| New Group of
World Servers In Action November-December 2002 Approaching Spirit Introduction For all of our recorded history humans have recognized and honored an "unseen" intelligence or force. Our experience of the "spiritual" aspect of our life is as real to us (if we do not simply deny it) as the material side. And for millennia we have worked to develop a relationship with it.
Meditation, prayer and invocation are
some of the many ways we use to approach spirit. Join us in our
exploration of this relationship and our spiritual evolution. The Reappearance of the Christ - Chapter VI - The New World Religion - A.A.Bailey The truth lying behind all invocation is based upon the power of thought, particularly in its telepathic nature, rapport and aspect. The unified, invocative thought of the masses and the focused, directed thought of the New Group of World Servers constitute an outgoing stream of energy. This will reach telepathically those spiritual Beings Who are sensitive and responsive to such impacts. Their evoked response, sent out as spiritual energy, will in turn reach humanity after having been stepped down into thought energy and in that form will make its due impact upon the minds of men, convincing them and carrying inspiration and revelation. Thus has it ever been in the history of the spiritual unfoldment of the world and the procedure followed in writing the world Scriptures.
~"Spiritual" refers to that which lies beyond our present point of attainment―everything which helps us move from one level of consciousness to the next, to the next step in our evolution ~The spiritual evolution of humanity is a series of graded approaches into higher levels of awareness, leading eventually to conscious union with God or the Supreme Reality; it is also a series of expansions horizontally, leading eventually to oneness with all of humanity and all of life. ~Frees us from illusion by rising to a higher level of clear vision ~The method by which the purpose of God is accomplished. (I)t will be realized that all activity which drives the human being forward towards some form of development (physical, emotional, intuitional, and so forth) is essentially spiritual in nature and is indicative of the livingness of the inner divine entity. ... The discoveries of science,... or the production of some great work in literature or in the field of art, are just as much an evidence of "spiritual" unfoldment as the rhapsodies of the mystic or the registration by the so-called occultist of a contact with the Hierarchy. There will, however, come a point in the experience of all those thus making a spiritual approach along some specialized line, where a meeting place will become apparent, where a joint goal will be unitedly recognized, where essential unity under diversity of forms, of methods and of techniques will be acknowledged, and where pilgrims on all ways of approach will know themselves to be one band of demonstrators of the divine.
The
Rays and the Initiations - Part Two - The Aspirant and the
Mysteries of Initiation
A new culture emerges ~ Winter 2001
If we view the coming century solely in terms of economic, technological, and political trends, the picture is bleak. Global elites appear to be preparing for a devilish endgame in which winners will literally take all. The world’s middle classes are hypnotized by the lure of cheap consumer goods and kept frantically busy meeting the demands of new market opportunities. The world’s impoverished are trapped in a system that institutionalizes inequality. And the biosphere on which we depend is being polluted and depleted. The media reflection on the last century — what there’s been of it — has focused on technological and economic accomplishments, military and geopolitical exploits, and pop culture. When attention turns to the future, it’s more of the same: bio-computer implants by 2005! Self-replicating robots by 2050! Few suggest we might eliminate poverty, hunger, or war in the next century or figure out how to live within the life-support capability of the planet. This contrasts with predictions published in 1900 regarding the dawning 20th century. Then, utopian social dreams seemed credible. Somehow the experience of the past 100 years has rendered such dreams quaint and unrealistic. Or has it? This cautious hope is grounded in achievements of our recent and not-so-recent past that don’t get the attention given to the new technologies and geo-political battles — achievements that ultimately may be more central to our hopes for the future. Despite the atrocities of the last century — perhaps even because of them — we may be slowly and painfully gaining in wisdom. Five significant developments have provided insights that are now serving us as we begin a new century.
From The YES! Magazine website S E R V I C E The great religions all sing the praises of generosity and service. “Make it your guiding principle to do your best for others,” urged Confucius. When Mohammad was asked, “What actions are most excellent?” he replied, “To gladden the heart of a human being, to feed the hungry, to help the afflicted, to lighten the sorrow of the sorrowful, and to remove the wrongs of the injured.” Both Mohammad and Jesus were uncompromising. Mohammad never said no when asked for anything, and Jesus urged, “Give to everyone who begs from you and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.”
