Initiatic Mastery

Sep 5

Play video below. You can read along with the transcript under the video.

Dead are those who slumber through life, with zero autonomy, chasing empty desired, perpetuating negative emotions. Those who seek life have within their heart, the burning fire. This flame of spirit is what propels them to seek out a spiritual practice and discipline with seriousness and earnestness. Initiatic Mastery is the aspiration of the extraordinary practitioner who reaches towards the crowning glory of enlightenment. In this talk we present an overview of what it means to be an embodied master within the world, serving the One Divine Purpose.

Initiatic Mastery

Series: Finding the Third Force - Class Four

Transcript

Instructor:

All right, so we've done a series of talks on “Finding the Third Force”, which we would say is the general basis and really the fundamental root of these teachings. If you come to the first class of a First Chamber, we usually give the teaching of how to find Gnosis, which is knowledge through direct experience.

And that teaching is simple. It is the same for someone who's just stepped into this room as it is for a master at a very high level. The teaching doesn't change. How it manifests and is applicated through your experience may appear different, but really it's simple at its root; and that is to stay in the present moment, and then from that present moment and that presence in the moment, to be able to work with the Three Forces of the nature of reality, right?

We call them the Three Factors of the Revolution of the Consciousness in a Gnostic Samaelean term, but really it's that the base of these rules are the Three Forces of Creation, and if you're present, you can work with those Three Forces of creation to awaken the consciousness. You can work through them to get yourself power, you can work with them for many things, right?

So, the most important thing is staying in the present moment, and that's what this series is truly about, as we go through ways of understanding what we call the Third Force.

We live in a world that has dual polls, and we live in a manifestation that is illusory, but it's illusory through duality. And in that aspect, the true duality is the duality between the conscious and the unconscious or the Spirit, the Divine, and the unmanifested.

So, what happens in the reality is that the aspect of the Spirit that's in matter, that's in the illusion, that is manifested, has two aspects to it because it is manifested in duality, whereas the aspect that is still in the unmanifested, in the conscious aspect, represents as a Unity. Thus, we have Three Forces.

This is just going to be for some context before we get into this lecture, because this lecture is going to actually be about being stuck between the poles of the 12 different energies that happen at this level, that we could relate to the zodiac or the Olympian gods, the Tribes of Israel. But this is a little bit background how we get to those 12 forces, some context.

Now, one symbol we have for Spirit is the circle, esoterically, but there's another symbol for that as well, which is the triangle. Which we could say that in the unmanifested, when there is no manifestation, that the Three Forces of creation are at rest in one. So they're there; they're in the unmanifested, and there is no manifestation. So, we have a triangle.

Okay. Now, when manifestation starts, the Divine goes within itself to create manifestation, to create a second point. But before actually creating the manifestation, first Divinity creates the second pole within itself. So the triangle goes within the first triangle. You might recognize this symbol from a video game. But it's actually a symbol of sacred geometry.

What happens is when the interior aspect of Divinity doubles within inside itself, what you get are three aspects that are also still one. Thus, you have four different triangles that appear within this. What this really is showing, is in the three-dimensional state, when Divinity manifests, what you actually see is a tetrahedron; or this would be the image that is of the unmanifested with anything that is manifested in the Reality.

The shape for the Reality would be a cube. So you could say that within the cube, if you put a tetrahedron, that's the Divine part of any being that's represented by the cube. The rest would be your unconscious or subconscious.

Those four faces of the tetrahedron manifest through the physical manifestation. So in that sense, each of those four faces has three forces, and four times three is 12. This is where we get—we use right here, the zodiac symbols just for an easy understanding—but the 12 forces through those four faces are those four elements.

So we have the element of fire, the element of air, the element of water, and the element of earth. And they all manifest through the Three Forces of creation as well. So everything that is manifest will manifest through these Three Forces.

So for fire, you have Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius.

If you notice, you will see that Aries is related to the negative or what we would call the feminine. This is the fire manifesting through the physical matter. Leo, being the positive or the masculine is related to the level of the soul, that is the aspect of fire that represents that manifests through that layer of reality, and then the part of fire that represents through the layer of the reality related to the Spirit is Sagittarius. And you could do this for all four of the elements.

Now, another thing that we talk about when we look at the zodiacal forces, is that they form a cycle or a cycle of energy that we go through. We line this up with the Hero's Journey. Is anybody's familiar with that. The stages of the hero journey?

Instructor:

Joseph Cambel.

Instructor:

And this is, by the way, just to show that this is a cycle, but the Hero’s Journey would be a cycle that relates to the journey of growth and change.

Heroes Journey in conjunction with the 12 Zodiacal Forces.

We'll just go through these really quick.

What you'll see is in that the cycle doesn't have to necessarily come through growth. That's why if you look at Pisces, which represents zero and 12, it could both be a cycle that you go through and you grow or a cycle that you go through and then recurs again; because when we go through cycles, either there is growth or they repeat themselves. This is related to things like karma and samsara.

Now, when we look at this, we could say that the Hero’s Journey is related to the journey that the Spirit or the soul takes on the path. So, in the first stage, we would say that zero is related to the ordinary world. And that's where we begin.

And then when we move forward, we go through each of these four elements, three times on this journey of growth.

And if we look at the first four, you'll see that they're related to those four elements, that manifest in the physical. The next four will be related to those four elements as they manifest through what we would say is the Higher Ego or the level of the soul or the higher reality.

And then the last four of the elements—then they come back around again—are related to those four elements as they manifest through the spiritual concept of the Spirit and a more divine origin. And through the growth of going through those energies, we reach a level that either we raise [awareness] through that cycle or we come back [down].

Instructor:

For those who are maybe not too crash hot on the zodiac, this may seem confusing.

It's a way that we can track different energies and cycles that we go through. And we've used the zodiac, but you could call it anything. You could call it A, B, C, 1, 2, 3. But because a lot of people are familiar with the zodiac, that's why we've used it to track these different types of energies that we move through in a journey.

Audience Member:

The previous slide, the first four, that you know, you keep it on here, but the first four are the, the feminine or the minus?

Instructor:

So, we go negative, then positive, conciliatory.

Audience Member:

Is there a reason for that?

Instructor:

There's other geometry and other things that we don't have context for. What I'm saying is that we could say that, you see the Tree of Life that's up there on the wall?

Audience Member:

Yes.

Instructor:

Okay. So, we could say that the Reality itself is broken into three levels, right? So we have the level that's down here (points to Assiah & Yetzirah, the four bottom spheres on the Tree of Life or the bottom triangle), which is the lower quaternary that's related to the physical reality we have.

This is dimension, three, four, and five.

Then you have this layer of reality, which is related to the level of the soul or like the angels, ETs, whatever you want to say, right? That's related to the aspect of reality where reality is created from.

And then the top layer of the Reality is related to the Spirit or the noumena behind everything that's here.

So, the elements manifest through here, here, and here (points through the three layers of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life), because you could say that this larger being that we're in also has three sections. So, in that sense, it is broken into the physical, the soul, and then the Spirit.

Audience Member:

Instead of moving out of the circle, it's like growing upwards?

Instructor:

The spiral, right?

But the energies do cycle up like that because it is a period of growth.

Another mathematical form that we could also look at, for example, over journeys, would be that we use in esotericism system is an octave, like a musical scale.

If you think of a musical scale, you start at DO, right? And if you go up to the highest, the next note above, where are you at? DO again.

Spiritual Octave, related with the Chakra system

So, it's the same idea. You want to go through the process and reach the next level up. But if you don't, then you just come back to the note that you started with at the origin.

Actually, using the scale is a good way to show how this happens. We would say that at certain points in a musical scale, there are inflection points or what we call semitones.

In a musical scale, it is about halfway through. It's the note FA, the fourth note, it wants to [resolve]. If you go DO, RE, MI, FA…FA wants to move. It has to go up or come back down to MI; the fourth note comes back down to the third, right? Or it has to resolve up to the fifth note. So at that point, there's a resistance or a struggle where some effort has to be applied to push through to the next note.

In the zodiac, halfway through is Virgo. And what you'll see with Virgo is that is the point in this cycle usually—and there are other places with difficulties—but usually the natural progression of our journey, whether we have bumps or stuff, will still be moving forward until we reach the energy of Virgo or we reach the energy of the note FA. And that's where you're likely to start coming back down towards the origination or you push through whatever the challenge is.

And if you look at Virgo, as we relate it to the trial of the Hero's Journey, what does Virgo represent? It's the inner cave, right? It's the symbol where the hero goes into the underworld and faces the challenge.

When Luke Skywalker goes into the cave on Dagobah (the swamp planet). That is when we have to face ourselves. And if we were to look at it in the sense of a spiritual path, this is where we have to make the choice between truly surrendering to the aspect of our of our Being.—Or deciding to stay in the ordinary world and (the lower) ego.

Luke faces himself as Darth Vader in cave on Dagobah. Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, 1980. Fair use

And what you'll see is, as we go through this—because I don't want to stay on this part this too long. Because this is actually a completely different lesson, but I wanted to bring this up. What you'll see is that, when we go through the two poles of each of these energies, you will see the ego and the divine trait.

At first, the first six are things that we can constantly bounce back and forth between. But what you'll see is, when you get to Virgo and you go forward, is that it becomes very black or white. It's not something that you're in between.

It's like if you have the wrong perspective, you're going to be on the wrong side of it. And if you have the perspective of following Source and following your own inner authority, you'll be in alignment with it. And that's because it starts to diverge.

Because from Virgo on, it's either you've entered the period where you go—and there is another semitone—you could say that there's usually a semitone right before the end.

You go up a musical scale, the seventh, to the eighth, there's a little bit of a ( resistance)...

But the most difficult part is that journey inside where we face ourselves. And if we don't, then we start to truly diverge from the path.

If you look at some of the zodiac signs if anyone here is familiar with astrology, the later zodiac signs tend to have dual planetary rulers.

