Saving the universe one lump of cheese at a time aint easy. But like Mighty Mouse I have big ears and a tail. If we truly love someone, we will do anything to help them. Even if it involves matching socks.

Let us know peace.
For as long as the moon shall rise,
For as long as the rivers shall flow,
For as long as the sun shall shine,
For as long as the grass shall grow,
Let us know peace.

–Cheyenne Prayer

……

Your thought is a tree rooted deep in the soil of tradition and whose branches grow in the power of continuity. My thought is a cloud moving in the space. It turns into drops which, as they fall, form a brook that sings its way into the sea. Then it rises as vapour into the sky. Your thought is a fortress that neither gale nor the lightning can shake. My thought is a tender leaf that sways in every direction and finds pleasure in its swaying. Your thought is an ancient dogma that cannot change you nor can you change it. My thought is new, and it tests me and I test it morn and eve.

You have your thought and I have mine.

Your thought allows you to believe in the unequal contest of the strong against the weak, and in the tricking of the simple by the subtle ones. My thought creates in me the desire to till the earth with my hoe, and harvest the crops with my sickle, and build my home with stones and mortar, and weave my raiment with woollen and linen threads. Your thought urges you to marry wealth and notability. Mine commends self-reliance. Your thought advocates fame and show. Mine counsels me and implores me to cast aside notoriety and treat it like a grain of sand cast upon the shore of eternity. Your thought instils in your heart arrogance and superiority. Mine plants within me love for peace and the desire for independence. Your thought begets dreams of palaces with furniture of sandalwood studded with jewels, and beds made of twisted silk threads. My thought speaks softly in my ears, “Be clean in body and spirit even if you have nowhere to lay your head.” Your thought makes you aspire to titles and offices. Mine exhorts me to humble service.

You have your thought and I have mine.

Your thought is social science, a religious and political dictionary. Mine is simple axiom. Your thought speaks of the beautiful woman, the ugly, the virtuous, the prostitute, the intelligent, and the stupid. Mine sees in every woman a mother, a sister, or a daughter of every man. The subjects of your thought are thieves, criminals, and assassins. Mine declares that thieves are the creatures of monopoly, criminals are the offspring of tyrants, and assassins are akin to the slain. Your thought describes laws, courts, judges, punishments. Mine explains that when man makes a law, he either violates it or obeys it. If there is a basic law, we are all one before it. He who disdains the mean is himself mean. He who vaunts his scorn of the sinful vaunts his disdain of all humanity. Your thought concerns the skilled, the artist, the intellectual, the philosopher, the priest. Mine speaks of the loving and the affectionate, the sincere, the honest, the forthright, the kindly, and the martyr. Your thought advocates Judaism, Brahmanism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. In my thought there is only one universal religion, whose varied paths are but the fingers of the loving hand of the Supreme Being. In your thought there are the rich, the poor, and the beggared. My thought holds that there are no riches but life; that we are all beggars, and no benefactor exists save life herself.

You have your thought and I have mine.

According to your thought, the greatness of nations lies in their politics, their parties, their conferences, their alliances and treaties. But mine proclaims that the importance of nations lies in work – work in the field, work in the vineyards, work with the loom, work in the tannery, work in the quarry, work in the timberyard, work in the office and in the press. Your thought holds that the glory of the nations is in their heroes. It sings the praises of Rameses, Alexander, Caesar, Hannibal, and Napoleon. But mine claims that the real heroes are Confucius, Lao-Tse, Socrates, Plato, Abi Taleb, El Gazali, Jalal Ed-din-el Roumy, Copernicus, and Pasteur. Your thought sees power in armies, cannons, battleships, submarines, aeroplanes, and poison gas. But mine asserts that power lies in reason, resolution, and truth. No matter how long the tyrant endures, he will be the loser at the end. Your thought differentiates between pragmatist and idealist, between the part and the whole, between the mystic and materialist. Mine realizes that life is one and its weights, measures and tables do not coincide with your weights, measures and tables. He whom you suppose an idealist may be a practical man.

You have your thought and I have mine.

Your thought is interested in ruins and museums, mummies and petrified objects. But mine hovers in the ever-renewed haze and clouds. Your thought is enthroned on skulls. Since you take pride in it, you glorify it too. My thought wanders in the obscure and distant valleys. Your thought trumpets while you dance. Mine prefers the anguish of death to your music and dancing. Your thought is the thought of gossip and false pleasure. Mine is the thought of him who is lost in his own country, of the alien in his own nation, of the solitary among his kinfolk and friends.