Essential
Spirituality, From the
Institute of Noetic Science
website Do you realize this is the first time in history that publicly acknowledging that you follow two or more distinct spiritual traditions would not have you burned at the stake, stoned to death, or facing a firing squad? We tend to forget what an extraordinary time this is, that for the first time in history we have the entirety of the world’s spiritual and religious traditions available to us, and we can practice them, at least here (in America), without fear. We are discovering that underlying this vast array of practices and traditions and theologies and beliefs is a common core of wisdom and practices. Beneath the surface we find a deeper wisdom, not usually recognized but hidden in the depths of each and every one of the great religious traditions, a wisdom known as the perennial philosophy and the perennial psychology, which encompass a set of perennial practices. The Perennial PhilosophyThe perennial philosophy was known of for some time, and at its heart are four statements about the nature of reality: The first is that this physical world we live in and see and touch is not all there is to reality; that underneath it—in fact, at its source—is another world, a sacred world, a world of spirit or consciousness or Mind with a capital “M”, or Geist, or Tao. The second of the four claims is that we as human beings partake of this reality. We are rather like amphibians. We have a part of our life and being in this world we see and touch, but in a deeper part at the core of our being, at the center of our minds, at the center of our awareness, we experience this other sacred realm, and we partake of it, and we are it. The third claim of the perennial philosophy has to do with epistemology: It states that we are capable of knowing this other realm. If we train and develop the mind sufficiently, if we hone our awareness, develop our attention, refine our perception, then we can come to know this reality directly for ourselves. This is what differentiates the perennial philosophy from dogma. It is not a truth-claim to be believed simply on someone’s word. It is an experiment that is offered to us, that each and every one of us can try.
The fourth claim is an
ethic. It states that coming to know this sacred realm and coming to
recognize it as ourselves is the highest good and the highest goal of
human existence—that it is the means by which we can best
This is an excerpt.
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W I S D O M Wisdom is deep understanding and practical skill in the central issues of life, especially existential and spiritual issues. Existential issues are those crucial and universal concerns all of us face simply because we are human. They include finding meaning and purpose in our lives; managing relationships and aloneness; acknowledging our limits and smallness in a universe vast beyond comprehension; living in inevitable uncertainty and mystery; and dealing with sickness, suffering, and death. A person who has developed deep insights into these issues—and skills for dealing with them— is wise indeed.
Essential
Spirituality,
MICHAEL TOMS: Perhaps we can begin by hearing you tell us how to recognize soul. I know it's difficult to define it, but how do we recognize soul? THOMAS MOORE: Soul likes to be connected. When you're with somebody--a friend, or even a family member--where you really feel the connection, and it's not just based on some kind of common work or something you can actually express and define clearly, but you can feel the connection, heart to heart, it doesn't even have to be terribly emotional, but that kind of connectedness is one sign of soul.
We have to make some distinctions about this. It seems to me that soul loves the memory of childhood, loves the stories, loves the characters. So if I'm doing family therapy, I want to hear those stories, the stories of the uncles and the aunts and the mother and father and grandparents. And even before them, the stories of the family, the places where we lived, all that kind of thing. In fact, that's exactly what dreams do; dreams take us back to those characters and places, a good indication of where the soul likes to be. But that's different from trying to change oneself and become better by somehow healing that person or that childhood, or certainly blaming what happened in childhood. That's not a soulful way of imagining family or the past, to say, "I am who I am today because my father was alcoholic, or there was abuse in the family, or people were distant." I think that this blaming of the family is one of the causes of difficulties with our families, the fact that we can't find the love and connections of family. It seems to be a healthy thing because we're finding the roots of our current problems, but I think that's an illusion. It's one thing to try to contact the family in order to change; it's another simply to honor and respect that family, and to take it as