All of the signs are dual in nature. But (further through the zodiacal cycle) they actually start to have dual planetary rulers, say something like Scorpio is ruled by Mars and Pluto. Aquarius is ruled by Uranus and Saturn. Pisces is ruled by Jupiter and Neptune.

So there becomes this divergence that if you're on one side of that energy or the other, there's a much larger split with the later signs in which that you are either aligned with the alignment of your inner authority or you stayed in the alignment with the lower ego.

There's a bigger space between the signs later.

Audience Member:

So everyone goes—hopefully—goes through this within a lifetime. It's not related to what your actual aspect is?

Instructor:

Okay, so we could we could overlay a cycle like this over a lifetime. We could overlay this over a year. We go through these energies.

There's things to be aware of, but any type of duration—because everything is connected through math—so any type of duration, let's say we set out to start a business, right? And we set this (goal): in a year, this (such-and-such a goal) has to happen. So, for us to get to that that goal in a year, that process of trying to create that company will go through these energies.

As well as you could overlay eight over it. You could overlay four—the seasons, right? So there's all of these types of math. There are these energies and these are things that we can be aware with and work with.

Like I said, that's another class for another time. But that we teach about learning to work with the energies of the cycle and also being able to pick up when things are coming.

Because like I said, there's certain places where there are inflection points, that arrive in this kind of a cyclical journey.

But I just wanted to highlight this, because the instruction on cycles will be within the actual class. I just wanted to highlight this to show some of the energies that can be related to the signs when we start talking about why it is that there are two poles and why we get stuck between those things.

And there are also questions that come along with that need to be answered for us to understand the symbols.

So, when we start out on this journey, we would say that the first energy in the zodiacal year (because a year actually begins with Spring in an esoteric sense), this is when, the season is born coming out of the dead period of winter. And we would say that Aries is related to...

It's important when we have two things that are going on and neither of them are good nor bad, but when something is misappropriated and applied at the wrong time, then it becomes the opposite of what's needed with the energy. We're not flowing with the energy of the Reality, which we are the Reality. We all are a piece of that Reality.

So when we flow with the vibration of the Reality, then things go in a positive way. When we flow against the Reality, then we create resistance or we can create things like “karma”, whatever you want to call that. But that's a result of a cause, a cause that has an effect that's going against the natural motion of the Spirit on a macro level.

So the lower ego—we think of the ego as a bad thing, but the ego is simply the tool that we use to experience the Reality so that it can manifest. The problem with with ego and everything that goes on right now is not so much the ego itself, but the fact that we have become lost and become identified with it. And therefore, our perspective on reality is stilted because we don't see both perspectives.

From a conscious perspective, you can see the consciousness and the ego, and then you know when something is applied right, and the ego becomes the tool for you to have an experience. But the ego is not necessarily a bad thing. The ego is the resisting force to the force of the return towards Spirit. Which is why that in between those two forces—this is on a macro scale—the force of matter, is where the experience happens. Life happens in the energy between those two poles.

The ego's job IS to always do opposite of what's right for the moment. But the thing is, if we understand that, then we don't think we are that and we don't go along with it, then we know what the right choice is for the moment and what is right in the moment if we have consciousness and see both of those things.

The Third Force sees both sides. But we're stuck thinking in a two-dimensional sense, and we're stuck bouncing between those two poles, and we never see that there are multiple options.

We could say the Third Force is really the idea that there's even more options than three. It's not even that there's a third option. It’s that there are multiple options. It's multidimensional. But as long as we have our two-dimensional mind, even though we're in a three-dimensional space, we always we always feel like there are only two choices, and that's because we can't see the truth. We stuck in that illusion. The illusion is that there are only two choices.

If you ever come around people that are manipulative or that are trying to get you to do something or trying to control you, because sometimes people are aware of this to the extent that they use it for their own ego. But if you ever notice someone that's trying to manipulate, right? They always try to make it seem like you only have two choices. And both of those choices are beneficial to something that they want.

And they put this pressure on you. They make you feel that, “Well, you have to do this or that,” right? But the choice is, the truth is you don't have to do at all this or that. There's something else going on. They just don't want you to see that.

So, that's what it is to see from that conscious perspective is that we can see multiple choices, thus then we can make a decision based on what's proper for the situation.

Instructor:

Well, I can give an example of this, because we think that there's always a right and a wrong. In some traditions, there's a list of rules. If I follow these rules, then now I'm good.

And what Adonis was talking about with manipulation, if you go into some religious order, you will find that it is ripe with control and manipulation and all these things, and of course they use rules and these concepts of right and wrong to control people.

And what we're talking about here is that there is no definitive right or wrong for every case, as in “every case should always be the same way”.

So here's an example under Aries, which is the first part of this Hero's Journey that we're going through. Call to Adventure.

So the adventure starts. Do I speak or not?

And we've seen in some groups, say, if you go to a Vipassana course.

I don't know if anyone here has been to one of those meditation retreats where you don't talk. And you practice silence, so you can observe yourself, and that's good, because we talk a lot, so we never get time to be alone with what is going on internally.

Now, some religious orders will then say, “So, therefore, it is always bad to speak. And so, if you speak, now you're evil, or you're just less conscious than the master who is silent.”

And then this is something that could be used.

So, let's say you are in a spiritual community, and there's some bullying going on. That those who are manipulating everything will say, “Oh, but if you speak, it's your ego, so you should be silent.” And perhaps in these instances, it will be good to speak up and call a spade of spade.

But if we think that we should always follow a rule, that it should always be a certain way, then that is unconscious.

So we have to come out of these ideas of religious dogma where every circumstance should always be exactly the same. And if I follow these rules, then I'm holy.

Each situation will call for something different. So sometimes keeping silent is good, like maybe your friend puts on an outfit and it doesn't look good, and you don't need to say anything. You don't need to be the one who pushes the buttons and says, “Oh, that's horrible,” right? To what end? So that's the time you can keep silent and keep your ego in check.

Somebody is being bullied, speak up.

So, we have to assess every situation with our awareness, with our consciousness. And this is how we define ourselves.

The question here is, “Who am I?”

What kind of person are we going to be? Are we going to be someone who follows rules or someone who has more awareness?

Instructor:

Yeah, and I think that's the word to use—definition is really important. And that's really what this whole journey is about through these energies and we'll see. We also have these questions that are related to each of these energies on the screen.

Aries – Fire – Call to Adventure

Who am I?

Keeping Silent Vs. Speaking Up

The first one right here for Aries is “Who am I?”

But of course, in an esoteric sense, “I AM THAT I AM,” right? We are the Being, we are a Divine Spirit.

But actually, if you had that comprehension, then we would already be able to understand all of these 12 questions properly.

So we would say that if we have the answer to all these questions from a Divine sense, then we would be completely detached from the Reality and always acting with right action in the moment.

So when we say, “Who am I?” here in Aries, it's really a look towards that that energy of the Call to Adventure.

We could say that this is the part where you have a spiritual inquietude, right? And it's really about, “What are your values?”

What do you stand for in that sense? So, where you speak up and where you keep silent relates with that. Do you speak up against an atrocity, sure. But what do you consider is an atrocity?

We have to understand that, in these balances, none of these things are necessarily wrong or right, but the ego will always want to utilize these things for the wrong thing. So, if we speak up against someone being abused or bullied, like Ruth said, that's the proper time to speak up.

However, if we're playing a victim card, and, we're trying to get what we want or pull attention, and we're (supposedly) “calling a spade a spade”, and we're saying that we're being abused and manipulated and all of these things to try to actually manipulate the situation to what we want. Well, are we doing that from a Divine purpose, or are we doing that for a desire that we have in our mind?

So, the catch-all with all of these, what you'll see is that if we're aligned with selfishness, and it does get more subtle too with some of the later ones, but usually if we’re aligned with selfishness, usually we'll want to do the wrong thing because like we said, the ego itself is the resisting force. That's its purpose. So if we identify with that and align with it, then we'll tend to use these in the wrong sense.

Now, there's something else before we keep going through these, that's important too. And that's how do we get to the point of being able to see these—the two aspects of reality and be able to see from the third perspective. And that's the moment-to-moment awareness. And basically the fundamental practice of everything that we do here.

So, as we said, without being in the present moment, you can't even properly work with the three forces. Of course, there are ways to stay present, still from an egoic way, but our goal is to try to be able to pull back into what we call the Observer.

This is what we would call the Third State of Consciousness.

There are four states of consciousness, (the first one happens when we are) sleeping as you are when you're sleeping at night, as in actually asleep. I suppose someone who maybe has a mental health disorder, like DID, that can be awake and in that state, but for this first stage, it is where there's no one home. It’s the same as when someone says, they murdered somebody and they don't remember it at all, right? We would say that they were in the First State of Consciousness. For the average person, this is when you're sleeping at night. The physical body's asleep.

The Second State of Consciousness is what pretty much we are in all the time. It is what we call the vigil state, which is a little deceiving. If we're up awake, the body's awake, we're going around, but we're mechanical. We are identified with the ego. So we're kind of going through the motions, the consciousness is on a little bit, you will know to maybe jump out of the way for car that is about to hit you or something. But for the most part, you're just going through the motions, not really thinking about what you're doing.

And then what we would say is the main goal of the practice is (cultivating) the Third State of Consciousness, and that is to be present in the moment, not with your thoughts in the future, not on the past, but to be in the moment, and to be able to observe your thoughts, your feelings, the instincts, all of that from the presence of the moment, so that you see everything that's going on and observe it.

Through that observation, then you're able to work consciously in a situation, whether that's knowing the right thing to do in a choice, or you being able to see that your anger is an illusion. All of these things come from being in that presence and being in the moment, because truthfully, the only thing that is real is the present moment and everything else is the illusion. So in that present moment, then you have the ability to see whatever the situation calls for.

Instructor:

And this practice—this fundamental practice—is the way out of all suffering, all confusion, all difficulty, all inner turmoil. By simply being present, we begin to understand the narratives that we repeat perpetually. We begin to see that there is no such thing as a problem. There is only the illusion of a problem. There's only a story about a problem.