You have your thought and I have mine.

–Kahlil Gibran

……

‘Purity of your desires, purity of your motives, purity of your faith, your hope
and your love; these become the greatest requirements. Everyone and even those
who have hardly begun to put their first hesitating steps on the path, are able
to begin with that. It is made possible by the Rose of the heart, the second
soul-atom of our microcosm. This Rose is not only sensitive to the gnostic
impulses coming from outside, but is also sensitive to the cries of distress of
our soul-nucleus, burning in the fourth candelabrum. When the consciousness
experiences this distress and sighs for liberation, vibrating its cry out into
the unknown, the Rose receives, as it were, a magnetic shock and as a reflex
sends out the echo of the soul’s distress call through the sternum, invoking
the reply of the Gnosis, which can
then be admitted.

The power of the Rose creates an opening in the impure heart-sanctuary. In this
way the first reply of the Gnosis comes into being. It is from this beginning
that we should build further and strive for the purification of the heart. This
makes us understand the poet’s imploring cry: “Create in me a clean heart, o
God”, and : “The Lord is near the broken-hearted”. For the wall of unholy and
I-centered desires must be broken through. Whoever applies this purification
procedure without interruption, gives himself neither rest nor satisfaction,
will experience that such purification of the heart has enormous consequences in
his entire life-state. It bridles willing and thinking, it changes our life of
action and thus conducts the activity of the first ray of the Holy Spirit in a
positive manner. We discover in all this a glorious aspect of life according to
the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see
God.” Thus it happens that the pupil, who from the first step works at realizing
purity of heart, simultaneously demonstrates the life according to the Sermon on
the Mount. He goes out to meet his light-birth with power and glory.
A dawn in which one “sees God”. ‘

–Jan van Rijckenborgh

“Those who from delusion’s grasp break free,
find the path to inner reality..
Those who unto not-doing attain,
are linked as one, forever, in the Chain.”

………………

“I asked one of the sages of the Kabbalah what the difference was between gilgul (reincarnation) and ibbur (impregnation). He replied that the term ibbur implies a mystery, just as a woman becomes pregnant and gives birth without lacking anything, so too the soul of the righteous and the pious became pregnant and give birth and emanate sparks into this world, to protect the generation or for some other reasons, like one who lights one candle from another, where the first candle is not diminished.”

-          David ibn Abi Zimra (Metzudat David)

……………..

“How will the soul be, which came in two or three bodies? And he quoted them as saying that the soul multiplies into several parts, just as the candle makes several sparks, and serves in all the bodies.”

-          quoted in the name of Joseph ben Samuel (Gerona Kabbalist, circa 1220)

…..

·          You may forget the one with whom you have laughed, but never the one with whom you have wept.

–Kahlil Gibran

The purpose of a fishtrap is to catch fish, and when the fish are caught, the trap is forgotten.
The purpose of a rabbit snare is to catch rabbits. When the rabbits are caught, the snare is forgotten.
The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten.
Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to.

–Chuang Tsu

If I can open a new corner in a man’s own heart to him I have not lived in vain. Life itself is the thing, not joy or pain or happiness or unhappiness. To hate is as good as to love – an enemy may be as good as a friend. Live for yourself – live your life. Then you are most truly the friend of man. – I am different every day – and when I am eighty, I shall still be experimenting and changing. Work that I have done no longer concerns me – it is past. I have too much on hand in life itself.

–Kahlil Gibran

I sing because You sing,
I smile because You smile.
Because You play on the flute
I have become Your flute.
You play in the depths of my heart.
You are mine, I am Yours:
This is my sole identification.
In one Form
You are my Mother and Father eternal,
And Consciousness moon, Consciousness sun,
All pervading.

– Sri Chinmoy

TO CLING OR TO LET GO

by

Gershon Winkler

I found this great ancient midrash concerning four archetypes of the warrior in Jewish tradition. It goes like this—literal translation:

        David said to God: “I am going to pursue my enemies and destroy them.”

        Assa said to God: “I have no strength to destroy my enemies, but I will pursue them, and leave the rest to you.”

