A weblog by a few young theosophists (well, in our thirties and forties so far). I've contributed a few posts and so have Chris Richardson and Pablo Sender. So far I've shared some of my ideas on religion, spirituality and theosophy that are not yet christalized enough for full blown articles on my own website. I will try to keep up links to my posts on this blog on my page with all my spiritual articles.
See also these two weblogs on myspace: Blavatsky blog, Theosophical Society weblog
"No man is conscious of more than that portion of his knowledge that happens to have been recalled to his mind at any particular time, yet such is the poverty of language that we have no term to distinguish the knowledge not actively thought of, from knowledge we are unable to recall to memory. To forget is synonymous with not to remember."
He is the eternal Reality, sing the
scriptures,
And the ground of existence.
Those who perceive him in every creature
Merge in him and are released from the wheel
Of birth and death.
327: "Find joy in watchfulness; guard well your mind. Uplift yourself from your lower self, even as an elephant draws himself out of a muddy swamp."
Life is unpredictable. Karma is just one of the ways chaos is organized.
In the big view of things it is impossible to wrong anyone. The negative act and later positive "reward" or justice for the victim is really all one action. The later justice is inherent in being victimized. Cause and effect is "one thing" or one event in space-time, so to speak. While three dimensions has time being passed through in an infinite concantination of cause in effect. If one were to see things in four dimensions, or in which all time is in a stasis, or eternity, or in which time is an already complete dimension of space - then a cause and effect "unit" might be seen as an existence or thing in itself.
Mr. X banging Mr. Y over the head in 1996 C.E. exists as a single unit with both reincarnating in 3150 C.E., getting into an aero-car accident, with Mr. X going, to the hospital and Mr. Y from insurance getting a new aero-car to replace his junker.
So in the big picture it is impossible to wrong anyone, which isn't an excuse to do bad things because of course the wrong-doer still pays the karma. In the short term, using machiavellian methods often pays off because karma is usually a slow mover. This makes it hard to maintain the high ground because in the short run ethical behavior is more often than not a loser to the unethical. The individual or personality who is wronged may never in this incarnation and personality see justice, because karma is so slow moving. So the individual who strives to maintain the ethical high ground is almost sure to be a martyr just based on the karma from one lifetime. So when someone finds himself wronged - from one side of the question, it is a cause for joy, because something good also just happened to him in the eventuality of time. You can't fool Mother Nature.
"Yet how can this be?" it is honestly asked. "Do poverty or riches, feebleness or power, obscurity or rank, indicate the merit or demerit I have gained?" "Not at all," answers Theosophy; but your degree of happiness does. Happiness does not depend on wealth or station; sorrow does not heedfully follow small means or small influence. Joy and sadness are conditions of the mind, influenced, no doubt, by bodily surroundings, but not determined by them. The rich are not always happy, hence not the standards of past good; the poor are not always wretched, hence not the standards of past wrong-doing. It is the state of the mind, not the state of the purse, which shows what Karma implies in any case."
If any man once clearly sees that his present condition is but the result of his conduct in prior lives; that it means and expresses, not merely what he has done, but what he is; that it is not an accident or a freak or a miscarriage, but a necessary effect through invariable law, he has taken the greatest step towards contentment, harmony, and a better future. For note what clouds this conception clears away, and what impulses towards improvement it at once begets. The sense of injustice disappears. He may not, cannot, know the past careers of which he feels the now effects, but he knows what their quality must have been from the quality of those effects. He reaps as he has sown. It may be sad or pitiable or distracting, but at least it is just. Envy disappears also. Why should he envy the greater happiness of those who, after all, have a right to it, and which might have been his too if he had earned it? Bitterness is assuaged. There is no room for such when it is seen that the causes for it do not exist, and that the only person meriting condemnation is oneself. Best of all, there dies out resentment at Divine favoritism, that peculiarly galling belief that the Supreme Being is willful or capricious, dealing out joys and sorrows for mere whim, petting one child and chastising another without regard to moral worth or life's deserts. In such a being confidence is impossible, and the only theory which can restore it is the theory of Karmic Law, a law which is no respecter of persons, regards each man precisely as any other man, notes the very smallest acts in its complete account book, enters their value in the precisest terms, and when the time of settlement arrives - be it in the same incarnation or in one far off on the great chain - pays it with scrupulous fidelity. Centering thus responsibility for each man's lot in himself alone, Karma acquits Providence, calms resentment, abates discontent, and vindicates justice.
But it does even more than this; it stimulates endeavor. If we are now what we have made ourselves, we shall be what we make ourselves. The mold of the future is in our hands today. The quality of later incarnations does not arise from chance, or from a Superior Will, but is simply such as we impart to them through our present. Responsibility, power, are ours alone. It is just as certain that rebirth will be upon the lines we trace in this life, as that the later part of this life will be upon the lines traced in the former part. Rebirth is, in fact, an expression of character, and character expresses what we are and do. He, then, who desires a better reincarnation must better his present incarnation. Let him perceive the faults which mar his life - the sloth, the repining, the rashness, the thoughtlessness, the covetous spirit, the evil of hatred or uncharity - and let him master them. Above other faults, and embracing all, is that of selfishness, the sad love of personal desire as against the rights, the privileges, the happiness of brother men, a love which inflames every lower element in the human constitution, and kills all higher and richer sentiment. He who would prepare for himself a happier rebirth, may begin by making happier the lives of others. He may respect their rights, consult their feelings, extend their pleasures, generously sacrificing himself that they may profit. As he so does, his own higher nature is manifested, and finer satisfaction greet him with an unalloyed delight. By a blessed law of being, he who thus loses his life shall save it; for he not only tastes richer pleasure than any possible through selfish effort, but he molds his character in the grace and beauty of true manliness, and he molds, too, that new incarnation which is to fit the nature formed in this.
Certainly a principle which quickens the highest motives in human nature may well be the regenerator of human life. He who sees his present as the product of his past self, who foresees that his future will be the product of his present, who finds in Karma the unfailing treasury for every effort and every toil, who desires that rebirth shall have less of pain and more of gladness than he knows of here, will seek in generous service to fellowmen the highest happiness of his highest faculties, and trust for brighter incarnation to that law which cannot break, that force which cannot fail.
I once asked Stalking Wolf, "Grandfather, how come you're not cold in the winter or hot in the summer?"
He said, "I am, but heat and cold do not bother me."
I asked why not, and after a long pause in which he seemed to be weighing whether or not I was ready for his answer, he said,
"Because they're real."
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