The Tree of Knowledge

The fruit and the sap of a tree nourish our bodies, the leaves of the tree purify the atmosphere and the wood of the tree provides shelter for our bodies. Understanding these things is the beginning of the journey. This nourishment and shelter providing object is sufficient in itself to the common man, interested only in what is it and what does it do for him. Having found nourishment and shelter for his body, and cleansing for his atmosphere, his journey is complete.

The Scientist goes one step beyond the ‘what’ to the, ‘how’. The man of science must seek the answer to how this is accomplished, how the tree provides the fruit, the leaves, the bark, and the wood. Because in knowing this it can insure that earth will be sustained. So, the scientist digs down into the earth and finds roots then following the root system it discovers that the tree is nourished through the soil where it derives its nutrients and water supply. Now science is done, it has accomplished its task and explained how. The material world can be sustained.

Yet there is more to the tree and to the world than what is physical. To truly understand the tree we must venture to the next level. Here the seeker searches beyond what is physical to what is metaphysical, and beyond how it works, to, ‘what is its source?’ The seeker must search for the seed, the unseen, because the seed cannot be seen, only the roots, the tree, the leaves and the fruit can. The seed is no longer visible as a seed. It is now only visible as a tree; for it has transformed itself into a tree so it could grow to become that which could feed the fire that warms, and produce the fruit that nourishes, the leaves that cleanse, and the wood that shelters. Finally it will return to the soil as thousands of other seeds which will begin their journeys nourished by all of the experiences that it has completed. In this knowledge the Seeker is satisfied, knowing the Source.

The Mystic seeks the answer to why the seed, already containing the tree within itself, desires to journey at all. In his journey he finds that the Source is all that it creates, and multiplies itself through its creations. Like a candle whose light is not diminished regardless of how many other candles it lights, the seed that was one, has become thousands and always remained one. It experiences itself as it multiplies, it nourishes itself with its experiences and it returns to itself with increasing brilliance. In this knowledge, the circle of benefit is complete and the Mystic is satisfied.

God’s Bible, is as simple as a tree.

One Size Fits All

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The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

Jung, Carl, 1875-1961, Swiss Psychiatrist

What is necessary for life on earth? What is the one thing that without which there could be no life? The answer is, contrast. There could be no life without contrast. There could be no physicality without non-physicality. Being could not exist without the belief in non-being. One of the primary purposes of this journey is to experience contrast. We find who we are by seeing who we are not. We find where we are by understanding where we are not. Every contrast that we experience is a way for the soul to stretch itself and grow in knowledge of itself.

It is the same as a play, a movie, or even a novel. Ideally, in a play or a movie the actors, directors, writers, designers, as well as the audience are affected by contrast of the work or the characters to their own lives. We vicariously experience our fears, our possibilities, or our dreams, reflected in the lives and experiences that are depicted. The play or book allows us to walk, for a brief time, in shoes of others.

Incarnating into all races, religions, nations and economic levels enriches each soul as a story enriches the writer, the actor and the reader or viewer. There are as many individual roles to play – shoes to walk in as there are souls on the planet. Each one teaches us something unique. This is why no two individuals are the same. It is why our world contains such diversity. We will throughout our many incarnations, all have played as many parts is takes for each soul to realized that there is only One, and that is what we are a part of. That One is called by many names, but its essence is Love. Ultimately we learn that love does not distinguish, it does not discriminate or differentiate as it is said in the Bible, 1 John 4:7 (King James Version) “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.”

We live our lives here on earth through our mythology, through archetypes. For us to have a hero, there must be a villain. To have a victor, we must have a victim. For one soul to experience itself as strong, it must play against another soul who experiences itself as weak. To believe in good, we must encounter what is believed to be evil. We experience every variation on a theme.

Each grouping that separates us has something that is unique to it, some experience that is uniquely shared only by those within that group, just as each person has qualities that make that person different from any other. Through the experience of many incarnations and many different perspectives the soul comes to understand that there are three hundred and sixty different angles of perception but regardless of the view from whichever angle you are in, there is still only one truth and that truth is understood only when you combine the perceptions of every possible angle. We learn that we must incorporate not eliminate.

Each nation, each tribe, each ethnic, religious, and racial group has, through the recorded history of the world, and even before our recorded history had its day in the sun. This is the way life works. Everything exists in cycles, a nation, or a group of people may be the ruling group for hundreds of centuries.

The goal is not for us to lose our differences. The goal is for us to accept and celebrate our differences. I cannot be me if you are not you. If we are the same, then I am not different and if I am not different then I am not I. If you and I are the same in every respect, then how can I be an individual? Many of us are repulsed by the idea of losing our identity. Our fear of death, even if we believe that we do not die, but become a part of God, is just that; merging into the identity of God and losing the identity of self.

We fear loss of individuality, yet, we hate and fear those who, being different are the very ones defining our uniqueness. We have chosen the earth as our schoolhouse because of our desire to feel that we are God. We seek to experience being the creator of our own lives. And so, we constantly create. We create children, works of art, technological advances, tools, ideas and so on.