        Yeho’shafaht said to God: “I have neither the strength to pursue my enemies nor to destroy them; I can only sing, and leave the rest to you.”

        Chizki’yahu said: “I have neither the strength to pursue my enemies nor to destroy them nor to sing. Rather, I will go to sleep in my bed and leave it ALL to you.” (Source: Midrash Yal’kot Shim’onee, Shmu’el 2:22:163)

        On one level, this teaching seems to address our varying capacities to overcome obstacles in our lives, deal head-on with challenges that come at us from time to time. Sometimes, we can be like David and—no holds barred—go out there, face the challenge head on and resolve it one, two, three. Period.

        Sometimes, we react like Assa and go full force head to head with the obstacles in our lives, but that’s about as far as we can take it. Then we grow tired, doubtful of our ability to take it all the way, and we back off, throw up our arms and leave it to God.

        Other times we react like Yeho’shafaht and rather than even so much as try to make some kind of overt effort to tackle the obstacle, we put on some music and sing, or watch a movie.

        And yet other times, we react like Chizki’yahu and are simply exasperate beyond beyond beyond, so weakened by a relentless series of unfortunate events that we have neither the strength left to pursue the problem, wrestle it through, or even sing, and all we can do is climb into bed and go to sleep and hope it goes away.

        On a second level of understanding, the teaching seems to address varying degrees of faith, of trust, in God. Sometimes we trust so totally, as in the scenario of Chizki’yahu that God will handle it all and we can sleep peacefully knowing this.

        Other times, as in the scenario of Yeho’shafaht, we have faith that God will take care of it all but only after we do a little spirit-boosting prayer song.

        Yet other times we have faith that God will deal with our problems for us, as in the scenario of Assa, but only after we’ve put in a little effort on our own.

        And finally there are times we have the faith that God will come through for us alongside us, meaning in congruent with the degree of effort we ourselves expend—that even if we do it all and on our own, we have the faith that our success was due to God’s behind-the-scenes support, as in the scenario of David.

        On a deeper level, however, the lesson goes like this: All four of these archetypal responses to challenge are one and the same, albeit in graduating phases of grappling with an issue.

        We might start out like David, doing everything we possibly can, taking it all the way, sparing no effort, giving it all we’ve got and then some. Then, if the situation persists in spite of our best effort, we move into the phase of Assa and continue to cling tenaciously to the struggle, yet letting go of completely resolving it, leaving that part of it to God. Then, if the situation is still not dissipating, we move into the phase of Yeho’shafaht where we step back from exerting energies that we realize are going nowhere, and instead we concentrate on keeping our spirits high and in good form through the power of song and chant. Finally, if the situation still abounds, it’s time to let go completely and get some sleep, surrender it totally into the hands of heaven, so to speak.

        Sometimes it is far healthier to let go of something or someone before you are dropped. At some point of non-resolution it might be better to let go rather than cling indefinitely until your veins pop, until your knuckles grow red and your grasp develops blisters and your grip loosens from fatigue and you end up falling.

        They say of our ancient prophet Joshua, Moses’ foremost disciple and personal aide, that he clung tight to his master, never letting him out of his sight, always always following him, listening to every word he spoke, observing his every action, paying attention to his every nuance. When Moses was about to die, the ancient rabbis tell us, he said to Joshua: “I am about to leave this earthly plane. It is now time for you to ask me anything about what I have taught you that you do not understand, that you have some questions about, or doubts.” Joshua replied: ”Master, I have absolutely no doubts, no questions. I am filled with complete understanding and clarity around every single teaching you ever shared. I have never left your side in all these years, and therefore did not miss an iota of anything you taught.” In that moment, the rabbis tell us, Joshua instantly forgot three hundred laws that Moses had taught him and became filled with doubt about his understanding regarding seven hundred lessons he had learned from Moses (Source: Talmud, Te’murah 16a).

        Clinging to a situation to overcome it, or to master it, is a good thing. But to a point. At some point we need to release our grip and empty ourselves of our obsession with achievement, our obsession with winning, our obsession with resolving what refuses to budge. As the Talmud puts it: “Just as it is a good thing to say to someone that which we know will be heard, it is just as good a thing to NOT say to someone something which we know will NOT be heard” (Talmud, Yevamot 65b). In this account, Joshua felt totally confident that he had understood everything, that he had mastered his master’s knowledge. He claimed ownership of and took credit for all of his sense of his own achievement in this regard, and left no space for the possibility that perhaps his uncanny capacity to retain all the information that Moses had imparted was due to God’s enabling him to do so.