There is frustration, prediction errors inside of the mind. Where, “I thought it was going to be like this, and then it's not so now I feel weird.” This is actually a mechanical thing that happens in the brain, and neuroscientists talk about that. All of our suffering is simply just prediction errors. It's, “I thought it should be like this, and it's not, so therefore, because the outside doesn't match the internal model, so now I feel this discomfort.”

And as we begin to observe, and we come out of the illusion of these emotions, these thoughts, then we find a kind of spaciousness, and this is what Adonis was talking about, the Third Force. We relate this to the three forces of the atom, right? There are always these 3 different energies that are at work, whether in a set of circumstances, in our psychology, the events of our lives. If we gravitated to one of the poles, that's where we would get caught in the dualistic thinking, but if we are in the neutral ground, the Conciliatory Force, then we are able to be outside of the confusion, outside of the emotion, outside of the thoughts, watching them, and then they don't control us, and then we can choose a choice that is most conscious, most beneficial for the circumstances.

Let's say, for example, somebody at work says, “Oh, go over here and do this thing.” And you think, “You're not my boss. Why do you say that to me? I don't have to listen to you.” So by having this internal reaction, like “Somebody's controlling me. They're so annoying!” Then suddenly, what would have been a five second scenario now turns into torment for a week. And we're just in our head about how this person’s so annoying. They walked on, on their merry way and they're just fine. Meanwhile, we decided to suffer on their account, by our decision.

So, when we can practice the moment-to-moment awareness, and understand that the thoughts and emotions are not us, then we can begin to have more power to choose in the moment. And that's what all of these are about.

Instructor:

And that presence in the moment is what will help us begin to answer these questions. We could actually say that the 12 questions that go along with each of these opposites that help us to understand when the opposites are correct, they were said to be the 12 things in the ancient initiatic schools that one would have to master before they would—back then, the process was more external—but be exposed to the energy of the Objective Reality for the first time through a high priest or something like that.

And we're talking about the ancient, ancient initiatic schools from back in the Age of Taurus, ancient Egypt, ancient Sumeria, not the schools that we have today, which are actually such that we're working at a lower level from when they (the initiatic schools) were left behind (on planet Earth, by the true initiates who left and were not reincarnating here for a long time).

Nowadays, we would say this process is internal. So it's not about having somebody transmit the energy to you. But still, it's the same process.

We have to be able to know these things about ourselves in a conscious way. And then we will have that connection through the process of learning all these things about ourselves. If you come to the end of these 12 things and connect consciously to all these questions, you will reach what we call detachment, surrender is the term they use in Buddhism.

Now, even at that point, there's still more work to be done. There's also an aspect of accepting the role in the Reality, which is the last step. But to have that experience with Objective Reality comes from surrendering the false sense of self. If we can answer all 12 of these questions, that we will go through, in a conscious way, then we will be able to surrender the false sense of self.

Again, this the question is, “Who am I?” And of course, the main question is “Who am I?” But in the sense of Aries, it really is what values do we want to stand for? So, do we want to be materialist? Do we want to still be?

There's something wrong with that too. Certain people will be drawn to spiritual inquietude because that's the development of their soul. If someone wants to be obsessed with, the material still and just watch TV and go shopping, then that's fine, right? They're at that stage of development.

In a macro sense, the growth is infinite as soon as the consciousness is born, and there is no actual time. So someone who's at a lower stage of development that’s still living experiences, is doing that because they have to go through those experiences. The reason we feel the spiritual inquietude, the reason we feel like moving on to something new or that something isn't being fulfilled or something is empty, is probably because we've already lived those experiences, be it in this lifetime, in previous lifetimes, in previous existences and manifestations. It goes back, back, back, right? So all of these cycles have to happen.

There's nothing that somebody has to do. It's if you feel called to do it, then these are the steps that we have to take. Right? So, that’s what Aires, this question is about. It's, “Who am I?” Am I starting to understand that I'm an eternal being, that I have a soul, that there's more to life than the rat race? Or am I just an NPC, as we call it?

Instructor:

Mundane. On autopilot.

Instructor:

And that's why this is the first step on it, right? If you answer that question that you just want to be in ego, you'll stay in the cycle and you'll stay exactly at that cycle year-to-year. You go through those energies and you'll just be living your experience, not moving anywhere. Because that's the nature of the energy, then you'll keep going through all the other questions from just from this one at that energy. So you'll stay at the same level.

We don't go down per se, but we do stay at the same level. I mean, you also can go down a certain point too, but that's a conscious choice as well. Black magicians don't become black magicians by accident. And that's also an experience that needs to be lived as well. For those people, yes.

Taurus – Earth – Refusal to Call

What do I have?

Receptivity Vs. Resistance to Influence

Instructor:

With the energies of Taurus, it's an earth element, and the two poles are Receptivity versus Resistance to Influence. If you think of the kind of person that is just a yes man, right? That just somebody comes up to them and says, “Okay, now do this,” and they say, “Yes.”

“Okay, now do this.”

“Yes.”

That could work well for a while, but then what if they ask you to do something that's maybe not conducive to the project, we could say, on an outputs level.—Or maybe that causes harm. Right?

So being a yes man all the time is not going to work all the time for the best outcomes. And it's the same if you have somebody very stubborn that just says no to everything, right?

If you say no to a lot of things, you can avoid a lot of trouble, but then you might say no to good things. Say somebody invites you out to dinner, and you have a habit of just saying no to everything. And maybe this is going to be a great meeting, a great opportunity, and a whole different direction was going to open up for your life. But you're always stuck in a rut and you just say, “No, I go out on Friday nights and I don't go out on Thursday nights and you asked me on a Thursday and I don't do that. So I'm not going!”

We have these two poles where if we mechanically just follow the routine, follow what feels comfortable, staying in our comfort zone, then we're not ever going to see or experience anything new. And we're going to make choices that potentially could work against what we say is our core, our Essence, or who we really are on a fundamental level, because the shadow and the self-sabotage is not who we really are. But it is a part of us that we are not yet fully aware of and being unaware of it, it's like an inner demon or a part of us that’s separated off, split off from our core and is now using our own will to work against us.

If you think of someone that says, “I want to start a new exercise program. I want to go running.” They say, “I'm going to run for 10 minutes every morning. And then on the third morning, they just say, “Oh, I decided that I didn't really want to do that after all.”

What happened to this person? Who are they? Are they the one that said I wanted to go running? Or are the one that said I don't want to go running? We can use this example to understand that within us is a kind of fragmentation. There is not one person yet. We have to do a kind of inner work to deal with all of these shadows, to begin to create a permanent center of gravity to bring our energy into the core, so that there could actually be someone home who is able to decide.

And so in this case, if you have someone who's receptive and they always say yes, and now the authority says, “Okay, we're going to make a decision in this company to destroy rainforests.” Well, if you're a yes man, you just go, “Oh well, I want my job and it's not my rainforest. It’s their rainforest so I'll say yes!” If we're always receptive, then we find that it can have serious consequences. It can be very damaging.

And if we're always resistant, we're someone who just says, “No,” no one's going to want to work with us, right? So, the solution is not to just stay in the middle and say, I'll say, yes, three times and no, three times. The solution is to actually become aware of the circumstances and their consequences.

And this is very hard because someone who always says yes or someone who always says no, they have the same problem. Not only is it a rut, but generally the person who always says yes, has a kind of insecurity, right? And the person who always says no has a kind of hatred of authority or they don't like to take orders. And funnily, that also comes from a kind of insecurity, because the positive and negative poles, they have a way that expresses in that they're not really separate from one another.

Take the example of someone who's the overachiever and they're always chasing big goals secretly it is because they feel inadequate and that's why they need many titles, many accolades, many certificates. So they may present as very lofty, externally, but internally, it's because they feel very small.

And so we find that these poles always exist simultaneously when we are out of balance. If you were at peace with yourself, you wouldn't be chasing anything, and then you would be able to respond cleanly. If I need to say yes, I'll say yes. If I need to say no, I'll say no. I won't feel like, “Oh, I know that I should say no, but I'm scared,” or, “I know that I should say yes, but I don't feel comfortable,” and so on.

So again, the moment-to-moment awareness or this Third Force is the way out of these emotions, these pulls that are trying to keep us stuck in our old patterns. So we can decide cleanly the best course of action.

Instructor:

Yes. The question for Taurus is, “What do I have?” It's pretty, pretty cut and dry here also too, with the difference between receptivity and resistance to influence. The one's pretty easy. We talked just before the class a little bit about meditation and how we want to be receptive, to connect to the Being, right? And obviously, we want to resist the influence of others that’s not Divinity and be always in that alignment. So at a perfect place, we're always listening to our Source, whether it's the Higher Self, our Soul, or Spirit, we have a connection to that. And we stay true to that inner alignment.

Of course, for the average person, even if we're working in spirituality, it's probably somewhere in the middle. We want to get better at listening to our own internal authority and not being influenced by others outside. But you can say that the question that goes along with it is pretty self-explanatory. “What do I have?”

Is it just this physical life and my things and my material things? Well, then you're never going to listen to that voice inside your [heart]. So you're always going to be trying to people-please, and do all these things to gain things materially in the external, and you'll be resistant to anyone that's trying to, maybe point you in the right direction because all you care about is the material. It's a pretty simple one.

And in the Hero's Journey, this is a Refusal to the Call, so the energy is that you felt that call maybe to move towards spirituality. But then, it all just comes at you really fast. It's all unorganized, so then you want to pump the brakes a little bit, right? Let’s bring up Star Wars again. When Obi-Wan comes and says, “Ah, you have to come with me to save the princess.”

And he's like, “Oh, but you know, I have my aunt and there's my uncle and I have to work on the farm.” And then, of course, he doesn't even actually necessarily pass that test. The Stormtroopers come along and shoot them. So he had no choice; he had to go anyway. But, that's a movie, right?

So that's the energy of Taurus at that point (in the cycle). So, it is where we we're hearing that call, but we're still stuck between a little bit of the material. And really, like I said, at its value, we understand what we are truly, and that we have a higher self, and that we have this energy that comes down, and that's what we're going to follow, rather than the temptations of the external world, (it's not necessarily just temptations) trying to gain more on what we would call the horizontal line of reality.