it is. Again, the soul likes the particulars--the way this family is--not some abstraction that sounds romantic and wonderful. MICHAEL TOMS: You wrote that "All families are dysfunctional." THOMAS MOORE: Yes. If we say that certain families are dysfunctional, that's like losing our own soul; that's like saying, "My family isn't," or, "My family is, and I can blame my family for being dysfunctional." In either case we have lost that sense of the shadow, the gaps, the holes in every family. It's in the very nature of family to fail at a certain level. Even in the Judeo-Christian myth of Adam and Eve, they fail--the mythological parents fail. That's a necessity. It's really a wonderful image--if we could understand it, feel it deeply enough, and take it to heart, then we wouldn't expect our families to be perfect. MICHAEL TOMS: So if we're focusing on a single parent: "Hey, this parent was very bad, or they didn't really do well by me," and so forth, in some way we're out of balance, we're not recognizing the good parts of that parent because we're focused on just the negative qualities? THOMAS MOORE: That's one way of looking at it--we're not dealing with a complicated person. Here's another soul word--complexity. Soul remains in complexity. We're with people who are very complicated; everyone's complicated. If we think someone is simple, then there's something wrong in our perception. I've never met a person who wasn't complicated. To care for the soul means, then, to live with that complexity. It seems every single institution in our society is moving toward a simplistic view of what human life is. And that's where soul vanishes, because soul is complicated. I can see the motivations for moving away from soulfulness--it would be nice if life were simple. It would be very nice if we could blame somebody for who we are and not have to face it ourselves, not have to deal with our own complexity. But that's not the way it is. We lose something of utmost importance when we give in to that temptation to oversimplify.
Copyright 1998, New
Dimensions Foundation, all rights reserved. The above article is
excerpted from the transcription of Program #2331.
From the Spirituality.com by John Selover Adapted from the Christian Science Sentinel BusinessWeek had it right with its issue recent offering "25 Ideas for a
Changing World"—ideas about corporate ethics, finance, technology, health,
trade. The Sentinel this week respectfully offers a 26th idea—a deeply founded
spirituality to guide and govern all human interchange. My undergraduate major in economics required an ungraded paper on the
economics of the Bible's "Sermon on the Mount." The content of that effort is
long lost to the years, but the assignment lives on. A scan of Jesus' sermon in
the Gospel of Matthew shows it is packed with ideas about economics, honesty,
human relations, exchange, investment, integrity. While these verses come
through the vehicle of New Testament scripture, the document is really
undenominational and embraces the deeper spiritual teachings of much of the
world's religious thought. Here are a few samples: · Give us this day our daily bread. · Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. · The meek shall inherit the earth. · Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. · Seek ye first the kingdom of God . . . · Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them. · Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it
shall be opened unto you. · Ye cannot serve God and mammon. · Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.
Our proposed 26th idea rests on the spiritual discipline of the Sermon on the
Mount. In this dawning post-materialistic era, the values of spirituality are
giving new creativity, strength, and substance to commerce, government, law, and
to public and private institutions, families and individuals. The utility of
goodness is asserting itself right through the sin of terrorism and fear, and
the extravagances and conspiracies of greed and competition. This 26th idea is universal.
Human development is now poised and yearning to move out of the vestibule of
uncertainty into a more God-centered, and therefore self-acknowledged, level of
ethics and values. God is All-cause, and the effect of that All-cause must be
Godlike. The divine care for the universe, including all ideas and interchange,
is found, through spiritual reasoning, to be all good. The human condition under
this spiritual Science becomes more blessed and blessing. A higher tone of trust
and trustworthiness invades and conquers, benevolently, the lives of all
humanity. This 26th idea is universal. It belongs to no sect or class or tribe.
Spirituality is a realized force for good. It makes no mistakes. It does not
take from one and give its largesse to another. It is unlimited and grows
through exercise. It does not turn its back on our best efforts, but reinforces
and empowers them. It brings to the surface surprising new ideas and solutions.
