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Opportunities Are Right Here

Jan 03, 2007 10:49 AM
by carlosaveline


Friends, 
 
Some people see the spiritual path as a way of obtaining peace and comfort at the personal level. In their deeds, if not in their words, they  reject all “probations” and tests. They fear pain. They attach themselves to pleasure. 
 
When these people learn about H.P.B.’s struggle against theological dogmatism and other forms of collective ignorance and hypocrisy,  they feel that the main teacher of the esoteric philosophy was  excessively polemist. They think that H.P.B. had a temper and  that she was less peaceful than she should have been. 
 
Thinking like this may help us disguise our own tamasic love for routine and ommision. Those who challenge collective ignorance are fiercely attacked in various ways – so it is convenient for us to have some handy explanations and excuses as to why we do not try to follow the example and the vibration pattern of Initiates.  
 
Naive students believe that HPB challenged the dogmas of her time because she was anxious, neurotic – or perhaps because she had ‘a missing principle’ in  her inner consciousness. The matter of the fact is that she was setting an example for future generations of truth-seekers to follow. 
 
She couldn’t avoid challenging  the dogmas of her time  because she had a greater view of things.  The same happened to many Messengers, great and small, since Pythagoras, Buddha and  Lao-tzu.  Messengers don’t care about established dogmas or personal well-being. Seen as an example of an vibration pattern, H.P.B.’s life and suffering contain an inspiring example for us in the 21st century.  
 
She was a willing instrument to open a new road and to establish a better pattern.  More than one century after she left her body in 1891,  her life is still a living metaphor illustrating the path which  we might take courage to tread  one of these days. The  inner aspect of the progress along this  road is radiant with eternal bliss  – while, at the outer level, the learner’s personality undergoes a painful psychological and alchemical transformation. 
 
One Mahatma described this process in a letter to a lay chela: 
 
“You were told (...) that the path to Occult Sciences has to be trodden laboriously and crossed at the danger of life; that every new step  in it leading to the final goal, is surrounded by pit-falls and cruel thorns; that the pilgrim who ventures upon it is made first to confront and conquer the thousand and one furies (1) who keep watch over its adamantine (2)  gates and entrance – furies called Doubt, Skepticism, Scorn, Ridicule,  Envy and finally Temptation – especially the latter; and that he, who would see beyond had to first destroy this living wall; that he must be possessed of a heart and soul clad in steel, and of an iron, never failing determination and yet  be meek  and gentle, humble and have shut out from his heart every human passion, that leads to evil.”(3) 
 
What about “Theos-talk” as a probationary field of search for truth? 
 
Contradictions here are evidences  that it is alive. 
 
“Opportunities are everywhere”, indeed.  
 
 
Carlos
 
 
NOTES: 
 
(1) Furies: in  classical Mythology, feminine deities who punished crimes, prompted by the victims, and  who took revenge on behalf  of the gods.  
 
(2) Adamantine: like a  diamond; impenetrably hard; utterly and unyieldingly firm.
 
(3) “The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett”, Theosophical University Press, Pasadena, California, 1992, Letter LXII, pp. 351-352. 
 
O o o O o o O o o O o o O o o O  o o O 
 
 


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