ONLY SOMETIMES ARE WE AWARE OF THE GREAT SPIRITUAL PILGRIMAGE THAT OUR LIFE HERE ON EARTH IS JUST A PART OF. WE ARE SACRED BEINGS, CHILDREN OF GOD, AND OUR PURPOSE AND OUR MEANING IS SACRED, SPIRITUAL AND MYSTICAL. IN OUR JOURNEY WE UNFOLD, BECOMING EVER MORE AWARE OF OUR TRUE SPIRITUAL AND DIVINE SELVES. IN OUR JOURNEY, OUR MYSTICAL QUEST TO FIND OUR TRUE SELVES AND OUR TRUE BEING WITHIN THE SACRED ONENESS OF THE ALL, WE AWAKEN. AND WITH THIS AWAKENING, SO SHALL COME OUR SPIRITUAL HEALING OF OURSELVES, OF EACH OTHER, OF OUR COMMUNITIES AND OF OUR MOTHER EARTH, OUR HOLY GAIA.
41.
A key question is this. Why should we give, whether of ourselves or of things we might possess, when it is apparently more to our advantage to take? After all, we would appear to gain so much by taking, and in a real sense actually lose so much by ‘indulging’ in giving. Certainly there can be advantage in giving when we are linked with others in some sort of mutual arrangement. But what of altruistic giving. Must it always be to some extent sacrificial? There is an answer to this, and it is a profound one. Perhaps the words ‘advantage’ and ‘disadvantage’ do not sit easily with the concept of altruistic giving, but rather we should consider the actual effects – the spiritual effects – of either taking or giving. When we take in any sort of selfish or self-serving way, we actually close ourselves down, close ourselves up, cut ourselves off from others, and from our own spiritual and true selves. When we give altruistically, we instead open ourselves up, open up our souls. In fact, when we selfishly take, we darken ourselves and diminish ourselves. When we give in any sort of altruistic way we open ourselves up to spiritual nourishment and growth. Giving is an explosion of energy. Taking is an implosion of energy. There might even be cases when individuals can be so addicted and dedicated to taking that they become spiritual ‘blackholes’. To give, on the other hand, is to be a radiant sun.
There is no obvious answer to this. But in actual fact, there is a profound reason. When we give ourselves, we open out our souls and auras, and by giving we actually grow. When we are selfish, we are actually closing in on ourselves. It is a difference between explosions and implosion. I suppose those people who are powerful in terms of evil are like black holes.
42.
The story of humanity is primarily the story of the evolution of our consciousness, of the evolution of our mind and thereby of our reasoning powers; and also, though we may not always realise it, the evolution of our faculties for empathy and intuition. We have invariably used the development of our powers of reason to further ourselves in terms of our ability to survive and be comfortable. Sadly, we have also employed those reasoning powers to achieve dominance over other reasoning threats to ourselves, as well of course dominance over the Earth and all the creatures of the Earth. Genesis I:26 and beyond is prescient when it says: ‘And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.’ But this was written at a time when the seeds of our reasoning powers had not yet born fruit. However, as the centuries have passed, so have our powers so increased, indeed become so powerful, that we can no longer afford to assume that we have unbridled dominion over the very Earth that nurtures us and harbours us. If we are to fulfil the true destiny of our awakening powers, we must emphasis to a much greater degree our power of empathy and intuition. Our destiny is to cherish, nurture and indeed harbour our planet and all its creatures thereof as once our planet cherished and nurtured and harboured us. Unless we can break through into a new evolutionary level of consciousness, we might have little evolution left for us to enjoy and use.
43.
