1. ASCÉTISM
A chapter of the book:
THE MASTERS OF RIGHTEOUS THINKING.
From Jean Prieur.
For your appreciation.
Here is enough to illuminate the lantern of more than one concerning monastic life that should be an innate vocation.
The observation I made is that:
As a man we have the power of discrimination, we remain at the static stage especially when it comes to spirituality, even when we see where changes need to be made. I am talking about the sexual excesses that many of those who have taken vows of chastity are subjected cannot legitimately respect. I have always seen this approach as irresponsible and unreasonable.
There is the notion of age that had to be taken into account, (See my text: Even the Lord Eternal Changes) which would have avoided a lot of inconvenience, which discredits this noble ecclesiastical profession.
Suppressing such an important need, would mean to avoid fulfilling a dual function; physiological and psychological for the maintenance of the body, all this goes against the seeking goal which is to have: A Holy Spirit, in A Holy Body.
(Chasing the natural, it comes back galloping}
In this sense, science is taking giant strides in its quest for human evolution, while in terms of spirituality, we are trampling.
Why is man so resistant to change?
We have confused change and getting into fashion.
I know that those who read the scriptures and want to conform to them will argue that the Apostle Paul said:
“We must not follow the fashion, but correcting it.”
Nature changes and our actions produce reactions that must be well discriminated against at all times.
What are we afraid of? Results.
If we learned to take conscious actions, we would have full control over the results and take responsibility for the effects in person. We could have made more responsible choices to ennoble good deeds and overcome bad ones easily by making righteous sacrifices, which would lead us to holiness without making commitments against our will.
Instead of always groping in the dark, we would lift the very thin veil that separates us from the light that is waiting for us to take a small step towards it to appear on the horizon of our consciousness.
THE REFUSAL OF ASCETISM
The Buddha: “There are two things that should be avoided: A life of pleasure, this is low and vain; a life of mortifications, this is futile and useless. After leaving his palace, Siddharta had joined hermits at the peak of the Vultures, he had practiced with them the scariest asceticism, martyring his body, fasting like an insect in the wrong season, until the day he understood the vanity of these practices that do not lead to virtue, love or knowledge. Christ, too, did not place salvation in mortifications of which he did not set an example.
Then The disciples of John approached Jesus and said to him, “Where does it come from that we and the Pharisees fast and your disciples do not fast?” Christ: “Can the husband’s friends grieve as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the husband will be taken from them, then they will fast. A time for everything at every
day suffices his sorrow; every day is his joy.
An authentic disciple of Christ, Francis de Sales disapproved of inordinate fasts: “The mind cannot bear the over nourished body; but too little nourished, the body can no longer bear the mind.
The Bhagavad Gîtâ: “O white Arjuna,” said the Blessed Lord, “this yoga is not
reached neither by the one who eats too much, nor by the one who abstains from food, nor by the one who sleeps, nor by the one who obliges himself to remain awake. This yoga, which destroys pain, is reached by the one who eats and lives properly, whose every act is regulated by reason, and whose sleep and sleep is well balanced. >
Pythagoras: “Watch out for your health provides the body with measure the food, in mind the rest. Too much or too little care is to flee because envy to one and the other excess also attaches, luxury and greed have similar consequences. You have to choose a fair and good environment in all.”
All antiquity accepted in man the existence of four virtues of justice, wisdom, courage and temperance or moderation. Similarly, the Roman Church counts temperance among the four cardinal virtues. There is three times a question of temperance in the New Testament, a term under which ideas of abstinence, chastity, continence is stored, but whose scope must be further expanded. The original Greek says egkrateia; the Latin version of St Jerome successively resorts to castitas, abstinentia, continentia, emphasizing the mere chastity “As Paul began to speak on justice, temperance (egkrateia, castitas), the judgment to come, Felix became afraid.” (Acts XXIV, 26) I What frightens the prosecutor of Samaria and Judea is less justice and temperance than the judgment to come: he has enough evil deeds on his conscience.
“Make every effort to add to your faith virtue (aretê, virtus); to virtue, knowledge (gnôsis, scientia); to knowledge, temperance (egkrateia, abstinentia) … (II Peter I, 6.) “The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, benevolence, kindness, fidelity, gentleness, temperance (egkrateia, continentia).” (Galates, V, 22.)
Some quite rightly translate egkrateia by self-control and the English Bible (Revised Standard Version) does not back down from a very modern expression: self-control. Love, joy, patience, benevolence, fidelity, self-control, so many virtues. Virtue: the word does not have good press; it blooms the sacristy and the old books of piety.
In reality, virtus comes from vir and means courage, manly energy; virtue equals strength, physical spiritual strength, mental strength.
“Every virtus,” said Senec, “is based on measure.”
“Moderation proves strength,” adds La Rochefoucauld, and Vauvenargues concludes: “The moderation of the weak is mediocrity. If for the apostles, and the Church from their teaching, temperance or moderation is a virtue, for Zarathustra it is an archangel. The fourth Amesha-Spenta is named Spenta Armaïti. It is calm thought, it is the holy wisdom, which keeps the me-sure and who says, like Delphi: “Nothing too much! Many of them were over the ages, those who exaggerate, those who do too much, whether it is the actor who charges, the “holy” who engages in repugnant practices, or the scholar who inflicts indigestion of reading.
Montaigne chokes from too much mood and lamps Like plants too much oil, so does the action of the mind by too much study and matter. »
Our excessive time, accustomed to
Superlatives of advertising, to the hyperboles of politics and cinema, is full to the brim of people who do too much. There is an urgent need to spread the teaching of Delphi and to remember the 13′ Olympic pinlight of Pindare:
“There is a measure in all things, grasping it about is the first of science.”