There is no place or form of human endeavor outside the vitalizing or reforming
offices of spirituality. Spirituality is a still, small voice. This is another Biblical reference, to the desolation of the prophet Elijah
when escaping the wrath of Jezebel. In a desert hiding place, a violent vision
of earthquake, wind, and fire assaulted him in a cataclysmic life lesson. In the
calm after the storm, he was given the spiritual promise that the Lord was not
in the chaos, but rather in a "still small voice" (I Kings 19:12). In the
chapter named "The Apocalypse" in her book Science and Health with Key to the
Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy wrote about the power and reach of that small voice:
"The 'still, small voice' of scientific thought reaches over continent and ocean
to the globe's remotest bound" (p. 559). This "scientific thought" is the essence of spirituality that has its source
or cause in God, Spirit. It knows no limits. It is at the heart of this still,
small 26th idea. Thanks, BusinessWeek, for your initiative. At hand are the occasion and the
time for all good ideas to weave their power together into a benevolent force
for progress that touches all our lives and institutions and geographies,
relationships and moments. John Selover is Manager, The Christian Science Publishing Society
http://www.newdimensions.org/article/chopra.html Love
makes the world go around, or so the saying goes. No other living creature's
offspring needs as much love and caring from it's mother as a human infant. None
of us would grow up without love at the beginning. We've all received it, and
we're all looking for it. What is this magic elixir of love all about? And why
is so important to our lives? Dr. Deepak Chopra explores these questions in the
following dialogue. Michael
Toms: This is a departure for you in some sense, your books have
been largely oriented to healing and the body, body-mind connection and so
forth, and here you've gone on to the path of love. What motivated that? Deepak
Chopra: In many ways it is not a departure; it's a continuing
evolution of the same exploration into the realm of consciousness and how it
influences our lives, and particularly how it influences the healing process.
I've become aware of a number of scientific studies that show very clearly the
power of love to heal, to renew, to rejuvenate, and actually change your
biological age. There is no doubt in my mind now that love heals, love renews,
love makes you feel safe, love inspires you, love empowers you, love can bring
you closer to God. I've been looking at some
of the medical evidence, which is absolutely astonishing. If you happen to have
had a heart attack and a nurse or social worker calls you once a week on the
phone for about a minute and says, "Mr. Smith, how are you doing? We care
about you; we love you," your mortality rate post-infarction drops by 60%.
That's with one phone call lasting less than a minute! If a drug did that and
you didn't use it, you would be sued for malpractice. But such is our bias that
this is not considered remarkably effective therapy. There are other studies
that show when nurses bond with cancer patients, particularly women with breast
cancer, if they give loving support to each other, the survival rate of the
patients doubles. It's about time that we
examined the phenomenon of love much more seriously than we've ever done before,
because in a sense we're in a crisis. With racism and ethnocentrism and
prejudice and bigotry and hatred and war and violence and terrorism, we are
certainly suffering from a world deficiency of love. What's
intriguing to me, Deepak, is that in the West, particularly in a highly
materialistic culture like America, our concept of love doesn't really include
the spiritual. Actually, what I'm saying
is that love and spirit are the same force. That at the core of every being
there is only love, because the core of every being is only spirit. The two are
the same force--an abstract, unifying force in nature, not just in the human
experience, but in nature. It's all pervasive. And we experience it in our lives
in the flavors of human relationship--with attraction, infatuation, communion
and courtship, intimacy and sexuality, surrender and non-attachment, and passion
and ecstasy. These are the different flavors of love in human relationships that
I've examined in this book. But my intent was to show that each of these is
actually a window into the experience of the spirit as a real force.
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to the full
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Deepak Chopra, founder
and educational director of the Chopra Center for Well-Being in La Jolla,
California, is a pioneer in helping individuals maximize their abilities to
achieve success and fulfillment through mind-body techniques. A best-selling
author and an internationally recognized motivational speaker, Chopra expands
the concept of good health and self-knowledge through a blending of Western
medicine and ancient Ayurvedic techniques from India. The basic tenet of
Ayurveda is that one's physical health is the balanced integration of body,
mind, and spirit. His many books have
sold nearly three million copies in English alone, and have been published in
twenty-five languages. His books include The Way of the Wizard; The Seven
Spiritual Laws of Success, The New York Times bestseller Ageless Body,
Timeless Mind; and his first novel, The Return of Merlin. He is also
the author of The Path to Love: Renewing the Power of Spirit in Your Life (Harmony
1997). If you'd like to be in
touch with the work and schedule of Dr. Deepak Chopra, you can write to: The
Chopra Center for Well-Being, 7630 Fay Avenue, La Jolla, CA 92037. Phone:
1-888-424-6772 (toll-free).