In Gnosis, we talk about the cross. We say there's a vertical line that's in the present moment, and that is where our level of consciousness is related to, and the horizontal line is what we move along in time in this dimension. So anything that's related to material (that's not good or bad), that is related to that horizontal line.

So when we were obsessed with that line, we'd stay at the same point in the vertical line, which only can be moved on in the present moment.

Gemini – Air – Meet the Mentor

What is my meaning?

Obeying Vs. Ruling

So, we move into Gemini, and Gemini is about communication, and it's an air sign, and what we have here is, we get stuck between the poles of Obeying and Ruling. Like, when is it proper to take leadership? When is it proper to go along with the flow, right? And again, these are two things that very much come with that alignment internally, right? We obviously want to align ourselves with the inner authority, the will of the Father, if you're a Christian, right? And you want to be aligned with that Divine purpose that comes from Source and be in alignment with the Reality that is YOU so that you're finding that flow.

But if we maybe are weak, and we don't believe in ourselves, we have self-doubt, then maybe perhaps you find someone else that has some level of spiritual progress, and maybe they call themselves a master or a teacher, and you start worshiping them, right?

Or you worship, even if it's not a person, other beings. That happens a lot with the occult that people will find what we would call a middle triangle being, but a being that is related to the level of the soul. You can use spells or things to get powers a lot quicker than becoming conscious of it in yourself. So people take that shortcut, but then they just lower their own ego and their false sense of self like they're worthless, but they transfer their false sense of self now onto this higher being or this idea.

And now that they maybe identify themselves as their higher self, that’s a different being from them, they still see it in separation. So, now, say, someone says they're the planetary genie of Jupiter, maybe they realize there's no person, they're not doing the person things, but they have an identity. They haven't really truly found that detachment. They just became attached to something else more fascinating. They did some spells, they had some visions, and now they became fascinated and attached to that new reality.

At our level where we see, this is in the third dimension. There are planes that we can open our natural abilities to with the (higher) bodies and the chakras that we can see, such as the fourth and the fifth dimension, time and eternity. And these dimensions are actually still part of the illusion. They're not even outside of the veil.

So one of the dangers that you see a lot, whether when people start to awaken these faculties, perhaps with substances or hypnosis or just magic—whatever it is—even if it's just natural ways, but they become fascinated with the clairvoyant visions and the clairaudience and all these things. And all they're seeing is their own creations of their own mind. Because the imagination creates things in the fifth dimension. Just because we're ignorant to it doesn't mean that it's not there, but it's also still not actually the Objective Truth. So it's a big issue to become fascinated with the next level, but still not actually seeing outside of the illusion.

So, you'll see somebody that has mastered some of these things and, you follow them, you worship them, because maybe some people are at that level. They don't want to actually do the work themselves. They just want to feel like they belong, and that's okay too. You know, it's not necessarily bad, but when we are following or obeying something in form, then we're not following and obeying the inner authority that is the Divinity that is within us, right?

And then same thing goes for ruling, right? Sometimes if we start to connect to the Being, we have to take a leadership role to be a guide, but that can easily turn into exactly one of those masters that we talk about, where that, instead of being a guide, you now become a tyrant or you're attached to the power, and now you're building up this pride and this ego.

“I’m master so-and-so!” And now you're taking advantage of these other beings that are still in ignorance that maybe at the stage in which they need somebody to follow. But you're not really guiding them towards growth. You're using them for monetary gain, energetic gain. Both at the same time.

In that sense, there's a balance to these things. And the question that comes along with Gemini is “What is my meaning?” And if we also look at the Hero's Journey aspect, it's when you Meet the Mentor or you, the mentor being the Being, your Higher Self, your higher power, right?

It is when you start to understand that that's there, right? So, through that, you understand what is the meaning of being here.

Of course, obviously, within the last few steps you had been staying in the material, you're not going to objectively meet that principle within yourself. So you'll be on the other end of this as well.

Cancer – Water – Crossing the Threshold

What do I feel?

Humility Vs. Self Confidence

Instructor:

Now we come to Crossing the Threshold, and the two poles are Humility versus Self-Confidence. There are many different interpretations of humility, generally because of the religious connotations. Most people associate humility with something good, right? There's also a kind of negative humility that would be someone who is self-depreciating, and who doesn't realize their potential to contribute, to participate. And they diminish themselves so much that they hide in the corner, right?

And this can be socially, it could be economically, it can be spiritually. We've seen people, like we talked about with the deity-worship, where they look at some deity and they say, “Okay, I'm just a lowly worm of the earth.” Funnily we've heard some masters say that, masters that were very respected. And we'd say that that's a stage of comprehension that one needs to come to where we understand that you don't get brownie points for saying you're a worm of the earth, right? It doesn't make you more holy or more pure. You're just self-flagellating. You're just self-depreciating. And it's just as much an identification with “a me” who is lowly, as “a me” who is above everyone, right?

You are exactly what you are. And just by thinking about it or saying something about it doesn't make it any different. In the same way, to say that I'm a lowly worm of the earth, and all of the other people, and all of the gods, and everyone are all above me, is exactly the same as saying, “Everyone is below me and I'm the best. I'm better; I'm the leader, the king, the guru.”

And so what you find is that you can see some masters, some gurus, who have fallen into this positive pole of this polarity where they see themselves as above everyone. And if somebody doesn't bow down and kiss their feet, then they think, “Oh, you're very impure because these are the feet of God. Why didn't you kiss them?”

In a more practical sense since we're not here being gurus, sometimes the being overly self-confident is where we're fully assuring ourselves of something that is full of a blind spot, for example. Let's say we make a decision, we didn't really think it through, but we're confident for no reason, and we just say, “I'm backing myself. I have to own it.” You know, these things that people tell themselves.

And the decision is perhaps a poor one, but because we are caught in this program of (so-called) self-confidence that, “Well, the textbook says I need to back myself, otherwise I'll be weak. I'll be the worm of the earth. I'm afraid to be that. So I'll just push ahead,” and maybe it's a bad decision if we can't admit that we are wrong in this instance or that it's not the most thought-out idea or plan.

So the ability to be able to move into the present moment and to observe is going to take us out of these two poles that it's not that I should always be below or always be above. There is no permanent self. Right? We can always change and grow. There is no one permanent thing that we are.

In the same way that when we were born as a child, nobody here is a baby, right? So where did the baby go? You took them over? You absorbed them? They're gone, but you still feel like the awareness point that has travelled on this journey.

You're not saying, “Oh, where is the baby? He's lost!” Right? Or, “She's lost.” You're here, this present moment, the awareness here and now. So in that way, we have the ability to give up the things that we are holding on to, the concepts and ideas, and from this point of being the Observer, to make a wise decision.

So maybe in some instance where you're, with a community and you have influence, you know what is the right thing to do, the correct thing for you, but you know that in this instance, I don't need to go and show everyone what I know, what I can do or that I know how to astral project. So you could be in a moment where you pare back right? It's not necessary to flaunt some kind of esoteric abilities.

In another instance, you receive a message from Source, and your colleague, your friend, you have to tell them, “Hey, this is this is the correct way for this instance.” And you tell them confidently, not with the energy of, “Oh, maybe…”

“In this instance, I need to warn you if you do this thing. This is what's going to happen.” The business could fail or whatever, your family could be in trouble, something like that.

So in different circumstances, we're going to need to move into a different one of these aspects. It's not always one way or the other.

Instructor:

Cancer is related to Crossing the Threshold. If we were to layer this towards the journey that we take on the path. With the work that we did in Gemini, you find your meaning; you decide to move forward and you actually start deciding to do work on yourself, and we start decide to move to cross the threshold, being like the underworld, or going into the journey of working on our own psychology.

As Ruth said, humility is a very misunderstood point. Humility—well, all the virtues—we would say, are actually the absence of the sin that they're related to. So humility is not the opposite of pride, but rather the absence of pride.

The mainstream religions will tell you that it's the opposite, and they look at, usually, the positive pole of the egos. So pride is arrogance and all of this, and humility is meekness and being subdued, which is great for starting a cult and having people worship you.

“Oh, you have to be humble and listen to me because I know what I'm telling you.” Right? But the truth is that humility is really the absence of pride. And in that sense, that humility is the comprehension that as a separate entity, you don't actually exist, that you're a tool that the Being works through, right?

Now, granted, I wouldn't say that humility is fully achieved at this state of the journey. I would say that's probably more along the lines of Virgo, but there's something interesting that I hear.

By the way, that's a funny typo. It says “What I do, I feel?”

But the question for cancer is, “What do I feel?” And this is important because especially with the Western mentality, what we see is what keeps us from connecting to the Higher Self or through the soul is the fact that we are very intellectual and we tend to not connect through the heart center.

In a sense, if the false sense of self comes from the mind, right? We want to conquer the mind. Jesus riding the donkey on Palm Sunday, right? That's where we fully master the lower ego. But the thing that gets in the way from us mastering the lower ego is that we tend to bypass the heart. And that's what actually keeps us incoherent and out of alignment.

To have the humility/self-confidence opposite here is interesting because in order to understand it, we need to understand what we feel. The 10 commandments are related to the levels of our psyche. And the commandment that's related to the emotional plane, or the astral body, is to not bear false witness, to not lie. But of course, esoterically, it doesn't mean, oh, don't go lie to people. I mean you shouldn't go lying to people. But it's to not lie to ourselves.

And that's to not lie to ourselves that we are “a thing” because the next one is to not steal—and that’s the mind. And the stealing is the false ego, the false sense of self stealing from the Being. But before we can even master that and the true humility, we have to stop lying to ourselves that we are a separate entity in the first place. So it's interesting that the concept of the understanding what humility is comes along with also connecting to the heart center and being able to connect to your soul and the higher principle and have this grander sense of reality.

