A Journey

I have noticed recently that there are several random viewers from different parts of the world beginning to be more frequent. As well, I would hope, as those of you who like to read whenever you can. This being said, before going any further, if you enjoy this blog or have enjoyed any other blog you have read, please share the whereabouts with someone you know. This may not be easy, as many are not the slightest bit interested. But try, if you can.

The reason for this blog; I am about to depart for a weeks holiday in Tenerife with my beautiful family. As well as this journey I will be taking another one, of a different nature. I will be reading Paramhansa Yogananda’s ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’. For those of you who have heard of this book, or even read it, will know what I am speaking of. Those of you who haven’t. Make some practical use of the internet and google it!

I am sharing this information with you who read this to say that I will not come back from Tenerife the same person as I went away. I will have read one more book, seen 7 more sunsets, seen my sons smile countless times. What more is there to pray for?

When I return from my holiday, I will be sharing several insights from this great book, by this great man. And for those of you who are interested it will take you about 3 minutes to read them. Or roughly as long as it has taken you to read this. There will be a Yogananda category and a Kriya Yoga Category for you to Read, enjoy and share.

Have a Blessed week. Enjoy the ups and downs. But, first, form your opinion about this post.

Practicing the Way

“Its like chopping down a huge tree of immense girth. You won’t accomplish it with one swing of your axe. If you keep chopping away at it, though, and do not let up, eventually, wether it wants to or not, it will suddenly topple down. When that time comes, you could round up everyone you could find and pay them to hold the tree up, but they wouldn’t be able to do it. It would still come crashing to the ground… But if the woodcutter stopped after one or two strokes of his axe to ask the third son of Mr. Chang, ‘Why doesn’t this tree fall?’ And after three or four more strokes stopped again to ask the fourth son of Mr. Li, ‘Why doesn’t this tree fall?’ he would never succeed in felling the tree. It is no different for someone practicing the Way.“

~ Zen Master Hakuin.

This is a wonderful quote for anyone practicing ‘the Way’, or, ‘a Way’. What you soon realise after walking any path for a certain number of days, weeks, years is that nothing miraculous occurs. No life changing experiences, no inner tranquility which the books and teachers speak of, no enlightening meditations. But, as the above quote tells us so very clearly, ‘You won’t accomplish it with one swing of your axe!’

‘If you keep chopping away at it, though, and do not let up, eventually, wether it wants to or not, it will suddenly topple down.’ This sudden toppling down which Hakuin is speaking of is a most evasive thing in the Western world! We want results right now, with one swing of our axe. “I’ve been meditating for six months now. Why am I not enlightened?” Is something one may ponder as time passes us by.

Practice a Way! The Way, your Way, my Way, her Way, his Way or even their Way.. But do not practice it with thoughts about the results coming from your efforts. Do not think of felling the tree. Just continue ‘chopping away’, hour after hour, day after day, purely because you love to chop at ‘your tree’. And, ‘eventually, wether it wants to or not, it will suddenly topple down.’

This will be unmistakable.

Strive for Freedom

“We must strive for freedom if we strive for self-knowledge. The task of self-knowledge and of further self-development is of such importance and seriousness, it demands such intensity of effort, that to attempt it any old way and amongst other things is impossible. The person who undertakes this task must put it first on his life, which is not so long that he can afford to squander it or trifles!”

~ G. I. Gurdjieff

Vocation

vo·ca·tion
[voh-key-shuh n] – noun

1. a particular occupation, business, or profession; calling.
2. a strong impulse or inclination to follow a particular activity or career.
3. a divine call to God’s service or to the Christian, Divine, Spiritual life.
4. a function or station in life to which one is called by God: the religious vocation; the vocation of marriage; a vocation to greatness!

“Among his various possible beings each man always finds one which is his genuine and authentic being. The voice which calls him to that authentic being is what we call ‘vocation.’ But the majority of men devote themselves to silencing that voice of the vocation and refusing to hear it. They manage to make a noise within themselves… To distract their own attention in order not to hear it; and they defraud themselves by substituting for their genuine selves a false course of life.”

Jose Ortega y Gasset.

Are you listening to the voice which is calling you to your vocation? Are you aware that there is an inner voice? Or, are you making noise within yourself, distracting your own attention and defrauding yourself!?

These are questions that require an answer, that can be answered if enough attention is paid to them. If you have never pondered a thing such as this; ‘vocation,’ ‘Life purpose,’ ‘Life Task,’ maybe now is the time? After all, you are reading these words…

We all have individual purpose in this life of ours. Each and every one of us is hear for a particular reason. Wether that is to produce an offspring, find a cure for cancer, become a world leader, or, torment another human being with our poisonous negativity!

