Becoming, Becoming What?
The tale of Lanoo comes from an ancient catechism. It is a tale of becoming. In a few short sentences it traces the eons of ground over which we have passed to become what we now are. Of our ancient equipment we have remaining, as Lanoo testifies, nothing but our bow and arrow. For many of those eons, we did not really know what was going on. We were driven by an unknown and unrealized force. We didn’t even know that we were being driven, or why we endured the pain and travail of following after our arrows of searching, of dropping veil after veil or skin after skin in the life after life quest to become. Ah yes, to become ... but to become what, we never knew or even wondered about. We just became. We crawled up onto our hind legs and proceeded to evolve. The trail over which we have passed is so long that it would make most anthropologists goggle with amazement as it literally disappears into “the night of time.” Its been a long trip. And now, here we stand, the result of ages and ages of evolutionary development, while the waters of yet another New Age lap at our soles. For many of us, however, this New Age will be unlike any other we faced on those dim and distant trails, for this time we are awake. We are aware of things that were previously hidden. Even more significant, we are aware that many things still remain to be discovered, and we are consciously seeking them out. Although still unavoidably driven onward, for many of us, the force that drives us is less a mystery. We have identified it as that spark of essential divinity that we know beyond all doubt exists within all beings. Countless numbers of humans have touched this spark of divinity, and many have identified with it. In so doing, we have discovered the future, and we are able to see into it. We can see what humanity can become. We can see a New World Order. A world order that is based, not on some delusion of separative privilege and exclusivity, but on the recognition of our essential divinity and simple laws and principles of reality, such as:
This vision is not some idle fantasy. It is a real possibility and it is within our grasp if we have the courage and will to reach for it. We also have the Teachings, the reports and descriptions from those who have gone before about the lay of the land, about the nature of the unseen and the not yet manifest. We can plan our cooperation with the Great Unfolding because at long, long last, we are beginning to be able to understand and to identify with that which we are becoming. Humanity is now living within the beginnings of an unprecedented and unavoidable evolutionary occurrence. This event, if you can see an event as something that might take a few hundred years to occur, is the result of those previous eons of becoming, a result of the unfolding Plan. The event about which I am speaking is the externalizing Hierarchy. It is the return or the re-emergence of the 5th Kingdom from out of the warp of timeless existence into which it withdrew ages ago, back into the woof of time, into the here and now space occupied by the 4th Kingdom. This emergence is setting up an unprecedented interface between Humanity and Hierarchy. This interface is unprecedented because for the first time in the long history of the planet, there are sufficient numbers of humans in incarnation who are able to recognize and understand the Hierarchs. There are or soon will be enough of us to make their existence or presence among us normal and acceptable rather than aberrational and supernatural. Indeed, without the evolutionarily gained ability of large numbers of humans to understand what we are becoming and to intelligently and willfully cooperate with this tiny aspect of the Great Unfolding, the emergence of the Spiritual Hierarchy, while it may still be possible, would be senseless. As you undoubtedly have, I, too, have spent many hours pondering on just how this Hierarchal “externalization" could be going on. I have never been able to get behind the notion that these beings, Hierarchs, for lack of a better word, would just sort of pop into manifestation, sort of show up in the woods, on a mountain top or something, or at the Congress and Senate, or the oval office. The notion that some 40 or 50 or 70 year old people, say some 180 pound 6 footer with no drivers license, a person who does not even have a background for the Home Security Department or FBI to check out, or for the media to "dig up", could just show up and start to run the show, never made sense to me. I think that this notion of beings of some sort, just popping in and laying it on us is one of the major stumbling blocks for the general acceptance of the Idea of Hierarchy by the more mentally polarized people on the planet. I know that it will come as a big disappointment to the more astrally polarized among us, but— in spite of the comments about the wings of angels and so on— Gods, or Masters, for that matter, popping out of the sky, doesn’t make sense, and it just won't fly. The externalization of the Hierarchy— a kind of group John the Baptist— which is fore lighting the reappearance of the Christ is a natural and reasonable part of the Great Unfolding. Because most of us are still locked into the time/space paradigm of one incarnation, we tend to have a very narrow range of vision. We are unable to include very large concepts in our mental grasp. We tend to think of evolution, for