And then the other the other side of it is the self-confidence. Obviously, if their confidence is in the lower self or the false self, that's not aligned with Divinity. But at the same time, there is the quiet confidence of being in alignment that you have to trust.

One of the trials that we go through after reaching surrender and contacting Source for the first time is that we get stuck in this place where we're now in between the two things, all across the board. And at that point, you already have the comprehension of the Objective Reality. I'm talking about you've had the experience, you've had an objective Samadhi. And it takes almost like a leap of faith where you have to just say, finally, “I'm not going to listen to the ego,” because the ego will try to be like, “Well, what if you're wrong? What if it is the ego and that's not Divinity?” And all these things in our psychology.

And there's nothing more to learn at that point, but rather you have to take the leap of faith and that acceptance. And that's where that self-confidence comes from. It is, “I’m listening to the Being.” Technically, the ego is also Divine. And even if you make a mistake and you don't follow your inner authority once in while, and you realize that upon observation, you feel it, “Oh, that was resistance. That was a mistake.” Well, then if you learn from your mistake, then it still is a Divine Act anyway.

So, you have to get over that—having to be perfect or always right. Because the point of being in the experience is to go through this expression anyway. So in that sense, the quiet confidence is like when, Jesus said “I am, that I am,” or when Krishna opens his mouth to his mom, and the universe is in there. All of the prophets, they know that they are God. And not, “I'm God, and I'm confident, and you're all lowly little minions,” but it's that you have become God. You didn't experience God, you’ve become God. And that is what everyone is capable of.

So it's not about being arrogant or lording over everybody else either, because whether someone's at a stage of development where they can incarnate the Spirit or embody the Spirit or not, they will eventually. Once the genie's out of the bottle, in the macro sense, the consciousness is growing. You're just going through the experiences. Everyone's going through the experiences.

And even then, you'll get to point where in-between there’s growth (even once you connect to the Spirit) there are periods of descent again where you have to come back down and create new patterns. So you'll connect and then you disconnect, and then you connect, and you disconnect. And it's this infinite growth going on forever and ever.

To grow, you have to sometimes come back down here. So, in that sense, the knowing that you are the I AM presence—there is a confidence, a quiet confidence in that, but it's not an arrogance or a better-than because there's no separation there. It is Unity. But, having confidence in that and understanding that is part of the process of fully embodying the Divine Purpose.

Leo – Fire – Tests, Allies, Enemies

What do I do?

Lightning Speed Vs. Circumspection

Next, we come to Leo, which is the first aspect of the element that's related to what we would call the level of our soul. And Leo is action. In the Hero's Journey, it’s Tests, Allies, Enemies. And in that sense, is it's that the Higher Self will test us. And also, the Higher Self is our ally, and our enemy is the (lower) ego. The test will be passed if you follow your intuition, and if you are not in alignment, then it'll be a difficult period. Sometimes energetically this period could be difficult for you when you're going through this cycle.

But it also the Being brings abundance. So if you're in alignment, usually this is a very nice period. Leo is a nice energy when you're in alignment.

But Leo's about action, “What do I do?”

If we were going through something, if we were trying to create something…

Let's say, we're looking at a cycle of a year and we're trying to do a project, when you get to Leo, you would say during the first three energies you're in the process of investigating.

Now Cancer is when you've decided what you're going to do. And you take a second, Cancer is introspective. You have to pump the brakes a little bit.

You started your planning in Cancer, and finally when you come to Leo, this when you go out there. It’s time for action, and you're aligned with your purpose and what you're supposed to do.

And in that sense, the two aspects of Leo are related to action. We have the lightning-like speed, the decisiveness of being able to act on the moment immediately, but also being able to understand when it's better to pull back into circumspection, and come back from from another perspective and deliberate.

Obviously, when we're in alignment, if something is happening in the moment and you just know and you're there, you know when you need to act right away. But, if you're impulsive and you don't take time to understand the situation and you don't understand the situation, we can act impulsively and create a problem.

On the other end—same thing with deliberation—deliberation can be good, but if you deliberate forever, it turns into self-doubt and you don't act and you don't make moves when they need to be made.

Instructor:

Well, I think employment opportunities often can relate to this, right? Somebody brings you an opportunity—sign the contract tomorrow. Otherwise, the opportunity is going to fly away. And if you are conscious and you're able to observe, and you're not just following whether impulse or fear, then you might be able to see, “Okay, is this a good decision.” You might have to proceed quickly, in order to take the opportunity.

Another example, where someone is purchasing a property, sometimes the agent is not too above board, and they use the old trick where they say, “Oh, I have another buyer. They're calling me. They're going to sign the contract. Do you want it now or not?!” And you haven't done your due diligence to investigate the property, right? So if you take lightning speed at this moment, you could be buying a dud, a scorpion infestation, a house full of termites.

So, it's not that we should always act quickly and say, “Oh, I was so decisive. I made an executive decision.” No, well, it depends on the decision. It's not that, because that sounds cool. I'm just always going to be snappy with my moves, right? Sometimes it is important to act quickly. Sometimes it's important to take the time.

Again, if we think of someone who's always hesitating and opportunities come to them, say the girl you like says, “Do you want to go out Saturday night?”

And he's going, “Oh, should I? Should I? I don't know.”

He’s thinking to himself, “Oh, what’s she going to think of me?” And, “Oh and she's friends with so-and-so. Maybe I should think about it.”

Well, is the opportunity going to come again? Perhaps not, because the way the Reality moves is that if we have a certain alignment, something comes to us and we say no, then we may not get another chance, because we have this energy that's rejecting, but some things we should say no to, right?—If something is going to be harmful to us, or harmful to others.

If we are not sure, and we didn't weigh up all of the information, such as in the case of not investigating the property before buying the termite infested house. Well, then shame on us. There was no “great executive decision”. It was just poor judgment. And we can't say, “Oh I made a quick move, and they tricked me.” No, you tricked yourself.

So we have to understand that it's not that we should always move quickly. It's not that we should always hesitate, but we need to understand the situation, and that's what it means to be conscious, is to access all the information that we can, and to decide wisely rather than saying it should always be a certain way. To know what to do, we have to assess.

Virgo – Earth – Inner Cave

What do I serve?

Accept Everything Vs. Ability to Differentiate

Then we come to Virgo, which is related to the Inner Cave, or the approaching of the inner cave, the approaching of the ordeal. We say that Virgo into Libra is the trial of the depth of the hero now descended into the underworld, and are they to come back or not?

And the question here is, “What do I serve?” And this is what we would say, if you're on the path, right? This is related to the Dark Night of the Soul. It's when everything is going on. You have to face yourself; you have to face your fears; you have to face your pain. And this is where we would say the surrender needs to come. The surrender comes from the balance of Libra.

From the Virgo going into Libra, is that moment where you're going to have the awakening or are you going to run back to the regular life? And what you'll see after these signs, like I said, the first six leading up to this, where you have that inflection point, is all these other things, even after we're in the spiritual work, you do flutter back and forth between them. There's not really a perfection there unless (and until) you complete the work, right? You're always going to be somewhere in a gradient.

But what you'll see is as you move through these, if you choose to serve the ego, rather than serving the Being, then energetically, you'll see that the other ones are much more kind of split as we move forward from here. Because either you're in balance; you’re in coherence, or you're not, that's what Libra is.

Leo kind of prepares for this because of the Tests, Allies, Enemies. And it's kind of Dagobah with Luke Skywalker, right? And he's about to go to the cave and to Yoda says, “What's in the cave?”

And Yoda replies, “Only what you bring with you.”

Well, he brings his weapon and then he has a more difficult time and eventually he gets through that trial, which we would say bleeds into his first encounter with Darth Vader, but he loses a hand, right? And he is knocked down because he wasn't necessarily truly ready for it. He wasn't quite listening to the Voice of Reason, even though he was able to get through that, right?

It’s pretty straightforward. We accept everything or are we going to have discernment? And this embodies the trial, what we call in the Gnostic framework the Fifth Minor Mystery, but it's basically like you're hearing from the Being and the ego of mystical pride, the spiritual ego is going to try to—it knows that you see the ego—so the ego tries to hide basically as your Divinity as well. And it's going to try to get you to hide usually in a method, like get attached to some type of thing that's still spiritual so that you “continue along on the spiritual path”, but you miss the stages of detachment and the surrender.

So your false sense of self now becomes, for example, “I'm a plant medicine distributor, or I'm a yoga instructor,” right? That can happen, right? So, this is where the test really is, “Am I listening to the Being or am I not?” And that's where it comes.

Obviously, we want to accept everything that comes from Divinity, and we need to be able to discern what's NOT actually coming from divinity. So I think it's pretty self-explanatory.

Instructor:

For example, someone shows up and gives you drugs and then here and someone says, “Oh, it's a gift from God. I’ve got to accept everything. He brought it to me, so I should take it.” Maybe not, right?

But if you look at the fundamental Buddhist philosophy, it's all about acceptance, accepting the present moment. And we need that teaching in the beginning, so we can start to give up our pain and our resistance, our self-torture. Then at some point, we do have to have discernment, right? The wrong person comes and says they want to marry you, and go, “Oh, well it must be from God. You know, I shouldn't have an opinion, because I'm so detached. I'll just say yes, right? It must be from God.” No, we have to have discernment. That could be a very poor choice.

Or maybe we go to a school, and the guru is secretly a black magician, and we go, “Oh, something feels wrong here. Oh, I don't know, he's making money shoot out of his head, and he's giving it to everyone, and now they're kissing his feet, and he's giving them fruit. I don't know what's happening,” you know?

“But I should accept everything. So this is my school,” right?

So we have to understand that acceptance is very important. It's very important for our psychology and to find balance. But when we take it too far, we become a fool. You become a foolish saint, and we want to find our hearts so we can have inspiration, we can feel that devotion, the love, the Divinity.

And don't turn off your mind completely, right? Don't just think, “Oh, because they said this, now I should do whatever they said.” We still have to have discernment, and sometimes we have this feeling that something is not quite right, but then we think, “Oh, I should be so accepting,” and we let that override it. That's just another ego that's a “me who accepts everything” and doesn't differentiate.

