Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts

Wednesday, 3 May 2023

Soul Powers - Virtues are evolutionary energies

Source: https://www.totalenlightenmentcoaching.org/soul-powers/

So, the name of the game is to MANIFEST the Soul in our three personality vehicles: mental, emotional and physical body – thinking, feeling and acting life.

To do that we need to expand our consciousness to include the reality of the Soul AND we need to saturate and penetrate our vehicles with the qualities of the Soul.

Now, these so-called Soul qualities are higher Soul energies that have the power to propel us forward on the arc of evolution.

In colloquial language we call these evolutionary energies virtues.

Virtues are not just empty names on a piece of paper. A virtue, by definition, is a Soul energy and a SOUL POWER that enables us to manifest our Soul here on Earth, in our daily life. A virtue, by definition, is an EVOLUTIONARY ENERGY. Therefore: Virtues help us to evolve.

Begin to live as a Soul

In Soul-Powers! 10 Steps to Awaken your Sleeping Potential into Active Power, you will learn how to awaken these powers of the Soul within you by weaving 10 Spiritual disciplines into your daily activities that enable you to manifest the powers of the Soul and begin to live as a Soul.

Seven reasons why to systematically develop virtues

But WHY, you may ask, why should you strive to manifest the powers of the Soul? How can they help me in a practical way in my daily life?

Here are seven compelling reasons why you should seriously consider to begin working systematically on the unfoldment and development of these Soul powers, or virtues, as they are commonly called.

1: Enter the 5th Kingdom

2: Live as a Soul

3: Meet Needs

4: Eradicate Karma

5: Experience Beautiful Transition

6: Give Healing

7: Give Self-Confidence

VIRTUES ARE A REQUIREMENT TO EVOLVE INTO THE FIFTH KINGDOM IN NATURE

The Spiritual path is the path towards Spirit. This is the reason why we call it the Spiritual Path and why, in order for us to reach this goal, we have to spiritualize our consciousness and material nature. The closer to Spirit we advance, the higher and finer the frequency. We cannot enter the higher dimensions with a low vibration. Therefore, we have to sublimate our lower nature and raise our vibration. Virtues, being evolutionary energies, enable us to do that. Without unfolding and developing virtues, we literally cannot take the next step in our evolution and evolve into the fifth kingdom in nature. When we are not evolving (moving towards Spirit), we are naturally involving (moving towards matter).

These are just seven out of countless reasons why it is a noble endeavor to deliberately engage ourselves in the cultivation of Soul powers.

we are living in very exciting times but we are also living in very challenging times. Albert Einstein once said that “we cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.” The solution to all our problems in life, both on a personal and planetary level, is to raise our heart and thinking to the next level.

This next-level-thinking involves the realization that we live in a world of energies and forces. This has always been the case, however, only now are we starting to realize this. Only now are we beginning to realize that our goal is to learn to consciously wield these energies and forces for an evolutionary purpose.

For many, many lives we had no clue about any of this, and so we have been living in a world of energies and forces all along, and they have been influencing us and moulding us all along, and we have even been unconsciously directing these energies and forces all along without us realizing what we were doing.

And being identified with the matter aspect (=body) and separation, and living a selfish life as a natural consequence of our identification, we have naturally been using the energies at our avail for selfish purposes, for involution and densification – instead of for evolution and sublimation. We were not aware of evolution as we are today.

We did not understand that involution is the densification of Spirit and that evolution is the sublimation of matter. We did not understand that virtues are evolutionary energies and that vices are involutionary forces, and that we should cultivate the first and eliminate the latter.

Everyone of us has a so-called character

What we commonly call character is simply the sum total of energies that characterize our consciousness. Energies!

So long as we remain unaware of the fact that we live in a world of energies and forces, the energies around us will continue to play upon and influence us and we will continue to be a so-called victim of circumstance (circum, Latin = around). In other words: We will continue to be the victim of the energies around us.

However, once we understand that we live in a world of energies, and that there exist different types of energies that are characterized by different qualities and that in colloquial language we call these different qualities of energy virtues (or vices, if used for an involutionary/selfish purpose), we can learn to consciously wield these energies for an evolutionary purpose.

