Nora and Leo: Trick and Treat!

HALLOWEEN is an annual holiday observed on October 31, primarily in the United States, Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.

Known also as a harvest festival, called Samhain (“Summer’s End”), it is rooted in Celtic polytheism. The word is also the Irish and Scottish Gaelic name for November.

It was the beginning of a “darker” season on Earth, with less sunlight and shorter days. In place of the usual psychic horrors and scary costumes, we chose instead to consider the symbol of an inner or hidden sun, represented by the flaming candle placed inside a pumpkin.

Samhain is similar to the Gothic samana, and the Sanskrit sámana. The Hindu God Krishna, symbol of the Higher Self, notably incarnates cyclically at mankind’s darkest times. 

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Lighted from Within

Unfamiliar Terrortory

A few days ago, I was walking the neighbor’s dog down to the beach area of our community. It was already dusk, so I had my flashlight with me. The usual bonfire, surrounded by gents and their beer yakking about the day, was gone and folks were talking in hushed tones.

The river was oddly beautiful with numerous boats shining cobalt blue lights. I was taking it all in and then the guys told me they were searching for a missing police officer.

He had volunteered in a training exercise earlier that day at a beach down the road from us. He was playing the “victim.” How he managed to slip away into the waters while a helicopter hovered overhead and police dive team members, marine patrol, and fire department personnel watched boggles me. Helicopters overhead that night looking for him kept me awake.

Ran into an officer earlier today while walking the dog at the beach and now they’re looking for his dead body. He asked me to call if I found anything.

A drowned body is hard to recognize, a neighbor told me, especially because of all the river critters that feed off it ‘til it journeys to the shore.

“Beware of this, O candidate!,” Helena Blavatsky warned,

‘Beware of fear that spreadeth, like the black and soundless wings of midnight bat, between the moonlight of thy Soul and thy great goal that loometh in the distance far away.” (The Voice of the Silence)

At the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, mice are learning how to not be afraid in stressful situations. Researchers there explain that two types of fear, instinctive and learned, have deep evolutionary roots and are essential for survival. But in some people, pathological forms of learned fear can lead to debilitating anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress syndrome, or depression.

Learned safety, on the other hand, reduces chronic stress, one of the hallmarks of depression and other psychopathologies. “The ability to identify, develop, and exploit conditions of safety and security is central to survival and mental health,” said Institute investigator Eric R. Kandel, “but little is known of the neurobiology of these processes.”

A friend of mine sent me a note last week about how fear had been holding him back on the Path, from making progress. And he sent me a link to an inspiring film about a young man who overcomes his fears.

So powerful a person can be when he or she “resides IN the ‘great & eternal’ moment,” my friend said. “I think this guy is an amazing vehicle for this lesson.”

Think of Blavatsky’s words before you watch this:

“Fear, O disciple, kills the will and stays all action.”

© Kara LeBeau 2008. All rights reserved.

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It’s Always Right Now

In their internal, or rather essential constitution, both nature and man are at one, as their essence is identical. All grows and develops and strives toward perfection on the former planes of externality or, as well said by a philosopher, is–“ever becoming”; but on the ultimate plane of the spiritual essence all Is, and remains therefore immutable. It is toward this eternal Esse that every thing, as every being, is gravitating, gradually, almost imperceptibly, but as surely as the Universe of stars and worlds moves towards a mysterious point known to, yet still unnamed by, astronomy, and called by the Occultists–the central Spiritual Sun.

H. P. Blavatsky, The Fall of Ideals

The crisis facing humanity today is, at its root, a crisis of consciousness. We are being called to put into practice the perennial wisdom of the ages.

Peter Russell
The Spirit of Now

Love Now

by Brian Piergrossi

On the surface of the world right now there is war and violence and things seem dark
But calmly and quietly, at the same time, something
else is happening underground
An inner revolution is taking place and certain individuals
are being called to a higher light
It is a silent revolution
From the inside out
From the ground up

You won’t see us on the T.V.
You won’t read about us in the newspaper
You won’t hear about us on the radio

We don’t seek any glory
We don’t wear any uniform
We come in all shapes and sizes
Colors and styles

Most of us work anonymously
We are quietly working behind the scenes in every country
and culture of the world
Cities big and small, mountains and valleys, in farms and villages,
tribes and remote islands

You could pass by one of us on the street and not even notice
We go undercover
We remain behind the scenes
It is of no concern to us who takes the final credit
But simply that the work gets done

Occasionally we spot each other in the street
We give a quiet nod and continue on our way so no one will notice

During the day many of us
pretend we have normal jobs
But behind the false storefront, at night is where the real work takes place

Some call us the ‘Conscious Army’
We are slowly creating a new world with the power of our minds and hearts
We follow, with passion and joy
Our orders from the Central Command
The Spiritual Intelligence Agency

We are dropping soft, secret love “bombs” when no one is looking:
Poems
Hugs
Music
Photography
Movies
Kind words
Smiles
Meditation and prayer
Dance
Social activism
Websites
Blogs
Random acts of kindness

Our work is slow and meticulous
Like the formation of mountains
It is not even visible at first glance
And yet with it entire tectonic plates shall be moved in the centuries to come

Love is the new religion of the 21st century

You don’t have to be a highly educated person
Or have any exceptional knowledge to understand it

It comes from the intelligence of the heart
Embedded in the timeless evolutionary pulse of all human beings

Be the change you want to see in the world
Nobody else can do it for you

We are now recruiting
Perhaps you will join us
Or already have….
All are welcome…
The door is open

-Brian Piergrossi,  from The Big Glow

Self-Knowledge Is Of Loving Deeds The Child

One must reach Self-Knowledge, and Self-Knowledge is of loving deeds the child.