http://www.newdimensions.org/article/chopra.html by Corinne McLaughlin Our Essence and True Identity Each of us has experienced
moments of heartfelt kindness, of courageous daring, of steady
strength, of deep inner peace. These are fleeting experiences of our
soul—our deepest essence, our highest self—who we truly are. When we
experience an expanded sense of oneness with all life, when we
forgive someone who has harmed us, when we inspire others with clear
insight, when we courageously do what is right The soul is essentially energy,
and to study the soul is to study the science of energy. In the
Ageless Wisdom of East and West—which is often called the “golden
thread” which connects the inner teachings of the world’s religions We are essentially spiritual
beings having a human experience, rather than the other way around.
Although we might initially say that we “have” a soul, it is more
actually more accurate to say that we are a soul who “has” a
personality, and this self-centered personality is our instrument of
expression in the world. Until our personality is more purified and
invokes the soul’s help, it tries to run the show and often creates
a mess. Although some popular modern
writers primarily see the soul as our deep unconscious, or as some
fragile thing that our personalities need to care for or we’ll lose,
the truth is actually quite the opposite: it is our soul which cares
for our personality—if it is invited. The soul is referred to in the
Christian tradition as “the Christ within, the inner divinity” in
each person. The realm of the soul is called “the kingdom of God.”
In the Jewish tradition, the soul is sometimes referred to as “the
vital principle.” In the Hindu tradition, it’s called the “Atma” or
“Self.” In the Buddhist tradition, it is “the Buddha Mind,” “the mind
of enlightenment (bodhichitta).” In ancient Greece, the temple of
the Oracle at Delphi proclaimed, “Man, know thyself, and thou wilt
know the universe and the gods.” As we know our soul, the microcosm,
so we will understand the macrocosm. We know that the human body is the
endpoint of the evolution of physical forms. But evolution doesn’t
end with the perfection of forms. Consciousness continues to evolve.
Soul expression is essentially the next evolutionary step in
consciousness for humanity. Poets and songwriters have eternally
written about the longing for the soul as if it were a distant love.
But the soul is closer than our heartbeat. Today, modern science is
beginning to prove the existence of the soul and its survival after
the death of the body. The Link Between Spirit and Matter According to the Ageless Wisdom,
the soul is essentially the connecting link or relationship between
spirit and matter—between spirit and our human personality. The soul
is the mediating or bridging principle of consciousness. It is the
attractive force that holds all forms together so that the life of
God may express through them. The soul is technically a unit of
light colored by a particular ray vibration. The soul is anchored in
two places in the body: what’s called the “consciousness thread” is
anchored in the top of the head, and the “life thread” is anchored
in the heart. We can sense the presence of the soul most easily in
our hearts or at the top of our heads. In the soul’s experience, all of
life is connected to each other in a seamless web. The soul reveals
that we are not separate from each other or from all life, whether
visible and invisible. To experience the soul is to experience a
deep sense of oneness with all that is—a profound sense of
inspiration and joy. The soul is essentially the
observer or witness, the higher part of us that watches our
personality life with detachment. The soul, working with the Law of
Karma, or cause and effect, draws to us experiences and lessons for
our spiritual growth as we are ready for them. Crisis such as an
illness or accident may be a calling card from our soul, suggesting
we need to do some deep reflection on our life, our purpose and
where we are heading. Qualities of the Soul
The soul expresses “the good, the
beautiful and the true.” The only difference between a saint or
master and the rest of us is that a saint or master expresses
his/her soul all the time, while most of us express our soul only
occasionally.
******************* Corinne McLaughlin is Executive
Director of The Center for Visionary Leadership and co-author of
Spiritual Politics and Builders of the Dawn. She coordinated a
national task force for President Clinton’s Council on Sustainable
Development and taught politics at American University. She has been
teaching meditation and spiritual development for over 25 years
around the U.S. and Europe. For further information, contact: The
Center for Visionary Leadership, 3408 Wisconsin Ave. NW Suite 200,
Washington, DC 20016; (202) 237-2800; email:
cvldc@visionarylead.org.
www.visionarylead.org |
Transpersonal
psychologist and psychiatrist
