Month: May 2017

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McCall Gathering 2007, Part 51

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This entry is part 51 of 54 in the series McCall Gathering 2007

The Slaying of Cerberus, Guardian of Hades

JJ: The next labor is Capricorn, that is Artie’s sign. The slaying of Cerberus, Guardian of Hades. (Hell) In this labor he is told again that he needs to go and rescue Prometheus. He is in two of these labors and I don’t know why but I guess just for symbology sake. In this labor Prometheus is in hell and Hercules must descend to hell and rescue him. Prometheus is sent to hell because he went against the grain of the gods for he was not supposed give fire to man which he did against their will. Now some stories say that he just gave them normal fire so that man could progress and light fires and cook food and give him warmth and other stories say that he gave them the fire of the spirit from the gods, the fire that makes them gods.

Whatever he gave them angered them and they chained him up this time in the pit of hell and again he has vultures picking at his liver and his body. So he is in terrible shape and Hercules has to descend to hell and save him. So he begins to descend to hell and he has to cross a river named Styx, a river that the souls of the deceased must cross. It is guarded, interestingly enough, by a person named Charon (sounds like Sharón)

Charon is a ferryman that can take the souls over to the other side of the river. He ferries Hercules over and he was supposed to charge him a penny but he forgot because Hercules was so strong and powerful that he didn’t think about it. In hell he meets Medusa and tries to overcome her and was not quite able to slay her. It does not say anything about turning people into stone like the ancient stories indicate. Then he goes through a Labyrinth and he meets the king of the underworld.

The king of the underworld says, you can free Prometheus if you can kill a three-headed dog with your bare hands. Now many people have tried to do this and no one has been able to hurt this dog and if you can kill this big beast with your bare hands than I will let you free Prometheus. So Hercules continues on his journey and he comes the place where Prometheus is and the three-headed dog guards him. He attacks the dog and he centers in on his main head. The three heads symbolize, sensation, desire and good intentions, so he grabs him at the most important head, which head would that be?

Audience: Desire?

JJ: Correct, desire, and desire is the one that is the most important to overcome. So he grabs him at the central head, which is desire, and he chokes the dog to death. He then proceeds and frees Prometheus, unleashing him, he re-traces his steps and takes him out of the underworld and up to the surface.

Audience: So he only had to kill one head and the others would die?

JJ: Yes, the desire is the main head. Prometheus, as we said, symbolizes God and man, and he is chained to a rock in the depths below which means he is chained to the densest matter and that makes it really hard to see the God in us and remember it is important that to love our brother. We must look into his eyes and see his soul and if we can look into our brother’s eyes and see his soul, then we can see the God within. But many of us only see the outer personality. We only see Prometheus chained and not free and just a normal person and suffering from the things that we suffer from in life. Instead of seeing the suffering we should look and see the perfection of the God within and this is what we have to do with Prometheus. That is the only way we can free the Prometheus within us is to see the true God that is there.

Because God does not appear to be there it appears that he is chained and powerless for that he has been there for ages and ages and ages. It appears we are sinners to be punished by God and we are born in sin and God is frowning upon us and we are chained and suffering and there is nothing we can do about it. Prometheus is an extension of Hercules (Us) and he frees Prometheus hence freeing himself by seeing what he truly is and seeing that the God within and the God without are the same.

Audience: I am lost on that one; I thought you said that he strangled desire?

JJ: He did.

Audience: Well how does that find the God within?

JJ: I will cover this in a little more detail. The lower passions hide the God within. The symbolism of the rock tells us he was trapped in the densest matter. The lower passions, desires, sensations, and good intentions, sensation is very closely related to desire and it increases desire and good intentions are our desire to do good. You have heard the statement that, “The way to hell is paved with good intentions.” This is often the case; it is people with good intentions who often create a lot more harm than good.

Every bureaucracy that we have in this country is created with good intentions. Politicians say we are going to create this bureaucracy that is going to do a lot of good. We create the bureaucracy that costs us billions and billions of dollars and ten years later nothing is improved and it is the same as it was before so all the good intentions did was cost money, raise our taxes and produced nothing what so ever and often times does harm. You look at almost every bureaucracy that has been created and it is the same thing, it was created with good intentions but it does more harm than good.

