__+__ Lichtstation __+__Read Messagewritten by Webster on 03.07.2010 at 01:34:59 - as answer to: Cancer Vollmond-Gruppenmeditation am 26.6.2010 by Webster I build a Lighted House and Therein Dwell’ Friends, welcome to our full moon meditation meeting this evening. At this time of the year the sun is in the sign of Cancer, and we will therefore be working with the energies associated with this sign and we will use for our meditation the keynote for the disciple in Cancer which is "I build a lighted house and therein dwell". We are working in the build up period to the time of the full moon which is tomorrow morning at 10.23 (BST). From time to time we all ask ourselves the simplest of questions, only to find that the answer is elusive and a mystery. One such question is ‘what is light?’ We know a lot about what it does, but this doesn’t tell us what it actually is in essence. Like life itself, and consciousness too, it is one of the great mysteries of existence. The scientist will tell you that light is "simply a name for a range of electromagnetic radiation that can be detected by the human eye", as one web site expressed it. I think this definition tells us a bit about light and quite a lot about how anthropocentric humanity still is – particularly with the phrase, "that can be detected by the human eye". Immediately the question arises in our minds, ‘But what about the eyes of animals and birds, the unbelievably complex eyes of the insect world, the eyes of fishes?’ Some fish live deep in the ocean where no light can penetrate and generate their own light with luminous organs in order to be able to see. And what about the plant kingdom? Now a plant does not have an eye in the sense that we understand that word, but all plants are sensitive to light and their whole life is characterised by growth towards the light. Indeed the lotus in the East and to a lesser extent the rose in the West have for centuries been consciously used as wonderful symbols of human aspiration and progress towards the light. These plants with their roots in the earth struggling upwards against gravity or the impulse to materialism, through the water or the involutionary urges of the desire nature, eventually reach the air – symbol of the mind – where their gorgeous array of petals and their beautiful fragrance, portraying redeemed intelligence, pure love, and the spiritual will, unfold in response to the energy or light of the sun. The plant, focussing itself in the flower, together with the sun, then become in themselves an example of the "Glory of the One". And it’s not just the light of the sun. When we look out at the night sky we see stars and galaxies in profligate abundance casting their light in all directions. And, thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope, we can look at extraordinary photos of the remotest stars and galaxies, and of interstellar clouds of gas and dust incandescent with reflected light in a dazzling portrayal of beauty that had not been even imagined three decades ago. More prosaically in our own solar system we see the light of the sun reflected by the material form of planets and moons, asteroids and comets. Light of course has many meanings and many aspects. The light of matter is described as a dark light. Perhaps this is because matter is viewed as being without principle. And we know that part of the destiny of humanity is to redeem matter which means among other things to irradiate it with light and imbue it again with principle. The light of consciousness is the awakening light within humanity as a whole, so much and so powerfully in evidence these days. The light of the soul is the all encompassing light of love, and this is shining with ever greater intensity into the world and in the world, as groups and individuals connected with Hierarchy and the New Group of World Servers tread the path of lighted service to the whole. The light of the spirit is so wonderful that the Tibetan has no other words to describe it than darkness, but it is "a darkness which is the very antithesis of darkness as the non-initiate and the unenlightened understand. It is a centre or point of such intense brilliance that everything else fades out." All these thoughts bring to our minds the central idea of the ageless wisdom teachings that the whole theme of the evolution of life is concerned with light. So let us pause for a moment to focus on the light and then we will say together the mantram on the card that you have with you. We reach into the Light and bring it down to meet the need. We reach into the silent place and bring from thence the gift of understanding. Thus with the Light we work and turn the darkness into day. At critical moments in the life of humanity throughout history, great beings have emerged among us who have in unique and often dramatic ways indicated to us all how to find the pathway of light that leads out of darkness into spiritual realisation. One of these people was the Greek philosopher, Plato. He is famous among other things for his parable of the cave, which is a brilliant depiction of the human condition, trapped in the illusion of the material form, and how to gain release into the light. Human consciousness, he says, is like living in an underground cave. Here the people have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see in front of them, Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets. You will see people passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials. Some of them are talking, others silent. These are ourselves. But we only see our shadows, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave. The echoes of the cave make it seem that people’s voices are actually coming from their shadows. For these people the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows cast by the images. But what happens when one of these prisoners is released from his chains. He is able to turn round look in the opposite direction and see what is causing the world of shadows. At first, there is an inevitable resistance to this new reality. But as the mind becomes accustomed to the new understanding the released prisoner, or, as we would call him, the disciple, rejoices in having found the way of ascent into the light of truth. He makes his way past the fire, symbol of the soul, and climbs to the entrance of the cave and bursts out into the sunlight of the spirit, whose brilliance blinds him to everything else. As he gets accustomed to this new light and is able to perceive things as they truly are he also remembers the condition of the cave and the illusion under which his fellow prisoners are still living. Will he not want to descend back into the darkness of the cave, the material world, and try and persuade his fellow human beings to break their chains, to turn around and travel with him into the light? And will they not accuse him of being a troublemaker with outlandish ideas about reality? And will they not say of him that he went up, and came back down without his eyes? And that it is better not even to think of ascending. And if he tries to release another and lead him up into the light, let us catch the rascal and put him to death." And how often has humanity done just this to its saviours and light-bearers! But each one of them – and there have been many – has sowed seeds of truth deep within the consciousness of the human race over the course of millennia. Hercules for example, the struggling and eventually triumphant disciple, portrayed for us all the journey