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Time to return to our Nation’s will. The will to be better, to act better, to manifest better ideas than the ones that have torn us apart these past four years. Get out of your mind people. Run to that heart that lays truth upon you without bias. We are all in it together and cannot succeed without the many acting as one. Now that the Thanksgiving weekend has come to a close we must never forget how it all began and do our best to make our future better.

This is the proclamation that set the precedent for America’s national day of Thanksgiving. During his administration, President Lincoln issued many orders similar to this. For example, on November 28, 1861, he ordered government departments closed for a local day of thanksgiving. 

Sarah Josepha Hale, a 74-year-old magazine editor, wrote a letter to Lincoln on September 28, 1863, urging him to have the “day of our annual Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival.” She explained, “You may have observed that, for some years past, there has been an increasing interest felt in our land to have the Thanksgiving held on the same day, in all the States; it now needs National recognition and authoritive fixation, only, to become permanently, an American custom and institution.”

Prior to this, each state scheduled its own Thanksgiving holiday at different times, mainly in New England and other Northern states. President Lincoln responded to Mrs. Hale’s request immediately, unlike several of his predecessors, who ignored her petitions altogether. In her letter to Lincoln she mentioned that she had been advocating a national thanksgiving date for 15 years as the editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book. George Washington was the first president to proclaim a day of thanksgiving, issuing his request on October 3, 1789, exactly 74 years before Lincoln’s.

The document below sets apart the last Thursday of November “as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise.” According to an April 1, 1864, letter from John Nicolay, one of President Lincoln’s secretaries, this document was written by Secretary of State William Seward, and the original was in his handwriting. On October 3, 1863, fellow Cabinet member Gideon Welles recorded in his diary how he complimented Seward on his work. A year later the manuscript was sold to benefit Union troops.

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When I was in my twenties I joined a community in Queens, New York, headed by an Indian guru. I spent only five years there, but the impression it left would be the foundation for the life that followed. Much of the experience with the guru is more than meditation and selfless service. If you think peace, light and bliss are constant in this environment you are mistaken. The constant battle over ego and ego’s best friends; jealousy, doubt, insecurity, pride and depression, is mind boggling. It releases these friends in big doses and breaks you down like never before. 

Yet, in spite of this, there is still the searching for peace, light and the all elusive bliss. With the practice of meditation – and opening of the awareness centers that meditation activates – there is a touching of these esoteric essences that comes to visit every so often. Peace and Light are visible to the inner eye through clarity that imbues the inner being. You can see the wave form in front of you during meditation and feel its presence as it enters your body from the other realms. 

Bliss is not visible. Bliss is resonance at the most subtle level. There are times when you think you’ve caught it, but it’s just the emotional body responding to the Peace and Light that comes through the meditation. You are even set upon by tears of joy which masquerade as bliss, playing on the third chakra, and sending messages to the heart producing bouts of unstoppable weeping. This is the kundalini energy moving up to the third chakra, the emotional center; and when it gets there it is suddenly blocked and the energy stops moving further up to the heart center where the real experience of bliss occurs. 

So what is bliss? Bliss comes in a wave, like a soft breeze against the skin. It moves gracefully. It never announces itself and you can’t meditate to it. It comes when least expected because the human mind cannot intend it or even cry for its presence. No, Bliss sneaks in when you’re off guard and guard is the key word here. We always guard ourselves from external and internal occurrences, or so we think. We are constantly watching out for ourselves and this creates the barrier to keep bliss away. Bliss is always present. It resonates around us all the time. It is part of the cosmic makeup and it laughs like hell when it feels someone searching high and low for it. It’s just not going to show up. Don’t even try.

