Lancaster kids with Paul Schmitendorf (center right) harvesting seeds PHOTO: Paul Schmitendorf

Here are a couple of photos from Sunflower Seed Harvest Day at the Boys & Girls Club in Lancaster, PA. The kids enthusiastically harvested seeds, and then we roasted them for a delicious treat.

We have well over 1,000 seeds remaining, which we will plant and distribute next spring. It’s amazing how one small seed can become a fourteen-foot sunflower plant and then produce a couple hundred seeds at the end of the summer!

Contributed by Paul Schmitendorf

Sunflower heads being harvesting by Lancaster kids PHOTO: Paul Schmitendorf

Editor’s Note: Paul has sent our office a bag of seeds from the project: both the large white seeds that grow into the mammoth 12-14-foot plants and the smaller dark seeds that grow into a multi-flowered 10-foot plant. Seeds are available to anyone in the Community who wishes to plant them.

 In Idealism we have perhaps the most sublime theory of Being which has ever been constructed by the human intellect: a theory so sublime, in fact, that it can hardly have been produced by the exercise of “pure reason” alone, but must be looked upon as a manifestation of that natural mysticism, that instinct for the Absolute, which is latent in man. But, when we ask the idealist how we are to attain communion with the reality which he describes to us as “certainly there,” his system suddenly breaks down; and discloses itself as a diagram of the heavens, not a ladder to the stars. ~Evelyn Underhill

“In several previous articles, I have discussed the idea that the physical world that many of us consider “reality” is largely an illusion. A large part of the reason it is an illusion is because our beliefs, our prejudices, our education, etc. have a much greater effect on what we see around us than we think. We tend to believe that we all see it the same, but that has been proven false many times. You can say words like, “beauty,” or “sexy,” or “cute” and the image formed in the persons mind will vary considerably. The gay guys answer to “who is the sexiest movie star?” will almost certainly be different than the straight guys answer. And one person will visualize a small child in response to “cute” while another will see a puppy.”

< Read the entire article online on Harold’s blog at spiritsun.net. >

contributed by Harold Boulette

“The words of man are inadequate to express just what man really is, the knowledge of his true nature is beyond the understanding of the unawakened spirit. The inheritance within the grasp of man is without limitation, for it is the totality of all things. Man has not been misled in the hope and belief that the seemingly mortal is in fact immortal. The spirit does not mislead men. They are deceived by their own eyes; they are misled, so they are unable to see things as they are in reality. All that men see and experience throughout earthly existence is veiled in illusion. Man may think his eyes reveal things as they are, but no mortal eye has ever beheld a thing as it actually is. It appears to man through the colored distorting glass of his own mortality.” ~The Kolbrin Bible GLN:15:52

“The materialistic type of person will immediately question this. “I know what I am,” he will say, “I know my nature.” He will they proceed to tell you about his profession, his family, or his body, which of course is NOT what he, or any person, truly is. Our true self is spiritual and the material self can be though of as a mask or a costume we are wearing that is covering the true self. But the brain/mind, which developed to deal with the physical world, cannot understand this accept in a very abstract way. Its purpose is to understand and deal with the physical world, not the spiritual. Only the spirit and soul understand the spiritual and the true self, but first they must be awakened.”

< Read the complete blog post at Solar Wind. >

Visit and bookmark Harold Boulette’s blog Solar Wind at:  http://spiritsun.net/

contributed by Harold Boulette

“When the soul is disturbed by anger, confused by drunkenness, or sunk in deep depression, the intellect cannot hold fast to the remembrance of God no matter how hard we try to force it. Completely darkened by the violence of the passions, it loses totally the form of perception which is proper to it. Thus our desire that our intellect should keep the remembrance of God cannot make any impression, because the recollective faculty of our mind has been hardened by the rawness of the passions. But, on the other hand, when the soul has obtained freedom from there passions, then, even though the intellect is momentarily deprived by forgetfulness of the object of its longing, it at once resumes its proper activity.” ~The Philokalia

“While I agree with what this quote says, I would change a few things. First, the soul does not get angry, depressed, or drunk. Those are all attributes of the mind. On the other hand, it is the soul that remembers God and communicates with God, not the mind or intellect. It seems that the writer of this section of the Philokalia gets the two confused, or perhaps worse, thinks they are one and the same thing. In a sense, this might be true is we are talking about the mundane soul, the animal soul, but I can’t see why a book of religious instruction would be talking about that soul.