example, both as a process that concerns the development of forms and as a thing that is happening on Earth. However, evolution concerns the development of consciousness as it manifests through forms, thus the presence of a group fore lighter for the reappearance of the Christ. Evolution is also a word that clothes and gives direction to the cosmic principle of the Great Unfolding. Evolution is what is going on in Universe. Rather than thinking of the universe, as most physical scientists do, as a bunch of stuff, matter, expanding along some imaginary physical time line, think of the universe as an evolving Life, as The One Life that is constantly circulating higher and higher aspects of Truth, of Its Self, out of nothing, no space, no time, into space/time, into form. Or, if you prefer, out of Being into becoming and back to being. Besides getting rid of the ludicrous exercise of wondering if this or that planet or solar system or galaxy— of which at last count there were more than 50 billion— will support life, this position makes it easier to see and comprehend large hunks of time/space as parts of even larger hunks of time/space. So, the current externalization of the Hierarchy is an occurring cosmic event. It began, no doubt, eons ago on Cosmic planes beyond the Physical about which we know nothing. Its occurrence is still beyond the range of most people’s vision, but it was and is as inevitable as the sun rise. In fact the sun rise is the sky size, easy to see, timeless symbol of the inevitable return of the Light, the externalizing Hierarchy and the reappearing Christ. How can you doubt something that happens everyday? Anyway, this event, the externalization of the Hierarchy, has to make sense. We can not have it being perceived as ludicrous by the vast majority of the planet's thinking people. And, at this point in time, we just can't have full grown men and women popping in to run the show or to meet us in the woods to “just act” as advisers. If we start seeing, thinking and discussing the externalization of the Hierarchy as a normal and logical evolutionary development, I think it will begin to make sense to more people. What is lacking, of course, on the part of people who understand and can articulate these ideas, is the courage to speak up. So, what does make sense? Well to me, what makes sense is that there is a group of people on the planet, growing in number everyday, who got here and are getting here the acceptable way, that is by being born. These people have jackets. They have parents, backgrounds, IQ's, educations, siblings. They own property, have jobs, families. They exist in time and space, and they have a history to prove it. And more and more of them know who they are and why they are here. They endeavor to live physical plane lives of intelligent men and women within the world of humanity. Their goal is to demonstrate no freakish peculiarities, but to "...stand forth as living examples of goodwill, of true love, of intelligent applied wisdom, of high good nature and humor, and of normalcy. They may indeed be so normal that recognition of what they are may escape notice." Externalization of the Hierarchy, p 699. These people occupy the space I call becoming. Becoming is a place between two states of being. Another name for this place is discipleship - What disciples are becoming is Hierarchs. It is my opinion that the world discipleship group is the evidence of the externalization. We are the externalizing Hierarchy. On a couple of levels, this is a rather significant realization. For one, I think that a lot of disciples have not really faced the fact that they are working strenuously at moving out of the human kingdom. Some, many, avoid this realization by thinking that it would be glamorous, or presumptuous to think this way. But if not Hierarchs, one might legitimately ask, what are they becoming? Why are they trying to grow, to evolve into the group conscious state? Being human is a state with which we are very familiar. Being an Hierarch is a state about which we are learning by experience. Often, what we learn, makes us hold more tightly onto what we are. We are, many of us anyway, not real keen on relinquishing the familiar and comfortable state we call human, thus working against ourselves. (There is that old "comfort is the cemetery of the spirit" warning again.) But then humanity is on the 4th ray and we are destined to reach the harmony of group consciousness only through the conflict of self-conscious living. In the meantime, those of us who are willing to accept this responsibility are the very disciples who are making the externalization possible. We are, as I said, the vanguard of the externalizing Hierarchy, the Way Makers. Disciples are men and women who have a foot in both the 5th and the 4th Kingdom. We live “physical plane lives,” but our hearts and minds are often located in other areas of existence, and by, "treading this Way, the Ways of men" we link the Two Ways which is, you will recognize, an appropriate 7th ray use of the throat center. It also points out that the world discipleship group is the planetary antahkarana. While not yet Hierarchs, these men and women we call disciples are more than just human. They live in that space, as I said earlier, called becoming. And now, Lanoo, for we are still Lanoo, we find ourselves in that proverbial dark time of the year. The sun has gone way South. The days are short. The nights