Instructor:

It's a good place to talk about mystical pride, actually, because the way we focus on the teaching, we actually really try to get to this point of inflection that we call the awakening or that surrender moment to connecting to the Infinite potential of the real Reality. And that really has to happen by a certain point in the energy. It could happen before, but if it doesn't happen, you'll be put into this test regardless.

The part up to the halfway point is going to naturally progress through the energies of nature. Once you start working towards this goal, and if you do poorly before, it's going to be such that, you will probably fail the test right here at this point.

And if you work towards it, if you have the comprehension before coming to this test, then it'll be easy. But the thing is the mystical pride.

The true nature of reality is infinity, right? So if you actually contact that and you actually have comprehension of that, then you realize that it's impossible to know everything and it's impossible to be a master. A true master, say, Jesus or Krishna, someone who I would say has actually achieved that state, never calls themselves a master, right? The ones that are running around calling themselves masters, [are not at the level of Jesus and Krishna].

If you think you've learned everything or you think you have more than everybody else as “the teacher”, it's because you still have a false sense of self. And that's the trap.

I think of the words that they have in New Age all the time, “my truth, my truth,” that is so toxic to actually finding the Objective Truth.

And here's the thing. Objective Truth is beyond conscious perception and even beyond the consciousness itself. You can't [hold onto it, nor remember it, nor describe it]. As soon as you come back from touching it, your view of it still is subjective. So in a sense, that's where this idea of “my truth,” [has a problem]. It should really be “my perspective;” this is your perspective.

You [either] have a perspective that has encountered truth, or you have a perspective that is yet to have encountered that, but it's still NOT the Objective Truth because there's nothing in that reality.

But the thing is that when we become identified with our specific truth as a reality, then that means that we haven’t contacted what the actual Reality is, because all perspectives are valid, because they're all a perspective of this actuality from a different perspective point.

And actually to grow our consciousness, we—after this point, if you're successful—you realize that you actually, after first taking a straight line or whatever method that works for you, that gets you close to this, and then if you find your own centre and then become your own teacher; and then you actually branch out and the umbrella becomes, “I need to experience more perspectives.”

Because by understanding more perspectives, I actually grow my perspective point. But at the beginning, that could be a little confusing. And that's another thing that the mystical pride trying to do is have you jumping from school, to school, to school, (confused, lost, endlessly searching) all of these things.

But this idea, we call it Complacency in the Work, where “I already know everything, so there's nothing more to learn.” That's how you get trapped and you get stuck in this place. And we have to be able to see that and understand what the goal is. Well, it’s not even a goal, but to understand from all the teachers that are talking about what that truth is, then we need to find it ourselves. No one can show it to you.

So somebody tells you this is my method, it's how I did it. Maybe that worked for them. Most likely not if they're telling you that, but even if they did, if they're following the teacher that is connected to Unity consciousness, they should tell you that you still have to find your own way. They can only guide you close to the point and then you have to face yourself.

And that's why most people can't get through this trial too. The reason why they latch onto the mystical pride is because people don't want to face themselves. It's usually the pain, the suffering.

You can have the reverse [case happen as well]. You have the left-handed path where they conquered all their fears and they want power. That's also [something that happens], but usually most of the time, people want to be good. It's their fears, their traumas that they're scared to sit with.

And the thing is, when we get to this point, we have to sit with these things and disidentify. They say that an emotion lasts 90 seconds. And of course, there's more than one [emotion that] you have to sit with, but each one of those things that really keep you compartmentalized away and inside. If you're able to process it and allow the consciousness, go into meditation, and put the consciousness on all the things that are keeping you attached to the reality, you give each one of those things 90 seconds, then you'll be able to disidentify.

But of course, it's not that it's not necessarily that simple because we're attached to our pain and our fear. We're attached to our suffering. That's something that we don't realize. We are actually are attached to the suffering. We all say when the things are bad, “I don't want that.” But then at the same time, every ego has two poles. So when the thing that we associate with pleasure comes around, that's going to lead to that suffering, we don't want to give that up.

So these are all these things [we have to get through in this growth process]. But this is this energy here, and if we were using a different system, if we were looking at octaves, [the midpoint is] the same thing as the semitone. This is usually that point that's really important when we're working towards understanding and that's the trip into the inner cave and understanding “what do we serve”. Is it the Divine Purpose or is our own selfish machinations?

Libra – Air – The Ordeal

What do I generate?

Stand Up & Fight Vs. Peace & Diplomacy

The next aspect is Libra, and this is related to balance. And in this sense, the question we have is, “What do I generate?” Which we could also say as, “What do I create?” And balance is how we create (safely & most effectively) in this reality.

Another thing we talk a lot about here is coherence, and that is creating from the centre. And the truth is that coherence doesn't necessarily mean you're aligned with Divinity.

If we look at a lot of the people who are running the world right now, whether they're secretly black esotericists or they're just people with low moral values, they're actually very coherent, but they're coherent because they have no morals, right? So they're able to create in coherence with the ego because we could say that creation comes from being balanced with your mind, emotions, and actions.
Now, the reason why the average person who is also in ego doesn't create indiscriminately, like say Jeff Bezos or Donald Trump, is because even if we are chasing our egoic things, we do tend to have morals, even if we don't listen to them. So we're not actually in coherence. You know, we may be working against those things because our mind works against our heart, but there's something there.

But, what we create is completely about being in alignment and finding balance. And Libra is the scales, right? It's also ruled by the planet Venus, and this is related also to what we would call in Gnosis, chastity. But the aspect of being in balance and having the energy balanced. And in that sense, we are able to create in this reality, whether that's in alignment only internally (within our own mind-heart-will) or internally and externally (within ourselves and with the Divine Purpose, the “will of the Universe”, the flow of Spirit, the way, the Dao, etc), the creation comes from being in an in alignment within our vehicle.

What do we create? We need to know when we need to stand up and fight for things or when to be peaceful and diplomatic. We start to see these things as you go forward, where you lay on the side of these questions, it's very clear cut and dry in this sense.

If you are in balance with the Divine Purpose, you'll rise up against things that are wrong, and you'll try to keep things usually peaceful, diplomatic, and not look for a violent solution. On the other hand you look at one of those world leaders wherein they're in coherence with their ego, that's why we see wars and we see all the things that are going on in the macro scale. We can say the entire planet is a being, and it has an ego consciousness. And the reflection of the general population is a reflection of the Earth's ego consciousness.

So, as you can see, if anybody turns on the news—which we don't suggest watching too often—but right now, there's more of an ego consciousness on the planet, and that's what's being acted out through these world leaders or the 1% or all of these people, that they generate, but they generate for their own selfish reasons.

Instructor:

Some people have the problem of being overly antagonizing. So they like the struggle, they like the drama. And therefore, they think that everything is the hill they should die on. There might be a particular hill where it's good to stand up and fight. But because the person is caught mechanically and just thinking, “I have got to fight for anything!” Think of the activist that just wants to hold the sign for every cause because they just want to fight something, right? These people will pick a fight, perhaps at the wrong time. And then cause a lot of drama. Maybe they will win their little war, but it's not necessarily something that meaningful.

So the question [is], “What do I generate?”—It could be a lot of hot air, a lot of struggle, a lot of conflict. And maybe it's some silly things, right?

Audience Member:

I do that too much. Absolutely.

Instructor:

It's something to reflect on, because if we get caught in this, we can like it, right? We just think, “Yeah, let me tell them off,” right?

I remember one workplace I was in. And of course, when you work in a big company, then there are always people sitting somewhere else deciding something that doesn't work for you. And so you think, “Well, let me just go and tell all of them, and then we can fix it because they're making things hard for me.”

And if you try to fight all of them, you'll either get fired or you'll just be really unhappy at work, right? So some things maybe it's a good idea. And other things, sometimes we have to choose the peace and diplomacy, right? Which is what they talk about in corporations or in the business world, basically pick your battles. If you need to go to bat, make sure it's something that's a worthy cause. Because if you fight all of them, you'll be blue in the face, and some of them were just draining your energy. So we have to assess this.

Scorpio – Water – The Reward

What do I seek?

Caution Vs. Courage

So, the next is Scorpio. And Scorpio is a very interesting sign that we talked about where we start to see the dual nature of these signs coming out. We could say that this is the first with a dual planetary ruler. It's very esoteric. Scorpio is ruled by Mars, but also Pluto.

Scorpio is also a very sexual symbol, which is also with the esoteric mysteries and the work with the creative energy and transmutation, makes it a very profound sign in that sense as well.

Scorpio is basically, “What do I seek?” What do I desire? This is all about desire. Obviously, to connect to the Being, we have to free ourselves from desire. But there is a divine inquietude, right? There's [a higher desire] from the Divine aspect, so the desire to be in alignment, to be in alignment with the Reality, or [in the lower aspect, it is] literally our desires, our physical desires.

And Scorpio is also related to transmutation.

We think of Scorpio as a scorpion, right? But Scorpio actually has two animals that are related to this sign and that is a scorpion and an eagle.

Now, the scorpion has a poisonous tail and it can sting itself, right? And in that sense, this is the symbol of what we want to do on the initiatic path. It is that we want to alchemize the poison. So we sting ourselves with the poison. We work with our own poison to then birth the eagle, which is actually a symbol of the Spirit. And that's all [carried out] through the sexual transmutation and working with the creative energy. That's why Scorpio is very much a very on the polar opposite.

We could say that Pluto or Hades is literally related to our lower psychology, the Tree of Knowledge in the Bible. It is the hell realm. So it's the lower intellect itself. Whereas Mars represents the will of the Father, the Divine Will of the soul. So there's this dual aspect to it.

If you align yourself with the one side of Scorpio—I don't know if people know any Scorpios that are very, asleep, but they tend to be very sexual people and very into the material.

At the same aspect, it's an energy that that allows us to really grow and work in alchemy. —And the inner alchemy of transforming oneself and that's the energy of the sign.

Instructor:

Do we have Scorpios here, by the way?