Many things that we do in our personal life does more harm than good. I was talking to a man a while back and he said that he believed in harmlessness and he would not own or shoot a gun no matter what the case. I said really, lets suppose that you are in this bank and a bank robber comes in with a bomb strapped on him and he begins to rob the bank and says unless everybody cooperates he will press a button and blow everybody all up. The police arrive and they are all trapped inside and now he can’t get out and becomes desperate. In the process he winds up shooting the guard and the guard falls close to this guy who does not believe in shooting anybody and this gun slips out of his holster near his foot. Now here is the guy with the bomb and he tells the police that if they do not do exactly what he says that he is going to blow everybody up. The police are not cooperating and the guy says in ten seconds I am going to blow everybody up. He begins to count ten, nine, eight…

Now you can save the situation by grabbing the gun and shooting the guy, do you shoot the guy and take one life or do you let the guy detonate the bomb and take a hundred lives in the bank? Which one do you do?

He says, well I would not shoot him. I said well then the blood of one hundred people will be on your hands. He said, no it wouldn’t. And I said, yes it would because if you have the possibility of stopping this guy and don’t then you have the responsibility for a hundred lives. So, in that situation would you still not shoot him? He said no. Well the guy has good intentions but those good intentions are going to cost one hundred lives because that guy is now going to detonate the bomb. The guy has the power to stop him but he will not so his good intentions will cost the lives of one hundred people who have husbands, wives, children, girlfriends, boyfriends, friends and who will also be affected by this one man with good intentions that had a chance to stop this and he did not.

This is often the case, we have good intentions and we do what feels good and what sounds good but in the end it creates a lot more destruction than if we took the hard path and actually did the common sense thing that would produce the most good.

Audience: So the good intentions hide the God within?

JJ: Yes, good intentions often create more harm than good and we have to see through the good intentions and see if they are really going to do anything good. The second thing we have to do with good intentions is when our good intentions are actually good and not bad then we have to see them through. If we see through our good intentions and they make sense and fulfill them and if we conquer sensation so sensation does not control us and if we overcome desire so desire becomes a servant then that opens the door for the God within shine forth.

There are a lot of things we can do to show the God within but the most important thing overall is to look, if we do not look we will not see but we can’t really look until we have successfully overcome wrong desire and wrong thought and wrong attachment to sensation.

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McCall Gathering 2007, Part 50

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This entry is part 50 of 54 in the series McCall Gathering 2007

Killing the Stymphalian Birds

The next labor of Hercules is the killing of the Stymphalian Birds in the sign of Sagittarius. There was a marsh in a place called Stymphalus and it was a putrid place that was inhabited with thousands and thousands of these birds. The leaders were three great big birds and there was a whole bunch of small birds. The marsh was putrid place and stunk up the whole countryside.

Hercules’ assignment was to go and rid the marsh of these birds. So he went looking for them and made a long search until he came to Stymphalus and viewed all these great birds and they were horrible looking things. They had iron beaks sharpened like a sword with feathers too that seemed like steel shafts and falling could cleave twain a person right in two and their talons matched their beaks in sharpness and strength. So people were terrified of these birds for if they landed on a person they would be ripped to shreds.

Three birds perceiving Hercules came after him and he pulled his great sword and wounded one of them but he did not quite defeat the birds. So he was trying to figure out how to go after them. He killed a handful of the small ones but pretty soon there were so many of the birds flying overhead that it darkened the sun and made it almost like night. Hercules concluded that were just too many birds to get rid of and thought, “What am I going to do?”

Notice before he comes back with a solution he always withdraws from the battle and thinks. The power of thought is the most powerful thing that the disciple has. So he sits back and thinks of how he can rid the land of these birds and then an idea came to him. He remembered he had two cymbals given to him by one of the gods, and these two cymbals when clanged together make a noise so horrifying that Hercules himself had to cover his ears with pads and bind up his ears as much as possible or else he would not be able to bear the sound.

So he goes back to the marsh where the birds are and begins to bang these cymbals as hard as he can and the sound was so horrific that even Hercules was affected but the birds had more sensitive ears and it was horrific for the birds so they began to fly away and as they flew away Hercules kept banging the cymbals until they were all gone, never to return. And so this is how he got rd of the Stymphalian birds. What do you suppose these birds were?

Audience: Bad news!

JJ: Chuckling, now remember all these things are problems that the disciple must get rid of in his own life.

Audience: Thought forms?

JJ: Pretty close, it is wrong thought of some kind and usually a wrong thought that is transmitted into sound for he defeated them with sound. Wrong thought transmitted into sound meaning wrong speech. No matter how far you get on the path it is difficult to speak in a way where we maintain harmlessness. I try to be as harmless as I can and it is amazing how many people I still offend. Joshua looks like a pretty harmless guy, are you still able to offend people?

