Monday, September 30, 2019

"Ye shall die in your sins"




John 8:21-24

Then said Jesus again unto them, I go my way, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sins: whither I go, ye cannot come.
Then said the Jews, Will he kill himself? because he saith, Whither I go, ye cannot come.
And he said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world.
I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.




Sunday, September 29, 2019

Three Michaelic Ideals






What was previously called godliness
now means unconditional truthfulness.

What was previously called love
now means responsibility for others.

What was previously called humility
now means courage in the face of fate.









Source: Sue Barker's newsfeed
"Michael and the Serpent" by Arild Rosenkrantz (1952)

Spiritual Invincibility: What the archangel Michael expects of us








Matthew 16:17-19

And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.
And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.









The Altar of Humanity
 The Solar Plexus
The Manipura Chakra
The Stronghold of Manu

Rudolf Steiner:


"This ability to rise to the point at which thoughts about spirit can grip us as powerfully as can anything in the physical world, this is Michael power. It is confidence in the ideas of spirit — given the capacity for receiving them at all — leading to the conviction: I have received a spiritual impulse, I give myself up to it, I become the instrument for its execution. First failure — never mind! Second failure — never mind! A hundred failures are of no consequence, for no failure is ever a decisive factor in judging the truth of a spiritual impulse whose effect has been inwardly understood and grasped. We have full confidence in a spiritual impulse, grasped at a certain point of time, only when we can say to ourself: My hundred failures can at most prove that the conditions for realizing the impulse are not given me in this incarnation; but that this impulse is right I can know from its own nature. And if I must wait a hundred incarnations for the power to realize this impulse, nothing but its own nature can convince me of the efficacy or impotence of any spiritual impulse. 


If you will imagine this thought developed in the human heart and soul as great confidence in spirit, if you will consider that man can cling firm as a rock to something he has seen to be spiritually victorious, something he refuses to relinquish in spite of all outer opposition, then you will have a conception of what the Michael power, the Michael being, really demands of us; for only then will you comprehend the nature of the great confidence in spirit. We may leave in abeyance some spiritual impulse or other, even for a whole incarnation; but once we have grasped it we must never waver in cherishing it within us, for only thus can we save it up for subsequent incarnations. And when confidence in spirit will in this way have established a frame of mind to which this spiritual substance appears as real as the ground under our feet — the ground without which we could not stand — then we shall have in our heart and soul a feeling of what Michael really expects of us."




Rudolf Steiner:  "Michael will point out the right road with respect to the world which lies about man, for him to know and be active in it."



"The Christian Knight" by Albrecht Dürer

Rudolf Steiner:  "The famous image of The Christian Knight, or as it is often called, Knight, Death, and the Devil. Please note how this copperplate engraving grew entirely out of its era. Because if you put this image up next to the lines that I cited earlier from Goethe's Faust:


    I've more sense, to be sure, than the learned fools,
    The masters and pastors, the scribes from the schools;
    No scruples to plague me, no irksome doubt,
    No hell-fire or devil to worry about...


then you find yourself with this whole character who need fear neither death nor the devil, but instead strikes out into the world. And this is how he is to be depicted, the Christian knight who rebels utterly against the doctors, masters, scribes, and clerics brought into his sphere, that knight who must make his way in the world fearing neither death nor the devil that stand in his way and that he must simply push aside in order to continue his journey. The title of the engraving really should be The Christian Knight because death and the devil are simply standing on the path; but he steps over them, passing them by without paying them any mind."



 "Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."  — Thoreau 

"In the karma of every single Anthroposophist is written: Become a person of initiative; observe whether out of the hindrances of your body or any other hindrances that thwart you, you do not discover initiative to be the center of your being. Suffering and joy for you will actually depend on whether or not you can discover personal initiative. As if in letters of gold, there should always stand before the soul of the Anthroposophist: 'Initiative is part of your karma; much of what meets you in life will depend on whether you can bring this initiative to consciousness.'"  —Rudolf Steiner



Rhinoceros, woodcut by Albrecht Dürer

From the Sutta-Nipata:



Go forward without a path,
Fearing nothing, caring for nothing,
Wandering alone, like the rhinoceros!
Even as a lion, not trembling at noises,
Even as the wind, not caught in a net,
Even as the lotus leaf, untainted by water,
Do thou wander alone, like the rhinoceros!







Rudolf Steiner:  "Spirit Triumphant! Flame through the impotence of faltering, fainthearted souls! Burn up egoism, kindle compassion, so that selflessness, the lifestream of humanity, may flow as the wellspring of spiritual rebirth!"



Related posts: 

https://martyrion.blogspot.com/2019/10/keep-calm-and-become-worthy.html
http://martyrion.blogspot.com/2018/08/peace-as-strength.html
http://martyrion.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-cry-of-human-heart-is-how-can-i-help.html

Saturday, September 28, 2019

LoveLight



Rudolf Steiner:  "As the beings of love which we are in the supersensible world, we experience ourselves among beings who can do no other than draw their own essence out of love, and live their existence of love in a shared cosmic existence of love."





