SOUL'S BREAKFAST - Day Ninety-three

Dear All,

This morning I share with you a higher state 
from Mervyn that has fed me infinitely. 
It is part of his notes on Mysticism. Every 
time I see a fire I ‘remember’ this higher 
state. I believe one of the greatest blessings 
of being part of a School is that we are able 
to live certain experiences through other 
students. This state of Mervyn has stayed 
with me since I heard it for the first time. 
Every time I watch a piece of coal on fire 
I see Influence C being liberated from a 
prison. I hope this text may serve as a 
reminder and bring you a little closer to the 
awakening process lived by our Teacher.

With Love,

Hector

----
  
I remember studying some ex-Students from my 
old School in Canada and they seemed to 
think the whole thing required extraordinary 
efforts. It was like they were trying to use 
the will of the machine to awaken the Soul.

There are still 1000's of people all around 
the world stuck in this way. It is as if we 
need oars to row the yacht out of the 
Harbor! This was what I called 4th way #1.

But when a good wind came and it was time 
to abandon the oars and raise the Sails 
they would not. They insisted on rowing 
across the ocean.

Inexperienced Teachers often order a 
Student not to raise the Sails as they fear 
them and do not know what they are. This way 
they keep the Student stuck and often 
unwittingly will send a well-meaning person 
back to be crucified afresh.
 
Mysticism starts with the raising of the 
Sails and the Gods provide the Wind. To go 
into the open Sea is different than rowing 
around the shore.
 
As I evolved in the work and after 10m years 
of meetings I began to experience Aridity or 
dryness. There was no juice anymore, just 
the same old regurgitated angles, and people 
becoming more brittle in their work. 
I increased my efforts to counter this 
and then stopped dead.

It was not that I would not continue 
in this way, but that I could not.
 
I sensed the limitations of rowing versus 
the Sail and started to overcome the 
criticism of others that in applying 
the Sails I was slothful and lazy. This 
criticism had kept me rowing for many years. 

I started to understand that to "Know" truths
by a simple glance of the Soul was a Mode of 
Knowledge and Understanding far above the 
Human Mind. The Mind in its turn seeks after 
Truths by reasoning and will not tend to 
acknowledge the Superhuman or Mystical 
Modes, or even their existence.
 
One evening 5 years before I awoke I was 
sitting with some Students around a big coal 
fire. A Student had put on a fresh supply of 
Coal and we were sitting around, drinking 
wine and discussing "The Ray of Creation."
I heard great angles and counter angles. 
Passions were roused and disagreements 
abounded ... 

Quietly and without warning I was noticing 
the flames licking around the black coal as 
a beast of prey would lick the carcass in 
anticipation. I could still hear me Fellows 
and their discussions but now the flames 
were beckoning me.
 
Suddenly I saw trees growing for hundreds of 
years and dying. Then I saw them crashing to 
the Forest floor and more growing in their 
place, and the same thing happening over and 
over. My understanding went into warp speed 
and I saw eons of trees growing and being 
pushed down into the earth.

I saw that the first tree took a hundred 
years of soaking up the energy of the sun and 
containing it in its wood and the second and 
third and so on. Millions of years of 
captured Sun in wood being buried deeper and 
deeper into the earth. 
What a prison for this Solar energy! 
I thought of the Fall of Man.

I saw the Solar energy experiencing tragic 
suffering, disconnected completely from its 
origins and source - buried deep in the 
blackness of the Earth. At this point I felt 
in despair as I watched the energy in Hell. 
All hope abandoned, 
doomed to an eternal blackness.

There was something strangely familiar in 
this and it triggered a grief within me 
that all was lost.

Then ... What was that? The energy saw a 
light, but how could that be? There was no 
light here and yet it was coming nearer.

My God is a Miners Hat. Millions of years 
in this darkness had turned me into Coal 
and here a human Miner had dug down into 
the Earth to find me. For some reason I 
remembered in Snow White that the Dwarfs 
were digging down in the mines for Gems ...
 
I was in ecstasy thinking of the 
exhilaration the Solar energy in the Coal 
must have felt, because I was it too. In 
10 Minutes it was freed and transported to 
the outside world. Back into the light. I 
felt the Coal crying out with joy and relief 
at its deliverance. It was home and was now 
attached once again to the light 
and its source.

It was just like when I found the work.
I felt once again connected to the Source.
 
Hey, but now it was COAL. Yes it was 
reconnected to the source, but home was 
still a long way away. Just like me.
 
Now I was transported back to the fire and 
the flames were starting to really sprout.
What a lousy end for the coal! To have 
endured millions of tree lives and millions 
of years in the bowels of the earth and now 
just to be burned here in the fire 
to keep me warm.
 