are long. We have been working steadily since Gemini at the task of manifesting the Plan, the present keystone of which, we remind ourselves, is the externalization of the Hierarchy. We have just passed through the evaluating and re-orienting experiences of Scorpio, and in these dwindling days of the year, we are all tired and weary. As we near the end of this particular out-breathing cycle, I have found myself on more than one occasion getting especially tired, to say nothing of irritated and bored, with the gyrations of the forces of retrogression as they do their utmost to fend off the coming sunrise. They seem this year to have been especially loud and petty and whiny. They have unleashed the howling dogs of war, let loose the scarecrows of fear and fanned the fires of fanaticism on all fronts. I am reminded of Alduous Huxley’s comment in a little essay called Liberty and Peace written years ago, “As Athens and Sparta died of flag waving and jingoism,” Huxley said, “so shall we die of flag waving and jingoism. I want to turn the radio off, forget the newspapers, slip into a nice comfortable place and escape the squabbling, the selfish stupidity, the noise, and just rest. Ah comfort, that inviting cemetery of the Spirit. And then I think, “Wait, this seemingly endless bickering and fomenting, this petty personality game playing is a weapon of the forces of retrogression. They want to wear us to a frazzle. They hope that those who are working for the evolution of humanity will give up and, from sheer exhaustion and ennui, throw in the towel of discouragement." Of course, we will not. For one thing we know about the eternal promise of the Avatar to manifest a light in the darkest hour, and drawing strength and courage from that knowledge we will stand. For another, we are old and tested warriors on the path, and long ago, long, long ago in some dim and distant Aries we pledged ourselves to stand through the long night, to be there at the end of the story, with the sword if necessary, but certainly with demand, readiness and expectancy. Our name, after all, is still Lanoo. And, so we are here, and we will be here as long as it takes Effective occult meditation over an extended period develops the habit of being focused in the future. By future, I don't mean tomorrow or next week or next year. I mean focused on what is coming our way. Meditators spend a lot of time thinking about the future, (which is not in time at all, so one actually spends time being out of time, very curious. Anyway, as we all know, time matters very much when one is trying to get to work, complete an assignment, cook a turkey. However, future doesn't seem to pay much attention to time at all. It is apparently of little significance to the beings who make up the future— beings that have been waiting to manifest literally for eternity— whether they will manifest in a year or 20 or 200 years. Because of that foot we have planted in future, we realize that the coming ideas will only come if and when a way is made for them. "...when the thoughtform of [the Hierarchy's] exoteric existence is created by Humanity itself and the invocative cry is intense enough, then the Great Ashram will slowly make its appearance upon the physical plane." A Treatise on the Seven Rays, Vol. V, p382. The externalization of the Hierarchy is an idea. It, like any other idea, has to be thought into existence. And so I do force myself to pay attention, to keep the radio tuned, the newspapers read. In fact, in spite of all that the forces of retrogression are able to do, once I can get past the obscuring blizzard of non-sensing details and personality gyrations, I find the more cognizant I am of the events that are occurring in time, the more clearly I can think and see the outlines of the plan taking form in human institutions and cultures. And again, we see this need for disciples to straddle the two worlds of being and becoming. So, the worlds turn, we realize, on the wheels of the system known as invocation and evocation. It is up to us to invoke, to demand, to literally think these new ideas into manifestation. We know that energy follows thought. We know that invocation is radiatory in its effect and that evocation is magnetic. The ideas, the lives we call the future follow the radiatory path, "the Lighted Way" which human invocation creates, and by their magnetic power draw the planet and all its beings into themselves. That is a really neat image, kind of cosmic, but it is not any great insight. For, as you know, we always have lived and moved and had our being in the Great Idea we call God. However, there is, it seems a whole lot more to God or to that Idea we call God than many are aware of. For lack of a better term, I call this Idea within which we live and move and have our various states of being and becoming the future. What other future does mankind have? Well, from my vantage point, friends, it is a glorious future, and in the dwindling days of this year, as we approach the celebration of the season of Light, the celebration of the birth of the Light or the Christ in the darkness, let us add to that light by being a source of joy and glory, a wellspring of wonder for our friends and families for our co-workers and for just everyone we meet and touch in our lives. We can do this because we know beyond any doubt that Humanity and all of our planet is becoming a place fit for Gods. Tom Carney December 1997 |