Audience Member:

One.

Instructor:

It's actually a powerful energy for the work, when applied for the work. And then on the opposite aspect of it, it's a very powerful sign for debauchery.

And especially on the rising, because sometimes the rising is more important than the sun sign. So that's a very powerful, astrological position for doing inner alchemy and transmuting the lower ego into the solar ego etc.

The two poles of this are Caution-Courage, right? We need to know when to be tempered, we need to know when to rise up and move in the right direction.

When we're in alignment, same thing. We know when it's the right point to step back, and we know when it's the right time to fight. It's similar to the last sign with the fighting for something. But this [sign] is more in an internal sense, where we have to be in the soul.

Instructor:

There's also practical application as well. If you think of someone who's very courageous, they feel that they've conquered their fear, but they're foolish. Maybe they say, “Oh, we're going to go up this mountain. We're going to stay here. It's okay. I'm not afraid,” and then they get eaten by a bear because they just had raw courage with no assessment. So it could be good to be cautious.

But then again, the other side is where someone is consumed by fear. I think of a certain family member, who had every time someone in the family maybe purchased a property or made some business decision, they'd always say “No, you shouldn't do that. It's dangerous. What if you can't pay the bank?” And all these kinds of things. So they had very, very strong caution. But there was no wisdom there. So it was just [a sentiment of], “We should always just hold back, just hang back and see in case because we're worried,” like the conservative or overly conservative investor.

It's not that we should always be cautious or we should always say, “Oh, I have no fear, let me go into this situation.” But again, to be conscious is not to always do anything, it is to see the situation for what it is. So if it's a good business decision, then you will have the right amount of caution and courage. Caution to assess everything, courage to proceed without fear.

And it’s the same with courage. Let's say you're going to go and perform. And if you were going to be cautious, you might say, “Oh, I should prepare for this performance and make sure that I do the performance well,” but it's not that I say “No, I'm not going to take that gig.”

Maybe someone says, “Okay. The gig is in a few days. Can you go?” The caution will weigh up if I can perform. It's not going to say, “Oh, I'm so courageous,” and go out there and do a terrible performance. So we have to balance these two parts.

Instructor:

And Scorpio is also related to The Reward and the reward is the Solar Bodies. That the alchemizing of the lower ego into the higher ego of the of the Soul. In a myth, it's usually a weapon. So, we'll use the Star Wars example again, because it is literally based on the Hero's Journey. When he (Luke) goes to Jabba's Palace and by then he has constructed the new lightsaber.

The reward is the new lightsaber.

Luke returns with a new light saber to rescue Han Solo. Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi, 1983. Fair Use

Sagittarius – Fire – The Road Back

What do I intend?

To Possess Nothing Vs. To Command Everything

Of course, their hero has returned from the underworld or the road back, and that's what Sagittarius is related to. Sagittarius is the Centaur; he is now the man on the horse's body, and in Gnosis we would say that this is the representation of a Hasanamussen, or someone who has achieved some level of alignment with the Being, they've incarnated the Soul, but they haven't finished the work yet. They still have egos. They're both man and body, but the man is above the animal aspect of himself. So it's going in that direction. (Traditionally in Samaelean Gnosis, this term Hasanamussen can also carry the implication that the practitioner has gotten stuck with a double center of gravity which they are unable to come out of. Here, we are using it more loosely to refer to a stage of development.)

With this sign we have, “What do we intend?” That's the question that we ask here. And when you see what the road back is—you've established some level of Divine Self—we could say that this person, looking at their spiritual journey, has become a master, and master meaning not that they've completed the work, but that they've incarnated the Soul.

In the esoteric sense, mastery is related to the work in the horizontal line (the material, the matter). So you would say that if you've prepared the vehicle to receive the higher aspect, then you probably have psychic abilities and all these things. This is what we attribute to being a master, which is why we also say in the series that we need to be cautious about the term “master” because it doesn't actually mean conscious. It just means like when you are a master blacksmith, you've done a lot of work and you became a good blacksmith.

A master in a spiritual sense is someone who's developed spiritual abilities, sure, yes. But they could be conscious, they could not be. The awakening is not actually related to the work with the transmutation and the creating of the Solar Bodies.

But (at this stage of the journey) this person comes back (from the cave, from facing certain difficulties of the path) and they have some level of spiritual attainment, we could say. And then that's what we see here, where the intentions are important, because you can say that actually a being at that level could be more dangerous, right? Plenty of people in high positions that have some level of consciousness. They've done some work and they've now turned it into use for their ego.

Probably, actually most of the system—pretty much—most of the systems on the planet are run by people we could put in this category, that have some esoteric knowledge, and they've used it to have personal gain. So the opposites here that we have is to Possess Nothing or to Command Everything.

And obviously, we don't objectively possess anything in the sense that everything is Divinity, and if we're one with Divinity, we're aligned with that, then we don't need to chase the material. But at the same time, it's not to be foolish, right? You don't want to be homeless on the street. “Oh, I just gave up everything. Because nothing matters and it's all an illusion and I'm so spiritual. I'm going to go live under the bridge and that's how I'm going to help society,” right?

Yes, we don't want to chase the material. We don't want to chase desire. We don't want to make it the focal point, but it's all a perspective. We, awaken the consciousness not to run away and escape like we hear a lot in New Age, but actually to be able to then come back and then consciously work within the system.

So being able to consciously work in the system, you're going to have to possess things, but it shouldn't be for a desire or for material gain, but if you need to attain things to help with your mission of diffusing the Divine Purpose, then those are the right times that you should possess certain things. But of course, if it's for some type of foolish desire of your personality, then you say no to it. Maybe it's not important, it's not in alignment.

And the same goes with the command everything. The examples we use are of all these world leaders or these entertainers that are maybe in esotericism. They misuse this. So they have the ability to experience and they use it for their own personal gain to become famous, to have power. But at the same time, sometimes you need to be able to command things, but we need to understand that it doesn't actually come from you. It comes from being in alignment with Reality.

There may be times you may need to use abilities to command the elements, to do all these things, but not to take credit for yourself and to use it for selfish reasons. So, the intention's important here. Like, what is your intention? Why are you in spirituality? In spirituality, to become a co-creator in unity with the Reality and everyone else and to help others with that Divine Purpose?

The Divine Purpose basically is to awaken and to help others awaken because they are you as well. So thus you're helping yourself awaken by helping others. But, or did you get into this because, “Oh, I became powerful and strong, and now I'm going to use this to subjugate others and have disciples.” That's exactly what Sagittarius is, the Hassnamussen, right? Everyone's a hassnamussen at this stage, whether they're aligned with Purpose or not. But it’s how you want to use that.

And of course, at the very, very lower end of the spectrum is if you never even achieved the spiritual inquietude, maybe you're not commanding everything, but you desire to command everything. So you're just stuck as the person who, works at 7-Eleven, but you still have your delusions of grandeur. And you also possess nothing.

And also, this is the first sign that's related to the aspect of what we call the top of the Tree of Life or the Spirit. And this is the part of reality that is always in coherence. It's the part that's unmanifested.

When we try to balance things, we have to balance ourselves here in this in the lower quaternary. This is our mind, our emotions, and our energy, body, and then also our soul to an extent has to be balanced as well.

It's probably a little more abstract to describe what that is, but we could say that, for example, worship and power is related to that level. That's a duality there. That level is not as split as we are. We wouldn't say the angels are unconscious, but there's something that keeps them separate. And part of that which is keeping them separate has to do with these things in our psychology, in our unconscious, because we could say that the inverse of that plane (the middle triangle) is more related to our unconscious, rather than our subconscious, and those more deeper unconscious desires are related actually to that level of reality, and that balance (or lack thereof).

Capricorn – Earth – Resurrection

What do I use?

To Have no Ties Vs. Loyalty

Okay, now we're at Capricorn. The question of Capricorn is, “What do I use?” We say that Capricorn is really related with the material. It's the material at its highest aspect, it’s an earth sign, but the earth sign. that is related to Spirit. So in its application, Capricorn should be a good use of the material. Seers that see forward into the Age of Capricorn say that's when the humanity on this planet, for example, after having refound Spirit during Aquarius, will begin to become synergetic with the Maya and the Matrix around them, and actually using the Divine aspects of the Reality.

In the inverse way, if it's the ego, the ego likes to see, “What do I use?” Like, “What can I get out of it for myself?” But in a sense, it's more how we interface, the energy of this is how we interface with matter. And on the Hero's Journey on the spiritual path, this is related to Resurrection.

Resurrection is what we would say is the moment where you would have fully evolved from a being of the lunar aspect or a third dimensional being into a sixth-dimensional being (a solar being). So you have completed the alchemical transmutation and that process, and shed the physical body as Jesus of Nazareth did at the end of his time. He dies on the cross. The last thing that had to go is the physical body. Why? Because a being that resurrects as a sixth-dimensional body can come into the third dimension. So there's no purpose for it (keeping the third dimensional body). The last thing that attaches you to this after you've completely transformed your psychology is the physical body itself. So that's what Resurrection is.

And then in that sense, it's the mastery of matter because the Soul, we think of it as Divine in the light—Divine—but the Soul is just a higher, more subtle form of matter. Each layer has its own form of matter, and only at this layer are we identified with it, so of course, the beings that are higher are aware of what reality is, but it is a mastery of matter that resurrection entails. So, that's where we have the, “What do we use?” and it's related to matter.

And then the poles we have here is to have no ties, to be completely detached. And also, loyalty to others. And in this sense, we need to detach from reality. We have to understand that everything is illusory, but it can't become this cold indifference.

To say, “Oh, everything [doesn’t matter],”—completely apathetic, right? That's what it is to have no ties. To have no ties is to be able to not let attachment pull you off of the mission, not to be too wrapped up in the mundane things of everyday life, but we don't want to make that have us be cold.

And loyalty is [the other part of this puzzle] too. I mean, loyalty to Source, loyalty to others as an expression of that Source. Right? But not overly trying to people-please, and letting that that harm you, and taking you off of your own direction and path as well.

