“When man learns of the existence of his spiritual mind and begins to recognize its promptings and leadings, he strengthens his bond of communication with it, and consequently receives light of a greater brilliance. When we learn to trust the Spirit, it responds by sending us more frequent flashes of illumination and enlightenment. As one unfolds in Spiritual Consciousness he relies more upon this inner voice, and is able more readily to distinguish it from impulses from the lower planes of the mind. He learns to follow Spirit’s leadings and to allow it to lent him a guiding hand. Many of us have learned to know the reality of being ‘led by the spirit.’ To those who have experienced this leading we need not say more, for they will recognize just what we mean. Those who have not yet experienced it must wait until the time comes for them, for we cannot describe it, as there are no words to speak of these things which are beyond words. … Spirit, Man’s seventh principle, is the Divine Spark – our most precious inheritance from the Divine Power – a ray from the Central Sun.” ~William Walker Atkinson

Trusting the Spirit Isn’t Simple

We must trust the spirit, but doing so isn’t simple. Every flash of inspiration that comes to us may seem to be coming from the Spiritual Mind (also known as the Soul), but many are actually coming from the lower mind, or worse yet, from outside influences that are often less than benevolent. Knowing which of these inner voices or gut feelings are coming from the spirit takes practice, but it is worth the effort.

I know from personal experience that several important decisions in my life came from intuition, so I  know that trusting the spirit works.

Read the entire article online at spiritsun.net.

Original article posted by HAROLD BOULETTE on February 5, 2021

So this is who I am
And this is all I know
And I must choose to live
For all that I can give
The spark that makes the power grow

Immortality by Celine Dion (1998)

The ancient Greeks often quoted the maxim, “Know Thyself,” which I have adopted as my own life motto. When I first learnt of it many years ago, I heard it as “Man, know thyself,” attributed to Thales of Miletus in the 7^th century BC. I now know that it was inscribed in the forecourt of Apollo’s Temple at Delphi – in Greek (naturally): γνῶθι σεαυτόν, transliterated as gnōthi seauton and meaning “Know Thyself.” So, the word “Man” is probably superfluous.

The quest to know oneself gives rise to the question: “Who Am I?” If you make the statement, I want to know myself, it implies that there are two parties involved: I and Myself. It is important, I believe, to love yourself – not in a narcissistic way, but with true, spiritual, unconditional love. Once again, the inference is that there are two selves.

To clarify this, I will draw on the explanation used by one of my favourite teachers, Dr Sue Morter. According to Dr Sue, it is limiting to ask whether you are the “I “or the “Myself.” It means you are identifying with the mind. Our identity becomes attached to the mind and we think that is who we are. We are compromised in this situation – it means we haven’t yet anchored to our real self and we need to build presence in our central being. She says that we are talking from the mind, and we want to know our soul.

Read the full article on Paul’s blog at his web site southernsunlightcom.wordpress.com.

“The Working of Blessed Love. It were bitterer than death to me if ever I did that which is good, without God.”
~by Mechthild of Magdeburg

Good Without God

Why would Mechthild say that it would be worse than death to her if she ever did good without God? Because when humans try to do good without God they do what they think is good, but often isn’t. It may be good for them as individuals but is bad for others. Or it may be good for people, but is harmful to the environment. Of course, atheists would argue otherwise, but studies show they are wrong. While they may claim you don’t need to believe in God to be a good and moral person, studies show that while first generation atheists maintain much of the morality of their religious parents, by the third generation much of the morality is either completely lost, or followed only when convenient.

When I took a class in Systems Analysis (what they called Efficiency Expert in the 1950s and 1960s) one of the things the teacher taught us about solving a problem for a person or a business is to make sure the solution does not create problems that are worse than the problems you are trying to fix. The environmentalists back then clearly were not Systems Analysts and did not follow that concept when they advised us to stop using paper bags and switch to plastic. We know now in hindsight that plastic bags are far more environmentally destructive than the paper ones were.

But even a trained systems analyst using pure science can make mistakes. But a mystic like Mechthild with a direct connection to God will not because God always knows the answer, so we should never try to do good without God.

Read the entire article online at spiritsun.net.

Original article posted by HAROLD BOULETTE on February 22, 2021

“Use only one vessel, one fire, one instrument.

