“Toys and fooleries at home, wars abroad: sometimes torpor, sometimes sloth; this is thy daily slavery. By little and little, if you do not better look to it, the sacred dogmata will be blotted out of thy mind. How many things be there, which when a mere naturalist, thou hast barely considered of according to their nature, thou does let pass without any further use? Whereas thou should in all things so join action and contemplation, that thou might at the same time attend all present occasions, to perform everything duly and carefully and yet so intend the contemplative part too, that no part of that delight and pleasure, which the contemplative knowledge of everything according to its true nature does afford, might be lost. Or, that the true and contemplative knowledge of everything according to its own nature, might of itself (action being subject to many lets and impediments) afford unto thee sufficient pleasure and happiness. Not apparent, but not concealed. And when will thou attain to the happiness of true simplicity and unaffected gravity? When will thou rejoice in the certain knowledge of every particular object according to its true nature; as what the matter and substance of it is; what use it is for in the world: how long it can subsist: what things it does consist of; who they are that are capable of it, and who can give it and take it away?”

–Marcus Aurelius

Toys and Fooleries

What Aurelius is calling “toys and fooleries” isn’t limited to the toys of children. He is talking about anything that distracts us from the serious side of life. Things like television, video games, and being on a cell phone so much you don’t notice anything around you. It is really sad that when I go to a fitness center to work out, there are always a few people who ignore the club rules and talk on their cell phones the whole time they are on the treadmills, stationary bikes, or even weight machines. The same happens in the supermarket. Aurelius is correctly labeling this attachment to these things as a form of slavery.

If You Do Not Look To It

The harm of getting too caught up in and attached to things in the material world is that it tends to cause us to ignore our obligation to develop our spiritual side. That is why the Forces of Darkness work so hard to get us to spend more time with video games, cell phones, television, etc. When Aurelius talks of being a “mere naturalist,” he doesn’t mean someone who is out in the natural world all the time, but one who is caught up in the physical realm of matter.

Join Action and Contemplation

What Aurelius is saying here is that instead of idly acting on anything that we find interesting, distracting, comforting, etc., we should think about what we are doing and act on the things that benefit us instead. There is nothing wrong with playing video games a little, but not for hours a day. I personally like to play solitaire on my Kindle Fire for twenty minutes or so each night before I go to sleep. It helps me relax. But I know better than to spend two or three hours playing such games. So when we contemplate what action we are planning to take, we need to ask if that action helps us grow, or not. We need to ask if there are some other actions we should be doing instead. Most of all, we need to be sure we are spending a reasonable amount of time on spiritual development. That doesn’t mean just doing techniques for a few minutes. It means reading books that help stimulate spiritual growth. It means that when we watch movies nd television shows, we choose those that do not promote violence, anger, vengeance, and other negative behavior.

Everything According to Its Nature

When we contemplate, we must think of what is the true nature of things. We must forgive the violent behavior of some animals because we know that it is not their true spiritual nature that is guiding them to do such things. Poisonous plants are not poisonous because they hate us. They are poisonous because their physical self is a product of the Darkness in the world and within all of us. Instead of condemning such plants and animals, we should seek to help them change. Likewise, we should seek to help other humans change. Foolish people sometimes depict angels destroying demons and devils by cutting them up with swords, etc. Nothing could be further from the truth. Contemplation should teach us that such behavior is just joining the darkness, not stopping it. The Angels and Beings of Light stop the demons by convincing them to change their ways. We must change our ways as well.

“Paracelsus recognizing derangements of the etheric double as the most important cause of disease, sought to reharmonize its substances by by bringing it into contact with other bodies whose vital energy could supply elements needed, or that were strong enough to overcome the diseased conditions existing in the aura of the sufferer. Its invisible cause having been thus removed, the ailment speedily vanished.

