If every person really understands that "we will all die
someday..." then why do we worry about events and objects?
We are like tourists; we come and go on this planet earth.
Make the best of your visit, and when you have to go
make sure you have with you something that cannot die.
Meditation can help you to find it.
Shantinath
Publisher's Note:
Welcome to everyone, and especially to new subscribers!
Another serving of mental, spiritual and metaphysical
nourishment for your pleasure. If you have any suggestions
for future content in this newsletter, please send them to:
and let us know. If we get enough feedback of interest and
value, we may add a reader's letters' section. So feel free to
get in touch.
We are also prepared to consider articles for publication here,
although they must conform to the theme of the ezine and the
editor's word on their inclusion is, alas, final!
Please DO forward this ezine on to your friends so that they
can benefit too!
Great news for you! The Mystic Visions Discussion Forum is up
and running. Now we can have a community of Aspire To Wisdom
readers sharing questions, thoughts and insights. I will be
there to respond to you too. You can find the forum at:
The first article has an important perspective to impart - how
to live your life as a Mystery School. It's a wonderful way of
viewing life - it makes sense of so much of what you experience
each day. Believe me, it is no theoretical concept. I face my
own "initiators" at this present time - in the guise of
EXTREMELY noisy neighbors! Doubtless the idea is to teach me
patience and how to love the outwardly unlovely! So read it
with this practical perspective in mind and you too may benefit
from incorporating this approach to your own life.
The second article provides you with a valuable tool that can
help you to actually put this perspective into practice in
your own life. If considered and applied, the results from
applying these ideas can definitely be life-changing. I hope
these writings are of benefit to you.
On another subject altogether, I would like to thank those
people who called or wrote to express their support for this
ezine and the Mystic Visions website. It is most encouraging
to me. To date, the comments have all been very positive. So I
am glad to be benefiting you.
Regards,
Asoka Selvarajah
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Mystery schools once existed throughout the Ancient World -
Greece, Egypt, India, China, South America. These spiritual
centres provided a place where students could receive a
mystical education by progressing through a series of
spiritual trials and initiations. The goal was to provide
seekers with the highest levels of spiritual realization - to
understand the deep truths of existence, the cosmos and human
life. Initiates of the Mysteries were credited with wisdom, as
well as great magical and occult powers.
The main method of teaching the Mysteries was through myths -
stories with deep mystical and psychological symbolism; for
example, the Greek and Roman Myths. In reality, these stories
possessed two different levels. On the mundane level, the
myths could be seen as simple entertaining tales with light
moral undertones. For most people, this is how they would be
received. These were the Outer Mysteries.
However, for those with eyes to see and ears to hear, there
existed the Inner Mysteries.
Students of the Outer Mysteries would be carefully observed.
Some would show signs of recognition - a clear ability to see
beyond the superficial level of the stories to the more
profound meaning. These few would then be selected for further
initiation into the Inner Mysteries. They would serve under
the tutorship of the Master (Hierophant) of the Mystery School
and be taken to ever deeper levels of spiritual unfoldment.
The teachings were hard. The initiation ceremonies were
dramatic and frightening - seemingly life and death situations
where the student was exposed to his deepest fears and
temptations. Perhaps the mythological stories would be enacted
in the depths of a dark cave to the sound of loud gongs and
frightening flashes of light. Frankly, nobody really knows.
Initiates were sworn to strictest secrecy, even unto death,
and these matters were never written down.
Thanks largely to the efforts of organized mainstream religion
throughout history and the world, the Mystery Schools have
mostly vanished on the physical plane. However, they still
exist on the spiritual level. More excitingly, they can come
alive right now for YOU in a personal way - through a profound
study of your own unfolding life.
Prior to your birth, imagine that the spiritual part of you -
known as the Higher Self - made some decisions. It determined
precisely the lessons and experiences you needed to undergo in
order to learn, grow and perfect yourself in all ways. It then
chose exactly the right parents, and the right time and place
for you to be born. Ever since your birth, it has been
orchestrating ALL the events and people in your life to
perfectly present you with all the challenges and lessons you
most need in order to develop yourself. From this perspective,
nothing happens in your life by chance. Everything has
meaning. There are NO accidents.
What is the goal of all this? What is the purpose of your life
from this perspective? It is no less than to become a
Spiritual Master over as many lifetimes as it takes!
THIS is the perspective of your life as a Mystery Story. The
Master Teacher of the Mysteries is your Higher Self. Through
the trials of ordinary life, -through perceiving the mythic
dimensions of it - you are presented with the lessons you most
need to learn in order to perfect yourself in all ways.
It is a theory which cannot be definitively proven. However,
as the great mystical teacher, Paul Solomon, once said, life
works far better and makes more sense if we assume it is true,
even if it is not!
The Mystery School perspective is very similar to the way in
which we regard dreams. Modern Psychology postulates that
every person, object and situation in our dreams has deep
symbolic meaning. They are created by a part of our mind that
understands and thinks only in symbols. The challenge is for
our waking consciousness to then make sense of all these
meaningful symbols.