        Of course, use your good judgment. Because there are always exceptions to the lesson; some things are worthy of and demand of us to fight it to the death. But in general, these teachings are very helpful for our day-to-day sanity.

        In the Purim story (Purim happens this week Thursday night through Friday night), the Jewish people are helplessly slated for total annihilation. Their one hope, the fact that the queen of Persia (Esther) is one of them, hinges on her having the courage to approach the king uninvited, which might cost her her life. In the moment, she had become so immersed in her role as queen and all of the polity and protocol that went along with that role that she had not left any room for the possibility that God might have brought her to the palace to begin with so that she could rescue her people. Her uncle and mentor, Mordechai, had to remind her of this. Once she was reminded of this, Esther takes the above lessons to yet another level, and begins to plow through the phases of tackling the situation albeit in reverse, gradually moving from the total faith phase of Chizki’yahu and leaving it entirely in the hands of God, to the phase of Yeho’shafaht by instructing her people to pray, to the phase of Assa as she pursuing the villain Haman by inviting him to a face-to-face encounter, and finally to the climactic phase of David by confronting Haman head on and destroying him and his plot.

        May we be gifted with the sense of when to cling and when to let go; when to move from David down to Chizki’yahu, and when to move from Chizki’yahu upward to David. Life is a dance. And the dance is definitely a tango. And Purim is definitely the time to tango.

Happy Purim.

Frau Holle

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

A widow had two daughters, the one was beautiful and industrious, the other ugly and lazy. She greatly favored the ugly, lazy girl, because she was her own daughter. And the other one had to do all the work, and be the Cinderella of the house.

Every day the poor girl had to sit by a well, next to the highway, and spin so much that her fingers bled. Now it happened that one day the reel was completely bloody, so she dipped it in the well, to wash it off, but it dropped out of her hand and fell in. She cried, ran to her stepmother, and told her of the mishap. She scolded her so sharply, and was so merciless that she said, “Since you have let the reel fall in, you must fetch it out again.”

Then the girl went back to the well, and did not know what to do. Terrified, she jumped into the well to get the reel. She lost her senses. And when she awoke and came to herself again, she was in a beautiful meadow where the sun was shining, and there were many thousands of flowers. She walked across this meadow and came to an oven full of bread. The bread called out, “Oh, take me out. Take me out, or I’ll burn. I’ve been thoroughly baked for a long time.” So she stepped up to it, and with a baker’s peel took everything out, one loaf after the other.

After that she walked further and came to a tree laden with apples. “Shake me. Shake me. We apples are all ripe.” cried the tree. So she shook the tree until the apples fell as though it were raining apples. When none were left in the tree, she gathered them into a pile, and then continued on her way.

Finally she came to a small house. An old woman was peering out from inside. She had very large teeth, which frightened the girl, and she wanted to run away. But the old woman called out to her, “Don’t be afraid, dear child. Stay here with me, and if you do my housework in an orderly fashion, it will go well with you. Only you must take care to make my bed well and shake it diligently until the feathers fly, then it will snow in the world.* I am Frau Holle.”

Because the old woman spoke so kindly to her, the girl took heart, agreed, and started in her service. The girl took care of everything to Frau Holle’s satisfaction and always shook her featherbed vigorously until the feathers flew about like snowflakes. Therefore she had a good life with her: no angry words, and boiled or roast meat every day.

Now after she had been with Frau Holle for a time, she became sad. At first she did not know what was the matter with her, but at last she determined that it was homesickness. Even though she was many thousands of times better off here than at home, still she had a yearning to return. Finally she said to the old woman, “I have such a longing for home, and even though I am very well off here, I cannot stay longer. I must go up again to my own people.”

Frau Holle said, “I am pleased that you long for your home again, and because you have served me so faithfully, I will take you back myself.” With that she took her by the hand and led her to a large gate.

The gate was opened, and while the girl was standing under it, an immense rain of gold fell, and all the gold stuck to her, so that she was completely covered with it. “This is yours because you have been so industrious,” said Frau Holle, and at the same time she gave her back the reel which had fallen into the well.