The Source created us to experience itself as Loving and being Love and receiving Love. And through its creations, it experiences being – and grows richer. Through each experience that we have, the whole experiences itself. God created every species in the universe so as to experience every aspect of itself as a whole and as an individual. This experience is a Divine Gift, wherever we are in the picture.

Besides being influenced by the intent of the soul family, each soul is influenced by the aspect of experience through which it has chosen to incarnate. There are those who choose in this life to learn to master the material world through the lower senses, their journey is to be of the world. Others choose to be master over their lower senses and to rise above the material world, to be in it but no longer of it. Whatever area of crisis we choose to work through, material, emotional, mental, religious, or a varied mixture of each our goal is to learn about the meaning of Love in all of its faces.

Whichever mixture of challenges we choose will color the soul and its experiences here. It will color the way that each of us perceives our lives and also the experiences that we magnetize to us. The families through which we choose to enter will influence us by, imprinting on our lives and our vision the essence of the challenges we have chosen to grow through in this life and those carried over from those lives we consider as past.

Each particular mix, just like a recipe, will add a distinct flavor, a distinct aura to each individual. It makes our lives what they are in contrast to the lives of those around us. In addition to this is the joint experience that we choose to enter through race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and national origin. Each of these elements will color our lives, but in a particular way that is unique to each us as it all combines with the particular soul qualities. Therefore even though we may contain the same ingredients as someone else, somehow when it mixes with all that we carried with us into this life, we still come out unique.

Look at the solar system and you must be immediately aware of what makes this world different. All of the colors made by the different bodies in our galaxy are joined together in our one planet. There is the blue planet, the yellow sun, the red planet, the orange planet, and then there is the earth, the planet where all shades of all colors stand brilliantly side by side, not poured into a bucket to form some single shade of mud, but together forming one planet that stands out among all the others not for its size, or its shape, but for the beauty of its uniqueness. If you were a soul floating through the galaxy passing all of the objects orbiting the sun you would have to say, “I want to go there”. It is alive with diversity. And with all of its color, and all of its diversity it still is one planet. One planet that is special because one size does not fit all.

God Is An Ocean

God is an Ocean of Consciousness
Nothing exists outside of it
For there is no outside of it…it is THAT
It is All That Is and All that will ever be
From its deepest being a wave rises into a dream
And from THAT a rainbow of luminous drops are cast up
From the Ocean in which each drop has always existed yet
Unaware of its existence
To become self-conscious – self aware
To journey into the dream and find the individual “I am”
A journey to know the eternal self that slept within THAT
A self that once awakened
To itself
Will eternally be
Itself, eternally “I am”
This is the beginning of evolution
To know oneself apart from One-Self
It says, “I am this” but “Great is THAT”
It first sees THAT as all-powerful
So it seeks to amass power
It then sees THAT as the Creator
So it seeks to create
It sees All That Is as belonging to THAT
So it seeks to own all there is
It sees THAT as perfect
So it seeks the power to create and define perfection
And defines it in its own image
So that it can attain what it seeks
And excludes all others that appear different
Because it sees only the world of the dream
It comes to learn that it needs love, so
The self seeks to learn LOVE
It comes to learn that it needs kindness, so
The self seeks to learn KINDNESS
It comes to learn that it needs compassion, so
The self seeks to learn COMPASSION
Through many lives in many dreams
Through every shade of every body, and
Every gain with equal loss
As it absorbs each pain and sorrow
Each joyful moment along the path
In each life within the dream the self becomes the sum
Of all lives before
Until, when all dreams have been dreamt
All characters have been played – oppressed, oppressor,
Winner, loser, master, slave, persecutor, persecuted, superior, inferior
It doesn’t remember that it has walked every path, but somehow it knows
The pain of the stones and the nails on the way…
It becomes Empathy
It doesn’t remember all of the times that it was hungry, or homeless
But the needs of others feel too familiar
So, it becomes Kindness
It doesn’t remember its lives of suffering, but scars of the suffering has become
A part of its being and so, without thought, or plan, all suffering of all beings
Opens wounds lost in time
It becomes Compassion.
It doesn’t remember the lives of material abundance, but the soul knows
The dream holds nothing it has not tired of, and so it covets nothing
And coveting nothing
It becomes free
It doesn’t remember all the battles, diseases, and deaths it has passed through
Yet each one is a part of the self’s becoming
Without knowing why, it knows its eternal, unconsciously knowing
There’s nothing to fear
It becomes fearless
Being fearless, wanting nothing, the dream becomes powerless and
It becomes Power
Feeling all life as itself, and seeing the Divine in all,
No longer aware of differences, no longer nourished by the stuff of the dream,
The dream vanishes, the dreamer awakens
It knows that it is, itself, it knows it knows that it is the SELF, it says, “I AM”,
It says “I know that I AM,” it says, “I know, that I am, and that you are, THAT”
Enriched and Awakened, it returns, to bring its gifts back to ITSELF,
back to All-That-is. And as it’s many lives, color by color
Turned the drop from the rainbow into the rainbow itself
It returns home to the Ocean, once lost, now found
Once empty, now complete -
Once seeking, now guiding, once asking, now offering, once alone
Now All-One.



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