“When a man begins to perceive the love of God in all its richness, he begins also to love his neighbor with spiritual perception. This is the love of which all the scriptures speak. Friendship after the flesh is very easily destroyed on some slight pretext, since it is not held firm by spiritual perception. But when a person is spiritually awakened, even if something irritates him, the bond of love is not dissolved; rekindling himself with the warmth of the love of God, he quickly recovers himself and with great joy seeks his neighbor’s love, even though he has been gravely wronged or insulted by him. For the sweetness of God completely consumes the bitterness of the quarrel.” ~The Philokalia

“People who are not spiritual will undoubtedly disagree with this quote very strongly. They will claim that they are fully capable of love for others even without any awakening of the soul or even belief in God. But the love that is addressed in the above quote is a higher love that cannot exist in those who are not at least partially awakened. This love happens when you look at another person and recognize the spirit and soul withing. You recognize that while the physical being is not of God, the unawakened spirit and soul is. And that is what the spiritual person loves.”

< 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: University of Birmingham

Using powerful ground-penetrating radar, investigators working around Stonehenge have detected a trove of previously unknown burial mounds, chapels, shrines, pits — and most remarkable of all — a massive megalithic monument made up of more than 50 giant stones buried along a 1,082-foot-long c-shaped enclosure.

This news is resetting virtually everything everyone thought they knew about Stonehenge.

Follow these links to learn more:

http://io9.com/archaeologists-have-made-an-incredible-discovery-at-sto-1632927903?utm_campaign=socialflow_io9_facebook&utm_source=io9_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

http://www.cnet.com/news/digital-mapping-project-reveals-stonehenge-secrets/

http://www.citylab.com/tech/2014/09/scientists-discover-dozens-of-monuments-hidden-below-stonehenge/380002/

links submitted by Frieda Nelson

“I participated in the Peru Sacred Places of Power Tour with Sean Savoy as our group leader. On August 3^rd, we visited parts of Lima, the capitol city. We went first to the main square in downtown Lima where many government buildings and the main cathedral are located. As a writer, I of course made special note of the House of Literature there (see photo). We went to the catacombs at Saint Francis Church, which was interesting, but a little creepy. There are piles of human bones and skulls from thousands who were buried there.

“Later, we visited Casa Luna, the home of the Luna family with a large private collection of nativity scenes. After touring the collection, we had an excellent lunch of Peruvian dishes. After lunch, we visited the archeology museum, but we didn’t get to see everything because we were behind schedule.

“Few people seemed to pay much note to this badly faded old tapestry, but I found it very interesting because the pattern has a striking resemblance to the diagram for a modern computer chip! We then went to an old tavern and were shown how to make a Pisco Sour, the national drink of Peru (which I enjoyed regularly during the next ten days).”

< 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

Symbols of an Alien Sky DVD cover

The Thunderbolts Project (www.thunderbolts.info), an organization advocating the “electric universe” concept, has recently posted on YouTube full-length videos from the three-part documentary series Symbols of an Alien Sky. The first of the series explains the extraordinary figures visible in the sky from Earth some 10,000 years ago; this is, of course, according to the electric universe theory as expounded by David Talbott. The images theorized by Talbott and catalogued from ancient sources worldwide are fascinating.

And the producer of the series is none other than our long-time Consociate Jerry Simonson!
< Watch Part 1 of the series Symbols of an Alien Sky online at YouTube.com. >

“We are beginning to learn the overwhelming importance of infantile impressions: how a forgotten babyish fear or grief may develop underground, and produce at least an unrecognizable growth poisoning the body and the mind of the adult. But here good is at least as potent as ill. What terror, a hideous sight, an unloving nurture may do for evil; a happy impression, a beautiful sight, a loving nurture will do for good. … Babyish prayers, simple hymns, trace while the mind is ductile the paths in which feelings shall afterward tend to flow; and it is only in maturity that we realize our psychological debt to these early and perhaps afterward abandoned beliefs and deeds. So the veritable education of the Spirit begins at once, in the cradle …” ~Evelyn Underhill

I seem to remember reading somewhere that about half of what we learn during our entire life happens during the first five years. While that is partially due to the fact that after a while we are no longer exposed to much that is new, it is also largely due to the fact that as we develop beliefs and create filters in our subconscious mind, we start rejecting anything that contradicts those beliefs.