What you must do is pack your mental bags, put them into storage, and move into the palace of the heart. The home of the heart is a beautiful place. It is always clean and scented with delight. It sees you always as a dear one and will never tell you anything but the truth. And once you accept the truth that the heart offers you, you will see a change in yourself. Immediately you will notice a grace about your Self that was not apparent before. You will see all things as good and all beings as loved ones. The noticing of this is subtle but it will tap you on the shoulder and let you know it’s here. Once your mind no longer directs the symphony of your life, once you hand the baton over to your heart, you will be free. And Bliss will become your best friend. You will laugh with joy when it arrives. It shows up at the most unimagined moments. You could be strolling down a road or listening to a piece of music. Suddenly the wave arrives. It caresses you and you feel your heart swell and tears roll out. These tears aren’t thunderous, they are expressions of recognition. And this recognition bolsters the experience to levels of the greatest delight. I’m sure there are those that will read this post that have had their own bliss experiences, for each one is personal and I would hope you will share these experiences with us. Oh yes, one more thing, when we all discover simplicity in our lives we will open the door wide for our friend to arrive.

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With our election season coming into full bloom, and our many months experience with Covid-19, I felt it would lift the spirit a bit to read about a man who seems to have transcended the fractured, mundane world of egoism, and tasted the more awakened world of Conscious Evolution. For some of us, we have long walked this path seeking our soul’s quest, for awakening to a more profound existence, above the maddening crowd, freed from the shackled life of ignorance and self indulgence.

Those of us who will leave this planet sooner than later, with a modicum of success on this path, find it necessary to pass on any and all information to those who seek the truth and will walk the walk. Ignorance and self indulgence are a blight on this planet, and the planet will eventually see fit to rid itself of this terminal dis-ease. It is happening in the evolution of our next generations. Not necessarily those who are here now, but those beings yet to be born. The earth’s DNA is changing. This acronym, DNA, will be referring to Dawn’s Newly Awakened.

So, read on. Explore the transformation of Franklin Merrell-Wolff. Let in his energy into your energy. In that deep state of silence and simplicity you will know that this is the destination for us all.

 

Franklin Merrell-Wolff

IT IS A COMMON and apparently quite natural habit with us to regard the material given through the senses as being something actual. Our science and philosophy may fail to give an adequate interpretation of this material, but still we generally feel sure that it is something. So the larger portion of the human search for Reality is in the field of the things given to our consciousness through the senses. But in my reflecting upon the idea that this universe of things is derived from and dependent upon a primordial plenum, it suddenly struck me that in the midst of the bare and original fullness there could be nothing to arouse discrete or concrete consciousness. It is a familiar fact of psychology that a long-continued or unchanging state or quality tends to become unconscious. Thus, in a state of health an individual is only slightly conscious of his body in its organic functioning. But let there be some form of injury or sickness, and at once the individual is conscious of his organism as he was not before. Likewise, when a long-continued period of bodily pain has ceased, there is then a concrete consciousness of well-being such as did not exist before the pain. In such a case, simply to be free of the pain has the value of an active joy, though the same bodily state did not have that value formerly. Through pain the joy-consciousness of health was aroused to recognition. A version of this article appears in:

Philosophy of Consciousness Without an Object by Franklin Merrell-Wolff

Now, applying this principle in an ontological sense, it follows that the Consciousness of the original Fullness can only be aroused by first passing through the experience of ‘absence’ or ‘emptiness’, in some degree. Thus the active, concrete, and perceptual consciousness is to be viewed as an arousal of specific awareness through a partial blanking-out of the full and perfectly balanced consciousness of the Primordial State. As a result, the world of things, apparently given through the senses, is actually a domain of relative emptiness. We become concretely aware only when contacting voids. There is nothing in this to invalidate the positive findings of natural science. Science studies the direct or indirect determinations of the senses and finds those relationships binding the various parts which render possible the formulation of laws. The question as to whether the terms or facts of science have a substantial base, and if so, what its nature is, is a metaphysical question quite beyond the range of the methodology of natural science. Scientific philosophy reveals a real critical acumen in dropping the notion of ‘substance’ as being relevant to our kind of science. It says—I think correctly—that science is concerned with terms in various relations, and nothing else. When it goes further than that and says specifically or in effect that scientific knowledge is the only kind of real knowledge possible to man, or possible at all, it trips on the very error it charges against certain other philosophies, namely, that of “definition by initial predication.” The book shown above is out of print, but it’s contained in Experience and Philosophy