Realize that virtues belong to the higher dimensions and that when we draw them into our aura, they will magnetically lift us up into the finer dimensions of reality,

Understand that disease is the result of inhibited Soul life – virtues are Soul energies that enable the Soul life without inhibition, thereby bringing healing,

Comprehend that virtues support the flow of Soul energies into our system whereas vices clog and congest the nadis through which the prana and higher energies circulate, causing illness as a consequence,

Learn that virtues and vices, by definition, condition the quality and chemical composition of our blood stream, lympathic system and endocrine system, of our skeleton, nervous system, muscular system etc.,

Become aware of the reality that vices, being involutionary in nature, cause densification and slow down our vibration,

Come to appreciate that virtues, being evolutionary energies and Soul powers, literally give us power, energy and strength; thus: we feel less tired and more energized,

Know that as we charge our nature with the frequency of virtues (=higher energies), our whole nature becomes charged: our thinking, our actions, our language etc. all become charged,

Come to understand that our aura is a self-created atmosphere and that when we cultivate a pure, high level self-created atmosphere, nothing of a lower nature can penetrate it,

Gain the revealing insight that virtues create a tangible, measurable force field of high level electricity around us which acts as a natural shield of protection,

Recognize that our thoughts, emotions, desires etc. are literally magnetically maintained and kept together in our aura,

Wake up to the reality that as we begin to develop our divine potential (virtues), we begin to radiate our divinity via the etheric network of humanity to all of humanity,

Understand that our vices make our bodies coarse and dense, while our virtues make them radioactive and light,

Learn that the spiritual path is like climbing a ladder and that virtues are the rungs that allow us to climb the ladder: with each virtue we develop, we take another step towards our Divine Self.

Purification: An Alchemical Process

By Gloria Excelsias

Link: https://www.iamuniversity.org/purification-an-alchemical-process/

It is not possible to advance on the Spiritual path without going through a process of purification. The word purification comes from the Latin and means „to make pure.“ („purus“ = pure; + root of „facere“ = to make) It literally means „free from extraneous matter.“

Being an extension of Source, we are – like Source – a trinity: Spirit – consciousness – matter; in intuitive philosophy this trinity is also known as: Monad (Spirit or life aspect) – Soul (consciousness aspect) – Personality (matter aspect).

Our mental, emotional and physical/etheric bodies constitute the so-called personality vehicles. Our bodies are made of various degrees of matter (physical/etheric matter, astral matter, mental matter). The quality of the matter constituting our physical/etheric, emotional and mental bodies is dependent on the thoughts we think, the feelings and emotions we experience, the words we speak, and the actions we take.

Now, I would like to take a moment and talk about the need of purification, focusing specifically on our matter aspect, our bodies. At the end, I will explain why purification is a necessary discipline which we cannot evade if we are to take the next step in our evolution and advance into a Soul-conscious species.

Let’s begin with our mental body.

Since in our current stage of evolution we are mostly unconscious and passive and pay little to no attention to our thinking, we naturally allow the people around us, the situations we find ourselves in, the programs playing on TV, global events, etc. to condition our mental body. Said another way: The newspapers we read, the shows and movies we watch on TV, the conservations we have at work and with our family, the people we hang around with, all play upon and condition the matter of our mental body. Since we, as a human family, are still mostly identified with separation, most of these vibrations are separative in nature. They separate us from Source and from one another.

However, the Spiritual path is the path of gradually replacing the illusion of separation with the reality of oneness. Therefore, to accomplish this, we need to purify our mental vehicle of all separative elements. If we do not systematically purify our mental nature of these separative elements, we will not be able to grow and advance. On the contrary: we’ll stay stuck exactly where we are and keep going in circles. You need to understand that we will not just wake up one magical morning having a fully purified and enlightened mental body. If our mental nature is going to transform into one of love and light and beauty, we will have to take the initiative to do so.