This is EXACTLY the same situation that is presented with our
waking lives from the Mystery School perspective. In a sense,
as long as we participate in life unawares, we are still
asleep. As soon as we realize and actively participate in the
Mystery School lessons of our lives, the sleeper awakens to
progressively greater levels of awareness.
If your life is a Mystery School, everything that happens to
you is by design. There are NO accidents. Every person who
enters your life, every situation whether joyous or tragic,
every challenge you face, is there for a specific reason. From
this viewpoint, you have to stop blaming your parents all the
time for the way you turned out. After all, you chose them!
Like King Arthur, Perseus, or Odysseus, you are the hero of
your own personal Mystery Mythology. The events and characters
in your life are the colorful fabrics of which your story is
woven.
People and circumstances that you perceive to be enemies and
trials are in fact your greatest teachers. In the Mysteries,
the initiators could appear to the student as demons or
monsters - evil forces that had to be overcome before any
further progress was even possible. These were in truth
archetypal forces within the pupil's own psyche that needed to
be wrestled with and brought under control before any further
progress could be made.
Yet, once the lesson had been learned and the demon overcome,
it revealed its true form - as an angel of light. As the
Dalai Lama once said, we need to be grateful to people who
mean us harm, for it is only through conflict that we can
grow. From a Buddhist perspective, there is even more need for
gratitude to enemies: they are actively harming themselves,
incurring massive negative karma, specifically to benefit you!
And they don't even know it!
How does this apply practically? Well, have you noticed that
certain scenarios - work difficulties, relationship problems
or whatever - keep cropping up again and again for you? The
reason is that if you refuse to learn a lesson, it will simply
repeat again later until you do. Please don't think that you
can go on to the advanced lessons until you have mastered the
simple ones.
It will not happen.
Wherever you go in all the world to escape a lesson, you take
yourself with you! Thus, you can be sure that your Higher Self
will simply orchestrate events to present the exact same
lesson/challenge until you finally get the message.
Moreover, remember this. The Higher Self regards your body as
perfectly expendable! After all, if you refuse to learn the
lesson in this life, it can simply provide you with a new one
and the same lesson can start over where it left off!
In summary, viewing your life as a Mystery School is immensely
beneficial. It provides you with a powerful spiritual
perspective. It makes sense and meaning out of all that
happens to you, enormously increases your chances for growth,
and helps you work towards a firm purpose that transcends
yourself.
The goal of becoming a Spiritual Master.
Copyright Asoka Selvarajah 2000. All Rights Reserved.
Asoka Selvarajah is a writer on personal growth and
spirituality,
and the author of "The 7 Golden Secrets To Knowing Your
Higher
Self". His work helps people achieve their full
potential, deepen their
understanding of mystical truth,
and discover their soul's purpose. Learn more about his work
by Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy. Published by Thorsons.
Anyone who troubles to read beyond the structured orthodoxy of
Christianity knows that all is not rosy. History reveals many
valid alternative views and interpretations of Christ
destroyed by the Church for purely political reasons. New
sources - such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi
writings - reveal that the teachings of Jesus did not offer
any radically new material. The story of the dying and
resurrecting God is an ancient theme, most notably present in
the myths of Osiris, Dionysus, Mithras and many others.
In this challenging new book, the almost unthinkable question
is asked: Did Jesus Christ actually live as a real live human
being at all? Freke and Gandy present strong evidence to
suggest not. They propose that the teachings and stories we
associate with Christ actually arose from a pre-existing pagan
god with almost identical characteristics, who had been
worshipped for thousands of years beforehand. They probe all
the available evidence for the actual existence of Jesus. They
analyse the other teachings and movements extant at the time -
Paganism, the Mystery Schools, Gnosticism.
Their compelling detective work leads them to propose that (1)
Christianity was based upon pagan Mystery stories, rewritten
as the Gospel of Jesus Christ, (2)that the early Christians
knew this perfectly well, and (3) that the truth of this has
been covered up by the orthodox church for millennia. This
book is fascinating, well-researched and absorbing. Is it the
greatest heresy of the last few centuries or the most
revolutionary discovery since the beginning of Christianity
itself? You be the judge!
A great man once said that a life worth living is a life worth
recording. With this truth in mind, let us examine the
time-honoured method of keeping a Journal as a powerful tool
for self-improvement.
Firstly, understand that a Journal is NOT a diary. Although
the line is definitely blurred, a diary largely deals with
externals. A Journal is about your inner being. It is actively
used as a tool for self-improvement, as opposed to passively
recording events.
The benefits of keeping a Journal are that through doing so,
you monitor your own internal processes. It can be used to
integrate psychological parts within yourself that have long
remained in conflict. A Journal can help you see the changing
cycles within your life - processes that only become evident
when rigorous self-examination is used. It helps you to
remember your dreams, and begin to understand and gain insight
from them. Most importantly, the keeping of a Journal puts you
ever closer in touch with the Higher Self - the highest part
of you responsible for creativity, wisdom and for
orchestrating the events of your life.
