Japanese-style Second Advent Cross PHOTO: Yukako Kawai

“As the portrait painter keeps an eye upon the king’s face as he draws, and when the king’s face is toward him, he draws the portrait easily, but when the king turns his face away, he cannot draw. In like manner, Christ, the good artist to those who believe in him and gaze continually at him, straightaway portrays after his own image a heavenly person. Out of his own spirit, out of the substance of Light itself, the ineffable Light, he paints a heavenly image. If a person does not gaze constantly at Christ, the Lord will not paint his image with His own Light. We must, therefore, gaze upon him, believing him and loving him, throwing away all else and attending to him in order that he may paint His own heavenly Image and send it into our souls, and thus, wearing Christ, we may receive eternal life, and have full assurance and be at rest.

“As the golden coin, if it does not receive the imprint of the King’s image, does not come upon the market, but is discarded, so the soul, if it has not the image of the Heavenly Spirit in Light, is not fit for the treasures above.”

–St Macarius the Egyptian

The Portrait Painter

It seems odd to think of Christ as a portrait painter, but this is an obvious use of metaphor and allegory.

While I’ve never been a portrait painter myself, I can understand how one would get frustrated if the subject kept turning away or changing position. That is why many portrait painters today will take photos of the subject, and then work from the photos, perhaps only asking the subject to sit for a short while at the end to complete the final details.

At first, it sounds like St. Macarius is saying that Christ is painting a portrait of us, but if you read the quote carefully, you will see that he is painting a portrait of Himself upon our Soul.

Macarius tells us we must be continuously looking at Christ for this to happen. That is impossible to do, in a literal sense, and still function in the material world. What it really means is that we must keep a mental image of Christ in our minds at all times. In Cosolargy, we are taught to keep an image of the Cosolargy Cross in our minds at all times, which is the same thing as that cross is a symbol of Christ.

The Ineffable Light

Those of us who have been in Cosolargy for more than a few months know that when we talk about the Light, we don’t mean the basic light of a light bulb, or even the light of the material sun, but we seek out a greater Light that is Spiritual and comes to us through the Spiritual Sun. St. Macarius calls this “the ineffable Light, which is a good name for it. Ineffable means something so great or powerful that it can’t be described accurately in words. That is the Light we all seek.

Believe in God and Love God

St. Macarius tends to use Christ and God as if they mean the same thing, but we in Cosolargy know that they are not the same. Macarius is correct in saying we must believe in God and Love God if we are to receive God’s greatest gift, that Spiritual Light that awakens and develops the spirit into a conscious Soul, and makes us truly immortal.

The Golden Coin

This is another allegorical way to tell us that we must have Christ in our spirit and soul, we must have that Divine Light in our soul if we are to reach heaven when we leave the world. While it makes many people happy to believe they will get to heaven without having to do anything to earn that great privilege, it is a fantasy. The great mystery schools of the world and the founders of the major religions never taught that. They have always taught that getting to Heaven was a privilege that had to be earned.

“Out of the deep, slow brooding and pondering on some mystery, some incomprehensible link between himself and the Real, or the deliberate practice of loving attention to God, the contemplative—perhaps by way of a series of moods and acts which his analytic powers may cause him ‘nicely to distinguish’—glides, almost insensibly, on to a plane of perception for which human speech has few equivalents. It is a plane which is apparently characterized by an immense increase in the receptivity of the Self and by an almost complete suspension of the reflective powers. The strange silence which is the outstanding quality of this state—almost the only note in regard to it which the surface intelligence can secure—is not describable, Here, as Samuel Rutherford said of another of life’s secrets, ‘Come and see will tell you much: come nearer will say more.” Here the self passes beyond the stage at which its perceptions are capable of being dealt with by thought. It can no longer ‘take notes’: can only surrender itself to the stream of an inflowing life, and to the direction of a larger Will. Discursive would only interfere with this process: as it interferes with the vital processes of the body if it once gets them under its control.”

–Evelyn Underhill

Pondering Some Mystery

When Ms. Underhill says that the mystic is “pondering some mystery,” she is not talking about mysteries such as are found in Agatha Christie novels, but pondering the greater mysteries of life beyond the physical realm, or as she calls it: the “Real,” meaning the spiritual.

Loving Attention to God

This is also an important part of spiritual growth. We need to pay attention to God and we need to have love for God. Without these, our spiritual progress will be limited, at best. On the other hand, the love of God alone won’t make you spiritual or fully develop your spiritual faculties, but it is a good start. You still have to practice the Solar Techniques as taught by Cosolargy.

Plane of Perception

Spiritual development will bring us to new planes of perception, which are also called higher levels of consciousness. Those who have experienced these higher planes do find human speech inadequate to describe such places as our languages are for describing the material realm, and fall short when trying to describe the spiritual. Not that it really matters because having someone describe these levels of consciousness to you is not important, experiencing them for ourselves is what matters.

Receptivity of the Self

It is true that at higher levels of consciousness, we become more receptive to the greater Knowledge found at those levels while at the same time, finding that we do not question and reflect on such Knowledge because we simply know that it is true. When you know that something is true, there is no need for reflection, no need to question.

Surrender to In-flowing Life

We do need to surrender our ego to the greater Will of God to receive this in-flowing Life, this stream of Divine Knowledge that the Gnostics called Gnosis. Not everyone is capable of doing this when they began their spiritual practices, but it is something we must develop. We do not need to destroy the ego, as some are teaching today. The ego is useful for getting things done. But as we develop our spiritual Self, we must keep the ego under control so it doesn’t work to prevent such development.