The Tender Trap

If you were going to build the perfect prison, how would you build it?

Would you procure the finest construction materials, concrete, steel, bulletproof glass, etc.? Would you utilize the best SuperMax prison design schemes? Hire burly, no-nonsense guards who all weigh well over 220 pounds? Would you place the prison on an island surrounded by shark-infested waters? No TV, no radio, no library, no visitation? Would all these things insure that the inmates would not try to escape?

Or would you build your prison with no walls, no fences, no rules, no punishments? You'd provide the inmates with whatever they wished, forgive their transgressions, serve them the finest food, allow them unlimited congress with the opposite sex, make available to them all kinds of drugs, alcohol, etc. There'd be no fences, no barbed wire, no shark-infested moat to keep them imprisoned. They would be free to leave at any time.

Which prison do you think would be most successful, with the happiest inmates and the least amount of escape attempts? i think that one's pretty much a no-brainer.

That is sort of what has happened to man on earth. We are inmates in a very dynamic and alluring prison. We stand transfixed by the glamour of the world, unable to figure out that we are being fooled into staying in this condition and encouraged to never leave. We think that this is all there is, and what there is "ain't so bad", so why not just stay here and deal with it? That is how a "perfect prison" works. It allows the prisoner to incarcerate himself.

Every night, the prisoner walks obediently to his cell.

Every night, the prisoner locks the door to his own cell, then throws the key outside to his jailer.

Every night, the prisoner dreams of what he will do to pass the time tomorrow, when he opens his eyes and realizes that he is...back in prison, his home.

The most difficult thing for people to do is to contemplate (much less accept) that all of this, this "reality", this "life" that they've built up for themselves is a complete and utter chimera, a dream. Those who insist on dreaming the same dream night after night will be pummelled by Pain and Sorrow until they finally tire of their glamorous prison and begin to Seek a way out.

Meanwhile, those who recognize exactly where they are silently bide their time...and carefully plan their Escape.

~~ g

Something To THINK About

Thoughts are things; they go somewhere.

[QUOTING]

At the present stage of evolution the majority of the thoughts of men are usually self-centered even when they are not actively selfish. Such self-centered thoughts hang about the thinker. Most men, in fact, surround their mental bodies with a shell of such thoughts. They hover ceaselessly about them and constantly react on them. Their tendency is to reproduce themselves – i.e., to stir up in the man a repetition of the thoughts which he had previously entertained. Many a man feels this pressure upon him from within, this constant suggestion of certain thoughts, especially when he is resting after his labours, and there is no definite thought in his mind. If the thoughts are evil, he frequently thinks of them as tempting demons goading him into sin. Yet they are none the less entirely his own creation; he is his own tempter.

Repeated thoughts of this kind play an important part in working out what is called Prarabda or “ripe” karma. Persistent reiteration of thoughts of the same kind, say of revenge, bring a man at last to a point which may be compared to that of a saturated solution. Just as the addition of further matter of the same kind to the solution will produce the solidification of the whole, so will a slight additional impulse result in the commission of a crime.

Similarly, reiterated thoughts of helping others may, when the stimulus of opportunity touches the man, crystallise out as an act of heroism. Under such circumstances, a man may marvel at his own commission of a crime or at his own performance of some heroic act of self-sacrifice, not realising that repeated thought had made the action inevitable. A consideration of these facts goes far towards explaining the old problem of freewill and necessity or destiny.

Furthermore, a man’s thought-forms tend to draw towards the man the thought-forms of others of a similar nature. A man may thus attract to himself large reinforcements of energy from outside; it lies within himself, of course, whether these forces that he draws into himself be of a good or evil kind.

Usually each definite thought creates a new thought-form; but if a thought-form of the same nature is already hovering round the thinker, under certain circumstances a new thought on the same subject, instead of creating a new form, coalesces with and strengthens the old one, so that by long brooding over the same subject a man may sometimes create a thought-form of tremendous power. If the thought be an evil one, such a thought-form may become a veritable malign influence lasting perhaps for many years, and having for a time all the appearance and powers of a real living entity.