Recently, there have been posts on Facebook, Twitter, and other social sites that show something like a white infant playing with a black one and saying that racism is something that has to be learned and no one is born a racist. That is true for just about all forms of bigotry. No one is born hating gays, Jews, Muslims, blacks, short people, etc. They learn these prejudices from others, most often their parents, siblings, and caretakers. But it isn’t limited to what we directly tell out babies, they learn as much—if not more—from observation.

But the good news, as Ms Underhill mentions, is that they can learn good habits and beliefs as easily as they can learn bad ones. The key thing is we have to make an effort to teach them the positive, knowing that the very nature of the world means they will regularly be exposed to a lot of negative things. We need to tech them to be open-minded rather than trapped in any belief which may later prove to be wrong, no matter how fervently we believe in it ourselves. We also need to be careful about teaching them something negative in an indirect way by promoting a group that practices negative or bigoted beliefs, such as promoting a church that promotes hatred of gays (I know, I know, they claim they don’t hate gays, but their behavior says otherwise), or a club that allows members of only one sex. Even the idea that certain toys are for boys and others are for girls helps to build false beliefs that may be difficult to overcome at a later age.

Most important, though, is the last part of the quote. It is never too early to start teaching kids about spirituality. They need to learn to value the spirit and soul as soon as they are old enough to understand what the words mean.

< 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: Image byCarl Weins

Though he probably didn’t intend anything so jarring, Nicolaus Copernicus, in a 16th-century treatise, gave rise to the idea that human beings do not occupy a special place in the heavens. Nearly 500 years after replacing the Earth with the sun as the center of the cosmic swirl, we’ve come to see ourselves as just another species on a planet orbiting a star in the boondocks of a galaxy in the universe we call home. And this may be just one of many universes — what cosmologists, some more skeptically than others, have named the multiverse.

Despite the long string of demotions, we remain confident, out here on the edge of nowhere, that our band of primates has what it takes to figure out the cosmos — what the writer Timothy Ferris called “the whole shebang.” New particles may yet be discovered, and even new laws. But it is almost taken for granted that everything from physics to biology, including the mind, ultimately comes down to four fundamental concepts: matter and energy interacting in an arena of space and time.

Ron Theriault thinks this is a wonderful little essay, with some interesting references. He says: “It clearly highlights the line between the materialist and non-materialist viewpoints that divide science as well as society at large. The second book mentioned (Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality) reminded me of an interesting observation I read recently, which I will paraphrase: “. . . human sciences and philosophies have undergone numerous changes and revolutions since recorded history, but mathematics seems to stand apart in that when something is proven in mathematics it is proven for all time.”

< Read the entire New York Times article by George Johnson online at nytimes.com. >

link submitted by Frieda Nelson

“Let us begin, then, to withdraw from the thing of this world. Let us despise possessions and money and all that swamps and drowns our intelligence. …Those who travel by sea, when overtaken by a storm, do not worry about their merchandise but throw it into the waters with their own hands, considering their property less important than their life. Why, then, do we not follow their example, and for the sake of the higher life despise whatever drags our soul down to the depths? Why is fear of God less powerful than fear of the sea? …
“Do athletes compete with their clothes on? No, the rules require them to enter the stadium naked. … Yet, instead of stripping ourselves, we try to engage in the contest while carrying countless burdens on our shoulders, thus giving our opponents many chances of getting a grip on us.” ~The Philokalia

We do need to withdraw from the things of the world, but despising possessions and the material world in general is probably going a little too far. We don’t need to hate the material world, indeed we should not, because the source of it is the spiritual world, the realm of God and the angels. We don’t hate a person for having a physical deformity, so we shouldn’t hate the spirit that has been deformed into matter. Spirit is still at it’s root. We can have possessions, we can wear clothes and live in a house, but we should avoid becoming attached to these things.