Experience and Philosophy by Franklin Merrell-Wolff

Now, if it is relative emptiness that arouses to activity concrete consciousness, then it follows that actual substantiality is inversely proportional to sensibility or ponderability. There is most substance where the senses find least, and vice versa. Thus the terms-in-relation of the sensible world are to be viewed as relative emptiness contained in an unseen and substantial matrix. From this there follows, at once, a very important consequence. The discrete manifoldness and apparent pluralism of sensibly given things are quite compatible with a continuous and unitary substantial matrix. The monistic tendency of interpretations based upon mystical insight at once becomes clear, and there is afforded a reconciliation of the one and the many.7

(more…)

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Photo Credit: Adena Rose Bright

Therein Lies The Hope

In my waking breath, I start and start again this day’s long pace. I have a choice to walk it right or throw the day to waste? Can stay captive to the mind-noise that yesterday I fought, or carry forth the truth set in unencumbered thought.

I can busy Me, my Self, in the ego-sea of Me, or journey to a world of those around who’ve been set free. I can nod to no importance, ignore beauty through my eyes, or linger in the peacefulness, seeing splendor beyond the skies.

If my heart is beyond shallow I won’t hear the crying sound, I’m destined to the sadness of a horrid day gone down, and patterns that have made me Me, repeating, repeating a lost strategy.

This thing we’re all built on, truth and love and willing, it’s time to set a new stride and keep the dark from killing. It’s time to offer Gratitude and Loving arms that brace, it’s time to see our lives are a wasteland but for Grace.

© 12/24/17 Stefan Bright

Below is a passage from “The Holy Unknown.” It gives power to the Path Of The Enlightened Mind. Anger is the sword that cuts the thread between the joyful open heart and the delight of the mind. Can we regain that space of peace? Follow the guidance here and see life through the eyes of divine grace.

I reflect, in the silence, on all the distant turmoil in my home time—and in my own ‘distant’ mind. I can’t help raising a challenge, “Your description of the Unknown sounds plausible and wonderful, O. I trust what you are saying. I know you don’t lie. [Your] third and sixth centuries are clearly better places than my own age. But in that world right now—in the Great Storm—terrible things are happening, befalling many people, nations, the environment, and all of civilization. My question is how can humans be expected to trust the Unknown in the midst of unspeakable horrors and violence?”

You answer calmly, “We indeed empathize with your plight. However, you cannot blame the Holy Unknown for that. Humanity has created the problems for itself. The Unknown does not create horrors. You do! Your ‘civilization’ has always been violent.”

“OK. True,” I allow. “But, in light of this, how can we ever come to ‘trust the Unknown’? I seem to be back to my original doubt: What’s to trust? When awful things are happening, how can we be comfortable with an invisible force, associated with the future and ‘destiny’, that keeps delivering terrible things?”

 You reply, “It is your lack of trust that creates the future you experience; it creates separation and cuts you off from the goodness of universal freedom. It is indeed a terrible, vicious cycle you live in. From our perspective, the answer is easy: Accept the deeper reality of what is—not the surface one you believe to exist. Go into your inner sensation and make faith—generate trust in what lives deep within you, within which you live and have your being.”

Again I challenge, “That sounds very much like an old, standard, religious platitude to me. They always say, ‘just believe in … whatever. Fill in the blank. … and you will be saved!”

You retort, “We do not believe, in order to be saved. That is expressly not what I’m saying. We accept and trust the Holy Unknown because we know it to be true—within our own being. It is not a concept in the outer world, in the words of preachers or of dictators or of decomposing dogmas. We do not take a ‘belief’ into our minds and substitute it for what we do not know. Faith is not that!”

“But how,” I ask, “is that really different from what humans are doing? You say ‘accept’. Isn’t belief just another form of acceptance?”

“Belief is a mental and emotional construct. It moves you away from inner knowing, not toward it. Strong belief inevitably turns into rigid political and religious systems through lack of true inner trust; belief does not link you to your essence. Instead, it holds your heart at bay and manipulates you into a governance not your own. ‘Belief systems’ are only proclamations, delivered from external authorities—with mass individual acquiescence—ending in debilitating uncertainty. There is no soul in them. The soul is within you! It is that Life force which permeates your being. Look deeply into what imbues your nature to find the acceptance I speak of.