Have patience, Candidate, as one who fears no failure, courts no success. Fix thy Soul’s gaze upon the star whose ray thou art, the flaming star that shines within the lightless depths of ever-being, the boundless fields of the Unknown.

Have perseverance as one who doth for evermore endure. Thy shadows live and vanish; that which in thee shall live for ever, that which in thee knows, for it is knowledge, is not of fleeing life: it is the man that was, that is, and will be, for whom the hour shall never strike.

Compassion is no attribute. It is the LAW of LAWS — eternal Harmony, Alaya’s SELF; a shoreless universal essence, the light of everlasting Right, an fitness of all things, the law of love eternal.

The Voice of the Silence

My point in presenting this perspective is that my experience shows that the gray area between non-functioning/oddly connected brain-mind situations with challenged individuals, and possible mystic realization (although I think unconscious), as revealed in their abstract behavior, is vast. Remember, I felt similarly about my late daughter Cherise, who had multiple disabilities, as revealed (I thought) through her behaviors. Surely, this is the best way for a parent to relate to these situations rather than resignation to a non-connection with persons like this.  But without a Theosophical education (there, without the grace of Theosophy, go I), I surely would have remained in the “dark.”

In fact, without some genuine study in true mystical studies, such as HPB’s The Voice of the Silence or perhaps something like Patanjali’s Yoga Aphorisms, there really cannot be enough actual information to go on, to decide whether the actions of one so afflicted with such karma, is displaying something based in mystical abstraction or simply disjointed mentation.

More to the point; I know that during my daughter’s seizure activity, if I were to look into her eyes as if I were looking to relate with that which resides “within” the troubled body/mind relationship, for the Real “Cherise,” and literally calling her to take charge or bring order, on occasion just that occurred. Over the years of my Theosophical study, I became more and more convinced that such behaviors as hers were based in a disorderly relationship between that which cannot know disorder, her Higher Self, and the personal man, where such disorders can reside. It was this kind of awareness (albeit initially without real knowledge or understanding) that provoked my original search for whatever wisdom existed that might further my intuitions and make them practical.

It is practical wisdom we need. Or the alternative is simply insisting that such afflicted individuals are always displaying some kind of disjointed mystically based behavior, is just a kind of “enlightenment” wishful thinking. This is where someone has sort of latched onto this kind of thinking through an introduction to Eastern or some kind of mystical thought, as a parent perhaps might. But without any real “substantial” awareness of anything mystical, or any real knowledge of what that even means, they might decide this behavior is mystical, given that alternative culturally acceptable ideals or models are just too negative. (which, of course, most are).

However, Theosophical teachings are clear on the relationship between the lower and Higher Self.  For all behaviors are essentially spoken to, to be altered by trillions of psychological and karmic variations to be sure, but not in cause, only in expression. So, all of our so-called “normal” behaviors are included as well. And that, I think, is the real test of such a philosophy regarding its practicality or lack thereof: Is it applicable to all conditions of human expression?

Steven Levey

It is easy to become a Theosophist. Any person of average intellectual capacities, and a leaning toward the meta-physical; of pure, unselfish life, who finds more joy in helping his neighbour than in receiving help himself; one who is ever ready to sacrifice his own pleasures for the sake of other people; and who loves Truth, Goodness and Wisdom for their own sake, not for the benefit they may confer–is a Theosophist.

But it is quite another matter to put oneself upon the path which leads to the knowledge of what is good to do, as to the right discrimination of good from evil; a path which also leads a man to that power through which he can do the good he desires, often without even apparently lifting a finger.

H. P. Blavatsky

“The behaviors our children show are a reflection of our incompetence, not theirs.”

Dr. Marc Gold

Marc Gold began his career as a special education teacher in Los Angeles. It was there that he formulated a values based systematic training approach, “Try Another Way.” This approach was based on a few fundamental beliefs: Everyone can learn but we have to figure out how to teach; students with developmental disabilities have much more potential than anyone realizes; and all people with disabilities should have the opportunity to decide how to live their lives. These video segments demonstrate his philosophy, and the respect and value he placed on the abilities of each of his students.

Minnesota Governor’s Council on Developmental Disabilities -http://www.mnddc.org

Dr. Marc Gold: “Try Another Way”

View the video… (26 Min.)

Or copy and paste this link into a new window:

http://www.mnddc.org/parallels2/four/video/video44-tryanotherway.html