 
Bang…
 
  
Another wave hit me - much bigger than the 
one which took me under the earth - and I am 
sure I could sense something (Which many 
years later became "The Nameless") close by.
 
As I exploded with energy I could see that 
the flames were not destroying the coal. Yes 
they were destroying the Coal, but they were 
also releasing the Solar energy trapped 
inside it. I was in ecstasy as I saw the 
Solar Energy now being released in the form 
of Fire and flames, leaping for joy up the 
chimney and home.
 
It was like Summer in Vivaldi's "Four 
Seasons" was being played and I could hear 
the squeals of delight and relief as the 
Solar Energy leapt up the Chimney and home.
 
I saw that at death I will be released from 
the creature as this was from the coal. 
Death was not destruction, but liberation.
 
I had just been privy to the most 
astonishing understanding and visions. I 
knew this was not imagination. I could not 
imagine at that speed and what about the 
quality of the realizations? 
It was to say, at the least, Miraculous.
 
I must have given off a sigh of some sort, 
because one of the Students asked me was I 
alright. I think I looked dazed as I 
adjusted to this slow ponderous world. The 
Leader looked at me in a quizzing Saturnine 
way and told me he would like to offer me 
a photograph.

"You have been in imagination" He said 
condescendingly. The others laughed and said 
"Come on Mervyn, What do you think about 
the Ray of Creation?" "I think it is real," 
I said and I realized that I could never 
tell them what had just happened.
 
But this time they were not going to make me 
abandon what had happened. 
I knew it was real.
 
I had been to Sea, not rowing or sailing, 
but in a Speed Boat, and it would take a 
long time for me to even begin to formulate 
the words for what had happened. 

I had tasted the Mystical States ... 
and none of them had noticed.

~ Mervyn Brady

SOUL'S BREAKFAST - Day Ninety-two

Dear friends,

Yesterday we started with a ‘sweet’ breakfast and I believe today we need some protein. And if we are looking for protein there is no one better than Mr. Rodney Collin. The following is a fragment of the legendary ‘Theory of Celestial Influence’. These angles have been very useful to me when I’ve met with people interested in joining the School and in my own Work.

I believe Rodney has the great virtue of explaining things in a very clear way, and at the same time keeping the mysticism behind the phenomena . I recommend you explore his angles, for even Mervyn used to say he was his closest teacher.

See you tomorrow!

H

Another curious psychological trick must be mentioned in connection with the moment when a man first hears about self-remembering. If he connects it with something he has heard or read before, with some religious or philosophical or oriental term with which he is already familiar, the idea immediately disappears for him, loses its power. For it can only open new possibilities to him as a completely new idea.  If it connects with some familiar association it means that it has entered the wrong part of his mind, where it will become pigeonholed like any other piece of knowledge. A shock has been wasted, and only with great difficulty may the man return again to the same opportunity.

When a man first hears about self-remembering, if he takes it seriously, all kinds of new possibilities immediately seem open to him. He cannot understand why he never thought of it before. He feels that he has only to do this, and all his doubts, artificialities and difficulties will disappear, and all kinds of things will become possible and easy for him, which before he regarded as completely beyond his reach. His whole life will be transformed ...

Thus self-remembering , or the practice of divided attention –though the first glimpse of it may seem extraordinary simple, easy and obvious- in reality requires a complete reconstruction of one’s whole life and point of view, both towards oneself and other people; as long as one believes that one has the power to do, that is, to make things other than they are, either internally or externally, the state of self-remembering seems to retreat from one the more efforts one makes to achieve it. What at first seemed just round the corner later begins to seem infinitely far off, impossible of achievement.

And yet many years of struggle and failure may be necessary before one comes to a curious psychological fact, which is in reality connected with a very important law indeed. This fact is that although it is extraordinarily difficult to divide one’s attention into two, it is much more possible for it to be divided into three: although it is extraordinarily difficult to remember oneself and one’s surroundings simultaneously, it may be much more possible to remember oneself and one’s surroundings in the presence of something else.

As we have seen, no phenomenon is produced by two forces: every phenomenon and every real result requires three forces. The practice of self-remembering or division of attention is connected with the attempt to produce a certain phenomenon, the birth of consciousness in oneself ...

What is this third factor which must be remembered? Each person must find it for himself, and his own form of it – his school, his teacher, his purpose, the principles he has learned, the Sun, some higher power in the universe, God. He must remember that he and his situation both stand in the presence of higher powers, are both bathed in celestial influence. Fascinated, he is wholly absorbed in the tree he notices: with divided attention, he sees both the tree and himself looking at it: remembering, he is aware of tree, himself, and of the Sun shining impartially upon both. 