that each of us has to travel once we break our chains and turn around – in this case on the incarnational wheel of the zodiac – and consciously face the tests of spiritual will in regard to the use of all aspects of the form nature. The Buddha, "the enlightened one", anchored a new understanding of the cause of suffering and how to gain release from this suffering in the four noble truths. The Christ, the world saviour, showed that the spiritual path is the path of sacrificial service. In an extraordinary way these seeds of spiritual victory, of enlightenment and of a demonstrated love have the possibility of germinating on a large scale within humanity in the crisis of our present time, and we know that it is not only possible but crucial that they do so. The past several centuries has seen the domination of the world by western civilization, and the myth par excellence that characterises the west is the story of Faust, a man of brilliant intellect who sells his soul to the devil in order to possess every thing and every pleasure that the material world can offer. This story has been pondered on and elaborated by poets, musicians and film makers, perhaps most notably in the plays of Christopher Marlowe and Goethe. At the end, of course, and in a dramatic denouement the devil appears and demands his payment, the soul of Faust. Western civilisation’s material values, material knowledge and applied science mirror the story of Faust in a remarkable way. We have all become Faust in varying degrees. What this really means is that we have put material values before the spiritual or true values. And the result is a humanity split into haves and have-nots and a world of rapidly diminishing resources that can only work, we are told by orthodox economists, by an exponentially growing material consumption in which the havenots can never truly participate and the haves will accumulate even more – clearly an impossible scenario. In fact it is now pay-back time and the whole of humanity is facing the consequences of our collective actions and false values. But is the law of karma an unforgiving force over which we can have no influence? Do we have to blindly reap what we have so thoughtlessly sown? Surely all the great teachers of humanity indicate that karma can be met in a creative way and it then becomes an agent for change and an empowering energy for what is new and better. The Tibetan describes this with a wonderfully practical illustration. He writes: "The Law of Cause and Effect is not to be understood as we now interpret it. There is, to illustrate, a law called the Law of Gravitation, which has long imposed itself upon the minds of men; such a law exists, but it is only an aspect of a greater law, and its power can be, as we know, relatively offset, for each time that we see an aeroplane soaring overhead, we see a demonstration of the offsetting of this law by mechanical means, symbolising the ease with which it can be surmounted by human beings." What this means is that humanity doesn’t have to continue as Faust to the bitter end, blind to the possibilities of transformational change. We don’t have to stay as just the separative, selfish, desiring personality crashing headlong into the depths of misery and deprivation. We can open our eyes and see what is really happening. We can become, indeed there are many signs that we are becoming, humanity the world disciple. We can start to build a house characterised by lighted relationships and motivated by the life of the soul. We can choose another myth to guide our minds and hearts. We could make the myth of Hercules, for example, the new driving force for human unfoldment with its wonderfully detailed symbolic account of the struggles, defeats and victories of the spiritual path. We can learn the lesson of the Buddha regarding desire and realise that as we purify our desire life we will gradually be released from the glamour of materialism. This will achieve two important things. First of all it will lead to a proper sharing of the world’s material resources and enable humanity’s real material needs, as for example encapsulated in the Millennium Development Goals, to be met. At the same time the creative energies of humanity can then be focussed on recognising and meeting other important but inner needs. One of the great mystics of the Western tradition was the early 14th century German, Meister Eckhart. Many of his sermons have been preserved and it’s fascinating to read them and discover how really modern some of his ideas are. For example, he regarded the bible as a spiritual text, and he asserted therefore that it must be interpreted spiritually, not literally. So Christ’s injunctions that we should feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, visit those in prison take on deeper meanings as well as retaining the obvious and, we have to stress, not unimportant ones. We all know about the devastating consequences of physical hunger and malnutrition, and it is a sobering thought to realise that at the present time a billion people in the world, a seventh of humanity, are suffering in this way. This is why one of the millennium development goals is the progressive eradication of poverty and hunger. And the fact that we have enunciated these goals at all is a wonderful indication of the soul of humanity attempting to direct the activities of humanity’s personality. But what about spiritual hunger; what are the devastating consequences of not meeting this need? Surely we should be putting an enormous amount of energy into understanding and then satisfying this hunger. For example the lack of a sense of deep meaning or purpose is blighting the lives of many people as they turn to outer things to assuage a hunger which by definition is an inner one that cannot be satisfied in external ways. This is just one of many inner needs that cry out for recognition. To discern these inner and spiritual needs is the task of the New Group of World Servers, who are training themselves not only to be able to sense what they are, but also to relate them to the overall Plan for humanity and the world. This requires that we work at unfolding the light of the intuition. Interestingly for our work this evening, this is one of the tasks of the disciple in Cancer, and it is one of the reasons why the keynote for the disciple in Cancer is "I build a lighted house and therein dwell". For the light mainly referred to here is the light of the intuition. The intuition is the organ of synthesis. "All things can be known in the vivid light of the intuition", writes the Tibetan. "At its highest point, it is known as that universal love which has no relation to sentiment or to the affectional reaction but is, predominantly, in the nature of an identification with all beings. Then is true compassion known; then does criticism become impossible; then, only, is the divine germ seen as latent in all forms. Intuition is light itself, and when it is functioning, the world is seen as light and the light bodies of all forms become gradually apparent. This brings with it the ability to contact the light centre in all forms, and thus again an essential relationship is established and the sense of superiority and separateness recedes into the background." So let us therefore go into our meditation by celebrating our oneness with all life and confirming our desire to help humanity build and dwell in a house of lighted relationships. Cancer Festival Meeting - London July 2009 Simon Marlow] Answers to this message: |