1992/08/28

Affirmation

I am called by love, inspired by love, full–filled by love.
I am a vessel of love in the world, giving freely what I have received.
Love is my whole being – and what I feel is love.
God is love – I am love.

Going beyond your limits

"To exceed your self you would have to step outside your own control system – to allow the elemental forces of your psyche to work throu you without restriction. That would be so-o-o scary. You'd get where you really want to go in double-quick, but it would be a roller-coaster ride. If you think you can hold onto your faith in what you really want throu this, do it. "Everything will appear to go wrong, fall apart, even the dream itself may appear to wither: BUT if you hold your faith a fabulous new harmonious reality will ultimately form, purged of all that made your previous situation unsustainable. And you will rejoice as you have never known rejoicing.
"Paying close attention to the interaction between your inner & outer worlds is the key. Hold to your inner vision even when there are powerful reasons to doubt – not clutching it obsessively, but in a warm reactive relationship dialog."

1992/08/27

The narrow path is quickest in the long run

"What discomfort you gave yourself by deviating from what you knew to be right. You wanted to learn? Learn you did.
"Now then, the straight and narrow path … Imagine a tube with yourself as a ball – the straighter and narrower you are the quicker you reach your destination – but the more you yaw and veer the longer your journey. Taking an 'easy' route can allow your pathway to become so wide it /you lose coherence, and your ball may end bouncing /ricocheting /spinning so that it loses the way or comes to a halt.
"Increase your realisation that nothing matters more than hearing my voice. Surrender control of your intellect. How wise you would be if you listened to your own advice!!"

1992/08/21

*The darkness before the dawn is the womb that yearns to create

"In everything there’s a lesson. The lesson isn’t designed to make life easier, harder, better or worse. It’s designed to increase your wisdom (balance). When the unawakened human intellect seeks to define itself it differentiates things & experiences into categories. But this isn’t the way holistic consciousness works. Of course you need to make sense of the experiences surrounding you – but you should try to do so inclusively, not by focusing on a tiny area of knowledge and excluding everything else. At first the all-ness of everything swamps your awareness, and holding one part steady when all is in motion can be a real ordeal – but then slowly it dawns on you that everything is meant to be in motion. And you discover that the only way you can only make a contribution is by joining in the dance, and so balancing and coordinating your own motions as a dancer within the all-ness of everything."

In The Grail Legend (p133) Emma Jung & Marie-Louise von Franz express a similar idea
> In the dreams and fantasy pictures of modern man this hidden, invisible something is occasionally depicted as a meaningful and numinous void. Thcre is one picture in which an egg-shaped void, from which rays stream forth, forms the centre of a world or of a mandala with an empty centre. The words of Meister Eckhart beautifully express what is meant by this image: "Everything must be lost, the soul must exist in unhampered nothingness," or "Whosoever would come to God must come as nothiug." Or, expressed in Eastern imagery: "In the purple hall of the city of jade dwells the God of Utmost Emptiness and Life." The Confucians call it "the centre of the void:' A nothingness, a void, is therefore the inescapable condition for the emergence of the Self. The outer and inner realizations of a life lived to its end. For this reason Jung has likened it to the "crystal lattice' present as a potential form in a solution which first becomes visible in the process of crystallization, although crystallization does not necessarily take place. The Self is therefore not complete. but is prescnt in us as a potentiality which can become manifest only in the course of a specific process. Certainly, the Self is not invariably realized through the unfolding of the natural biological life processes. There appear to be many lives where this does not come to pass.
> Then how and by what means can thc Self become manifest? It is realized to that extent in which it is lived in the experience of daily life. It is not achieved, however, when it appears in symbolic form in dreams and inner images, nor is it when consciousness acquires a specific degree of clarity, nor yet when a psychological function has attained a high degree of differentiation. Important as consciousness undoubtedly is—and rightly utilized consciousness is an invaluable means of help for the realization of the Self—it is not by itself the determining factor. For it does not depend so very greatly on knowledge and ability or upon some degree of intelligence, but rather upon the use which is made of these attributes and above all, on the psychic attitude a person adopts in the face of the various circumstances of his life and fate. As the threads of fabric are woven into a pattern, so the Self as the living garment of divinity is woven out of the many decisions and crises, in themselves possibly insignificant, by which we are affected in the course of our lives. Such occasions present themselves at every level of life and intelligence and in every milieu. Whether or not they lead to a manifestation of the Self depends solely on our own response. Many of us have observed that children, even small children, when faced with some difficulty, possess an attitude which many adults could only envy. That "something," the lack of which we experience as soullessness, is a "someone" who takes a position, who is accountable and who feels committed. Where this higher, responsible ego is lacking there can be no Self. Ethos and the Self are therefore mutually interdependent. For this reason, too, an attitude of "beyond good and evil;' such as has been commended in many quarters in modern times and especially since Nietzsche, is the best way to prevent the emergence of the Self.
> From the foregoing we can see that a fascination can emanate from something empty. It longs for completion like an invisible form which calls out for substance; the individual is conscious of the existence of this summons and of the growth of this attraction, but without knowing what it is that calls to him. The influence , emanating from the hidden Grail could be likened to such a summons.