My aim for this blog is only to hope that you take a short minute of introspection and ask yourself a simple question.. Are you happy where your life is right now, and feel you have found your ‘vocation?’ Makes no difference to me and my family, but it will have a huge difference to yours.

Thank you for reading, aim high, and never let someone tell you it isn’t possible!!

Fire

I came across a quote the other day which describes what many of us are searching for, but many in vain. Each of us has their own individual system, and they differ as far as you can imagine. I know people pursuing: Zen Buddhism, Hermetic Science, Islam, Christianity, and Gurdjieffs Fourh Way too name a handful of available systems.

One has to be unhappy and disillusioned with life to begin one of these paths, and how this occurs takes place in many forms. But once you know what it is you desire out of life, and find a way to attain this desire, you can begin to make efforts towards your aim.

The quote that embodies all of the above information is;

“People are throwing water onto wood and expecting fire, and when fire does not catch, they denounce the idea of fire altogether. It is the system which is to blame, and not the individual.”

If you want ‘fire’ to be present in your life. And I mean fire in a way that is your own idea of what it represents. All that is left is to find a system that will bring this ‘fire’ more abundantly into your life. Then all that matters is how much efforts you make towards this goal.

Please don’t throw water onto wood and expect fire.

A Challenge (part 6)

Note: there is an introduction and parts 1-5 that precede this.

“I challenge you above all to a deeper life, and I implore you for the sake of your fellow men to strengthen your contact with your own soul, so that you will have done your share in making revelation possible; so that you will have served your part in bringing in the light, and will therefore be in a position to take advantage of that new light and new information, and so be better able to point the way and clear the path for the bewildered seeker at that time. Those who are not ready for the coming events, will be blinded by the emerging light, and bewildered by the revealing wonder they will be swept by the living breath of God, and it is to you that we look to fit them for the event.”

Quote from Alice Bailey, Esoteric Psychology Vol 1.

A Challenge (part 5)

Note: there is an introduction and parts 1-4 that precede this. You can read them as a series, but each one on its own is significant.

“If you cannot yourself teach or preach or write, give of your thought and of your money, so that others can. Give of your hours and minutes of leisure, so as to set others free to serve the Plan; give of your money, so that the work of those associated with the New Group of World Servers may go forward with rapidity. Much time you waste on non-essentials. Many of you give little or nothing of time. The same is the case with money. Give as never before, and so make the physical aspects of the work possible. Some give of their very need, and the power they thereby release is great. Those on the inner side are grateful for the giving by those who can give only at great personal cost. Others give what they can spare, and only when it needs no sacrifice to give. Let that condition also end, and give to the limit, with justice and understanding, so that the age of love and light may be more rapidly ushered in. I care not where or to whom you give, only that you give, – little if you have but little time and money, much if you have much. Work and give, love and think, and aid those groups who are building and not destroying, loving and not attacking, lifting and not tearing down.”

A Challenge (part 4)

Note: there is an introduction and parts 1-3 that you can read

“I also ask you to sever your connection with all groups which are seeking to destroy and to attack, no matter how sincere their motive. Range yourself on the side of the workers for constructive ends, who are fighting no other groups or organisations, and who have eliminated the word ‘anti’ out of their vocabulary. Stand on the side of those who are silently and steadily building for the new order- an order which is founded on love, which builds under the impulse of brotherhood, and which possesses a realisation of brotherhood, which is based on the knowledge that we are, each and all, no matter what our race, the children of the One Father, and who have come to the realisation that the old ways of working must go, and the newer methods must be given a chance.”

A Challenge (part 3)

Note: you can also read an introduction, as well as part one and two.

“I challenge you also to make sacrifices; to give of yourself and your time, and your money, and your interest, to carry these ideas to those around you, in your own environment, and to the group in which you find yourself, thus awakening your associates. I call you to a united effort to inculcate anew the ideas of brotherhood and of unity. I ask you to recognise your fellow workers in all the groups and to strengthen their hands. I ask you to seal your lips to words of hatred and of criticism, and to talk in terms of brotherhood and of group relationships. I beg of you to see to it that every day is for you a new day, in which you face new opportunity. Lose sight of your own affairs, your petty sorrows, worries and suspicions, in the urgency to the task to be done, and spread the cult of unity, of love and of harmlessness.”

A Challenge (part 2)

Note: there is an intro and part one to read as well.

“I ask you to drop your antagonisms and your antipathies, your hatreds and your racial differences, and to attempt to think in terms of the one family, the one life, and the one humanity. I would remind you that hatred and separateness have brought humanity to the present condition. I would add to that reminder, however, the fact that there is in the world today a large enough number of liberated men, to produce a change in the attitudes of mankind and in public opinion, if they measure up by an act of the will, to what they know and believe.”