A shell of self-centered thought obviously must tend to obscure the mental vision and facilitate the formation of prejudice. Through such a shell the man looks out upon the world, naturally seeing everything tinged with its predominant colours; everything which reaches him from without is thus more or less modified by the character of the shell. Thus, until a man has complete control of thought and feeling he see nothing as it really is, since all his observations must be made through this medium which, like a badly-made glass, distorts and colours everything.

It was for this reason that Aryasangha [now the Master Djwal Kul] said in The Voice of the Silence that the mind was “the great slayer of the real”. He was drawing attention to the fact that we do not see any object as it is, but only the images that we are able to make of it, everything being thus necessarily coloured for us by these thought-forms of our own creation.

[END QUOTING]

Excerpted from The Mental Body -- A. E. Powell

~~ g

Complete Immersion In Self

“There are days when 15 or 20 people pass by and might not even notice I’m here,” he said, as several pedestrians seemed to do just that. “A decade ago, if you saw someone covering their ear and talking to themselves, you would have thought they were just nuts. Today that’s the norm. It’s as if they are totally consumed by their own world and have no room for the outside. It is complete immersion in self to the exclusion of all else. That has to have an impact on the rest of our lives.” - Charles Mysack, NYC street vendor / bookseller

And so, from a humble street vendor, we get a hint as to what the hidden purpose of the "Gadget Age" is really all about:

"Complete immersion in self to the exclusion of all else".

Don't let it happen to you.

~~ g

For Whom The Bell Tolls

"NO man is an island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were.

Any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind;
and therefore never send to know
for whom the bell tolls;
it tolls for thee..."

These famous words by John Donne were not originally written as a poem - the passage is taken from the 1624 Meditation 17, from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions and is prose. - Poetry Online

~ g

The Cosmic Motion Picture

The phenomenal universe is often referred to as an "illusion". It is God's Thought Vibration, Cosmic Light, molded by Divine Will into an infinite variety of shapes and forms. In Autobiography of a Yogi, the following passage speaks to the nature of objective reality.

From the chapter 30, entitled "The Law of Miracles"...

[QUOTING]

The motion picture art can portray any miracle. From the impressive visual standpoint, no marvel is barred to trick photography. A man's transparent astral body can be seen rising from his gross physical form, he can walk on the water, resurrect the dead, reverse the natural sequence of developments, and play havoc with time and space. Assembling the light images as he pleases, the photographer achieves optical wonders which a true master produces with actual light rays.

The lifelike images of the motion picture illustrate many truths concerning Creation. The Cosmic Director has written His own plays, and assembled the tremendous casts for the pageant of the centuries. From the dark booth of eternity, He pours His creative beam through the films of successive ages, and the pictures are thrown on the screen of space. Just as the motion picture images appear to be real, but are only combinations of light and shade, so is the universal variety a delusive seeming. The planetary spheres, with their countless forms of life, are naught but figures in a cosmic motion picture, temporarily true to the five sense perceptions as the scenes are cast on the screen of man's consciousness by the Infinite Creative Beam.

A cinema audience can look up and see that all screen images are appearing through the instrumentality through the instrumentality of one imageless beam of light. The colorful universal drama is similarly issuing from the single white light of a Cosmic Source. With inconceivable ingenuity God is staging an entertainment for His human children, making them actors as well as audience in His planetary theatre.

"Creation is light and shadow both, else no picture is possible. The good and evil of maya must ever alternate in supremacy. If joy were ceaseless here in this world, would man ever seek another? Without suffering, he scarcely cares to recall that he has forsaken his Eternal Home. Pain is a prod to remembrance. The way of escape is through Wisdom! The tragedy of death is unreal; those who shudder at it are like an ignorant actor who dies of fright on the stage when nothing more is fired at him than a blank cartridge. My sons are the children of light; they will not sleep forever in delusion".

[END QUOTING]

Beautiful.