Joshua: Oh yes!

JJ: James is a real harmless looking guy and we know James very well and I have never known him to say anything to hurt anybody but has anybody been offended to hear your speech?

James: Oh yes!

JJ: As harmless as you are – it is really hard to believe with James because he is really such a nice guy. Okay Adam is a nice guy and everybody is a pretty nice guy except for maybe Randy he is pretty ornery.

Audience: Laughing!

JJ: How about you Ren have you ever offended anybody?

Ren: I think mostly Susan.

JJ: Wives don’t count; they are offended half the time anyway aren’t they?

Audience: Laughing!

JJ: Adam you seem like the type of guy that wouldn’t offend anybody, have you ever offended anybody?

Adam: Oh yes!

JJ: It is interesting no matter how nice a guy you happen to stumble across that still encounter people who are offended. Even Annie – I think of all the people I have known in my life I would say the least likely to offend anybody would be Annie but she still manages to offend people! That is amazing isn’t it?

Even Jesus offended so many people that he said, “Blessed is he who is not offended in me”. Wherever He went He offended people and they crucified Him because He offended them too much.

The three main birds are represented in, talk of gossip, talk of self and casting pearls before swine. The rest of the birds are just the little chatter that people always talk so you have thousands of birds and then the three big birds. Gossip is a big one and I don’t think I have ever met anyone who does not gossip a little here and there and even Artie gives me a hard time saying, you are supposed to be a big time holy man or whatever and you still gossip. I mean who doesn’t talk about somebody right?

Audience female member: We call it information sharing and its important!

JJ: On the other hand you can say good things about people like my nephew here; he has a hell of a sense of humor!

Audience: Can you enlighten me on the casting pearls before swine?

JJ: Yes it does seems a little out of order here. Pearls before swine has to do with thoughts and thoughts are things. Once you have a concept or a thought and if you decide to give it to somebody before they are ready – that is the wrong use of speech. Gossip is wrong use of speech, glorifying your self is wrong use of speech and people really like to do that. We all have to check ourselves on that. Glorifying your own self like, boy I am really smart so let me show you how smart I am or how funny I am or whatever. Casting the pearl before swine is done with speech; in other words we give stuff to people before they are ready and they just don’t appreciate it. People use this idea a little bit too much. If some religious guy is talking to you and you do not agree with him he will complain that he is throwing pearls before swine and you are the swine.

Hercules went and clashed two loud cymbals to get rid of all the birds, what is this?

Audience: Send forth like an AUM?

JJ: It is a sound of some kind, what kind of sound?

Audience: irritating sound to them, repulsive.

JJ: It is the sound of spirit and matter coming together and producing the sound of silence from the soul. The vibration of the soul lifts us up and chases away all of the harmful thoughts that is represented by the birds. They go away and do not return. They are not killed, the gossip and wrong speech is still floating around somewhere because they did not get killed, they just left and they could come back unless we are able to reproduce the sound of the soul. The person who has achieved soul contact is able to cause them to flee away and not come back. You can’t stay in soul contact and have your thoughts directed towards the self and the lower desires and you can’t have your thoughts saying bitter things toward other people. Now you may talk about other people to some degree, there is a line to cross. You don’t say anything that is untrue about anybody, you don’t spread lies about someone and this type of thing.

I’ll end the discussion of this labor by reading the synopsis from the book. Consider the symbolic meaning as I read.

Within the place of peace the Teacher stood, and spoke to Hercules. “O son of God who art also a son of man,” the Teacher said, “the time has come to tread another way. At Gate the ninth you stand. Pass through and find the marsh of Stymphalus where dwell the birds that havoc wreak. Discover, then, the way to flush them from their long secure abode.”
He paused a moment. “The flame that gleams beyond the mind reveals direction sure.” he added. “The task awaits. Through Gate the ninth you now must go.”
Forward, then, went Hercules, the son of man who was also the son of God.

For long he searched until he came to Stymphalus. Before him lay the fetid marsh. A multitude of birds cawed raucously, a chorus menacing and dissonant, as he approached.

At nearer view he saw the birds. Large and fierce and hideous they were. Each had an iron beak that was sharpened like a sword. The feathers, too, seemed like steel shafts and, falling, could cleave in twain the pates of weary travellers. Their talons matched their beaks in sharpness and in strength.