Now, how do we purify our mental nature? One of the most essential ways – and that‘s just one way – to purify our thinking is to begin observing our thinking. As you observe your thinking, the moment you catch yourself having a thought of fear, hatred, separation, anger, etc., immediately stop it and replace it with a thought of love, joy, gratitude and freedom. Energy cannot be destroyed but it can be transformed. When we replace a thought of fear with a thought of love, in that very moment of changing the direction of a thought current, we transform the energy of that thought current and thus literally transform the quality, wiring and substance of our mental body. Changing fear-based thoughts into love-based thoughts is literally an alchemical process. As we keep raising the substance of our mental body by purifying it on an ongoing basis (by continually replacing fear-based thoughts with love-based thoughts), we can use our mental body for an increasingly higher, divine purpose. (To think high thoughts, we need a mental body made of high vibrational mental substance; with a low order mental body we cannot think high thoughts!)

Purification is a necessary discipline on the Spiritual path because it is the discipline that enables us to replace coarse matter with fine matter (in all our vehicles). Purification is a discipline that enables us to alchemically transform our vehicles so as to provide our Soul with suitable instruments to express and manifest itself on Earth. And why should we strive to manifest express and manifest the Soul on Earth?

Great question! Because, again, it is current evolutionary goal to advance into a Soul-conscious species – and we reach this goal by each one of us manifesting our Soul on Earth – in our thinking, feeling and acting nature.

What about our emotional body? The quality of our emotional nature is dependent on the feelings and emotions we express – past, present, and future. Fear-based emotions are separative in nature. Cutting off oneness, they literally destroy the wiring of our emotional nature and create short-circuits in our nature. As as result, we cannot change our emotional responses but are caught in so-called emotional automatic reactions. Someone attacks us, and we automatically attack back (before we even have time to „think“ about what we are doing). To heal these cleavages, we need to flood our emotional nature with love and joy and gratitude, etc. Fear separates, love mends. This way we literally heal the wiring and raise the substance of our emotional nature. So: Observe your emotional automatic reactions. As you catch yourself reacting on automatic pilot, stop yourself in the middle (to the best of your ability) and make a conscious effort to consciously respond in a new, loving way. In this way you install a new program. Part of our evolutionary goal is to master and control our bodies so we can use them in service of the Soul and Spirit. When we have an emotional body that does its „own thing,“ the Soul cannot use it in service. When you purify your emotional nature by flooding your feeling nature with love and joy and gratitude, and by striving to respond to what happens in your life in new enlightened ways, you literally purify and thereby raise the very frequency of the cells constituting your feeling instrument.

Lastly, we also need to purify the matter out of which our physical body is made. Now, how do we accomplish that? Through fasting, deep breathing (I am not talking about pranayama!), sports, sweating in the sauna, etc. Fasting, deep breathing, sports and sweating are excellent disciplines to release coarse matter from our physical matter and build new, finer, higher matter into our densest vehicle. In other words: these are excellent exercises to purify and raise the frequency of the cells constituting our physical body.

Now, this being said, as we all know: we are NOT our bodes. So why bother to purify our vehicles if we are NOT our bodies? Excellent question! As I have said in the beginning, we are a trinity: Spirit, Soul, matter. These three aspects work together in unison. The Soul is Spirit’s vehicle of expression, and the matter aspect (involving ALL our bodies) is the Soul’s vehicle of expression.

In other words: The Soul cannot manifest itself without matter (without bodies) because matter is the very vehicle for the manifestation of the Soul.

Our current evolutionary goal is to advance into a Soul-conscious species. Our current evolutionary goal is to MANIFEST the Soul, and for the Soul to manifest itself it needs suitable instruments. A suitable mental, emotional and physical instrument is free of lower-vibratory coarse matter and full of high-level-vibratory fine matter. The Soul literally cannot manifest itself in a heavy, lower-vibratory physical body, emotional vehicle and mental house.

Sunday, 15 January 2023

Universal Free Masonry

Source: https://www.universalfreemasonry.org/en/gallery/secret-teachings

MASONRY LIBRARY: https://www.universalfreemasonry.org/en/masonic-library

Gallery of The Secret Teachings of All Ages

https://www.universalfreemasonry.org/en/gallery/secret-teachings

TO SERVE IS THE HIGHEST IDEAL

THE MISSION AND VISION

Advancing the Evolution of Humanity

Unless we set for ourselves the grandest and loftiest ideals imaginable, the genius of humanity will never reach its full potential. As human beings we are engaged in a never-ending quest to achieve the unachievable, know the unknowable and explore the far reaches of existence. It is this quest that has pushed us to climb the highest mountains, dive to the bottom of the oceans, reach beyond the limits of our atmosphere and create technological wonders that push the boundaries of possibility. If ever we become content and satisfied with the mediocre, the average or the temptations of the status quo, the ingenuity of the human race will vanish.