Between the wars, when hyperinflation wracked Germany, the Berlin government was congratulated on its ability to speedily print higher and higher denominations of banknotes. To some extent they were forced into this. No-one chose for there to be such a catastrophic devaluation of the currency. But there was certainly nothing new in praise being heaped on people or organisations that could fashion such extreme achievements. And there is certainly nothing wrong in having ambitions to achieve new ‘heights’ and in actually achieving those new heights. But that being said, we do need to take stock of some of our ambitions and endeavours. It is laudable to run faster without the aid of performance enhancing drugs; laudable too to create a plane that can fly faster and higher than any other; or for that matter a car or train that can travel faster than any other. But what of our everyday lives? Is it really sensible to create trains that go fast, only to create new trains that go faster and so on? Do we need to motor along a highway at seventy, eighty or a hundred miles an hour, when it is probably safer and more relaxing and more environmentally appropriate to travel at some slower speed? Is an increasingly hectic world a boon for humanity? Is a noisier world to our advantage? Speeds and size and noise seem to dominate our national and world agendas. We have certainly improved when it comes to safety, but there seems to be very little room these days for matters such as beauty or elegance. Where are we in this brave new world we are creating?
44.
A key question is this. Why should we give, whether of ourselves or of things we might possess, when it is apparently more to our advantage to take? After all, we would appear to gain so much by taking, and in a real sense actually lose so much by ‘indulging’ in giving. Certainly there can be advantage in giving when we are linked with others in some sort of mutual arrangement. But what of altruistic giving. Must it always be to some extent sacrificial? There is an answer to this, and it is a profound one. Perhaps the words ‘advantage’ and ‘disadvantage’ do not sit easily with the concept of altruistic giving, but rather we should consider the actual effects – the spiritual effects – of either taking or giving. When we take in any sort of selfish or self-serving way, we actually close ourselves down, close ourselves up, cut ourselves off from others, and from our own spiritual and true selves. When we give altruistically, we instead open ourselves up, open up our souls. In fact, when we selfishly take, we darken ourselves and diminish ourselves. When we give in any sort of altruistic way we open ourselves up to spiritual nourishment and growth. Giving is an explosion of energy. Taking is an implosion of energy. There might even be cases when individuals can be so addicted and dedicated to taking that they become spiritual ‘blackholes’. To give, on the other hand, is to be a radiant sun.
There is no obvious answer to this. But in actual fact, there is a profound reason. When we give ourselves, we open out our souls and auras, and by giving we actually grow. When we are selfish, we are actually closing in on ourselves. It is a difference between explosions and implosion. I suppose those people who are powerful in terms of evil are like black holes.
45.
Schisms are the great crises of the church. Schisms lead to schisms that become the great crises of the churches. In Christianity alone we have seen numerous breakups, as the once all but monolithic Church split between east and west – between Constantinople and Rome – and leaving aside other minor breaks, we eventually saw the split in the west between Rome and Lutheranism, then Luther’s Protestantism splitting into many different factions, and the Roman Church then splitting off the Anglican persuasion. These are the great schisms. There have been many minor ones. Many evangelical churches have broken into house churches, which themselves have invariably broken into ‘rival’ factions or groups. Each split is invariably seen as a crisis for the ‘mother’ group. But as the churches fracture, two possibilities arise. The first is that co-religionists, even though adhering to rival factions, might begin to release that the details of their beliefs are unimportant compared to how they actually live their lives in terms of the spiritual and moral teachings of Jesus the ultimate founder of their religion. Too often it is doctrine – the understanding of what various overly charged terms mean that lead to splits. It is rare for split to occur over issues of morality and ethics and life-styles. The second possibility that might at last arise is that the breaking of the churches, at one level, though not at the most important level of moral and ethical behaviour, diminishes the churches in term of their power. The greatest threat to all religions organisations is not the threat of rival teachings, or rival interpretations of teachings, it is the threat of the what the possession of power can do to the holders of power. Power does invariably corrupt, does invariably lead the adherents of a church away from the true core of Christ’s teach which had absolutely nothing to do with pomp and circumstance and everything to do with humility and love and compassion. Even a church of great pomp and circumstance and wealth can find its true or original hearty when shaken by schisms of its own making.