Three birds, perceiving Hercules, swooped down upon him. He stood his ground, and warded off attacks with the heavy club he bore. One bird he struck resoundingly upon the back; two feathers plummeted to earth and quivered as they plunged into yielding ground. At length the birds withdrew.

Before the marsh stood Hercules, and pondered how he might achieve the task assigned, how rid the place of these predacious birds.
By many means he sought to find a way. At first he tried to kill them with a quiverful of arrows. The few he slew were but a fraction of the many that remained. They rose in clouds so thick they hid the sun.
He thought of setting traps within the marsh. Nor boat nor human feet could traverse the bog. Hercules paused. The words he then recalled of counsel given. “The flame that gleams beyond the mind reveals direction sure.” Reflecting long, a method came to mind.

Two cymbals had he, large and brazen, that gave forth an unearthly screeching sound; a sound so piercing and so harsh it could affright the dead. To Hercules himself the sound was so intolerable, he covered both his ears with pads.
At twilight when the marsh was dense with countless birds, Hercules returned. The cymbals then he sharply clashed, again and yet again. A clangor and a din so strident then ensued that he himself could scarce endure the sound. Such ear-assaulting dissonance had not been heard in Stymphalus before.

Bewildered and disturbed by such a monstrous noise, the predatory birds rose in the air with wildly flapping brazen wings, and screeched in hoarse dismay. Utterly confused, the vast cloud of birds fled in frantic haste, never to return. Silence spread across the marsh. The horrid birds had disappeared. The soft gleam of a westering sun was seen as it flickered on the darkening landscape.
When Hercules returned, the Teacher greeted him: “The birds of slaughter have been driven off. The labor is achieved.”

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McCall Gathering 2007, Part 49

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This entry is part 49 of 54 in the series McCall Gathering 2007

The Eternal Head

Power is the easiest thing to misuse. The reformer, Martin Luther, was grumbling about how the pope and everybody in government were misusing their power and then when he got a little bit of power he did the same thing and this happens again and again and again. If you study history almost everybody that becomes a totalitarian leader, king or dictator becomes corrupt. Can you think of one person with total power in history that was not corrupt?
Audience: What do you mean total?

JJ: Where he was like a king and had life and death power over everybody in his realm, can you think of one? Can you think of one king or ruler that had total power that did not use it unjustly?

Audience: George Washington

JJ: He had the opportunity to become king but refused; therefore, he never had total power over people’s lives. Let’s imagine he would have accepted total power – then within a couple years he may have been cutting off people’s heads and burning people at the stake too; but George Washington deserves a tremendous amount of credit because he was the first one I know of in history that offered to give up total power. It’s as if the people said, “We are going to give you a lottery, George, because you won the war for independence for us and so we are going to give you total power.”

George Washington said, “No I do not want it – we are just going to establish a presidency instead and we are going to have elections and so on.” He did not accept the position of absolute power of a king and they would have happily given him that position if he had accepted it. But even if a noble man like George Washington would have accepted it then who knows what the country would have been like after five years.

Audience: What about Solomon?

JJ: He had 700 wives and 300 concubines. He went kind of crazy there didn’t he?

Audience: Laughter!

Audience: What about somebody like Marcus Aurelius? (Emperor of Rome 161-180 considered the last of the good emperors)

JJ: You know that is who I was thinking of and that is probably one of the best examples of someone with total power that used it wisely, I am sure he made mistakes and I have not studied his life in detail but from what I do know about it he was the best emperor that Rome ever had. He was a philosophical emperor and the people loved him and he was one of the few and I cannot think of anybody else, can you think of anybody else?

Audience: That was the only one that came to mind.

JJ: Yes that was the only one that came to my mind as well.

Audience; there are some characters in the Book of Mormon, that if that history is true, they did pretty well, king Benjamin, Mosiah, and what we do know is that they were considered just men.

JJ: The Book of Mormon makes an interesting statement, it says, “It would be of good if you had a king if you could be assured that you could have a righteous king”. But because there is no way to be assured that you can have a righteous king then the best type of government is an elected type government. So they created what they called a reign of judges, which scattered the power amongst a number of individuals rather than give totalitarian power, which was wise for that people. I believe that is a true statement.

