Lighted from Within

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 spiritual sun, represented by a flaming candle placed inside the 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.

The Fires of Mind

ANIMALS are only instinctual machines, most people believe. But its not true.

 Controlled scientific studies suggest there are powerful spiritual and intellectual forces embedded in the kingdoms of nature.

 

In the 17th Century, René Descartes, dubbed the “Father of Modern Philosophy,” started us thinking the wrong way.

 

“Descartes held the living animal as being simply an automaton,” H. P. Blavatsky comments—”a ‘well wound up clock-work,’ according to Malebranche“—to which she countered:

 

“One, therefore, who adopts the Cartesian theory about the animal, would do as well to accept at once the views of the modern materialists.”

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Koko and Tabby

A woman found a young lion injured in the forest on the brink of death. She took it home with her and nursed it back to health. Later she made arrangements with a animal rescue group to take the lion. Some time passed before the woman had a chance to visit. This video was taken when she walked up to the lion’s cage to see how he was doing. Watch the lion’s reaction when he sees her!

New Spiritual Patterns 3

Celtic Woman

MANY people believe that crop formations carry a symbolically encoded message.

As with mythology, symbolism appeals to our imagination and is open to different interpretations.

But most researchers would agree that crop formations are ‘mandalas of hope’ for our troubled world, Theosophy writer David Pratt reports in his article “Crop Circles and their Message.”

Pratt theorizes “the basic element of crop glyphs is the circle, which can symbolize unity, boundless space, and the universal creative spirit or godforce.”

“Crop circles with rings and satellite circles sometimes resemble diagrams of the chemical elements, with their orbiting electrons.”

“Tacitly admitting the All-Presence of the boundless Circle and making of it the universal Postulate upon which the whole of the manifested universe is based,” Blavatsky explains in The Secret Doctrine …

New Spiritual Patterns 2

DURING critical awakening moments in our spiritual development, we sometimes receive timely messages in our personal consciousness.

More often than not they arrive in symbolic form, and in dreams or visions, challenging our brain dominated mind.

This is because, Theosophy says, our inner, reincarnating self is not here alone. It was chosen by the Higher Self to be its “terrestrial abode.”

In the crop formation above, discovered in Northdowns, Wiltshire, UK on August 13, 2010, we can clearly imagine the rays from the Spiritual Sun interacting with the mortal human beings below.

This occult process is described by The Secret Doctrine in metaphysical terms, how our inner child

“is drawn into the one and highest beam of the Parent-Sun.”

It is this spiritual evolution of the inner, immortal — now semi-awakened aspect of our nature, the teaching says — which is the “fundamental tenet in the Occult Sciences.”

The closer our personal self gets to our Higher Self, true occultism says, the more harmonious outcome in life for a human selves.

A direct effect of an increased harmony between the Arjuna and Krishna in us, that altruism eventually becomes the ruling factor in our life. This altruism or unselfishness is an “integral part of self-development,” as described in a previous post, when acceptance is willing and unforced.

New Spiritual Patterns 1

Kids in the first Dutch cropcircle of 2010

ACTIONS that call upon our nobler mind and innate spirituality, will surely spark the growth of true self-knowledge within us.

Old intellect-driven habits of thinking and acting do not work, and naturally fade away of their own accord.

Spiritual motifs become more deeply ingrained in us as we serve others, Theosophy says, and practice genuine compassion for  humanity, and the planet.

“Help Nature and work on with her,” is one important way, says the Voice of the Silence, “and Nature will regard thee as one of her creators and make obeisance — she will open wide before thee the portals of her secret chambers, and

... lay bare before thy gaze the treasures hidden in the very depths of her pure virgin bosom.”

“Unsullied by the hand of matter she shows her treasures only to the eye of Spirit,” says the Voice — “the eye which never closes, the eye for which there is no veil in all her kingdoms.”

Fosbury nr Vernham Dean, Wiltshire, UK, July 17, 2010

“Self-knowledge of this kind is unattainable by what men usually call ‘self-analysis,’ Helena Blavatsky affirms, “it is not reached by reasoning or any brain process:

…it is the awakening to consciousness of the Divine nature of man.”

And “to obtain this knowledge is a greater achievement than to command the elements or to know the future,” she adds …