With that the gate was closed and the girl found herself above on earth, not far from her mother’s house. And as she entered the yard the rooster, sitting on the well, cried:

Then she went inside to her mother, and as she arrived all covered with gold, she was well received, both by her mother and her sister. The girl told all that had happened to her, and when the mother heard how she had come to the great wealth, she wanted to achieve the same fortune for the other, the ugly and lazy daughter. She made her go and sit by the well and spin. And to make her reel bloody, the lazy girl pricked her fingers and shoved her hand into a thorn bush. Then she threw the reel into the well, and jumped in herself.

Like the other girl, she too came to the beautiful meadow and walked along the same path. When she came to the oven, the bread cried again, “Oh, take me out. Take me out, or else I’ll burn. I’ve been thoroughly baked for a long time.”

But the lazy girl answered, “As if I would want to get all dirty,” and walked away.

Soon she came to the apple tree. It cried out, “Oh, shake me. Shake me. We apples are all ripe.”

But she answered, “Oh yes, one could fall on my head,” and with that she walked on.

When she came to Frau Holle’s house, she was not afraid, because she had already heard about her large teeth, and she immediately began to work for her. On the first day she forced herself, was industrious, and obeyed Frau Holle, when she said something to her, because she was thinking about all the gold that she would give her. But on the second day she already began to be lazy, on the third day even more so, and then she didn’t even want to get up in the morning. She did not make the bed for Frau Holle, the way she was supposed to, and she did not shake it until the feathers flew. Frau Holle soon became tired of this and dismissed her of her duties. This was just what the lazy girl wanted, for she thought that she would now get the rain of gold.

Frau Holle led her too to the gate. She stood beneath it, but instead of gold, a large kettle full of pitch spilled over her. “That is the reward for your services,” said Frau Holle, and closed the gate.

Then the lazy girl went home, entirely covered with pitch. As soon as the rooster on the well saw her, he cried out:

And the pitch stuck fast to her, and did not come off as long as she lived.

*Therefore in Hessen whenever it snows they say that Frau Holle is making her bed.

…………..

I have some German ancestry so perhaps this is very good

interesting story, not very obvious as it is a tangled weave, perhaps due to the translation?

But yes typical Gnostic story

You are with your “parents”
You leave…where you become accustomed to your new life
You get anxious and wish to leave your new life
On the way back you are tempted to stay…given shiny nice things
You return radiant and resplendent

This however as you say, notes the follies of self elevation and assuming that merely being “awake” is all there is, whereas once awake one musty return home

A journey that is not easy….

Jesus mentions burning in fire in the Gospel of Thomas…This is perhaps to my mind a similar illustration, after all fire transforms things…

“True solitude is found in humility, which is infinitely rich. False
solitude is the refuge of pride, and it is infinitely poor.”

–Thomas Merton

PRE-EXISTENCE OF YOHANNA

An example of Yeshu (Jesus) teaching reincarnation can be found in the seventh book of the Pistis Sophia (an ancient Manichaean text dated to the 3rd century or earlier). In it we read of the reincarntion of Elijah, or Elias, as Yohanna d Masbuta (John the Baptist):

“Now it happened that when I came into the midst of the archons of the aeons, I looked down at the world of mankind, at the command of the First Mystery.

I found Elisabeth, the mother of John the Baptist , before she had conceived him and I cast into her a power which I had received from the Little Jao , the Good, who is in the Midst, so that he should be able to preach before me, and prepare my way and baptise with water of forgiveness .

Now that power was in the body of John. And again, in place of the soul of the archons which he was due to receive, I found the soul of the prophet Elias in the aeons of the sphere; and I took it in and I took his soul again; I brought it to the Virgin of the Light, and she gave it to her paralemptors. They brought it to the sphere of the archons, and they cast it into the womb of Elisabeth. But the power of the Little Jao, he of the Midst, and the soul of the prophet Elias were bound in the body of John the Baptist.