“The vehicle for the archaus, or vital life force, Paracelsus called the mumia. A good example of a physical mumia is a vaccine. … The most universal form of the Memia was ether, which modern science has accepted as a medium between the realm of vital energy and that of organic and inorganic substances. …

“Paracelsus discovered that in many cases plants revealed by their shape the particular organs of the human body which they served most effectively. The medical system of Paracelsus was based on the theory that by removing the diseased etheric mumia from the organism of the patient and causing it to be accepted into the nature of some distant and disinteresting thing of little value, it was possible to divert from the patient the flow of the archaea which has been continually revitalizing and nourishing the malady. Its vehicle of expression being transplanted, the archaea necessarily accompanied its mumia, and the patient recovered.”

–Manly P. Hall

Derangements of the Etheric Double

This is a way of saying that physical illnesses can have causes that originate in either the psychic or spiritual body. While we can’t say that all disease descends down to the physical body from the higher levels of being, we do know that some do. That is why Gene Savoy, Sr. taught that those who properly developed their spirit would achieve better physical health as well. You might ask, then, why do Cosolargists still have physical illnesses? The most common reason is that the person cannot mentally accept that the development of the spirit does eliminate most physical illnesses. Of course, it will never eliminate all illness, but in general, the spiritually developed people have less illnesses and less severe illnesses than the complete materialists.

Contact With Other Bodies

This is the basis of the Sonatherapy that was available for years at our Steamboat Healing Center & Spa. The concept, developed by a British doctor, is that a sound that duplicates the frequency of a healthy organ can be used to help heal a diseased organ. For example, if someone has cataracts or other eye problems, the frequency of a healthy eye can help them to heal. Paracelsus didn’t use sound, but he did use the same idea with herbs and other natural medicines that worked in a similar way. Color can also be used to help with healing some illnesses.

Gene Savoy, Sr. told us that some medicines worked better than others because they were the proper color. For example, a blue or purple colored pill or liquid would be good for eye problems, while red or orange would be a good color for pills to treat a bowel problem. That doesn’t mean that the drug doesn’t work, but that it works better when the right color is used.

Shape of Plants

This is a new idea to me, but there may be something to it. Nearly all herbs are green, but they treat different illnesses in different parts of the body so that shape may be involved rather than color. The important thing in all of these healing methods is vibration. That which vibrates at a frequency very close to the frequency of a healthy organ will help that organ to heal when diseased or damaged. As geometry is the language of the soul, plant shapes could aid in treating illnesses that originated on the spiritual level.

Accepted by Some Distant Thing

This is what it means in the Bible when it says that Jesus drove demons out of a person and into nearby pigs. A better way to do this, however, is in the way that we in Cosolargy do using an advanced technique where we send negativity out of us to harmlessly disperse into the world, rather than sending it into another being.

“If we will stand still and calmly consider our past life (the present life, we mean) we will see that certain things have led to certain other things, and that small things have led to great things – that little turning points have resulted in an entire change in our life. We may trace back the most important thing in our life to some trifling incident or occurrence. We are able to look back and see how the painful experiences of the past have strengthened us, and have brought us to a larger and fuller life. We are able to see how that particular thing in the past, which seemed needlessly cruel and uncalled for, was the very thing which has brought us to some great thing in the present.

“All that is needed is the perspective of years. And if we get so that we are able to see this, we will be able to bear with greater degree of philosophy the pains and disagreeable occurrences of the present, knowing that they mean ultimate good. When we cease to think of these things as punishment …, or the cruelty of Nature, and begin to see them as the consequences of our own past life, or the result of the Spirit’s directing had, we will cease to protest and struggle, and will endeavor to fall in with the working of the great Law.” –William Walker Atkinson

Consider Our Past

Many of us do consider our past, often more than we should, but not in the way that Atkinson is advising us to. We look back at our successes and failures of the past and generally avoid those things that we failed at and only do those we were successful at. Atkinson is advising us to look more closely at the failures and what changed in us following those failures. If we do that, we will often find that difficulties often trigger us to make changes in our lives, hopefully for the better. It is a simple fact of basic psychology that when we are comfortable and things are going well, we don’t advance at all. We need some problems to push us forward.