SOUL'S BREAKFAST - Day Ninety-one

Dear friends,

I am excited to be part of this beautiful octave. "A" shared with me this daily practice around three years ago. At that moment it was a shock, as she would wake up at 4.30 in the morning to be able to have her ‘breakfast’ before her children woke up at 6.30. A little later on in the day, but I started doing it. I would wake up a couple hours before starting my day, and tried to listen or read something that would bring my soul to the surface. Sometimes it would take 15 or 20 minutes, some other times even 1 hour, but I wouldn’t go on until I felt the presence of my inner world all around my body. A similar feeling to the one I would get at meetings.

I invite you to try it. Pick a day when you are not too busy, and program one hour for your breakfast. Don’t stop after reading the text that comes that day to the list, keep looking. We can always rely on music, paintings, prayer. The moment comes when the soul emerges and embraces the machine. It comes to the foreground. This is such a good moment to start the day. Whenever I have time to do it my day completely changes.

I want to start these nine days with Rilke. The Book of Hours (the one translated into English by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy) has touched my inner world as no other poetry book has. This is a book Rilke finished writing when he was 27. During many years, even just a few years before his death, he felt frustrated for not being able to surpass the spiritual depth of this text from his youth.

The following poem for me epitomizes the Work. Something similar to the ‘If’ poem of Kipling, but here Rilke shows how God sees man:

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

I feel the following poem illustrates the feeling of sweetness and union that comes with a higher state. A total merging with the creator, where one wonders what would God do without a vehicle to experience his creation.

What will you do, God, when I die?

I am your pitcher (when I shatter?)
I am your drink (when I go bitter?)
I, your garment, your craft.
Without me what reason have you?

Without me what house
where intimate words await you?
I, velvet sandal that falls from your foot.
I, cloak dropping from your shoulder.

Your gaze, which I welcome now
as it warms my cheek,
will search for me hour after hour
and lie at sunset, spent,
on an empty beach
among unfamiliar stones.

What will you do, God? It troubles me.

I hope you are not tired yet =) I want to share still one more poem, as Rilke explores in it a very deep melancholic tone that has fed my soul deeply in moments of meditation. In these lines, Rilke discusses the life of humans. What happens with the experiences lived through the mechanics? Where do they go?

No one lives his life.

Disguised since childhood,
haphazardly assembled
from voices and fears and little pleasures,
we come of age as masks.

Our true face never speaks.

Somewhere there must be storehouses
where all these lives are laid away
like suits of armor or old carriages
or clothes hanging limply on the walls.

Maybe all paths lead there,
to the repository of unlived things.

And yet, though we strain
against the deadening grip
of daily necessity,
I sense there is this mystery:

All life is being lived.

Who is living it, then?
Is it the things themselves,
or something waiting inside them,
like an unplayed melody in a flute?

Is it the wind blowing over the waters?
Is it the branches that signal to each other?

Is it flowers
interweaving their fragrances,
or streets, as they wind through time?

Is it the animals, warmly moving,
or the birds, that suddenly rise up?

Who lives it, then? God, are you the one
who is living life?

All who seek you
test you.
And those who find you
bind you to image and gesture.

I would rather sense you
as the earth senses you.
In my ripening
ripens
what you are.

I need from you no tricks
to prove you exist.
Time, I know,
is other than you.

No miracles, please.
Just let your laws
become clearer
from generation to generation.

Thank you for your time!

See you tomorrow!

H

Michaelmas

Dear Beautiful Souls,

Today, September 29, is Michaelmas, the festival of the Archangel Michael, the spirit of our times.  The mood of our times is anxiety and Michael is the spiritual model and teacher of the courage, calmness and clarity that overcomes the mood of anxiety. If your machine is challenged by negative emotions; confusion, overwhelm, uncertainty, fear, Michael's spiritual sword can pierce your soul, filling it with light and strength.  This is a sword that brings grace, transformation and balance to your thoughts and actions. 

Michael's sword can appear in life in many forms. Certain music enters my soul bringing the sounds of courage to the soul such as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and the Ode to Joy. I see the sword of Michael in every life lesson that leads to love and freedom in my soul.

Naz 

For the Michael Age 
by Rudolf Steiner


We must eradicate from the Soul

All fear and terror of what comes towards us

From out of the future,



And we must acquire serenity

In all feelings and sensations about the future.



We must look forward

With complete equanimity to everything that may come,



And we must think only that whatever comes

Is given to us by a world directive full of wisdom.



It is part of what we must learn in this age:

Namely to live out of pure trust

Without any security in existence,



Trust in the ever-present help of the Spiritual World.



Truly, nothing else will do

If our courage is not to fail us.



And we must seek this awakening within ourselves



Every morning and every evening.