The last the last two are the really high ones.

Aquarius – Air – Return with the Elixir

What do I know?

Contempt for Death Vs. Respect for Life

Next, we have Aquarius, which we're in the Age of Aquarius now, which we could give a whole lesson on that another time. But Aquarius is another one ruled by two planets, and it’s not just that Aquarius is very dual, but the planet that rules it in the modern times is very dual in itself. Uranus is basically the manifestation of Aquarius in the planetary energy.

And in a sense, the energy of Aquarius is the return of information. If we look at how the Age of Aquarius is manifested on the population, what you have is both, in a spiritual sense, the revelation of all of the mysteries coming out, and you can find all this stuff online, and maybe you don't understand it. It's not put to you in the right way. But everything has to be revealed.

On the other end, on the myavic end, it's also a time of information. Technology, AI, all of this. This is the energy of Aquarius. Anything that was hidden has to come out. All of the scandals we see, the Epstein files, all of this, the darkness behind society that's always been there.

Actually, maybe it was even worse during Pisces. You go back a few 100 years. People were raping and pillaging all across the world still. So there was still darkness, but we suppressed things in Pisces, everything was suppressed in Pisces. And in Aquarius, everything comes to the front. Even the dark is still here, even though the planet is coming up more.

So, the question for Aquarius is, “What do I know?” And on the Hero's Journey, it's Return with the Elixir, because the master at this point has now discovered and aligned with absolute Unity and Truth. The elixir is the elixir of life or the immortality, becoming immortal is the comprehension of the of the eternal truth. But Aquarius is all about, “What do I know?” And thus, the dual aspect here is all about the true nature of reality. You're coming out of Capricorn, Capricorn represents death and Saturn.

Saturn is actually the other ruler of Aquarius, which will show you that duality, Saturn being related to death and the material. Well, we have Contempt for Death and Respect for Life. The true mystery is that—the attachment to the illusion?—Nothing dies! Death is simply rebirth. There is no death. And we have to understand that. And understand our purpose.

And the contempt for death, though, can't turn into a disregard for life, in that sense. But truly it, this whole aspect of being in balance with this is understanding that true nature. So it's both not being attached to the concept of being afraid of death, because death is an illusion. That could be one end, or you could be out of balance that way. Or, you come to the idea to an extent, but you're still out of balance in the sense [that you have] some type of arrogance or pride and disregard for others.

“Other people's lives don't matter.”

“Everyone is fake.”

All of this, those type of egos that can come with the New Age kind of thing.

“I've been trapped on a prison planet.”

“Everybody else is a robot.”

“I don't have to care about anybody else.”

So you don't you don't want to do that either. But the true, the true knowing, if you know what the first mystery is—what we would call it here—but the, the ultimate truth of reality, [if you knew that] then these things would naturally be in alignment. Because you understand that both one, death is an illusion, and two, life is the experience, is the point of everything.

So everyone going through the experience is just other aspects of yourself also going through the same process. And even connected on bigger levels, we could say the planet is awakening. Or it's at its low point, but it's about to start awakening, and the reflection on the ego consciousness is all of that being [that], as the planet awakens, more people will have the inquietude to awaken. It's all connected as above, so below. When we understand that process, there's no reason to be out of balance with this.

Pisces – Water – Master of Both Worlds

What do I comprehend?

Indifference Vs. Love

You'll see that also with the last one too.

With the last sign, we have returned to Pisces, and the Hero’s Journey [is complete]. Hopefully you are a master of both worlds. If you didn’t [grow then you] come back around, you will be in the ordinary world. (Says to Ruth,) “You changed it to what do I comprehend?”

The question on this actually, sometimes, it's also, “What do I believe?” which, in a sense, if you have comprehension of truth, then you don't have belief.

False belief is a result of not having what we would call Gnosis. But a good word for we could use for this is faith. We could say that blind faith or belief is related to not yet experiencing Truth, so we believe what someone else has said. And it's not necessarily the worst thing in the world if we're not attached to it.

I mean, to an extent, right, we talked about discernment being one of the things in one of these opposites. Let's say we're growing and we have conscious faith or direct experiential contact, Gnosis with the truth, but we're still developing our bodies. We don't have the abilities. And someone else who has the same knowledge that we do says, “Well, if you continue working like this, this might happen.” You can use deductive, intuitive reasoning to say, “Okay, well, I should continue this, and this should develop, because I can trust that person because they also have the conscious knowledge and the comprehension of something that I already comprehend, and they've been working longer.” Right?

But complete blind faith works when we just don't know, and someone comes along, says they're a master, and we just believe in something because we're told to. And really, the blind faith is ingrained in our society specifically because of the Age of Pisces and all of the religions that came through from the Age of Pisces.

There was a different time. Man was at a different level of development and they needed to develop the Soul so they could receive Spirit in Aquarius. So all of the teachings, pretty much all of the religions that came through that time, I mean, the poster child is Christianity and the Judeo-Christian religions, but even the certain Buddhisms, like Mahayana Buddhism, which came later and came during time of Pisces, they have this externalization of the work, and it was necessary for that time, because the population needed to do work at a certain level to reach a level where it could receive the Spirit.

But now actually, as we come into the next age and subjectively the experience shifts into the higher aspect, such that the teachings of the actual Spirit are returning, are now here.

(Referring to exoteric religions or external methods that focus from outside to in) It actually is the antithesis of the work. Well, we would say, an inverted teaching or a Luciferic (dense, unconscious) teaching. But it's a teaching of outside to inside, but the [true] teaching [for this time] is inside to outside.

And the thing is, the blind faith, because of the egoic memory—and we're talking about on a collective level—like the social way we've been living as a society like this for such a long time, that it's (the tendency towards blind faith) actually ingrained into us. It's not necessarily our subconscious egos that we created. Some of it too. For example, you’re raised in this religion, you have this in your subconscious.

But there's an unconscious aspect to us as a society that has attachments to these things, and that really needs to be broken and move forward. Because religion isn't something external or a method you follow. It’s union with God within. It’s religare (Latin, relink [to God]). So that's how we connect to the Spirit. And that comes only from the direct contact from doing the work internally and having the comprehension. And thus through the comprehension, we would have conscious faith, which is why I like using faith, because faith can be conscious or it can be, not; it could be blind.

But anyway, the two opposites here, you have indifference and love. Obviously, misappropriated in the egoic sense, love isn't love at all. If you contacted unconditional love, there are no conditions on it.

Maybe we'll probably talk about it in next week's class, because we're going to talk a little bit about finding partners and things like that in spirituality. But, there's a thing that goes around in the colloquial sense of the five love languages. And we always joke, that they're really the five unhealthy attachments. That's not what love is. Like, “Oh, you need to love me like this because this is the way I like to be loved.” That's a condition.

True love is a is an unconditional energy related to the level of Soul. It is an expression of the life force itself or that true energy. You can say there's an energy potential that's indifferent, and as it comes down, it expresses as that feeling of unconditional love or that unity of everything. And then at our level, even below, it then expresses as the creative sexual energy as well. But it's all the same energy, it's just how we perceive it at those layers of reality. And it certainly doesn't have conditions or, “I'll do this for you because you did this for me.” The ego doesn't even, can't comprehend love. So it already, that's how it is.

And then, of course, on the other end (of the two poles) on the indifference, it's (such that) if we understand truth, how can we be completely removed (detached)? You see this a little bit with some people maybe that have been activated without a spiritual teaching or the non-dualists. They say, “ah, well, it's all an illusion. Nothing matters. I don't even have to do work. I don't have to work with the Reality.”

“I'm metta. I love everything and I just sit back and nothing matters. That's it.” Well, that's also out of balance, right? So, we don't want it to turn into indifference, but we also want to connect. And that comes from the comprehension of the Reality and the Gnosis that comes from connecting to that Third State of Consciousness, connecting in the present moment to our own inner frequency.

Instructor:

We could say in summary that there are no rules. There are no absolutes. What there is, is the moment-to-moment awareness to observe, to understand every circumstance, and to decide consciously what is right for the moment.

The practice that we talked about is very simple and that is to hold the awareness moment-to-moment, to see the thoughts, the emotions, and the intentions that are arising within our field of awareness, to not identify with them and say, “Oh, that's me, because I felt like eating ice cream, so I should go eat it,” right? But just to see what arises, to observe, and to give it a moment so that we can decide consciously, rather than being pulled by all of these forces.

And this is something that we’ll develop a lot more in depth in the rest of the course. But for now, the homework for the week is to be observant of the body, observing the mind, observing the emotions, and to watch very keenly.

Now, what's going to happen is you might suddenly fall asleep, right? You're saying, “Oh, I'm mindful,” and then, “Ah, my friend calls me,” and then I go do something and then I go, “Oh yes. I said that I was going to observe and remember, let me try again,” and so we're going to wake up and fall asleep again and again throughout the day.

You know, “I get angry.” I lose myself and then I go, “Oh, I wasn't observing. I just let that emotion take me.” That's okay. We just keep observing and slowly we're going to increase this awareness as we put more energy to it.

Instructor:

I would say, also, a good suggestion to use at the beginning is to use maybe random alerts on the phone, because we might tell ourselves, “Oh, I'm going to make sure every, like hour or so, I'm going to try to focus on it,” and then we just go a whole day and we don't do it. And also with the random alerts, we don't get mechanically set on, “Oh, every time at one o'clock, I do it,” either.

There are like apps you can download that will just give you the random alarms. Every time one goes off you take a breath, try to be in the moment, try to look at your internal state through the eyes of the Observer. So we want to see what we're thinking, what are we feeling or the impulse is, anything. It's not good or bad. It's just to observe and to see what it is. And to see also that you can see it. Because if you can see it, then it's not you. You know, we so much will go through the mechanicity of being identified with thoughts and feeling.

Ruth Ansell

Initiatic Mastery

Initiatic Mastery

Gnosis East Village

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Initiatic Mastery

Initiatic Mastery

Am I in Coherence?

Gnosis East Village

Location

Contact