves, and the Deceitfulness of their own Hearts; for everything in their Nature, would help them to like, love, and obtain such an Assurance, Strength of Conviction, inward Feeling, as is here required.

[Reg-206] Secondly, All restless Self-lovers, who were uneasy with themselves, and everything else, who could find nothing in Religion, or common Life, that enough pleased them; these would be easily persuaded to work themselves up into a Belief, that their Sins were forgiven them at such a Time, or that Christ took an entire Possession of them at such a Place. For hearing that true Religion consisted solely in this, and that they only wanted it, because of their want of Faith in it, they would naturally embrace this, as the shortest Way to Comfort and Rest in themselves, in their own Self-convictions.

[Reg-207] Thirdly, All Persons of a sanguine, tender, and imaginary Complexion, would be likely to strike in with the Religion of these Questions. For such Persons receiving everything strongly, and having a Power of believing and imagining almost in any degree, as they please, they would not find it hard, to comply with Doctrines so suited to their Nature, and which indulged that in them, which wanted most to be indulged, a sanguine Imagination.

[Reg-208] Fourthly, All those who so blaspheme God, as to make him from all Eternity absolutely to elect some to an irresistible Salvation, and absolutely to reprobate others to an unavoidable Damnation. For there could be no subsisting under such an horrid Belief as this, but by those, who through a blind Partiality, strong bias of Self-love, and Self-esteem, can work themselves up into a full Assurance, inward infallible Feeling that they are in the Number of the absolutely elected from all Eternity.

[Reg-209] Lastly, These Questions are a great Bait to all kinds of Hypocrites, who must find themselves much inclined to enter into a Religion, where they may pass immediately for Saints, upon their own Testimony, and stand in the highest Rank of Piety, and of Interest in Christ, merely by their own laying Claim to it.

[Reg-210] (45.) Suppose it was to be asked Christians, as necessary to their Salvation, Do you believe and know that you have the Self-denial and Mortification of John the Baptist? Have you an inward Conviction that you have a Zeal equal to that of St. Paul? Have you an Assurance that your Love is full as high as that of John the Evangelist? That your Penitence is equal to that of Mary Magdalene?

[Reg-211] Could these Questions, with any Warrant from Scripture, be put to all Christians, as Terms of their Salvation?

[Reg-212] Yet there is as much Foundation in the Gospel, for putting such Questions as these, and making the Salvation of Christians to depend upon them, as for asking them, on the same Account, When, and where they felt their Sins were forgiven them? When and where they felt Christ to take an entire Possession of them? When and where they felt themselves made sure of their Salvation, and incapable of falling from their State of Grace?

[Reg-213] For what is all this but calling, hastening, and stirring up People to seek for Self-Justification, and compelling them to think highly, and affirm rashly of themselves, in order to be saved? Why might it not be as well to call upon them to say, I feel myself to be as good as St. Paul, as pious as St. John, as to say, I feel that my Salvation is secure, and that I cannot fall from my State of Grace? Is not this making Faith in one's self, as good, as necessary, and as beneficial to us, as Faith in Christ?

[Reg-214] Would it not be as well, nay better, to make good Works of our own, necessary to true Faith, than to make Self-Justification, which is not a good Work, to be the very Essence and Perfection of it?

[Reg-215] The Matter will not be much mended by saying, that this Feeling and Assurance is acknowledged to be the pure Gift of God, and so cannot be called our own, or our own Justification. For if I have not this Gift of God, till I pronounce it myself, till my own Feeling and Assurance confirms it to me, I am self-justified, because my Justification arises, from what I feel and declare of myself.

[Reg-216] (46.) How strangely must they have read the Gospel, who can take a naked implicit Faith, and an humble total Resignation of our Spirit, State, and Life, into the Mercy and Goodness of God, to be not only a poor and imperfect, but a reprobate State; or that a Man has no true and saving Faith, till it is an infallible own-Feeling, and Self-Assurance? What must such People think of our Saviour dying upon the Cross, with these Words in his Mouth, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!" Will they say that this is a dangerous State? Is the Spirit of Christ here to be renounced? Will they say, that no new-born Christian can die in this Manner? Or that if he does, he is not in a State of Salvation?

[Reg-217] To know no more, and to seek to know no more of our Salvation, than we can know by an implicit Faith, and absolute Resignation of ourselves to God in Christ Jesus, is the true saving Knowledge of Christ, and such as keeps us in the highest Degree o Fitness to receive our perfect Salvation.

[Reg-218] (47.) I hope it will here be observed, that I no way depreciate, undervalue, or reject any particular Impressions, strong Influences, delightful Sensations, or heavenly Foretastes in the inward Man, which the Holy Spirit of God may at times bestow upon good Souls; I leave them their just Worth, I acknowledge them to be the good Gifts of God, as special Calls, and Awakenings to forsake our Sins, as great Incitements to deny ourselves, and take up our Cross, and follow Christ with greater Courage, and Resolution.

[Reg-219] They may be as beneficial, and useful to us in our spiritual Life, as other Blessings of God, such as Prosperity, Health, happy Complexion, and the like. But then, as outward Blessings, remarkable Providences, religious Complexion, and the like, may be very serviceable to awaken us, and excite our Conversion to God, and much assist the spiritual Life; so they may very easily have a contrary Effect, serve to fill us with Pride, and Self-satisfaction, and make us esteem ourselves, as greater Favourites of God, than those that want them. Who may yet be led to a higher Degree of Goodness, be in a more purified State, and stand nearer to God in their poor, naked, and destitute Condition, than we in the midst of great Blessings.

[Reg-220] It is just thus with regard to those inward Blessings of the spiritual Life. They are so many Spurs, Motives, and Incitements to live wholly unto God; yet they may instead of that, fill us with Self-satisfaction and Self-esteem, and prompt us to despise others that want them, as in a poor, mean, and reprobate State; who yet may be higher advanced, and stand in a nearer Degree of Union with God, by Humility, Faith, Resignation, and pure Love, in their inward Poverty and Emptiness, than we who live high upon spiritual Satisfactions, and can talk of nothing, but our Feasts of fat Things.

[Reg-221] All that I would here say of these inward Delights and Enjoyments, is only this, They are not Holiness, they are not Piety, they are not Perfection, but they are God's gracious Allurements, and Calls to seek after Holiness and spiritual Perfection. They are not to be sought for, for their own sakes; they are not to be prayed for, but with such a perfect Indifference and Resignation, as we must pray for any earthly Blessings; they are not to be rested in, as the Perfection of our Souls, but to be received as Cordials, that suppose us to be sick, faint, and languishing; and ought rather to convince us, that we are as yet, but Babes, than that we are really Men of God.

*Note:  You can use the numbers beside the text to identify which pasages can be read succinctly and which are separate