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In a message dated 3/6/05 5:57:41 AM, rcopleman@comcast.net writes:<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE CITE STYLE="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px" TYPE="CITE"></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Geneva" FAMILY="SANSSERIF" SIZE="2">For more, read anything by Thomas Berry, especially The Great Work. Or<BR>
enjoy Brian Swimme's The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos. For a connection to<BR>
the corporate world, global finance, and our more immediate, earthly issues,<BR>
devour David Korten's two latest books: When Corporations Rule the World and<BR>
The Post-Corporate World.</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Geneva" FAMILY="SANSSERIF" SIZE="2"><BR>
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Dear Friends in OS,<BR>
<BR>
I have been doing a lot of reflecting on some of these conversations about the universe, reality and such. Lumps, jitters, jiggles, etc. Don't know if anyone here has ever read "Life and Teachings of the Masters of the Far East" by Baird Spalding or not. Quoting from one of the Forewards of the five volume work, speaking about the Masters he met, "The LIVE Truth, which is a part of the Universe itself. Life is really traceable back into the misty past which bears to us the accomplishments of hundreds of thousands of past centuries. </FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Geneva" FAMILY="SANSSERIF" SIZE="2"><I>To us, life is bound about by every limitation and convention. (emphasis added).</I></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Geneva" FAMILY="SANSSERIF" SIZE="2"> To them, life is boundless, ceasless, unending bliss and happiness; the longer the span of life, the greater the joy and the more worth while the living."<BR>
<BR>
My reflection is also colored and influenced by the impending death of my father, the next to last at age 93 of his entire generation of my family heritage. Only his brother is still here after him, already age 90. The true family patriach is passing (father of four sons, as am I with Joelle).<BR>
<BR>
It is in that light that I was thinking of the true work of the human being. It seems to me we get caught in limitation and convention when we have seen what a human being is meant to be, a wholly loving, unlimited being. Jesus of Nazareth is only one example, albeit certainly an advanced example. The Masters Spalding met could materialize food (feed the 5,000), cross on water, change the vibrational levels of their body so as fire would not burn ("passing through the crowd, he went his way" Luke 4:30---where they were going to throw Jesus off a cliff---put yourself in that situation and ask "How did He do that? Pass through an angry crowd bent on killing him?").<BR>
<BR>
What I'm pondering is what mess of pottage have we sold our birthright for? Reality? What is that? And, why are we not able to use reality in such a way as to heal, to live wholly choiceful loving lives? Is OS, miraculous as it is to us used to planning, organizing, leading and controlling, really just an indicator, a pale shadow of what is possible if we could only get our minds and spirits freed up to see the actuality of the cosmos?<BR>
<BR>
And what might be that 'work'? In what ways might that be made truly possible? Not just occasionally, but ALL the time. These are some of the reflections the conversations on the List have provoked in me lately. Who might we become if we should learn 'the Way'?<BR>
<BR>
Flying up from Arcata, California one evening as the sun was setting I was privileged to see a most amazing sunset wherein there was a dark, dark cloud bank beneath which the sun was shining in deep red and purple hues. The cloud bank must have extended for many miles out into the Pacific Ocean because above that shaft of cloud was no sun, just the deepening blue of the space night as evening descended. The following poem leaped into my mind (literally, I think):<BR>
<BR>
Darkling sky, twilight imbued,<BR>
Split by an inky shaft of cloud.<BR>
Fire purple below, ascending blue,<BR>
My spirit shouts outloud!<BR>
<BR>
"The veil, the veil is separateness<BR>
concealing you from me.<BR>
O' pierce, o' pierce that darkened shroud<BR>
And set our spirits Free!"<BR>
<BR>
A musing Paul. Many thanks for being there.<BR>
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