If we could have a king like Marcus Aurelius that was a wise person and a philosopher then everybody in the kingdom would be happy and there would be little bureaucracy. The emperor could just give the command and the right thing is done. The advantage of a dictator is he can override the bureaucracy. Now the problem we have with our government is that we have too much bureaucracy and this slows everything down and makes everything less efficient and in many cases takes all but a few pennies from every tax dollar we give just to support it.

So absolute power corrupts and would most likely even corrupt a man like George Washington but a handful would not be corrupted. Lets take Abraham Lincoln. He pretty much had absolute power during the civil war because of the war powers granted to him and he performed even greater than Marcus Aurelius did. Lincoln did some controversial things back then. Today people think George W. Bush is bad, but when the press revealed war details and things like that they were not supposed to reveal, Lincoln had them put in jail. Could imagine if Bush had the editor of the New York Times put in jail?

Abraham Lincoln could not do today what he did during the Civil War. He did away with Habeas Corpus, he had mail opened and other things. I find it interesting that he is looked upon as our greatest president. After the Civil War he gave the power back to where it was supposed to be. He was like George Washington who gave the power back to the people after the revolutionary war and Lincoln gave the power back after the Civil War because he did not need it any more. But he could have established a dictatorship because he had so many powers given to him and if he had been a lesser man then we would not have the country that we have today.

Hercules overcame the hydra by kneeling. He found that when he cut off one head, two heads grew in its place and when he fought it directly it became stronger. When we fight our lower emotions like anger – when we try to overcome anger, jealousy, pride by fighting them – then it just makes it worse and it does not really help. To overcome these emotions Hercules had to go beneath the serpent of illusion with all these negative glamors and emotions and lift it up into the air.

The air represents the mind and the soul and when the soul comes into play then all the lower emotions are handled and what is interesting about it is that it is so much easier! All we have to do is achieve soul contact. Then the lower emotions are under our control and no longer a problem with the exception of one, power. Even after soul contact we still have power to deal with. Even Lucifer who went beyond the range of being a master let power get the best of him.

Maybe even God himself has a problem with power, who knows? He’s not going to confess to us. Power itself is eternal and, in other words, the problem with power. We hear about the wars among the gods and there are different legends in different cultures about how the gods are at war with each other over power so it an interesting thought that power is an eternal struggle even among the highest lives in the universe, even among those who we call the gods and even among the good guys who can also be corrupted by power.

We know that one higher than a master was corrupted by power so its an eternal head that always comes back to haunt us. It is like the founding fathers said, “Freedom must be won by eternal vigilance”. Corrupt power takes away freedom. Somebody seeking unjust power takes away freedom and keeping a lid on this eternal head does require eternal vigilance to a dimension that people do not realize. We think in terms of a lifetime but it is eternal and for the life of this universe there will be a struggle for power from one side or another.

This struggle for power brings the power of decision into play, so decision is always at play and so we always have to choose which side of power we want to get on and the choice always comes down to: which path will give us the most freedom? And where the most freedom lies is where we must make our choice. The side that is corrupting power will always tell us that they are on the side of freedom. Both sides will always claim to be on the side of freedom but one side really will be on the side of freedom and one side is merely using it as a way to get power. That is pretty much an eternal struggle that we will always have to worry about.

Audience: When Hercules did the labor in Gemini he also held up the multi headed serpent. Was that the same as he did here with the hydra?

JJ: It is a little bit different, the one in Gemini was destroyed by light, in other words, enlightenment was what destroyed that one. This one is destroyed by the power of the soul, which is different. You cannot destroy anger and the lower emotions by light. You can be enlightened and still have the problem of getting angry, jealous and so on but you destroy it by raising your consciousness up to the soul and the soul brings down the higher feeling which replaces the lower feelings. In the first story light replaced darkness and this time higher feelings replaced lower feelings. The feelings of the soul are much higher and they are so much more desirable. The key is to put the bad feelings in their place and replace them with the higher feelings.

Audience: But he did hold the hydra in the air, but that didn’t kill it?

JJ: It killed all the heads except the immortal one, which is the head of power.

Audience: And that one he cut off and hid it under a rock and he was to just ignore it, so the hydra is dead?

JJ: Yes the hydra is all but dead except for the immortal head that was cut off. So the hydra is dead because the disciple has lifted it up to the soul and the soul feelings replace the lower feelings and he no longer has a problem with the lower feelings like anger. It does not mean that anger is impossible it means that when he gets angry that he can direct it to harmlessness.