Atkinson adds that when he advises us to consider the part, he means the present life. Why would he not want us to consider past lives? The only reason I can think of is that he doesn’t beleve in reincarnation. If he did, he certainly didn’t think blaming everything on past lives was a good idea. Neither is putting off change for a future life when we don’t know we will have one. We need to make the changes necessary in our current life.

Trifling Incident

Unfortunately, while it often is true that some trifling incident in our life may have led to great changes—hopefully for the better—we often don’t remember those small incidents. I am reminded of the story told by actor and singer, James Maslow, who was picked on as a child for being chubby. He didn’t let that insult limit him, but instead decided to change and became a very handsome and muscular young man. He did remember the incident that led to that change, but many do not.

We should also remember the story of the hurricane that may have been started by a butterfly flapping its wings. It is not known that this has actually happened, but it is theorized that a butterfly flapping its wings can start a tiny wind current that grows and grows as it crosses the Sahara and goes into the ocean where it becomes a hurricane. So big things can start small.

Cease to Think of Difficulties as Punishment

Atkinson advises us to stop seeing difficulties as punishment for doing wrong, and instead see them as pushing us on to better things. There are two good reasons for taking that advice. First, God does not punish us, so we need to stop blaming God and change things when necessary. Second, the Dark Beings and Forces will bring difficulties to us when we are succeeding in our path to spiritual enlightenment in an effort to get us to turn away. We must realize what is happening and instead double down and continue on harder than before.

“As the spiritual student climbs the path leading to higher worlds, he becomes aware at a particular point that the cohesion of the powers of his own personality is assuming a different form from that which it possesses in the world of the physical senses. In the latter the ego brings about a uniform cooperation of the powers of the soul—primarily of thought, feeling, and will. These three soul powers are actually, under normal conditions of human life, in perpetual relation to one another. For instance, we see a particular object in the external world, and it is pleasing or displeasing to the soul; that is to say, the perception of the thing will be followed by a sense of either pleasure or displeasure. Possibly we may desire the object, or may have the impulse to alter it in some way or other; that is to say, desire and will associate themselves with perception and feeling. Now this association is due to the fact that the ego coordinates presentment (thinking), feeling, and willing, and in that way introduces order among the forces of the personality. This healthy arrangement would be interrupted should the ego prove itself powerless in this respect. If, for instance, the will went a different way from the feeling or thinking. No person would be in a healthy condition of mind who, while thinking this or that to be right, nevertheless wished to do something that was not right. …

“Now the person progressing toward higher cognition becomes aware that feeling, thinking, and willing do actually assume a certain independence. … For this reason, therefore, a person’s own ego must be strengthened, for it must introduce order among those three powers.” –Rudolf Steiner

Cohesion of the Powers

Mr. Steiner divides the Powers of Personality, as he calls them, into three: thinking, feeling, and will. He says it is normal for these powers to work together, and that is true. It makes sense that in order to have feelings about something, you must first think of it, and in order to do something, you must activate the will based on those thoughts and feelings.

Pleasing or Displeasing

I’m not sure it is true that certain objects are either pleasing or displeasing to the soul. I think it is more the mind that judges things in that way. Yet we know that there are sounds, such as music, and scents such as Frakencense that send high-level vibrations to us and those vibrations help to stimulate and develop the energy centers, which make the sevelopment of the Spirit and Soul possible. So shapes, sounds, and scents affect the Soul mostly in an indirect way.

Ego Coordinates

Steiner says the ego coordinates the powers of thought, feeling, and will so they can function together, and that may well be true. Some modern schools of spiritual development have taken the simplistic approach of claiming that the development of the Soul requires the destruction of the Ego. That is a completely false teaching.

