It’s About the Self

The seeking of knowledge in antiquity was of a character very different then our own. 

To attain a knowledge of truth, the ancient philosophers did not spend time in external labor or research, but sought truth through internal experience.  The ancient teachers looked upon humankind as a microcosm in which everything existing externally was latent and discoverable within.

The ancient philosophers were not deeply concerned with “the physiognomy and partial phenomenon of nature, they desired to understand nature’s more occult and efficient springs, by becoming themselves related to her as a central whole.”

We recognize their efforts because they don’t speak of beholding things speculatively but they speak of how outward things relate to one’s inner being.  The philosophers of old did not see outward things as independent and standing alone, but as an integral part of a great chain of universal cause, of which each is an effect of the creative energy of a Creator.

In their deeper knowledge the ancient teachers believed that no thing is correctly understood if it is regarded as a free-standing thing.  Nothing is free standing and in an important sense nothing can be regarded as just a thing at all.  Everything is interconnected.

As Blake stated, “Every natural effect has a spiritual cause.”  In sharing his belief in the deeper spiritual cause behind all visible experiences, Wordsworth said, “And I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime of something far more deeply infused, whose dwelling is the light of the setting suns, and the round ocean, and the living air, and the blue sky, and in the mind of [people], a motion of spirt, that impels all thinking things, all objects of all thought, and rolls through all things.”

In our quest to enslave the elements of our existence through scientific measurements of all kinds, we remain ourselves enslaved.  We have closed ourselves up to the real energies that give life to all that exists within our physical plane.  As we enlarge the aspects of attempting to measure, weigh and dissect, we have circumscribed our internal world.

When we become slaves to only our physical senses without a greater awareness of the deeper aspect of awareness that resides within us, we lose sight of whom we are.  The world of nature, with all its landscapes, colors, scents is a mirror which is meant to awaken us.  Earth is a vision and “geography is a visionary geography.”

Some of the ancient poets through their imagery attempted to show the coincidence between the early light of dawn and the awakening of one’s self.  Ancient teachers believed that what “we call physics and the physical is but the reflection of the world of soul; there is no pure physics, but always the physics of some definite psychic activity.”

Most of us are educated into the consciousness that “the world is outside us, and that we are onlookers who struggle with it, manipulate it, appreciate it, feel close to it, feel far from it, as the situation may decide.”  In all contexts it is seen as other.  This is one aspect that physics has created within our culture.

The purpose of my post is to remind you to look within.  There is an aspect of you that is with you every day traveling invisibly putting pieces together and guiding your journey so you will discover that all things are part of a greater whole.  In fact, our journey through this physical plane is an experience that helps us understand our own Greater Being.  Nature has an important part of awakening latent aspects within ourselves.

Carl Jung wrote the following regarding his soul, “You took away where I thought to take hold, and you gave me where I did not expect anything and time and again you brought about fate from new and unexpected quarters.  Where I sowed, you robbed me of the harvest and where I did not sow, you give me fruit a hundredfold. And time and again I lost the path and found it again where I would never have foreseen it.  You upheld my belief, when I was alone and near despair.  At every decisive moment you let me believe in myself.”

To inspire and empower.  With love, in love and through love.

Imagination As An Organ of Wisdom
 
Resolute Imagination is the beginning of all magical operations said the ancient Hermeticists.  In those ancient days magic meant an understanding of nature and the operations of the cosmos and not how later religious individuals would define it.

The alchemist Paracelsus defined the imagination as the ‘inner firmament,’ the microcosmic parallel of the macrocosm.  Ancient teachers believed that an individual’s higher Spiritual Self had direct contact with the consciousness through the imagination.

Paracelsus said, “The first step in the operation of understanding is to beget the spirit from the inner firmament by means of the imagination.”

In the ancient times imagination was considered the greatest gift that humans possess.  Today we define imagination as just someone’s fancy.  In ancient times the wild thoughts that someone might have would be considered and defined as fantasy.

The old philosophers termed someone’s fantasy as the ‘madman’s cornerstone.’  These would include obsessive thoughts, ruminating and brooding over ills and problems.  “Imagination takes us out of ourselves by taking us into ourselves."

With an open imagination say the ancient teachers, “it is possible to see into the essence of things…we may look into Nature in the same way that the sun shines through a glass.”

Cornelius Agrippa said, “Imagination of its own accord change the physical body with a sensible transmutation, by changing the accidents of the body, and by moving the spirit upward or downward, inward or outward.”

In the ancient books of the Corpus Hermeticum it says, “Within God everything lies in the imagination.”  Within our own imagination, “command your soul (the connection between body and spirit) to go anywhere and it will be there quicker than your command.  Bid it to go to the ocean and again it is there at once…”

“Order it to fly up to heaven and it will need to wings.  If you do not make yourself equal to the qualities and attributes of God you cannot understand Him.  Like is understood by like.  Grow to immeasurable size.  Be free from the body, transcend all time.” 

“Become eternity and thus will you understand God…Consider yourself immortal and able to understand everything: all arts, sciences, and the nature of every creature…Sense as one within yourself the entire creation…Conceive yourself to be in all places at the same time…Conceive of all things at once: times, places, actions, qualities and quantities: then you can understand God.”

Let’s stretch our concepts and belief systems.  Let us remember that we have come here to demonstrate how we manage creative energies.  Let us make no boundaries and know that all things are possible when we acknowledge that same thought.

As the Corpus Hermeticum stated, “I now see not with the eyes but by the operation of spiritual energy in the powers.  I am in heaven in earth, in water, in air; I am in living creatures and plants; I am present everywhere.”  “…let us tumble with the rock which falls from the mountain and rejoice with the rosebud about to open.”

To inspire and empower.  With love, in love and through love.