Universal Co-Masonry recognizes this quality in human beings and has declared as its mission the quickening of human evolution. Evolution, with its slow yet steady march across millions of years, has produced extraordinary wonders and a natural world so perfect in its completeness that it is beyond comprehension. It is, however, the unique duty of those with eyes to see and hears to hear to assist in unfolding the Divine Plan that Nature has revealed to us. Within the intricate symbolism of Freemasonry there can be found a blueprint for the expansion and transformation of humanity into the free, creative beings we have always been meant to be.

It is through Masonic ritual that the potential of the human mind to contemplate, imagine and create is developed and refined. Freemasonry is not merely a system of self-improvement or self-help designed to make good people better. Self-improvement is a side effect of the true purpose of Freemasonry: service to humanity. In this service there is no rest, only the reward of a job well done and the promise of more work.

The specific service to humanity that Universal Co-Masonry has decided to undertake is to combat Ignorance in all its forms. Ignorance, along with Ambition and Fanaticism, is the greatest of the three tyrants that have oppressed humanity from time immemorial. Universal Co-Masonry envisions a day when all human beings live harmoniously in liberty and prosperity, freed from the chains of physical, mental and spiritual poverty.

All human beings, regardless of age, sex, race or religion, are necessary to the fulfillment of this mission. Freemasonry has no room for the petty and the arbitrary divisions that have held back humanity for centuries. All Universal Co-Masonry requires of its potential Co-Workers is a deep belief in a Supreme power and the sincere wish to do good, speak truth and live as an example to humanity so that we may one day be free from the bondage we have imposed upon ourselves.

PHILOSOPHY AS THE TRUE LOVE OF WISDOM

PHILOSOPHY AND FREEMASONRY

Bearing the Torch to Illumine the Human Mind

Philosophy is an ancient human tradition. It is the practice of the contemplation of Nature and Science and has been a companion of the Mystery Schools since their inception. It is a living, breathing organism and has as its beating heart a conversation that has been carried on for millennia. This conversation is the conversation of human history, of the great minds of humanity speaking to one another across the centuries, and represents the exponential creation of human wisdom.

Philosophy, at least in the West, largely begins with the Greeks. This is not to negate the philosophers of antiquity, the sages of India and the Far East or the wise men and women of Egypt and sub-Saharan Africa. Truth-seekers and thinkers of remote cultures remain unknown to us and those philosophers of the early Mediterranean were certainly influenced by an older tradition of wisdom but the philosophy of the West – and Freemasonry is a Western Mystery Tradition – originates with the giants of Greek Philosophy.

Beginning with the Milesian School in the 6th Century, Greek philosophy marks the start of the Western mind’s recorded contemplation of the Universe. Philosophers such as Thales and Anaximander were obsessed with the elemental nature of the Cosmos and with finding the quintessential element from which all things are made. The Greeks had attempted to penetrate the mystery of Nature for centuries before Pythagoras, a mystic initiate of the Egyptian schools , who revolutionized our thought by his truly prescient insight into the mathematical nature of reality, a concept that our present-day physicists are still illuminating. He established a school of initiation that dispensed his philosophical teachings to men and women alike and until it was burned to the ground by an ignorant mob it remained a center for mystical instruction for decades. From this school emerges Socrates and his student Plato, two philosophical giants who would form the foundation of Western society to this day and who laid the groundwork for the emergence of the philosophies of Atomism, Cynicism and Skepticism.

Several centuries later, Zeno of Citium emerges and extolls the virtues of Stoicism, the philosophical backbone of the Roman Empire and of Freemasonry itself, a philosophy of Logic and Reason that encouraged the individual to form a personal ethical system and obey it ruthlessly and without compromise. Marcus Aurelius, philosopher king of the early Roman Empire, would march this philosophy across the Mediterranean world and leave its influence wherever he reigned. Following in the footsteps of his legions were the Mithraic cultists, who established secret lodges, dedicated to the veneration of their warrior god and patron saint of virtue, Mithras.