From the book: The Life of the Masters.
Chapter: The T-Cross.
From: Bird T Spalding.
As I found yourself together, the thought expressed by a verse of your Bible came to mind: “When two or three of you are gathered in my name, I am there among them.
How often has this verse not been considered a simple pun instead of making it real!
You made a great mistake with the teachings of Jesus by relegating them to a foggy past. You considered them mythological, mystical, ineffective before death. Instead, you should have known that everyone can apply the lessons in their daily lives, here and now.
Understand us well: We are not saying that Jesus as Christ represented a plan of life carried out by him alone, a plan that could not even have been particularly attainable by many seers and prophets, at other times and in other peoples.
We emphasize his life as the one that is most fully understandable.
When specifically referred to, it can only have one purpose and meaning, that of inspiring faith by the mere fact that the existence and works of Jesus were a living demonstration of his teaching. The author of the Sermon on the Mountain and the Parable of the Prodigal Son should not be blamed for the speculative dogma of proxy sacrifice, a dogma that has tainted Christian thought for centuries.
The guides of Western thought have diverted the faithful from the practical application of Jesus’ teachings and the study of God’s power. They taught them to confuse his teaching with the experiences of the Apostles. It should have been taught that the fundamental laws on which these experiments are based form an exact science that can be understood and applied in everyday life.
Orientals take the scientific part of their religion as the ultimate goal of their studies and achievements. In doing so they have taken themselves to another extreme. On both sides religion has been relegated to a miraculous and supernatural domain, Westerners have allowed themselves to be absorbed entirely by morality, the Orientals by religious science. Both closed to spiritual truth.
The monastic lives of retreat and asceticism, the separation of the world in Christian or Buddhist monasteries are not a necessity. They do not allow us to attain true spiritual enlightenment, to realize the perfect life of true wisdom and power as Jesus internalized and externalized it.
All these systems have existed for millennia. However, the teachings of Jesus during the few years of his time on earth have made an infinitely greater contribution to the elevation of the people of the people.
It is well known that Jesus knew all the monastic teachings, had gone through the initiations, studied the sacred mysteries as well as the forms rituals and ceremonies, and finally arrived at the teachings of Osiris. These were commented to him by a priest who
himself had kept himself away from all forms of ritual, monastic and material worship.
This priest was a disciple of King Thoth of the first dynasty of Egyptian kings. The known empire
Previously under the Egyptian name was brought to its high stage of culture and realization under Osiris and his successors. These people belonged to the pure white race. Later, they were known as Israelites, attached to the Hebrew race.
When King Thoth proclaimed the Empire of Egypt, he did so as dictator, usurper of the rights of the people. Thanks to the directives of Osiris and his successors, the inhabitants had built and maintained for centuries a splendid civilization of unity and brotherhood. Thoth governed wisely and endeavored to maintain the doctrine of Osiris. But the material and obscure conceptions appeared as the Egyptians, or black hordes of the South, who had brought Thoth to power, increased their influence. The following dynasties departed from the teachings of Osiris. They gradually adopted the obscure conceptions of the dark race and eventually practiced exclusively black magic. The kingdom soon fell, for this kind of kingdom must fall.
After Jesus had listened attentively to this priest, he perceived the deep inner meaning of his doctrine. Jesus’ cursory views of Buddhist teachings and the wise men of the East allowed him to see the great similarity underlying all these doctrines. He then decided to go to India, a project perfectly achievable by the old caravan route that was maintained for this purpose.
After studying the Buddhist teachings preserved with a certain degree of purity, Jesus perceived the similarities. He understood that, despite the ritual forms and dogmas imposed by men, religions had only one source who is God. He called him Father and Father of all. Then he threw all forms to the winds and went directly to God, right to the heart of his loving Father. A wonderful understanding ensued. Jesus soon found it superfluous to delve for many years into the documents, rites, beliefs, formulas, and initiations that priests surreptitiously impose on the people in order to keep them in ignorance and subjection. He saw that the object of his research was deep within himself. To be Christ, he had to proclaim that he was Christ, and then with pure motives in his life, his thought, his word, and his deeds, to live the life he sought in order to incorporate it into his own physical body. After that he had the courage to externalize and proclaim all this to the face of the world. It didn’t matter where he drew. It was his work that mattered, not that of others. The common people whose cause he espoused listened to him with rapture. He did not borrow his precepts from India, Persia, or Egypt. External doctrines simply led him to see his own divinity and the representation of it, Christ, which exists in everyone, not in a few, but in all.
Osiris was born in Atlantis more than thirty-five thousand years ago. Long after his time, the chroniclers of his life deified him because of his magnificent works. He descended directly from the men of high thought who, in the Mother Lying Earth of Man, had kept the clarity of their conceptions. This was the case for most mythological beings whose description came to us. Their works and character have been distorted by successive reproductions and translations. Their work and their achievements were considered supernatural by all those who did not want to devote the time necessary to deepen its meaning or make the effort of thought necessary to discover that everything is divinely natural for man operating in his real domain.
at first, his image was intended only as a symbol of what he represented, and then it gradually settled in people’s minds. The ideal was forgotten, and only the meaningless idol remained. Buddha was also deified by chroniclers long after his time. Notice the number of images that have been made of him, the consequence being that one loves the image instead of the ideal. The result was again an empty idol. The same goes for all signs and symbols.
This is what we also do for Jesus who asks us to imitate him, not worship him.
Be my imitators,” he said.