1992/08/17

Create your own reality - be harmless. La Grotte de Rouffignac

"Perfect stillness is not the human’s natural state. It’s a gift, given yet earned, from the same source as peace. On one level it’s a withdrawal from activity, but on another it’s an engagement with all that is.
"For everyone different issues emerge every hour of the day: the active person responds with further activity – thereby ensuring a karmatic sequel: the peaceable person first examines whether hir involvement is desirable.
"A person who looks only at exteriors decides whether to become involved on the basis of what is attractive: but you must look at the heart, and offer only what help is appropriate to the heart.
"The world grows & unfolds throu each person. Let yours be a balanced contribution, that best moves forwards the interconnected situations of which you are the centre.
"What to do when someone means you harm? Best is to walk away rather than compound the other’s negativity. Have you been wronged, or cheated of money? Your currency allows you to gain what the cheat loses. Not all rich people are cheats, but don’t envy their physical comfort. You already have, if you choose to claim it, far greater assurance than the rich ever acquire. If you continue to be preoccupied by earth matters, you’ll never grow to Heaven.
You can create your own reality. You can create peace or war; greed or cooperation; excess, sufficiency or revival – choose which world you wish to inhabit."

> Right at the point where the publisher had pulled out of my fledgling magazine CataList & given me the whole set-up, & I was mulling over whether I should /could continue, my wife was designing a production of Purcell's The Fairy Queen at Aix-en-Provence. So I & the family went there & then holidayed in a cottage on the Loire. During this latter period I took myself off for a day alone.
> I let myself drift & ended up at the Grotte de Rouffignac. This is a 'throat' opening from the underworld, a
natural cave which descends slowly over about a km. The floor is formed of petrified mud from the first ice age, & is cratered by mammoth hibernation pods (as shown).
> In 1956 animal carvings were discovered at the extremity of the cave in a space where the 'tongue' of rock-like mud almost reaches the roof. Now, after substantial excavation one can stand & view these carvings (which are by no means as clear the photo suggests) spread out randomly all over the roof. Parties descend in a little electric train, which takes about 20'. Banal as this might seem, nothing can detract from the numen of the place.
> For me, alone in a throng of holiday-makers, this was as profound a spiritual experience as it must have been for those who made the perilous descent over the vertiginous floor in total darkness millennia previously. It must
then have taken a good day each way & I cannot believe they would have had a means of sustaining light. My sense was that the descent & carving could have been a rite of passage for young men in which they attuned to /at-one-d with the spirit of their prey. Led by elders, whose knowledge of a safe route over the pothole-strewn floor must have been a source of authority, they would have arrived at the end & as part of some arduous ceremony someone would have created one of these extraordinarily realistic images of their 'life source' lying flat on his back in a claustrophobic opening barely large enough to wield the graving tool – which, the 'graduates' would have been invited in singly to trace with their fingers & engage with some mystical act of union before returning to the light as 'made men' of the tribe.
> When I came out blinking & transformed after just an hour, my car had been broken into & my beloved Minolta stolen. The police caught the thief, who was without a car to leave the remote hillside!! It turned out that he had only been released from prison the day before, & so I had to spend the afternoon in a Gendarmerie filling out forms while they gloated on their success … tho I never got my camera back.

1992/08/11

Dig deep for the still water

You and me together: that‘s all it takes. No grand designs. Dig deep for the still water. Allow it to rise slowly to the surface. Don’t boast of your strength, you’ve been given it for a purpose, use it with respect for yourself and toward others.

1992/08/10

Stillness is at the heart of it

"Just sitting still, and being still is so important. If you would focalise the great enterprise you dream of, you’ve always got to be half outside it. Time off is never wasted. You may value yourself according to how much you get done: we value you according to how you are. Time & resources can never run out for the person who is on the path of life. There may be tricky periods, but these are growth periods. Don’t worry or feel you wont be supported because you may make errors of judgment. Your higher self is simply leading you into a growth area. Ultimately, what matters more – pleasing others, or growing towards your personal destiny?
Don’t think of yourself as a machine: you’re a person, with all the rights that that implies.
Be easy on yourself
, you’ll accomplish nothing extra by being tough.
In the transformation of your will, you must retain a sense of purpose while detaching yourself from the need to produce results.

Go: grow. Love: live. Obey: overcome

1992/08/06

Go for it

"Yes, yes, leap! Know that the bad experiences are just as important to your growth as the good ones. Nothing inappropriate can happen to you. Fly as only those who truly know the laws of gravity can."

1992/08/03

Swim in the warm currents of love.

"Aren’t you excited? So many opportunities for growth … but only if you don’t try.
You’re struggling again. Striving for results.
'Results'
will defeat you every time, and turn to powder under your hand. Just follow each step as it appears. Let others have the grand design. Don’t be psyched into running with the pack. Concentrate on bringing love into the situation where you are. And we do mean love in its fullest sense; that is to say you need to feel love physically even if you don’t make sexual display. For the advanced soul it should not be targeted sexually upon individuals, but transmitted as a feeling, an atmosphere for all to experience – just as the warmth of the pool aids swimming, and the superiority of the piano promotes music–making. Take a lesson from nightclubs or places of popular resort where the unawakened expect to find love of a materialistic kind.
Be open. Let your openness be your defence. Grow! Feel the air against your wings. Leap off into the great freedom of the skies. Swim in the warm currents of love."