Like I have always said, if you get angry at somebody you can do three things, you can do physical harm to them, you can walk away and ignore it which is also harmful because it creates suppression in you, or you can tell the person, look when you said this to me it hurt my feelings and this communicates how you feel and releases the negativity from you. Anger is controlled by directing it to an intelligent harmless end so if I feel angry towards someone and I tell them, you did this and I felt like hurting you but I am not going to and this is how I felt, I felt like slapping you silly but I am not going to do it because I am trying to control myself here. So you have communicated with the person how you feel without slapping them.

Under the power of the soul you direct the lower emotions to harmlessness so that their power for negativity has died except for the one for power. To manage power you seal it under a rock so it does not have any power to cause you to misuse it yourself but you know it is still there and you cannot eliminate it completely. Even with the light of the soul it is possible that you may go back and lift that rock up and take a look at the head one more time. It is always there to be a thorn in your side.

If you win the lottery and you say here is what I am going to with it, I am going to give half to charity and then I am going to use the other half for this and you have it all laid out as to how you are going to use it and if you use this power correctly, you have put the immortal head of power under a rock so that it can’t do any damage to anybody. But then say time goes on and you think, you know I still have ten million dollars left and I could a lot of interesting things with this. I think I will exercise a little power over my nephew by manipulating him with this money. You may get these thoughts coming back into your mind and use the power incorrectly. Even though it has been under a rock for some time the disciple knows that, that power is there available to misuse and the temptation is always there lingering in the back round.

Audience: When does it come out because if it is eternal and the rock is not then either it will come out by removing the rock or it will come out because the rock will eventually fade away?

JJ: The rock never completely fades away for it is created by eternal will. The point is that you just know that it is there and the power is available and one of the qualities of a master is that He has power but he does not misuse it, He does not take more power than he needs but he knows that he could. He is the master of all these things, he is the master of all these mantras that he could use to destroy with and wreak great havoc and according to DK a master could really create a lot of problems if He misused his powers. It is always there and He could never take away from His consciousness the fact that He could misuse His power and generally for eons the master will keep it under control but the one who is Lucifer who became even higher than a master may have kept himself under control for millions of years and then he thought, well I think God is messing things up and I need to take a bit more power in my hands but it is for a good cause.

Audience: That is what DK ties together when He is talking about harmlessness but He also talks about the right use of power.

JJ: Yes, right use of power.

Audience: So what stops him (Lucifer) is that he is supposed to be one those mental plane dark brothers like you talked about in Book 4 of the Immortal?

JJ: He can descend to the lower mental plane.

Audience: What is to stop him from entering the physical? Is it because he has lost touch with the soul?

JJ: Well he has a lot of power that reflects to the dark brothers and the dark brothers know quite a number of words of power thanks to the fallen brother that carries these words with him and he may have a number of things that he has not even revealed to the dark brothers because maybe he has his own personal set of morality, who knows?

Audience: What is the illusion of their power and what could they actually do?

JJ: Well for one thing the typical Christian sees the devil under every rock and of course there are a lot of older ladies in the Christian world that prick themselves with a needle by accident and they say, oh the devil made me do that. DK says that the average person does not even get the attention of a dark brother. They may have people under them that use and manipulate the masses but as far as paying individual attention to grandma over there who is knitting a sweater or something they do not do that.

What is going on with grandmas and the typical Christian is entirely of their own making. In Mormonism they say that there are a whole bunch of devils all around and they whisper in our ear everyday and tell us what to do and give us all these temptations. All these temptations come pretty much from our own desire and our own thinking with what we ourselves have conjured up. Now if a person is a quality person with capability and talent then sometimes the dark brothers will go after that person and appeal to his lower emotions and try to make a disciple out of him. They do not go after just anybody.

Audience: What is the most powerful thing they can do?

JJ: You mean to hurt somebody?

Audience: Like when you said in the immortal about Joe when the Christ came into him so he felt like he could just evaporate an entire mountain, that kind of power.

JJ: That is on the side of light, of course, and you are asking about the dark side?

Audience: Yes, how much power, can the dark brothers yield?

JJ: Okay for one thing we have a protective mechanism in us and we have to open the door before darkness can have any control over us. If you are on the side of light and in the soul they may want to destroy you but they cannot get to you directly unless you open the door. So unless you open that door they can’t get in but if you open that door then they can get in and seek to destroy you. If they cannot destroy you and you are on a mission of some sort then they will seek to influence those around you so they can distract you from your mission. You will find that many of the great souls in human history had people around them that went somewhat berserk and this it made it very difficult for the disciple to concentrate on what they were supposed to do.