“The spiritual soul, the divine soul, does not suffer from any of the weaknesses mentioned. What can happen is that the spiritual soul is not awakened, but remains in a coma-like condition when the material mind, specifically the ego, dominates and controls what we do. So in a sense, the soul can be a captive of passions and material desires because it it not allowed to awaken and grow when we spend all our time and all our thoughts on material matters. Also, even after the soul has been awakened, the ego, often with some help from dark or demonic beings, can push it away and force it back into that comatose condition.”

< Read the complete blog post at Solar Wind. >

Visit and bookmark Harold Boulette’s blog Solar Wind at:  http://spiritsun.net/

contributed by Harold Boulette

PHOTO: Galawebdesign

It has been noted by climate scientists and others that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil could give rise to a hurricane somewhere else on earth. This is due to the fact that small, almost imperceptible differences in initial conditions are amplified over time without bound.

It must also be true that an atomic scale event inside a neuron of the nervous system of a butterfly could also result in it flapping its wings or not. Since events on the atomic scale are subject to randomness as described by quantum theory, one must conclude that a large degree of randomness is “baked into” the nature of the material world. It would seem to be a fools errand to expect that everything can ever be perfectly in order here.

The above raises an interesting question however. What would the world look like if there were no randomness in atomic scale events? Would it even remotely resemble the world we live in now? This question runs too deep for me to even know how to approach it. Food for thought.

—Ron Theriault
December 2014

“Our aim should be to induce, in a wholesome way, that sense of the spiritual in daily experience which the old writers called the consciousness of God. The monastic training in spirituality, slowly evolved under pressure of experience, nearly always did this. It has bequeathed to us a funded wisdom of which we make little use; and this, reinterpreted in the light of psychological knowledge, might I believe cast a great deal of light on the fundamental problems of spiritual education. …
“Further, in all this teaching, those inward activities and responses to which we can give generally the name of prayer, and those outward activities and deeds of service to which we can give the name of work, ought to be trained together and never dissociated. They are the complimentary and balanced expressions of one spirit of life;…” ~Evelyn Underhill

“Spirituality should not be something we do only on Sunday morning (or Saturday or Friday, depending on your faith). It needs to be part of our life every day. And not only part of our lives in the sense of saying our prayers before bed, or when we first wake up. It needs to be part of what we do all day. That doesn’t mean that we need to stop our materialistic pursuits every hour or two and spend five minutes praying, although there is nothing wrong with doing that. It means that in all our activities, all our conversations, and even all our thoughts, we need to get our spiritual side involved.” 

< Read the complete blog post at Solar Wind. >

Visit and bookmark Harold Boulette’s blog Solar Wind at:  http://spiritsun.net/

contributed by Harold Boulette

A very spiritual young man was taking a walk through the forest one day. The fresh air and the auras of the trees energized him and he walked boldly and with a smile on his face. Yet, after walking for several hours, he became tired and lay down in the grass beneath a great old tree. As he began to doze, he started to overhear a conversation. The words were difficult to understand at first and he soon realized that he was not hearing it through his ears, it was coming directly into his mind from some unknown source. He managed to stay calm and in his very relaxed state, both physically and mentally. The conversation began to make sense and he finally figured out that he was hearing the great old tree he was lying under conversing with another tree, a younger tree that spoke like a student or disciple of the old tree. The conversation went like this:

“You have been here centuries great one. Long before any humans lived in this forest. How was it different without them?”

“Not as different as you might expect because while the humans were not here in body, their thoughts, which control much in this world, travel great distances and so had a profound effect on the forest, even though they themselves did not know it.”

