"Realizations" and sudden understandings of the Nature of God or other spiritual matters often strike, like lightning, quickly, and then we're left with the imprint of it on our minds as the brightness of lightning is left on our retinas, and then we forget it somewhat.
This happened to me yesterday. I had a flash of insight, a direct knowing of something about the Holy Trinity and why Trinitarian theology has been held in Christianity for so long- only for the reflection of that knowing to be virtually unable to pass my lips. I've been unable to clearly formulate the thought. I've been unable to clearly explain it. Oh, yes, I'm going to try, right here, but it's going to be bungled and muddy and not at all what I want to say. Being the person I am, that's not going to stop me from making the attempt, so please bear with me. The normal issue we have when it comes to discussions about Self and Other and so on is the degree to which the Self or Other is really something like an illusion OR whether they're, in reality, unified. Is the Self illusory, and only the Objective World real? Is the Objective World a kind of illusion produced by the Self? Are they really united as One beyond all things? And these things are kind of abstract, philosophical, and the sorts of things that high-level-achievin' meditators discuss and write treatises on. But the Holy Trinity solves this problem by pointing out that there's always a Third Connection. Even if the Self and the Other are UNITED, there's always a "Third Observer." In other words, the answer to the question in Buddhism about "Who watches the Watcher?", that is, what is aware when there's no Subject to be "aware of" itself, is the "Third Person of the Trinity." There's always a Third Observer, a Third Person, a Third Reality that is connected to both of the Other Realities. The Trinity is a Mystery, but increasingly, I understand why it's to be found in Christianity. In Christ, Steve
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Featured above is an incredibly soothing version of the Om Asatoma Sadhgamaya mantra. You can find a translation and explanation of the mantra here. In Christ, Steve Due to things like being my thirties, I threw out my back yesterday. This has happened maybe once or twice before, and I'm still functional with the help of modern medication; thank God for that.
This brought to mind the number of times I've down healing prayers and meditations for friends and family, the times I've offered the Holy Rosary for the sake of someone's healing and so forth, and then I realized, now I'm on the other side of this; now I'm the one who has to visualize the Christ healing me and asking for recovery. It's interesting to know how very valuable these thoughts of compassion and healing are for myself in these moments. Sometimes just having someone think about you and offer prayers for you is really enough. A brief meditation also severely began to reduce the pain, and for that, I'm glad. I'm not under the impression that everyone has to go through every affliction in order to understand the importance of being on the receiving end of healing, but still, I can see the absolute importance of it now. This helps to then inspire me to offer more healing prayers and energy for others. Always be sincere in your duty to help others. In Christ, Steve Divination is one of those topics that can be touchy. I myself practice divination (predominantly in the form of card reading, though sometimes I consult the Yi Jing) and read for others and have noticed a tendency for people to sometimes begin relying far too much on readings and not on their own decision making.
From one angle, we can think of Divination as a means of clarification for complex issues: a complex obstacle stands before us, and we ask how to remedy or overcome such an obstacle. A reading can clarify that. From another angle, we must remember that Divination is not unlike meteorological forecasts- various factors go into making the forecast, and the outcome deals with what is most probable and not what is absolutely certain. I have to insert a joke I make sometimes about weather apps on smart devices and how I've had Tarot card readings that were "more accurate." It's a joke, but sometimes, it's described the situation all too well. At this point, I'm having to draw a boundary and make clear for myself that I'll not do a reading for a person outside of once every two weeks. There are a few reasons for this, but most it's because two weeks is a good measure of a smaller cycle in a person's life. All of this applies across the board- to cartomancy as well as astrology. I think perhaps tomorrow we'll continue the discussion and speak more about cartomancy. In Christ, Steve Our paradigms in spirituality are always that- systems, paradigms, organizations that help us to integrate and understand our spiritual experiences. They allow us to live in society and function while simultaneously having direct experiences of the Divine.
Unfortunately, all of us are prone to falling prey to the paradigm overtaking any kind of real spiritual experience. To honestly and consistently question one's self and to put a check on one's self is a great moral responsibility that all too often gets shrugged off in the more New Age-oriented perspectives. Worse still is this shrugging off of seriousness and responsibility is perhaps the major weakness of our more New Age perspectives. This isn't true across the board, and in this world, things are rarely true across the board. But it's true enough to find a disturbing overlap between people calling themselves things like "Light Workers" who also spend a lot of time embracing and promulgating some pretty dark (and given the right circumstances, dangerous) conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories have a huge allure for a lot of us because they seem to offer the "more" part of an explanation; when tremendous things happen, we want to assign some kind of agency to the cause. That reduces anxiety and makes us feel like we understand things better than we do. Another force driving the allure is how so many of us know there's more going on in the world. However, merely knowing of something- intuitively understanding that there are forces beyond what's recognized in a strictly scientific-materialist worldview- doesn't mean that we necessarily are accurately perceiving such forces or what the patterns that emerge mean. The Sufi Master Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee speaks sometimes of people being "dazzled by the bright Light of the Divine" who are need to then be grounded; in his particular school of Sufism, they use Jungian psychology to hold that ground in the manifest/physical world. I second this idea. The reality is that much of life is a complex interaction of, for lack of better terms, Archetypal Collisions. Dynamic, unconscious forces have their own agenda and function in a way comparable to how people used to understand the Gods. We have to remain grounded. Different ideas and perspectives might allure us or seem to offer us an interesting or exciting explanation; that something is alluring doesn't mean it's necessarily accurate, factual, or true. Moreover, the Shadow in our personal psyche ever searches for something upon which to project itself, and therein lies the most dangerous aspect. Prudence is a virtue to strive for constantly. Let make sure we approach life with such a humanizing virtue. In Christ, Steve October's an interesting month.
Growing up, Halloween was definitively one night of the year. Our school would decorate with Halloween decorations during October; we would eventually have a Halloween party in the earlier part of elementary school; and everything was tidily finished with the grand night itself, full of trick-or-treating. Things change, and in the modern world, Halloween may as well be the whole month. People are hosting Halloween parties, the decorations aren't just in schools, and as adults, we can purchase massive amounts of candy any time we please. Halloween movies are playing on TV, streaming services set up specific Halloween sections...you name it. Halloween follows a pattern that exists in many cultures around the world where something that was once borderline to downright terrifying has become, to quote a favorite Halloween movie, "...a night of frolic." (We can substitute the word "month" here instead.) Many of us follow an interesting path where of course we indulge in the frolic aspect but ask ourselves if perhaps there' more. Is there more to this? Is there something deeper? Our Nature traditions and modern Pagan paths bring back up what I've mentioned in previous entries- we should be working with and honoring the Dead, specifically our Ancestors and the Forgotten Dead. Another aspect to consider is that potentially inner transformation that Halloween brings with it. No longer relegated to a mere night, Halloween brings with it an entire month's worth of Shadow Integration. And that, I think, is the ultimate aspect of Halloween for many of us- by decorating with spooky things, by dressing up as something possibly creepy, by celebrating the World of the Dead and the Hereafter, we relate to both our inner Shadow and the Shadow of the Collective Unconscious. As opposed to, say, Christmas (which is my personal favorite), Halloween brings with it a little more of a bite. People get a little more creative. There's a little more dynamism in many ways. Halloween feels like it offers to us more ways to celebrate. May God guide us to properly revere our Loved Ones who've transitioned from this world to the next. May God shine Light Eternal upon them. In Christ, Steve |