“The door to success lies in the unity of will and purpose and the proper adaptation of the means to the end. There are many roads leading to the celestial center. He who follows the chosen path may succeed, while he who attempts to walk on many paths will be delayed.

“If the molten metals are allowed to cool off before they are transformed into higher ones, they will become hard again, and the whole process will have to be recommenced from the beginning. Use the inextinguishable lamp. Its light will not go out unless it is driven away by force.

“Recognize the true Prima Materia. It is to be found everywhere, but if you do not find it in your own house, you will find it nowhere. It is a living substance that can be discovered only in places inhabited by man. It is the only substance from which the Philosopher’s Stone can be prepared, and without that substance no genuine silver or gold can be made. In thirty pounds of ordinary mercury, there is usually not more than one pound of the true substance, and a hundred pounds of ordinary sulfur usually contains not more than one pound of that which is useful. It can only be found above he earth, not below it. It is before everybody’s eyes; no one can live without it; everybody uses it; the poor usually possess more of it than the rich; … it can be perceived by the sense of feeling, but it cannot be seen with the material eye.” ~Franz Hartmann

One Vessel, One Fire

Hartmann is saying that if you are seeking true spiritual growth rather than just studying the teachings out of curiosity, you must choose a particular school or discipline and follow it completely and regularly. If you find at some point that you made a bad choice, move on to a different school, but don’t just jump willy-nilly from one school to another, one method to another. Let’s consider the issue with an analogy.

A man who is by profession a home construction engineer wants to build himself a house. He starts by laying out a few boards and making a partial frame. But then decides a brick house would be better. So he starts laying bricks but does only a few dozen before he decides stone would be better than brick, so he tears down the brick and starts again with stone. If he continues on like this, not only will he not get the best home possible, he won’t get one at all! He has to make a firm decision and stick with it. The same for choosing a spiritual school or spiritual discipline to follow.

Read the entire article online at spiritsun.net.

Original article posted by HAROLD BOULETTE on December 21, 2020

Irving Finkel is a renowned expert and literate in the ancient written language of cuneiform.

He teaches classes on how to write cuneiform and is the leading authority on the history of board games.

He is an Assistant Keeper at the British Museum.

Here are a few comments regarding Finkel’s lecturing skills:

“This guy could talk about paint drying and I’d listen.”

“I loved listening to him, it’s like Monty Python + archeology.”

“Someone get this man a TED talk, a TV Series and a Movie deal”

Below is a summary and link to his 2016 talk “The Ark before Noah: A Great Adventure”:

The recent translation of a Babylonian tablet launches a groundbreaking investigation into one of the most famous stories in the world, challenging the way we look at ancient history. A world authority on ancient Mesopotamia, Irving Kinkel found himself playing detective when a member of the public arrived at the museum with an intriguing cuneiform tablet from a family collection. Not only did the tablet reveal a new version of the Babylonian Flood Story; the ancient poet described the size and completely unexpected shape of the ark, and gave detailed boat building specifications. Decoding this ancient message wedge by cuneiform wedge, Dr. Finkel discovered where the Babylonians believed the ark came to rest and developed a new explanation of how the old story ultimately found its way into the Bible. In The Ark Before Noah, Dr. Finkel takes us on an adventurous voyage of discovery, opening the door to an enthralling world of ancient voices and new meanings.

Watch the video on YouTube (58:18).

Article and link submitted by Michael McIntyre

THE SHIP OF GOD

“Deep companion of the beings of light! In your mercy, give me your strength and help me with your own hand. Dress my soul, O Lord, and speak to me. Help me when enemies close in. … Beneficent friend, free me. My soul is crying in my body at every blow and dagger stab. My hour of life and this form in flesh is over, and all its days of turbulence. … Springs of darkness opened, and the giant fishes transfixed me with fear. My soul fainted before those dreadful forms, hideous to look at. Their bodies lack a human shape. These are the demons, the banished princes, transfixing me with terror. … They rose to drown me. In every neighborhood there were storm winds. Rain, the mist of all fogs, lightning and drums of thunder, shores of clouds, hail, crashing sea. The skiff rose over the crest of a wave and glided into a hidden trough. … With the drownings the sails swallowed water, and the masts shook together in the turmoil. The rudders dropped into the sea. Those left on board turned to stone. Redemption became a habit. From every source the wind blew the prison locks loose. Stars whirled wildly about, planets fell out of orbit. The earth shuddered, as did my foundation. Lofty heavens sank. … The wheel of the zodiac lost its course. The seal of my feet and joints of my toes, every link of my soul’s life was loosened. Each joint of my hands and fingers was loosened and its seal taken off. Their meaty life grew feeble. My limbs fell cold. My knees froze together in fear. In my legs the strength was struck and drained away. When I saw the dark, the strength in my limbs collapsed, and my soul moaned at all its opposing forms. Who will save me? Who will save me; make a new way? … Who will rip off this body and dress me in a new one? After I spoke with trembling soul I saw the savior.
“After I spoke with trembling soul I saw the savior and saw his helmsmen, who came down to dress my soul. I raised my eyes that way and saw deaths hidden by the envoy. Hurt was remote. So too sickness and distress. Their vision left, their darkness fled. Everything was holy and unsurpassed. Light shone elating and lovely, swelling my mind with gladness.” ~Parthian Songs