I remember an old episode of the television series “Star Trek” where a technical problem caused Captain Kirk to be split into two. One of him was gentle and loving but incapable of making a decision. The other had Ego and could make decisions, but was afraid of everything. It was only when he was put together again that he could properly function as a Captain. This divided Kirk is described appropriately. Without ego, he couldn’t function.

Strengthen Ego

I don’t think what Mr. Steiner says about the need to strengthen the Ego is always true. While some people, often those who seek spiritual development, have weak egos that do need to be strengthened, some already have egos that are strong enough, or even too strong. The point is, we need the ego to function in the material world, and to develop ourselves in any way. But when we develop our spiritual Self, we need to put our ego under the control of the Soul so it won’t lead us away from the spiritual.

“Bless me, O God, thou the only True God. I thank thee for the preservation of me, and for all other benefits. I now commend myself, both Soul and Body, and all that thou has set me to do in my employment and calling, into thy protection. Be Thou the beginning of my conceptions, my undertakings, and alll my doings. Work Thou so in me that I may begin all things to the glory of Thy Name, and accomplish them in Thy Love for the good and service of my neighbor. Send thy Holy Angels along with me, to turn the temptation of the Devil and corrupt nature away from me. Preserve me from the malice of evil men, make all my enemies reconcilable to me, and bring my mind into Thy vineyard, that I may labor in my office and employment, and behave as Thy obedient servant therein. Bless me and ask that I am to go about and do this day, with the blessing of Thy Love and Mercy continue Thy Grace and Love in Jesus Christ upon me, and give me a mind cheerful to follow Thy leading and execute thine appointment. Let Thy Holy Spirit guide me in my beginning, and in my progress, on to my last day, and be the willing, woking, and accomplishing of all in Me. Amen.” –Jacob Boehme

When We Rise

We can pray to God, formally or informally, at any time, but the most important time to do so is first thing in the morning when we get up so as to set the theme for the entire day. This especially makes sense for us in Cosolargy, as we generally do our solar techniques at dawn. The somewhat lengthy prayer above by Boehme is a formal way to do it, but we don’t have to be so formal or lengthy. Simply saying “God bless me” is often enough, or you can be specific for whatever issues you may be having at the time, so if you are finding yourself getting angry at people, ask God to help you get rid of your anger. If you are having health problems, ask God to help with that. Most important, of course, is to ask God to help you with the process of awakening and developing your spiritual faculties.

Preservation of Me

When Boeme asks God for “the preservation of me,” he isn’t asking God to keep him as he is, for that would be pointless. He is asking God to keep him alive, not to prevent him from changing and growing.

I commend Myself

This is an important part of Boehm’s prayer. We should all commend ourselves to God. If we want God to help us, we must make it clear to ourselves that we are on His team, part of His Army of Light, and not just random people asking for God’s help while doing nothing to earn it or deserve it.

The Beginning of All My Doings

Whether part of a morning prayer, or something ongoing throughout the day, we do need to do all things in God’s name, and as God would have us do. Some Christians today are fond of saying “What would Jesus Do?” but what they often mean by that is what would my preacher do since they listen to the preacher rather than the teachings of Jesus. While we may not always know for sure, we should think about whether or not God would want us to do the things we do. We all have to make a living in this world, and that often means taking a job we don’t want and doing work we don’t want to do, but we should still try our best to do as God wants us to do.

Bring My Mind Into Your Vineyard

I think this is a fairly obvious allegory. Boehm is telling us to ask God to bring our minds into Heaven, although it isn’t actually the mind that can get a glimpse of Heaven, but the Spirit. The idea is to help to get some of that Divine Knowledge to trickle down into the physical mind as seems to happen in some cases of Near Death Experiences (NDE). This is so we can better be Guided by the Holy Spirit as Boehm says, and so that we have a greater desire to reach Heaven—the real Heaven, not the fantasized versions coming from human minds.