~~ g

Seek The Kingdom

A portion of a conversation recently read, from Readiness for Gnosis - Seeking:

[QUOTE]

Q. . . .It is like a person who is afraid of a lion. Although, by choosing to learn about the animal, facing it, and understanding it's personality and nature, this same person, if he chose, could stick his head in the lion's mouth without breaking a bead of sweat off his brow........All because he took the time to study his source of fear, despair, woe, and now understands it. Unmoved, unaffected, at peace with the threat only inches away. Now, on the other hand, if one acts in fear of this animal, it will know instinctively by one's thoughts and actions and may turn to tear you apart.

This same scenario is what is going on in this world. A world (as with any other) that is directly effected by the understanding, actions, and thoughts of people that dwell on it's surface. If it is dreaded and feared, it will be a dread and threat the whole time. If it is understood and studied, it will be a pleasant life in the face of constant threats that are created by others. And if the planet's inhabitants as a whole have understanding of both the positive and the negative aspects of life (The Natural Balance), it is then a world that lives under divine plan or law, and does not suffer any of the harsh conditions that are considered hell in a hand basket. . .

A. Well there is subtle error here, which demonstrates again that you are depending on your very limited intellectual faculty to interpret the Truth, the Reality of things, which is impossible to do. For how can a scientist with his microscope understand the living, vibrating Reality that is the Cause behind the microscope itself? How can the tiny part understand the Whole unless it becomes one with the Whole?

What I am saying is that we may only observe and understand that which we focus upon. If this world of phenomena (not noumena, note) is focussed upon by the phenomenal mind of man, then how will he ever understand the noumena that is the living Reality behind all phenomena?

Mankind has been trying to understand this world of changing appearances for ages and ages, yet still suffering and misery exists. So why has mankind not overcome this? The answer is: because he is looking in the wrong direction. He is trying to understand an illusion, which has no absolute reality and therefore all his efforts amount to a hopeless, utterly futile pursuit. This is why the fallen universe is restless, leaving no person alone and at peace, and this is why no true happiness and peace may be found in this world, ever. It is also why all realized beings eventually leave this world entirely, in order to return to the divine Universe, which vibrates above the created universe. "My Kingdom is not of this world." - Jesus.

The Gnosis explains this clearly for those with eyes to see. However, if one is not yet Seeking the Truth, if one believes he or she already knows the Truth, then one will not be able to See and so take benefit from the liberating Teaching of the Christed Ones. This is our point with regard to yourself. If you believe that you are already happy and living in Truth, in Bliss, then your cup is full and you will not be able to receive any new Wine. Indeed, if you are already there, then you will have no interest or need to further utilize your limited intellect to study anything, including our writings, for which you have applied. Furthermore, if you truly are Enlightened, if you had already reached the Goal of supreme Wisdom, then in radiating Christ-Consciousness (divine Love) would you not be attracting spiritual aspirants in the thousands, as did Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tzu, etc.? And if not, then why are you not a Seeker like the rest of us? If I am not in a state of divine ecstasy, then I know I have further to go and so Seek. This is fundamental reasoning, no?

If I do not Seek in the right way and for the right reasons, then I will never Find, and I will, under the insuperable Law of Cause and Effect, find myself back yet again on the wheel of birth, suffering and death in this illusion we call 'life' to try once more to find the Philosopher's Stone, the Summum Bonum, the Jewel in the Lotus, the one Goal of all unenlightened life. Once we understand these things there is no other sane choice but to Seek True Life, and this is the most wonderful journey in the world, for in it there is Purpose, and where there is divine Purpose there is also Joy.

[END QUOTE]

Again, "My Kingdom Is Not Of This World". The Christed One did not mince words with this statement. Feel free to interpret it literally. To remain attached to earth-"life" is to reject the Divine Reunion that awaits those who are able to shake off the cobwebs and successfully withdraw their focus from the material plane. Seek the Truth. Seek ye first the Kingdom...all else will be added unto you.

~~ g