A great example is Abraham Lincoln. His wife was a real bitch and she was always almost spending them into bankruptcy; she was very emotional and could not control her emotions. One time they were at a party and she took a pie and threw it right in his face in front of everybody. She was really a force to be reckoned with. Historians say Abraham Lincoln was our greatest president and his wife was our worst first lady. So we had the greatest and the worst put together. She was a big distraction for the guy and after he was killed she went insane. So I think that the dark brothers, even though she was not the type of person that would not be of much use to them – they tried to stop Abraham Lincoln and they could not get to him directly because he did not open the door – but they tried to get to his wife and probably other people around him.

There are all kinds of theories about conspiracies but they say a number of the conspirators that were in on the assassination of him were very close to him. And so apparently the dark brothers got to some of them. They tried to manipulate his wife. They did everything possible to stop him from winning the Civil War, saving the union, freeing the slaves and making the big advance for humanity.

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McCall Gathering 2007, Part 48

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This entry is part 48 of 54 in the series McCall Gathering 2007

The Lernaean Hydra

JJ: The next labor is Destroying the Lernaean Hydra, this is in Scorpio and this is an interesting sign in the fact that Scorpio is often called the sign of death because the Scorpio often has things happen that is out of his control. Death and divorce, things like this are beyond the control of anyone, certain things happen that are just beyond his control and so he learns to accept certain things that he cannot change.
In ancient Argos a drought occurred, Amymones sought the aid of Neptune and he bade her strike a rock and when she did out gushed three crystals streams but soon a hydra made his dwelling there beside the river Amymone a festering swamp of Lerna stands and within this noise and bog a monstrous hydra lies, a plague upon the countryside. Nine heads this creature has and one of them is immortal. Prepare to battle with this loathsome beast – think not that common means will serve. Destroy one head and two will grow apace.

Expectantly Hercules waited. “One word of counsel I may give,” the teacher said. “We rise by kneeling, we conquer by surrendering, we gain by giving up. Go forth oh son of man and son of God. Go forth and conquer through gate eighth.” Then Hercules passed through the gate and began his work..

The stagnant swamp of Lerna was a blot, dismaying all that came within the confines; its stench polluted the entire atmosphere within a space of seven miles. When Hercules approached he had to pause, for the smell alone well nigh over came him. The loosing quick sands were a hazard and more than once Hercules with drew his foot lest he be sucked downward by the yielding earth. At length he came and found the lair where dwelt the monstrous beast.

Within a cavern of perpetual night the hydra lay concealed. By day and night Hercules haunted the treacherous den, awaiting a propitious time when the beast would come forth. In vain he watched. The monster stayed within its fetid den. Resorting to a stratagem, Hercules dipped his arrows in burning pitch and rained them straight into the yawning cavern where dwelt the hideous beast. A stirring and commotion there upon ensued. The hydra, its nine angry heads breathing flame, emerged. Its scaly tail lashed furiously the water and the mud bespattering Hercules. Three fathoms high the monster stood, a thing of ugliness that looked as if it had been made of all the foulest thoughts conceived since time began. The hydra sprang at Hercules and sought to coil about his feet. He stepped aside and dealt it such a crushing blow that one of its heads was immediately dissevered. No sooner had this horrid head fallen into the bog than two grew in its place. Again and again Hercules attacked the raging monster, but it grew stronger, not weaker, with each assault.

Then Hercules remembered that his Teacher said, “We rise by kneeling.” Casting aside his club, Hercules knelt, grasped the hydra and with his bare hands, and raised it aloft. Suspended in mid-air, its strength diminished. On his knees, then, he held the hydra high above him, that the purifying air and light might have their due effect. The monster, strong in darkness and in slouchy mud, soon lost its power when the rays of the sun and the touch of the wind fell on it.

Convulsively, it strove, a shudder passing through its loathsome frame. Fainter and fainter grew its struggles till the victory was won. The nine heads drooped, then with gasping mouths and glazing eyes fell limply forward. But only when the lifeless body lay still did Hercules perceive the mystic head that was immortal. Then Hercules cut off the hydra’s one immortal head and buried it, still fiercely hissing, beneath a rock.

Returning Hercules stood before his Teacher. ‘The victory is won”, the Teacher said, “The Light that shines at the Gate, the eighth, is now blended with your own”.