“I don’t know, O. I’m still not sure your words can convince my readers that trusting the Unknown is any different from believing in an invisible, silent God who rarely, if ever, answers prayers.”

You say in conclusion, “The only difference is the essence you choose and accept—in other words, that you ‘take into’ yourself; that is what ‘acceptance’ means. The distinction lies in the conscious awareness of what you discover within. It constitutes the gulf between outer belief and inner faith. We are here only to say to you that the inner world of the soul is real and that you can remember it when you are ready. That is the difference you seek to understand.”

© 2018 Robert Lee Potter

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MLK Photo

 

“We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence.”

“Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy’s point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.”

 

As we watch our nation’s frustration turn on itself we must realize that ignorance exists at every level of participation. There are those whose convictions are sincere and will express that sincerity through resisting the ugly that festers in our ranks. There are those whose convictions are cancerous and will express that cancer through vile means, climbing over the body of justice to facilitate ignominious behavior, with no regard for the other. For the lover of truth, this moment in our tortured history will stain the pages of history forever, and tears will supplant the righteous call that should be this moment-in-motion.

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Ashmere Lake with Moon(1500px)

How small we are in this thing of dreams, no Wonder to enthrall,

How minuscule, how thinly masked, that grit that makes us tall.

We tower in our minds alone and revel in our ploys,

We think us greater than all else, and yet we play, as toys.

No deep thoughts linger to move the world, no depth in our perception,

We travel in a mindscape vision, mighty lost in the wrong perfection.

Towards end a light awakens me, the fog of thought now tiring,

How silly, was there all along, just lost in my self ‘miring.

The magic of life is simple and plain, it waits with patient breath,

The magic of life so willing, so game, to love us beyond cosmic death.

© Stefan Bright 02/04/18

[Conscious Evolution]

Stop where you are in your mind, right now. Listen to the energy that is coming in with this vision. Go behind it. Convert your awareness now, using a very specific intention. Instead of seeing the images, listen to them. Go down to the sensation beneath both seeing and hearing.

“Sorry, I can’t hold it back anymore. What I’m sensing is very large… vast in fact. It’s the size of the whole solar system. No, make that the whole galaxy. I don’t know why I’m saying this. It sounds crazy. But I’m feeling that sensation you suggested, way down below. That’s where these visions are coming from. That’s where the leak is. There’s an opening of some kind down there. I’m sensing a contradiction: The opening is in complete darkness, but it’s generating light. Am I making any sense?”

Absolutely. Stay with the sensation and tell me everything you hear and see.

“OK. It’s like I’m sensing molecules in my own body. I’m hearing them, literally, crashing into each other’s force fields. The vibrations of these impacts are synchronizing, merging, and carrying a message upward and out to my ears and eyes. The impression is rising and expanding out into the world. That’s the channel you are using to communicate with me. Wow! I get it. I actually sense it. Is this what you’re doing? Is this news to you?”

Yes and no. I understand the mechanics of this communication. But I certainly did not think you would be able to register at that level. You’re going much deeper than I would have expected.

“Now the impulse is beyond the world, out into space. It’s like I’m getting bigger along with the radiating vibration. I’m flying out through the galaxy. It’s all crystal clear. I’m seeing every planet, star and nebula in precise detail. The message is going out there, everywhere, all at once, in one timeless moment. There is complete stillness. And yet, it is all expanding, evolving, changing.

“Oh! Now it’s all getting very chaotic, agitated. I’m seeing stars erupting, exploding, wheeling through space, crashing into each other. Fire and searing bright light everywhere. Suddenly there’s an ominous blackness. The stars are all gone. What happened to them? I’m feeling a deep, unrelenting fear building up, pounding on my senses. It’s coming at me with infinite force, sucking me into it. Irresistible! I can’t imagine such a thing. This is horrible! I’ve got to… whew. The vision is fading. I’m losing it now, thank God. There is nothing coming through … only the root sensation. What does this mean?”

It means, my dear friend, that you have found your place in our work. There is destiny afoot here. Conscious Evolution has shown you the path of this project, what your role might be. It has shown you some of the microscopic and macroscopic mechanics of what we are using here.