You doubted now at the time when I spoke to you because John said : ‘I am not the Christ’ and you said to me : ‘lt is written in the scripture : when the Christ shall come, there will come Elias before him and he will prepare his way’. But when you said this to me, I said to you : ‘Elias has indeed come and he has prepared all things, as it is written : And they did to him as they pleased. And when I knew that you did not understand what I said to you concerning the soul of Elias, which was bound in John the Baptist, I answered you openly in speech, face to face, saying : ‘If it pleases you to accept John the Baptist, he is Elias of whom I have said that he will come’”. – Pistis Sophia, ch 7

[T]here’s just the TV image after all, the illusion of the media, and behind it…another group entirely rules. A corporate body of some kind. But who are they and how did they get power? … We came so far; we almost seem to know what’s really going on. The actuality behind the illusion, the secrets kept from us all our lives.

                 —Philip K. Dick, The Simulacra (1964)

I rise and pledge myself to God to do no deed at all of dark.

This day shall be his sacrifice and I, unmoved my passions’ Lord.

I blush to be so old and foul and yet to stand before his table.

You know what I would do, O Christ; O then, to do it make me able

–St Gregory Nazianzus

He who cannot accept correction shall certainly die before his time

–Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav

The Pythagorean Connection
by
Tom Saunders

A lot of very smart people over the centuries have studied what academia knows about Pythagoras, and come to no conclusions about how Pythagoreans used the theory of the Monad in the secret philosophy. In his essay “Pythagoras”, W. Bro. Ronald Paul Ng, states, “These are just some of the, what I consider, mumbo-jumbo of his numerology. Checking these beliefs against nature, there is no basis for such mumbo jumbo, and that’s what I meant when I said earlier we have to check our conclusions to the reality of nature.”

The first scholar to recognize the Pythagorean system(s) was similar to the Tai Chi philosophy, was Fung Yu-Lan, author of the ‘Princeton Press’ ”The History of Chinese Philosophy.” What Fung Yu-Lan did not have in his career as a philosopher were the Sethian Christian manuscripts of the Nag Hammadi Library, and other sources. If he had compared the descriptions of the Monad, and Autogenes, he would have realized as I have that the system of the Tai Chi, the Pythagorean and the Sethian Christian Monadologies, are ‘twin’ or duplicate systems. This is prima facie if you know the systems.

The study of the Pythagorean, and Christian Sethian Monad is based upon almost identical theories of the flow of energy, based upon the ancient philosophy of the Tai Chi. Most people are familiar with the Yin and Yang symbol, and the “I Ching,” or “Book of Changes.” These works represent different ways the theory of the flow of energy or Chi are applied to man, in the belief that ‘man (mind) is the same as heaven and earth.’ (This concept is known as the Taoist Trinity.)

What this theory postulates is the human mind, and the universe work on the system of having the form of a void, or blank slate, and the utility of these voids work the same way. The similarity of what fills the voids is one thing that connects the basic theories of both the ancient Chinese, Pythagoreans, and later Sethian Christians who adopted Jesus, i.e. Word, as the Monad. The Monad in theory is the first and most dominant thing that emanates from the void(s). Sethian Christianity calls this the Word, meaning Sophia, Wisdom, Law, Logos, or Holy Spirit.

The monad, becomes the duad or dyad, meaning two. This represents duality, and will be a salient part of the entire monadic structure regardless of its size. The dyad becomes the triad, the triad becomes the tetrad, pentad, hexad, heptad, ogdoad, ennead, and decad. The Pythagorean and Sethian model use an ideal of ten units. The ancient Chinese used eight as the ideal number for sets, or types, called ‘ba gua.’ The schema of the “heaven sequence” represetented in the Tai Chi icon, only uses even numbers, 2, 4, and 8, then sets of eight added to the primary set.

Monadic units forming sets are called ‘types,’ and these correspond to the Chinese ba gua, often called trigrams. These units are used to represent corresponding values. It is the nature of these values that determine whether the ‘set’ is being used as science and actual measurement, or the values of sets represent things like astrology and numerology which amounts to soothsaying.

If the Nag Hammadi Library had never been found along with some other Sethian works, the way the Monad was used by Pythagoreans would still be elusive to everyone. The only likely people to note the systems as duplicate are those that study the Tai Chi with a certain application to the trigrams. The Tai Chi, and the Monadologies, can be applied, and by some people they still are.