In short, keeping a Journal turns your life from a seemingly
random succession of events into a well-defined school. You
begin to see the lessons in your life and put them into
practice.
What is the best procedure? There are many, and it is really a
very in-depth subject. In this short discussion, we shall
examine a few ideas to get you on the road of at least
starting a Journal and thereby experiencing immediate
benefits.
The first step is to physically get yourself a suitable
Journal. This should ideally be an A4 book with either lined
or unlined paper. Don't get a diary as you will not be doing a
"day to a page" or anything like that. However, the book you
buy should ideally have section dividers of some sort.
Alternatively, you can buy a file folder, corresponding pad of
paper, and a set of dividers. Use the dividers to create
different sections in your Journal.
The first section you should keep is the Daily Log. Here, you
make brief entries during the day, preferably immediately
after the event. In this section, you record any internal
events that you deem of importance. Emotions, reactions,
thoughts, realizations, interactions with people or
situations, and the internal effects they had upon you. If
there was an external trigger, you record just enough of it to
make sense of the entry. The key here is brevity.
Even though your outer life may be relatively uneventful from
one day to the next, you will soon find that your inner life
is alive and rich and full of happenings. As you do this over
time, more insights will begin to occur. For instance, you
will start to perceive the triggers that cause your behaviour.
You will become increasingly aware of how you handle yourself
and how you could do better. You will become less "automatic"
and more conscious of your choices in each and every situation.
Another section you should keep is a dream journal. Here you
record ANY impressions, fragments or complete dreams that you
recall. If you do not normally remember dreams, this procedure
will help stimulate recall. Keep the Journal by your bed and
record anything that you remember. Better still, tell yourself
before you sleep that you WILL remember your dreams. If you
still don't remember anything, consider setting an alarm clock
at some point in the night, and write down whatever you recall
as soon as you awaken. If the answer is nothing, reset the
alarm clock!
Dreams are one place where your intuitive, creative self -
which can only speak in images - seeks to establish
communication with you. Thus by making this effort, you begin
to come into conscious communion with parts of yourself that
transcend your normal conscious intelligence.
The next section is where you ask questions that you need
answers to. These can relate to any area of your life
whatsoever - relationships, spirituality, work, creativity,
and so on. Actually, you are asking your Higher Self for the
answers.
Write your entry here in the form of a question. Date it and
leave it. Then pay attention to your dreams, the events of the
day, and your own internal insights and thought processes. The
various parts of the Journal fit beautifully together to give
you the answers you seek. Expect an answer and it will come.
If nothing happens, simply repeat the process the next day
with the same question! Be insistent. The answer will
eventually appear.
The final section of the Journal that we will talk about is
the Life Cycles section. You review your life and try to
describe it in terms of the big cycles that you have
experienced. It may have been a relationship cycle, an
employment/career cycle, a cycle of religious affiliation. It
differs for each person. Ponder your life and recognise the
major cycles. For example, it may be your ten-year marriage,
your six year career with XYZ Corp., your troubled teenage
years, etc. Within each major cycle, write the main events
that made it up as a series of brief entries. If you do this
properly, you should also be able to identify minor cycles
within the major. Do this also for the current cycle that you
are living in right now.
Of course, many different cycles overlap each other in our
lives. The point is simply to begin to get a perspective on
the major movements within our lives that have brought us to
where we are today.
Being able to see the large cycles and sub-cycles helps you to
achieve a much expanded consciousness and context for your
life. You see how the events of life seem orchestrated - as
indeed they are - to lead you to learn many lessons and gain
profound realizations. You begin to realize where you failed
to learn the lesson, and therefore had to experience it all
over again in another time and place until it finally sank in.
In short, you gain perspective. In doing so, you become more
empowered to lay out a grander vision for your future.
There is one final and important point. Your Journal is
PRIVATE. Therefore, say what you wish openly and do not censor
yourself. This is the one place where you can speak freely so
give yourself that blessing. At the same time, keep the
Journal in a safe place where it will not be available to
prying eyes!
This has been a whirlwind introduction to the benefits of the
Journal, although a lot has been covered. Doubtless, other
possible sections lend themselves to your imagination, as
indeed should be the case. The Journal is YOUR personal tool
for self-growth and should thus arise out of your needs and
aspirations. If you want to study the subject in greater
depth, there are plenty of resources available on the subject.
However, the important thing is just to get started and
experience the benefits NOW. You have enough ideas here to
create a deeply enriching life tool for yourself.
May it bring
you many tender insights and blessings.
Copyright Asoka Selvarajah 2000. All Rights Reserved.
Resources that can help:
"At A Journal Workshop - Writing to Access The Power Of The
Unconscious And Evoke Creative Ability" by Dr. Ira Progoff.
Excellent book that goes into the subject in immense depth.
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