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at. That was a very vivid thing I just witnessed. What was that fear, that darkness?” (more…)

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The Calm Before the Storm_1674a

 

No verse today to prologue this wire,

No words, no thoughts moved in to inspire.

The whispers, they voice around a.m. 3.

Last eve not even a drop tickled me.

So here’s the post, just let it be said,

More words like yesterday, I’ll just let them wed.

 

 

[Three More Suggestions]

“Several letters ago, you gave me three suggestions for living through the Great Storm. Can you give me any more?”

Yes. That’s what I was just preparing to do. We are synchronizing more and more. Have you noticed? This is what I anticipated from the beginning. You are learning to read between the lines. Here are three more suggestions, which are follow-ups to each of the three I started with:

1) As you improve your capacity to actively notice what you are feeling and thinking, and what is happening around you, turn that noticing into the expansion of awareness. Invite into your being a new openness and allowing that will begin to dissolve barriers around the little self. The focus of this is the release of your identity with form, and that which is separate from the Cosmos.

You may use noticing as a technique within your meditations. Observe, for instance as you sit still, that there are holes within the fabric of your thinking. There are occasional brief pauses in the streams of thought. There are openings between all the streams as well, loopholes if you will.

Use your imagination to zoom down to microscopic levels in these holes. There, if you are patient, you will recognize what we call points of peace. Now apply your awareness to these points. Center in on them. Relax into their spaciousness. They feel enormously peaceful. When you enter their orbits, you feel blanketed by the most refreshing and calming influence. If you do this, you will find that they are not only supremely serene, but they are also internal power generators of great abundance.

Peace points are always within your reach; they are built into every conscious inner being. Normally, in humans, they’re layered over by the jumble of thoughts, emotions and physical vibrations. The belief that you are an isolated individuality reinforces these distractions in your head. The point here is to make conscious what already exists. You do not have to go searching for peace. That would be a mental activity, and it would only cover the points over with another layer of mind stuff. This is what spiritual seeking does, by the way. It layers over the very thing you thinkyou are looking for, and leaves it perpetually hidden. Seeking does not reveal what is sought; only that which is sought can reveal itself. Instead of seeking, allow yourself to be patient, and notice.

“But that sounds like it would take an eternity. And besides, I have found many things in my life by searching for them.”

What you have found is not what you sought, my friend. It is a mental facsimile of that. Searching for things only creates more things in your life. If you are seeking the spirit, the soul, you will never find it in the mind.

“Hmm. I guess I always knew that somehow.” (more…)

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Monarch Caterpillar

Down Darkly...

 

[The following is a repost from Letters from 500 “Three Suggestions.” Reminders are wonderful things, especially now, in a world so filled with mind noise and distractions.] 

“Here we go again. I’m seeing stars! And I don’t mean like in the old cartoons. These are real! I’m getting images of quickly flowing lights, streaming gases, chaos. I feel like there is a bubble of light around me. It seems to be alive! Suddenly darkness. But this is not ordinary darkness. This is infinite blackness. No hope of light anywhere. I sense great fear, intense resistance. I can’t help but fight against it; it’s pushing on me so hard from all sides. It’s like this darkness is thick with its own presence, its own essence of fear. The sense of confinement is unbelievable. It is living death, totally alone. What on Earth is this?”

I feel that it is not on this Earth!

“Yes. It’s somewhere else. At last I feel a small degree of relief around me in the darkness. It’s hardly a glimmer, but something is there, a tiny glimmer of light; and now it’s gone. It’s all gone. God, I’m shaking all over. What was that? I don’t like it at all.”

It makes me think I must invite you more quickly into an open understanding of our project. I will initiate that upon completion of this next step.

“What do you mean, ‘next step’? Why do you keep delaying your explanation of these visions?”

Because the visions have their own explanations embedded within them. They must speak to you for themselves. You must listen. I can help, but the realization can only come from you.

I will say this, however. The visions are prompting our conversation to now move into a new phase. It behooves me to reveal some order in all this. I will give you some specific advice on how to live through the times you’re in.

“Great! That sounds right to me. I think we all have our heads spinning these days. Please help. Not that I’m giving up my right to raise tough questions, mind you.” (more…)