Mysticism means nothing if the attitude and the discipline which it recommends be adapted to fair weather alone: if the principles for which it stands break down when subjected to the pressure of events, and cannot be reconciled with the sterner duties of the national life. To accept this position is to reduce mysticism to the status of a spiritual plaything. On the contrary, if the experiences on which it is based have indeed the transcendent value for humanity which the mystics claim for them—if they reveal to us a world of higher truth and greater reality than the world of concrete happenings in which we seem to be immersed—then that value is increased rather than lessened when confronted by the overwhelming disharmonies and suffering of the present time. It is significant that many of these experiences are reported to us from periods of war and distress: that the stronger the forces of destruction appeared, the more intense grew the spiritual vision which opposed them. ~Evelyn Underhill

“Would you want to see a doctor who, in medical school, attended only those classes she found interesting and skipped others? Would you even want to get your car repaired by a mechanic who did the same? I hope the answer is no to both questions. If someone decided not to follow most of the rules of musical composition, what kind of sound would he produce? If would most likely be irritating noise, not music. Yet many people approach spiritual studies as if they are in a buffet line and can select those things they like and ignore the rest.”

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

contributed by Harold Boulette

“During the last two thousand years, but especially since the sixteenth century, humanity has achieved a tremendous work, namely, the conquest of the globe and the constitution of experimental science, in what concerns the material and visible world.

“That this gigantic and herculean task should be successfully accomplished, it was necessary that there should be a temporary eclipse of man’s transcendental faculties, so that his whole power of observation might be concentrated on the outer world. These faculties, however, have never been extinct or even inactive. They lay dormant in the mass of men; they remained active in the elect, far from the gaze of the vulgar.

“Now they are showing themselves openly under new forms. Before long they will assume a leading and directing importance in human destinies.” ~Edouard Schure

“I’m not sure it was a good thing that people became very materialistic over the past several centuries, but it certainly is true that it allowed us to explore the world and create a global society. Some might credit that to such things as Facebook, or the internet, but those things are all standing on the shoulders of much that came before. It can, of course, be argued that in spreading over the globe humanity did a great deal of damage and hasn’t stopped yet. But it is also true that many atrocities that despots and terrorists used to get away with because no one outside of their little domains knew about it. Now the whole world soon finds out, whether they choose to do something about it or not.”

< 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

Terry Hutchinson, circa 2008 PHOTO: Terry Hutchinson

My name is Terrance Arthur Hutchinson. I was born in Bangor, Maine, USA, on 16 June 1954. After shuffling between Maine and New York as my father followed jobs, I moved with my parents to California in May 1966 and graduated from Mojave High School in Mojave, California, in June 1973. Working for Great Western Cities, the predecessor of California City, and then California City, I was able to attend Antelope Valley College in Lancaster, California, and graduated with an associate’s degree in business. I was employed by the City of California City Parks & Recreation Department for eight years. I eventually found steadier work at Revere (Aluminum) Extruders and finally with U.S. Borax as a first-class millwright for thirty-eight years. While with U.S. Borax I was state-certified as a first responder and was part of the Heavy Emergency Rescue Team but was fortunate enough to never have to put those skills to use. During my tenure with U.S. Borax: I was blessed to receive my ordination as a minister with the Progressive Universal Life Church and on 2 October 2000 was awarded two degrees: doctor of divinity and doctor of philosophy in religion.

My spouse Lynn and I have been happily married for thirty-three years and have raised two children, adults at this point, who are successful and doing well. The two of us reside in California City with our dachshund Destiny.

I have been active with the Rotary Club of Rosamond, California, and was honored to be elected club president for two terms, 2003–2005, during the Rotary Centennial. I was fortunate  enough to travel to India with the Rotary on a grant-funding mission to finance a hospital, clinic, ambulance, several schools, and a water well. I am also a Paul Harris Fellow, an honor given by the Rotary Club. I was an active member of nearby Edwards Air Force Base Civilian/Military Support Group, the Boy Scouts of America Order of the Arrow, and local Boy Scouting Committee. I am also a former president of the Casa del Sol Estates Homeowners Association in California City. I’ve been active on our church trustee board and am currently donating time as church secretary with the Community Church of California City.

I have always felt a spiritual connectedness with God and now hold views closer to that of a Gnostic or Essene. I believe Christ was trying to tell us that we would not need a minister or priest as we are our own minister and priest of God. We need to nurture our own relationships with God and the Divine. We need to make a Conscious choice to choose to follow the Light (Logos) or Darkness (Kalos), to seeing the truth through all the falsehood. As Mark 3:14 says about Christ’s choosing of the Twelve: “That they be with him.”  I remember as a youth, one teacher saying we are born with two guiding angels, an accusing angel and a guardian angel, and that it was up to each one of us to choose which we would follow. I truly believe the Essenes had it right: the idea of greeting each morning sunrise; you never know when you or one of your loved ones might be taken, we need to remember to love those we love while we can! We need to truly walk on that Path of the Way, and not just give lip service to it.

Metaphysics holds a real fascination for me. I studied with the Rosicrucians several years before finding Gene Savoy and his Solar Teachings. I consider myself very fortunate to have discovered Cosolargy. I feel it has taken me further in my studies than what I had on my own. I remember Gene Savoy Sr. writing something to the effect that you better have a system; it didn’t have to be Cosolargy, but if you did not have a system or plan of some sort, you’d probably be lost. I have never forgotten that.

I think it an interesting story that in my studies, it took several times of finding Gene and his teachings; to finally read the writing on the wall and realize I needed to get it done. The first time, school sports interrupted that endeavor. The second time in my studies (Rosicrucian at this point), I meant to follow up, but marriage and a family came along and put the kibosh on that. It wasn’t till the third time, while in my studies, when I would find once again Gene and Cosolargy mentioned in a National Geographic article, that I realized that I truly needed to follow up; which I finally did.

Gene Sr. was still with us the first couple years of my studies in Cosolargy, and I dearly wanted and wished to meet him personally, but only letters were to be; our meeting to be postponed. I tell myself the Lord works in mysterious ways but know that our God is a God of the Living and that I WILL meet Gene Sr. one day. I thank him dearly for his encouragement to me to come and attend!  I enjoy the association of like-minded and personable individuals that attend. It is both refreshing and rejuvenating. I personally believe Gene Jr. and Sean have done a wonderful job in picking up the reins. I can honestly say I have never been to a church where so many members truly believe and share so many of the same common beliefs as in our walk on the Path of The Way, and methods to employ in getting there. God willing, I will enjoy this shared family experience for another sixty years. “That they be with him!”   Ku-ya!

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. >

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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