Ship of God?

This Parthian Manichean song is titled The Ship of God, yet when you read the first part of it, you would think it is more like the ship of Satan. In fact, it almost seems that the first part of the song is talking about a completely different ship than the final section. In truth, there is no ship at all, it is pure allegory. The allegory could represent the material world or the human soul. Both interpretations seem to work. This might be better titled Ship of God on the Sea of Satan.

Read the entire article online at spiritsun.net.

Original article posted by HAROLD BOULETTE on December 28, 2020

Outer and Inner Suns

“The reason why men can have no [spiritual] achievement is due to the fact that they look toward the west. They admire the sunset and sleep when the Sun rises. The west represents the material life, for which all people are awakened. It is good for a person to admire the sunset, but they must also look at the sunrise. God expects all people to be just, truthful, good and loving.

“Everything which surrounds Man must be a stimulus in his life. If you meet a person, a tree, a stone, a lake, a star,the Sun – everything must stimulate your life.The Divine Spirit Who works and awakens the consciousness of all living beings is hidden in all things. …

“In order to understand the life on the Sun, people should first find their own sun in themselves. All have small suns within within, situated in the center of their brains. He size of these inner suns is different for each person, depending on the size of the other planets in the person. Through the inner sun, the Soul attains knowledge. There is something in common between the astronomic Sun and the planets in the sky and the inner sun and planets in humans: in their rising, setting, and so on. … It means that there is a dependence between one’s outer and inner sun.” ~Biensa Douno

Look East Young Man

In the 1860s, Americans were being advised, “Go west, young man!” This was based on the idea that the east already had all the people and skills it needed so heading to the wild west was the best way to grow. But this kind of growth is purely material, and Douno is telling us that such growth, while useful, is not that important. What is important is spiritual growth, and for that, we need to turn to the east. That doesn’t mean to turn to countries in the East for spiritual advice. It means look to the sunrise which happens in the east.

Read the entire article online at spiritsun.net.

Original article posted by HAROLD BOULETTE on January 1, 2021

Crossing the Threshold

Have we now progressed sufficiently to cross the threshold from lower to higher consciousness and redeem our right to mingle once again with those demi-gods or alien entities? We may be straddling that hazy borderland of liminality right now. As the ancient Egyptians would have put it, we may be in a “state of becoming.”

It is odd, when you think about it, that we are all very familiar with the word subliminal but not with its parent word, liminal. When I check the Oxford Dictionary, Funk & Wagnalls and Roget’s Thesaurus on my bookshelf, the word Subliminal appears – defined as “adj, Psychol: perceived below the threshold of consciousness.” Liminal, on the other hand, has no entry in any of these.

Subliminal, then, means below that threshold of consciousness which we know (thanks to Freud and Jung) as the subconscious or unconscious. We hear the term sometimes used in relation to a sneaky kind of marketing known as subliminal advertising.

For those unfamiliar with the word liminality, it is used these days mostly in an anthropological sense, and stems from the Latin word līmen. My Wheelock’s Latin text book has this entry: līmen, līminis, n., threshold (liminality, subliminal, eliminate, preliminary).

The concept of Liminality is not difficult to grasp: it’s that moment in between two boundaries, the transition between one stage and another. It can be an event such as dusk or dawn, or a place like an entranceway. In human terms, it could be a point of ritual, a rite of passage, an initiation into a group or a transition in life. For our conscious awareness, it lies in that twilight zone between sleep and wakefulness.