< Read the complete blog post at Solar Wind. >

Visit and bookmark Harold Boulette’s blog Solar Wind at:  http://spiritsun.net/

contributed by Harold Boulette

“It appears that all the perfection of civilization, and all the advancement made in philosophy, science, and art among the ancients are due to those institutions which, under the veil of mystery, sought to illustrate the sublimest truths of religion, morality, and virtue and impress them on the hearts of their disciples. … Their chief object was to teach the doctrine of one God, the resurrection of man to eternal life, the dignity of the human soul, and to lead the people to see the shadow of the deity, in the beauty, magnificence, and splendor of the universe.” ~Robert Macoy

Many who have studied ancient history have come to the conclusion that the ancient schools of religion and philosophy, primarily the type known as mystery schools because most of their teachings were kept secret, were very much responsible for the creation of civilization. They taught these things primarily to the students of these academies and they in turn passed them on to others. When most humans were gatherer-hunters, the mystery school students taught them how to plant seeds and grow crops and how to capture certain animals alive and keep them and raise them. I suspect we can thank them for domesticating dogs and cats, though I haven’t read anything specific about that. They taught people how to start villages and elect village leaders to govern the group (I know some people today consider government an evil thing, but without government we would have anarchy and chaos with the strong killing the weak and stealing their food, etc.) They created libraries and schools. They taught medicine and other sciences.

< Read the complete blog post at Solar Wind. >

Visit and bookmark Harold Boulette’s blog Solar Wind at:  http://spiritsun.net/

contributed by Harold Boulette

“But if Soul and Essential Soul are one and the same, then the Soul will be an Ideal-Form unreceptive to all those activities which it imparts to another kind but possessing within itself that native act of its own which reason manifests.

“If this be so, then, we may think of the Soul as an immortal—if the immortal, the imperishable, must be impassive, giving out something of itself but itself taking nothing from without except for what it receives, … it cannot be sundered.

“Now what can bring fear to a nature thus unreceptive of all the outer? Fear demands feeling. Nor is there place for courage: courage implies the presence of danger.” ~Plotinus

 

“Things get confusing when talking about the spirit and soul. Some will say that the soul is very emotional, others that it is not emotional at all. Some say the soul is concerned with matters of the material world, other that it is only concerned with spiritual things. This is very much like the conflicting ideas of God from Jesus and from much of the Old Testament. Just as the loving, forgiving Father that Jesus spoke of is not the same god in the Old Testament that is vengeful and jealous (what could the real God possible be jealous of?) are actually two very different beings, the conflicting descriptions of the soul are the result of the fact that we have two of them!”

< Read the complete blog post at Solar Wind. >

Visit and bookmark Harold Boulette’s blog Solar Wind at:  http://spiritsun.net/

contributed by Harold Boulette

Hawaiian Sunset PHOTO: Paul Schmitendorf

In November 2007 I received an unanticipated email about a man from India who was going to give a lecture on sungazing. I was both intrigued and skeptical.

In the lecture he explained the basic concepts of looking at the sun, how to do it safely, and why it was a valuable practice for those open-minded enough to try it. So one morning, the following April, after a cold Chicago winter, I went out to the beach at Lake Michigan and waited for the sun to come up over the horizon. When it did, I looked at the sun for 10 seconds and then turned around and went home. I continued adding 10 seconds each day and before long I was looking at the sun for several minutes.

Slowly, I started to feel something happening. I felt calm, joyful, and sometimes euphoric. As the time looking at the sun each day grew longer, I started to feel something awaken in me. Around the time I reached 25 or 30 minutes a day I began communicating with the sun. I’d express my gratitude each day and ask for guidance on different aspects of my life.

Finally, almost 2 years after the lecture, I reached the goal of 44 minutes a day. Looking at the sun had become an important part of my life, but reaching this goal was a bit anticlimactic. I continued looking at the sun but began to wonder if there was something more to this process.

I asked the sun to direct me on a path that would allow me to learn more about this ancient practice. The path led me to the film “Eat the Sun,” which I watched in September 2012. Once I saw the sunrise service and interviews, I knew Reno would be on my path.

I read the Project X book and then scheduled a visit with Bob Petrovich. Once I met some of the people in the Community, attended my first Sunrise Service, and learned more about the program, I knew I’d come to the right place. I’m grateful for the opportunity to become part of the Community of Cosolargy and continue working with the sun on a higher level.