With the rise of Christianity and the fall of the Roman Empire came the early Church Fathers and the ideas of Theurgy and the emergence of Neoplatonism. Centered around the study of the human soul, Neoplatonic ideas were an ideal philosophical counterpart to the recent revelations of the Christ and would accompany the more mystic strains of Christianity as they would morph over the centuries into Gnosticism. As pilgrims flooded to the Holy Land, they came into contact with the ancient philosophical traditions of the Arabians and Islamic wise men. Astronomy, chemistry, mathematics and theology were reintroduced to the Christian culture whose progress had been stunted after the fall of the Roman Empire and the descent into the Dark Ages.

This meeting of philosophical hemispheres once more ignited the flame of the mysteries with the establishment of the Knights Templar, the Knights of Malta and numerous other esoteric and chivalric orders who were dedicated to the preservation of the Christian faith and philosophy. It has been claimed throughout history that such orders were no mere warrior monks but instead the discoverers and inheritors of mystical teachings and philosophies that led them to seek the answers to ancient questions in the deserts of the Holy Land. Upon their return to Europe from this campaign the Gothic cathedrals were raised by the Operative Freemasons and themselves served as centers of wisdom and learning for the Christian philosophy to develop. As the Renaissance era began to emerge, philosophy once again flourished in the Western World. Machiavelli, Copernicus, Galileo and many others lent their pens to the continuing conversation of philosophy, all amidst a climate of mystery and intrigue as secret societies and initiatic rites emerged across Europe. The Alchemists, the Rosicrucians and the newly arrived Ismaili mystics and Kabbalists of Judea all informed and inspired the budding philosophy of the Renaissance. Francis Bacon, polymath, court spy and philosopher extraordinaire was also rumored to be a member of both the Rosicrucian Society and the Freemasons and his work The New Atlantis has left historians and Masonic scholars alike with many puzzling clues as to the true origin of his philosophy.

The exuberance and extravagance of the renaissance eventually gave way to the rationality of the Enlightenment era of philosophy. This was an age of scientific advancement, of the practical application of the teachings of philosophy and the ideas of the mystics. It was from this time that such great scientific, creative and literary minds as Sir Isaac Newton, John Locke, Mozart and Voltaire extolled the virtues of the Craft in their various works by allegory and symbol. Not only did science and philosophy flourish at this time but Masonry was itself undergoing its Speculative transformation and its initiates would go on to lead revolutions in politics science and literature. It was the Enlightenment fervor for Truth and Reason that would eventually lead to a resurgence of mystical philosophy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries with the birth of numerous occult societies and culminating with the creation and expansion of the Theosophical Society – an organization dedicated to the harmonious uniting of philosophy, science, faith, mysticism and occultism.

Throughout history, Philosophy has marched hand in hand with Mystery. Wherever there have been initiates of those ancient traditions of humanity that seek to elevate the soul and quicken evolution, there has also emerged philosophy and a burning desire to know, once and for all, what it is that lies at the center of the great Mystery we find ourselves experiencing. As long as there are human minds to contemplate this great conundrum, both Philosophy and the Mysteries shall endure, and each shall inform the other as they uplift humanity together.

Saturday, 2 July 2022

Spiritual Resources for Practice and Study by Ananda Tara Shan

Source: https://www.heartflowworldwide.org/resources.html

Link: https://www.maitreyatheosophy.org/

Introduction
Slowly we will be building a compilation of practices and study texts which will be available via links from this page under the different headings below.

You are welcome to include these as part of your practice and studies, should you wish to do so.

Under the heading 'Meditation and World Service', you will find some short meditations of 5-15 minutes duration.

Under the heading 'Contemplations on the Way of the Heart', you will find short teachings selected from maitreyatheosophy.org, a source of published works by Ananda Tara Shan.

Different topics are explored under the heading 'Study of Theosophy'. For each topic, there are three parts each consisting of a 15-minute talk by Ananda, with study notes and study questions.