For centuries, mystics have thought of themselves as being “dwellers on the threshold,” working towards a breakthrough to the other side in a process that is sometimes described as “death before dying.” There are some naturally gifted psychics who can communicate with otherworldly beings, but most of us have lost the ability to perceive other realms. There are several possible reasons for this loss – one of which is often cited as being the calcification of our pineal glands, resulting in the atrophy of our sixth and seventh senses.

Read the full article on Paul’s blog at his web site southernsunlightcom.wordpress.com.

The One Reality

“Of all those forms of life and thought with which humanity has feed its cravings for truth, mysticism alone postulates, and in the persons of the great initiates proves, not only the existence of the Absolute, but also this link: this possibility first of knowing, finally of attaining it. It denies that possible knowledge is to be limited (a) to the sense impressions, (b) to any process of intellection, (c) to the unfolding of the content of normal consciousness. Such diagrams of experience, it says, are helplessly incomplete. The mystics find the basis of their method not in logic but in life: in the existence of a discoverable ‘real,’ a spark of true being, within the seeking subject, which can, in that ineffable experience which they call the ‘act of union,’ fuse itself with and thus apprehend the reality of the sought Object. In theological language, their theory of knowledge is that the spirit of man, itself essentially divine, is capable of immediate communion with God, the One Reality.” ~Evelyn Underhill

Mysticism Postulates

Mysticism isn’t about speculation, of listening to the idea of others, even those giving themselves the title “guru,” but about discovering truth for ourselves. If you pay attention to spiritual groups on social media, you know they are always putting down religion because. According to them, religion is about believing in someone else’s experiences, while spirituality is about having your own. They then go on to prove with that very statement, as well as almost everything else they post, that what they believe and practice is what they have gotten from others, not their own knowledge! Real mystics don’t do that, nor do real spiritual students. And while we are at it, putting down the beliefs of others is also not the behavior of real mystics or spiritual adepts. The fact that we have leaner some things others haven’t learned yet does not make us superior beings, and those who think it does are feeding overblown egos.

Senses and Intellect

Mysticism does deny that knowledge is limited to the physical senses and the intellect. Higher levels of knowledge are found in higher levels of consciousness that are beyond the limits of intellect. The highest levels are spiritual in nature and only accessible to the spiritual faculties. Real spiritual schools teach this as well. True knowledge, or Gnosis, comes from the awakened spiritual faculties, not from the intellect, and certainly not from reading books. Books can point you in the right direction, but the truth must be experienced by each individual. The one reality is not looked up in any book.

Read the entire article online at spiritsun.net.

Original article posted by HAROLD BOULETTE on January 6, 2021

“Even though life is hard, even though it is sometimes difficult to smile, we have to try. Just as when we wish each other, ‘Good morning,’ it must be a real ‘Good morning.’ Recently, one friend asked me, ‘How can I force myself to smile when I am filled with sorrow? It isn’t natural.’ I told her she must be able to smile to her sorrow, because we are more than our sorrow. A human being is like a television set with millions of channels. If we turn the Buddha on, we are the Buddha. If we turn sorrow on, we are sprrow. If we turn a smile on, we really are the smile. We cannot let just one channel dominate us. We have the seed of everything in us, and we have to seize the situation in our hand, to recover our own sovereignty.

“When we sit down peacefully, breathing and smiling, with awareness, we are our true selves, we have sovereignty over ourselves. When we open ourselves up to a TV program, we let ourselves be invaded by the program. Sometimes it is a good program, but often it is just noisy. … Even if our nervous system suffers, we don’t have the courage to stand up and turn it off,because if we do that, we will have to return to ourselves.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Life is Hard

Yes, life is hard. But as the song says, “I never promised you a rose garden”. Life on Earth, life in the material world is rarely, if ever, always pleasant. That is actually a good thing. If life here was always great, we would have no desire, no incentive, to seek a better life, a life of spirit. But even though life is hard, we can’t let it get us down and keep us gloomy all the time. We have to seek reasons to smile, reasons to have joy. So yes, life is hard, but you don’t have to be hard. Life is full of sorrows, but you don’t have to be trapped in sorrow.

Read the entire article online at spiritsun.net.

Original article posted by HAROLD BOULETTE on December 23, 2020