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To Annette (Re: THEOS-BUDS Digest 237 etc)

Jul 08, 1997 05:47 AM
by Murray Stentiford


Annette

I loved and resonated with many parts of your long message several days ago
and recognised a number of the painful places you talked about.

I've been in the TS for around 33 years and have come to believe that if
theosophy just stays in your head, it hasn't got very far at all. That
relationships are the furnace where the tools for doing things like the
first Object of the TS can be forged, and that the first Object in turn
points us to a wider, deeper quality of relationships.

>take a walk on the wild side - alone - like some of us who get back
>out there in the corporate and interpersonal world holding up our end
>everyday, doing both - taking care of business and walking the path and
>walking the path and taking care of business.  I dare you.

Dare happily accepted because that is what I'm trying to do already.

IMO, integration is the name of the game for whole-being health and
spiritual growth - between head and heart, belief system and actions, what
you demand for yourself and what you offer to others, between the different
states you traverse in consciousness during your day, between your many
intentions, etc etc etc. There are so many ways this seed idea can unfold.
Not a day goes past without my getting a surprise of discovering another
connection somewhere.

Fragmentation and separation between us and within us are, I dare say, the
biggest single causes of pain and getting stuck on our evolutionary journey.
Ie, dysfunctional or unrealised relationships. Take a look at the problems
at different scales: in the world, in your country, in your city and in
individual lives and see if some form of non-integration is not at the base
of them.

By the way, I enjoyed the Celestine Prophecy and found its insights an
uncluttered, accessible expression of some facets of the ancient wisdom.
Teilhard de Chardin's writing is great, though in a different register and
from a very different background. The heart of the wisdom is timeless but we
must be open to new expressions of it, to avoid fossilization ourselves. If
fresh leaves didn't keep coming out of the branch, you'd wonder if the sap
was still flowing.

As for the "psychic" - a term about as specific as the philosophical or the
energetic; in the TS, as I think you are finding already, there is a certain
negative baggage associated with it, which initially arose as some
reasonable advice for protection and balance but has since got a bit screwed
up and crabbed in the hands of those who are high in theory and low in
relevant experience.

I remember going to Geoffrey Hodson, a theosophical writer you may be aware
of, and saying to him that others had commented that I had a healing touch
etc, and asking what I should do to develop it. He replied simply "Use it."
The kind of intentionality for using it was utterly clear, too.

I believe that good integration generally means being open to, and
cultivating a balanced development of all the levels and frequency ranges of
our being, and a sensible attitude to that development. To have a special
down on one level could in fact be unbalanced - a sort of focus of
small-selfdom or an unnecessary complex.

Be encouraged. Thanks for taking the risk, if such it was, of writing so
much from the heart as well as from the head - the integration was great!

Murray


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