Isshinryu Karate is based upon the Tai Chi model, and when the ‘style’ is aligned to the Tai Chi, everything in the system can be measured by using the model. It records space and time, direction and distance, and within the blank slate what can be visualized are the eight primary techniques of fighting…punching, kicking, grabbing, chokes/squeezing, joint locks, throws, groundwork, and counters.
In all I can account for about forty other ba gua that can be applied to the primary set. (I can also come up with a few thousand friends who know the system, and can apply it on command.)

The Pythagorean model of the Monadology uses types or units in the same manner as the ba gua units. The karate model uses the punch or ‘te,’ as the first unit or Monad. This is gleaned from the meaning of karate, ‘empty hand.’ It is from this first unit, or Monad that the flow of energy moves through the set, much like a parallel electric circuit. The energy of the Monad, moves through each type in the set to the last member, which is best explained as the ‘gender unit.’

”The Principle of Gender, postulates that Gender is in everything, and everything has its inherent characteristics like masculine and feminine, offense and defense, good and evil. Gender manifests on all planes. This idea postulates that gender, especially the feminine, or negative pole in duality is actually the pole where new forms of energy are manifested.” ( See the; “Kybalion”)

In the karate fighter’s octagon above, any move can be countered, and that is why experts can make a fight last for a long time. The skill of counters applies to all other members of the set, and relates directly to the duality of offense, and defense in the act of a fight.

A skilled fighter who knows this model of the Tai Chi, or the Pythagorean model can explain any movement, direction, quality, form, etc. about any of the eight primary units. The way the fighting model is used, will be how you want to use any other ‘set’ you might want to put together. It can be done with the Platonic view of form, referring to an idea, like law, hate, love, lust, good, evil, fear, soul, etc. Many of the Sethian Christian texts explore these areas.

Is the U. S. Constitution a Pythagorean type document? This has been a matter of discussion over the decades based upon the personal interest of Freemasons, Founding Fathers, and historians. Benjamin Franklin, and probably many other prominent Americans knew the work of Gottfried Leibniz, who wrote a treatise on the Monad. He actually got the term Monadology, study of the Monad, into the reference books of modern science. I found nothing in his work to indicate that he knew the ancient system. This may be primarily due to the fact that the Church at the time would have tied him to a stake, and burned him alive for knowing them.

There is not a good way to document the facts explaining that the Founding Fathers used a secret heretical method to write the Constitution, or form the American government. Can the model of the Constitution be aligned with the methods described above? Yes it can. There are other models of Pythagorean texts in history like the ”Corpus Juris Secundum,” of which a modern version is used today to catalogue American laws. They are like the fighter’s octagon in that they pose what fills the ‘blank slate,’ in the way of providing a universe of law.

Most Americans know the triad of American government, the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial branches of the government. These are outlined in the Constitution. If the document is of the Pythagorean model, there must be a Monadic element that generates the energies the text is supposed to measure.

As it turns out, the Monadic force or Chi of the Constitution is very plain in the first few sentences…”We the People of the United States in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the General Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty, to ourselves and our posterity…….”

This makes the union of the American people the Monad, and liberty the gender unit. The set of Union, justice, domestic tranquility, defence, welfare and Liberty, the aim of our posterity, and the first monadic set which represents the ‘spirit’ which will flow through the branches of the government, as law is made. (This is not as regents of God, but under the sight of God, as what fills the ‘Great Void,’ is connected to the blank slate void, of the human mind, and its creations.)

In other words, the ideal is that liberty is obtained through the process of the union of the people, formulated in the processes of the Executive, Judicial, and Legislative branches of the government. The whole set from the first lines of the Constitution becomes, Union, justice, domestic tranquility, common defence, general welfare, and Liberty. These should be the ideal for the making of laws and establishment of rights.

Whether or not anyone who was an American law maker used or knew the Pythagorean system is a matter of speculation. The process of making laws is set up in the of the legislative, and judicial branches. Law comes about one of two ways, through the legislature, which is confirmed by the executive as acts or laws, or through the stare decisis of court decisions.

In another work, available from the National Writer’s Syndicate, “Establishing Law of the Land Rights,” I defined ten rights using this system, and established this definition…

A “Law of the Land Right” is established by defining a particular ‘right’ by presenting a Constitutional mandate, or ‘enumerated right,’ with ‘stare decisis’ of court decisions, and/or Legislative Acts. This merges both the Judicial, and Legislative bodies of government in agreement to the intended cause and effect of the law, concerning enumerated rights from the U. S. Constitution. (Thomas M. Saunders, BA./BS., Certified Linguist.)