At-one-ment 


Washed in the Blood of the Lamb are We
Awash in a Sonburst Sea
You—Love—and I—Love—and Love Divine:
We are the Trinity

You—Love—and I—We are One-Two-Three
Twining Eternally
Two—Yes—and One—Yes—and also Three:
One Dual Trinity
Radiant Calvary
Ultimate Mystery









Rudolf Steiner:

In the Initiation-science of today, the real facts that distinguish sleep from waking come to be known when we advance from Imagination to Inspiration. What a man himself is as soul, as spirit, from falling asleep until he wakes, becomes clear only to Inspired knowledge, whereas the advance to Imaginative knowledge gives a man the tableau of his life. When this life-tableau unfolds for him in his waking state and with empty consciousness he is wrapped in cosmic stillness — as I have described — there enters his soul from the Cosmos, as Inspiration, the life before birth. And then his own true being appears to him in the form he lives in as a being of soul and spirit between going to sleep and waking.
Through Inspiration we become conscious of that which remains unconscious during sleep. We learn to perceive what we do as soul and spirit while asleep, and we become aware that on falling asleep the soul and spirit leave the physical body and the etheric body. The physical body is left in bed and also the etheric body — or body of formative forces, as it is seen to be in Imagination, and as I have described it. The higher members of man's nature, the astral body and the ego-organization, leave the physical and etheric bodies, returning to them when the time of waking comes. This cleavage of our being, which comes about in the rhythmical alternation of sleeping and waking, can be seen in its real nature only through Inspiration. We then perceive that everything absorbed in ordinary waking life through our thinking, through our world of thought, is left behind. The thoughts we work upon, the thoughts we struggle with at school, whatever we have done to sharpen our earthly intelligence — all this has to be left behind with our physical body and etheric body every time we sleep. Out of these two bodies we take into the spiritual world, where as ego and astral body we pass the time of sleeping, something quite different from anything we experience in our waking state. When we pass from waking to sleeping we experience what is not normally brought into consciousness. Hence, in speaking to you of these experiences, I have to clothe them in pictorial concepts, so that they can be reflected on with healthy human understanding. These pictorial concepts, which are mere shadows of really living thoughts, we leave behind when we fall asleep; and we then come to live in a world where thinking is not as it is here on Earth, but where everything is inwardly experienced. During sleep, in fact, we experience light unconsciously. In waking life we think about the effects of light — how it makes shadows and colors appear in relation to objects. All these thoughts, as I have said, we leave behind. In sleep we enter into the weaving, living light; we pour ourselves out into the light. And as in daytime here on Earth we carry our body with us, and also our soul and spirit, and go about on the surface of the Earth through the air, so there, as sleeping man, we enter the weaving, waving light, becoming ourself a being, a substance, of the living light. We become light within the light.
When a man comes to Inspired knowledge of what he actually is each night, when this rises up into his waking consciousness, he at once realizes that during sleep he lives like a cloud of light in cosmic light. This does not mean, however, living simply as the substance of light, but living in the forces which in waking life become thoughts, are grasped as thoughts. The light then experienced is everywhere permeated by creative forces, the forces which work inwardly in the plants, in the animals, besides existing independently as spiritual worlds. Light is not experienced in the same way as in the physical world but — if we may express it figuratively — the weaving, living light is the body of spiritual weaving, as it is also the body of each spiritual being.
Here, as men of the physical world, we are enclosed in our skins, and we see our fellow-men so enclosed. But in our sleeping state we are light within the light, and other beings are also light within the light. We do not, however, perceive it as light in the way it is perceived in the physical world, but — again figuratively — the clouds of light that we ourselves are, perceive other clouds of light. These clouds of light are either another man, or some kind of being giving new life to the plant world, or a being who, never incarnating in a physical body, dwells always in the spiritual world. Light, accordingly, is not experienced there as it is in earthly life, but as living, creative spirituality.