The quoted section gives the example of a ship caught in a storm and how even the owners of the property will throw possessions overboard in order to save themselves. That is the proper attitude to have for material goods, but the real “storm” we should be concerned with is the battle of the Children of Light and the Forces of Darkness for possession of our souls. Many people seem to have the idea that by default, when they die physically, their soul and spirit will go to heaven and be claimed by the Children of Light as one of their own and the only way they will be claimed by the dark ones is if they do something really evil or, as in many classic novels, sell their soul to Satan. The truth is, if you ask Satan to buy your soul he will laugh in your face. As an old saying goes (on a totally different subject); why buy the cow if you can get free milk?

Satan doesn’t need to buy your soul because as long as you are in the grips of materialism, it is already his! You need to wrestle it away from him, in a manner of speaking, by turning away from materialism, by rejecting attachments to physical objects, and become attached instead to God and obeying His will and fulfilling His Plan.

I had to include the part about athletes competing naked for a little humor, but it does make a point. When we become attached to material things, and then try to develop spiritually, the demons can use those attachments to pull us away from our spiritual intentions. Then can cause a car to crash into our beloved auto, they can cause a forest fire to burn our house, etc. By not getting attached to things, we take that away from 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

Lancaster, Pennsylvania Boys & Girls Club lawn in April 2014

“Overall the last couple of years I’ve felt a growing connection to the sunflower.　I began planting a few of them last year but wanted to do something bigger and brighter.　 This spring I saw an underutilized section of grass at the Boys & Girls Club in Lancaster, PA and the vision came to me.　This vision was to start a sunflower garden and have the kids at the club contribute by helping to plant the sunflowers.　 Planting day was a huge success with kids enthusiastically and curiously getting their hands dirty and planting the garden.　The rain and sun did the rest as we now have well over 100 sunflower plants in our garden.　 I thank the sun not only for helping the flowers grow but also for inspiring me to start the project.”

Paul Schmitendorf

Lancaster, Pennsylvania Boys & Girls Club lawn in early August 2014

“To recognize and began the shift into new, Intuition Age perception, you need to feel how limited you are by old perception and consciously decide to expand beyond beyond what’s been so familiar. …
“The heart is really a kind of brain, and it generate an electromagnetic field of radiance that’s spherical in nature. … Your hears resonates with all other hearts, all other souls, and all other centerpoints. By being in your heart, you can know the core experience of any other being or reality—and you can know yourself as the whole unified field. … And as you experience spherical-holographic perception, you have insight into the workings of collective consciousness and an understanding of why the Golden Rule exists in all cultures.” ~Penney Peirce

“Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful” -Buddhism

“All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.” -Christianity

“This is the sum of duty: do not unto others which would cause you pain if done to you.” -Hinduism

“No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself.” -Islam

“What is hateful to you, do not do to you fellow man. This is the law; all the rest is commentary.” -Judaism

“Respect for all life is the foundation” – Native American

< 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

Harold Boulette’s home shrine PHOTO: Harold Boulette

Longtime Community member Harold Boulette shared with us a photo of his home shrine, designed after the instructions given in the Community’s Christology, along with these comments:

“Several years ago, we had a lecture and demonstration on how to set up and use a home shrine. Following the instructions, I set up this one. The shrine itself is a small table, about fifteen by eighteen inches. At the back of it is a large photo of the Community Cross (actually a photo of a stained glass copy of that cross) in a picture frame. On the right side (in the photo) are two bottles, one containing water and the other with scented oil—olive oil with essential oils added. In front is a small chalice. Instead of three individual candle sticks, I have a candelabra on the left that holds three small candles. In front of that is a small salt shaker. In the center there is an incense burner with two small glass bowls in front of it for the water and oil. Not visible in the photo are several books of scripture and a copy of the Rules of the Order, which sit on a shelf below. Also, there are no flowers on the shrine. Instead, I have a potted plant, a peace lily, next to the shrine.”

contributed by Harold Boulette

Harold’s Blog: Solar Wind