One thing the study showed was that some rights that should be afforded Americans is being denied, and the reason is obvious from the Pythagorean model. The primary force of providing liberty has broken down in the system. It is as if one or more of the elements in the fighters octagon is missing. This would make a fighter very vulnerable to anyone with a more complete set of techniques. Perhaps looking at American law from the Pythagorean perspective is not a bad idea.

A huge part of American and Christian history can be restored by learning the use of Monadic sequences as described above. The Founding Fathers used the ‘union of the people’ for the purpose of establishing liberty as the Monadic force, the Sethian Christians used Word or Jesus Wisdom, and a lot of Pythagoreans used God to fill the empty slate. There is a treasure of new things to learn in the study of this system.

“The essence of divinity is found in every single thing – nothing but it exists. Since it causes every thing to be, no thing can live by anything else. It enlivens them, its existence exists in each existent.

Do not attribute duality to God. Let God be solely God. If you suppose that Ain Sof emanates until a certain point, and that from that point on is outside of it, you have dualized. God forbid! Do not say, ‘This is a stone and not God.’ God forbid! Rather, all existence is God, and the stone is a thing pervaded by divinity.”

- Moses Cordovero (Shiur Komah)

Ritualists cannot envision doing with out ritual, that was my point…at least that is the trap many fall into

A ritual magician for example, cannot imagine not doing the LBRP before they enter into sacred communication

Agreed ritual is entering into the divine presence, but again this is separationYou are already in the divine presence. By placing a special place, time, way of doing things you are separating what is divine and what isnt.You see yourself as separate…that is your choice

Is a cup half empty?

Is a cup half full?

Is there a cup there at all?

Do we see a cup that is half empty or half full?

Are we confined to duality or do we seek to understand unity? A cup exists, it is half full and it is half empty. Yet a cup does not exist, all that exists is God. Whether a cup is half full or half empty is unimportant as it is dualism, dialetic. As Thomas 22 tells us we must unite opposites. Philip too of course tells us good is not good, bad is not bad, that we must move beyond duality.Where does our God conciousness end and where does it begin?

If we seek that it only begins and end when we perform a ritual, we enter into an allotted special time, are we not still stuck in duality?

”There was a big pond, and in it there were three fishes. The fist fish was One-Thought, the second fish was Hundred-Thoughts, and the third fish was Thousand-Thoughts. At some time a fisherman came and cast his net. He caught those two fishes of many thoughts; but he did not catch the fish One-Thought.”

–Manichaean Parable (Turtan fragment M127)

The fish One-Thought was spared, not Hundred or Thousand thought. Separation is separation.

The cup, the water, the emptyness or the fullness are great…but do we not seek to move beyond such restraints?

” On the other hand, God’s Will permeated the entire system of creation. The continued existence of creation, in fact, depends entirely on God’s willing it. Since only God exists in an absolute sense, everything else exists because God wills its existence continually. A human architect can design and construct a building and then forget about it. But God’s creation is more than that. Nothing can exist without God constantly willing it to exist. Without this, it would utterly cease to exist”

–A Kaplan http://magdelene.net/ain.htm

That was my point, practioners of ritual, too often see separation.

As Thomas Merton said:“The real function of discipline is not to provide us with maps but tosharpen our own sense of direction so that when we really get going we can travel without maps.”

Thus the purpose of ritual is to not have ritual, to BE the rosary…to embody it.

Ritualists are often either not taught this or just plain disagree.

It is very easy to fall into the trap that one needs to wear a pink rubber nose on your face before you can tell a joke…

What is ritual? what is mantra?

A way of centering..of getting back to that source.

Mantra and ritual become like giving a lover flowers, chocolate a nice evening out…gift giving with an agenda of reward at the end.

It is far better to be free of agenda and just to interact with your lover…without agenda of reward…

The word kabbalah means to receive

It doesnt mean grab

it doesnt mean take

it doesnt mean gimme gimme

it doesnt mean summon pink goblins from venus to help me have better toe nails

it means receive.

Vessels and light, give and receive…that is Kabbalah, that is all there is……

When my Beloved appears,With what eye do I see Him?

With His eye, not with mine,

For none sees Him except Himself.

–Ibn Arabi