Now, you know how, as physical men here on Earth, we live in something besides light — in the warmth our senses perceive. We feel and experience heat and cold. If, now, on going to sleep, we pass out of our physical body and etheric body, we live as substance of the warmth in the cosmic substance of warmth, just as we live as light in the light. Thus we are not only what I have called a cloud of light, but a cloud of light permeated by weaving waves of warmth; and what we perceive also bears warmth within it. Just as when we are asleep and as beings of soul and spirit we experience light not as light but as living spirit, and when through Inspiration we realize ourselves and other beings also to be living spirit — so it is in the case of warmth. It is impossible to make any headway in the spiritual world, even with Inspiration, if we cling to ideas acquired here on Earth. We have already found it necessary to get used to a different conception concerning the distance between two points, and we must do likewise for everything else. And just as when experiencing ourselves as light within light we actually experience ourselves as spirit in the spiritual world, so when experiencing ourselves as warmth within the cosmic warmth, we do not experience this as warmth in the usual way of the sense-world, but as weaving, strength-giving love. As the beings of love which we are in the supersensible world, we experience ourselves among beings who can do no other than draw their own essence out of love, and live their existence of love in a shared cosmic existence of love. Thus do we experience ourselves, to begin with, between going to sleep and waking, in a spiritual existence imbued through and through with love.
Therefore, if we wish really to enter the world in which we are every time we go to sleep until we wake, we must enhance our capacity for loving; otherwise this world is bound to remain an unknown world. Here in our earthly world it is not spiritualized love that holds sway, but a love in which the impulse of the senses prevails. In the spiritual world, however, it is spiritualized love — as I have been picturing it. Hence, whoever aspires to enter consciously the world he experiences every night has to develop his capacity for loving in the way described yesterday.
A man cannot find his true self without this capacity for love; for all that he really is during sleep — during a third part of his life on Earth — remains a closed book for him unless he can find his way into it through the training and enhancement of love. All that is experienced during sleep would have to remain an unsolved riddle for earthly beings if they had no wish to enhance their capacity for love, so as to be able to gain some degree of knowledge about their own existence, their own being, in the changed condition between going to sleep and waking.






Yes! Yes! A thousand times Yes!





At-one-ment 


Washed in the Blood of the Lamb are We
Awash in a Sonburst Sea
You—Love—and I—Love—and Love Divine:
We are the Trinity

You—Love—and I—We are One-Two-Three
Twining Eternally
Two—Yes—and One—Yes—and also Three:
One Dual Trinity
Radiant Calvary
Ultimate Mystery


You must be the change you wish to see in the world







The Prayer of Saint Francis


Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.








Rudolf Steiner, "Verse for America"

May we be centered in the feeling
of compassionate love in our hearts
as we seek to unite with human beings who share our goals
and with spirit beings who, full of grace,
look downward on our earnest, heartfelt striving,
strengthening us from realms of light
and illuminating our love.







At-one-ment 


Washed in the Blood of the Lamb are We
Awash in a Sonburst Sea
You—Love—and I—Love—and Love Divine:
We are the Trinity

You—Love—and I—We are One-Two-Three
Twining Eternally
Two—Yes—and One—Yes—and also Three:
One Dual Trinity
Radiant Calvary
Ultimate Mystery


Friday, September 27, 2019

"To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." — George Orwell
























Related post: https://martyrion.blogspot.com/2019/09/you-must-be-change-you-wish-to-see-in.html

The 24th Mary Magdalene


Rudolf Steiner


Rudolf Steiner:  "In speaking of previous lives there is a deplorable and only too widespread tendency to refer back to important historical personages. I have come across all kinds of people who believe that they were incarnated as some historical personage or figure in the Gospels. Quite recently a lady informed me that she had been Mary Magdalene, and I could only reply that she was the twenty-fourth Mary Magdalene I had met in my life. In these matters the greatest care must be taken to prevent fantastic notions arising." 










Source: https://rudolfsteinerquotes.wordpress.com/2016/12/30/the-24th-mary-magdalene-2/

13 ways of looking at my guru. #13: Father, forgive me


Johnny Cash's father
Rudolf Steiner



Teenage Stepdad
Swamiji

"The Return of the Prodigal Son" by Rembrandt



Thursday, September 26, 2019

"The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower" by Dylan Thomas




The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

















Brave and true will I be


‘The moment a dragon is slain’ Puppet Show (Paris 1963)


Brave and true will I be.

Each good deed sets me free.

Each kind word makes me strong.

I will fight for the right.

I will conquer the wrong.






"To have courage for whatever comes in life — everything lies in that."
—Saint Teresa of Avila


"Reminding myself that in this life it is not aunts that matter, but the courage that one brings to them, I pulled myself together.”  ― P. G. Wodehouse





Rudolf Steiner:  "Air is an illusion; it is courage that is everywhere around us. If we are really to live in the world in which we breathe, we need courage."



Rudolf Steiner:  "The spirit needs to become strong enough in our sensibilities for spirit to be more than a sense of personal grace and redemption, and to actually intervene in what we seek to do in outer material reality. We have to introduce the spirit, allow it to flow into this outer material reality."



"What matters most is how you walk through the fire."
— Charles Bukowski




  "Yogaḥ Karmasu Kauśalam" ["Yoga is skill in action"]
— Bhagavad Gita 2:50
The motto of the Himalayan Institute



August 15, 1987
Swamiji giving a kung fu lesson to seven 'Tuter Tots.
I'm the 40-year-old P.E. teacher on the left in two-tone blue.

"Let each one of us see in one another what is just and imbued with strength. Let strength generate and empower strength. Only then shall we move forward together." — Rudolf Steiner




Rudolf Steiner:  "...for people to look back upon their childhood with joy. That is, however, precisely what human beings need. Throughout life, we need to be able to look back upon our childhood as something like a paradise."

'Tuter Tots, 1985










cw 331, pp. 140-141, May 3, 1920
Related post: https://martyrion.blogspot.com/2019/06/courage-dear-heart_17.html