So Hercules goes after this hydra and it lived in this marsh that was putrid and the stench went for seven miles it was so bad. What is the symbolism here?

Audience: It reminds me of the paperclip where water, air and land meet, but here you have all of these mixed in one and muddled together like a corrupt version of it.

JJ: The Hydra represents our lower desire and it produces stench, chuckling, our lower desire gets us into a lot of trouble and it has nine different aspects. One of the heads is immortal. The nine different heads are:

1) Sex

2) Comfort

3) Money

4) Fear

5) Hatred

6) Desire for power

7) Pride

8) Separativeness

9) Cruelty

JJ: Which one of the heads do you think would be immortal?

Audience: Greed, jealousy, hate.

JJ: Basically they represent all the negative emotions and the negative emotions associated with the lower desire but they are not immortal for they shall be transmuted. Which one of the heads is immortal.

Audience: Power

JJ: Right, it is power and it does not say it in the book but I am sure it is power. You might think sex, and sex on all of its levels is probably immortal but not in the lower nature. But power is immortal for we are told that in the council chambers of heaven there was still a struggle for power – and do you remember what that story was about? Who was the one who rebelled against God and wanted power?

Audience: Lucifer

JJ: Right so even in the courts of heaven, which were supposed to be ruled by the Most High there was one we call Lucifer who rebelled and took with him a third of the hosts of heaven because he sought power. The Tibetan verifies this – He says that in the councils of the Most High there has not always been peace and tranquility and wrote about the fall of Lucifer. He said the fall of Lucifer was not really a big thing in the whole course of the universe or even our solar system but as far as our earth goes it was a significant event. He does not give us a lot of details about it so apparently even in the courts of the Ancient of Days there have been big problems with those who are seeking power.

So Hercules took this immortal head and buried it under a rock, now what does that mean?

Audience: He wanted to suppress it.

JJ: Right, it was hissing even as he put it under the rock and is symbolic of desire for power being put out of his consciousness so he would not misuse power. Now power is the easiest thing to misuse, it is interesting if you ask anyone if they can be trusted with power and they all think that yes they can be trusted with power. It seems like an easy thing to handle. Money is an attractive power and it is interesting thing with these lottery winners – have you ever the stories about these winners after they win millions of dollars? What happens to them?

They go crazy don’t they, they go out buy very expensive homes, cars and all kinds of things and people hit them up for money and family comes out of the woodwork and pretty soon half of its gone and they think well I had better be careful with this or there will be nothing left. Then people get mad at him because he will not give out money anymore and all his friends feel like he has turned on him and pretty soon he gives out more money to pacify them and that still does no good and then pretty soon all the money is gone and so are all of his friends. He is just disgusted with all of his family and friends and I would say that about after about two years 95% of them end up this way or worse. They end up saying that they wish they would had never won for their life would have been a lot better off. Now if I told you guys I would give you twenty million dollars, do you think you could handle it? Would you take the chance?

Audience: Yes

Right, we all would, wouldn’t we? Yet it is funny that most of these lottery winners wind up saying, “I wish I had not won the money.” But how many of us would have the foresight to see in such a way that we would say, I do not even want to win the money. Who says that? Nobody, and as a matter of fact these same guys that say I wish I would have never won the lottery, still play the lottery. And that is the funny part about the whole thing! They think that somehow they can redeem themselves by continuing to play the lottery.

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McCall Gathering 2007, Part 47

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This entry is part 47 of 54 in the series McCall Gathering 2007

The Labor of Libra Explained

JJ: What do you suppose the wild bore represents?

Audience: Inaudible

JJ: The bore represents our lower nature that is out of control again, particularly the emotional nature and the earthly nature, so he was told to go and capture it and not to kill it. Now remember in the last labor he wore the skin – he killed the lion and he has now a new personality, one that is woven from his own thoughts, one that will serve him well. This time he has to have further dominance not by killing but by capturing the wild bore – there are still wild parts of himself that must be tamed. Once a labor is accomplished then we come back in an entirely different life and wild things begin to grow again, so again and again we have to tame these wild things. So Hercules had to tame this wild bore and once again he had a hard time finding his quest and he comes across these two centaurs What do these centaurs represent?

Audience: Guards, centaurs are guards aren’t they?

JJ: One of them was kind of on guard.

Audience: Centaurs have a lower half of an animal a horse and the upper half is man so they are not fully human.

JJ: The two centaurs had names and one was Cherion, which means good thought and the other was called Pholos, which means bodily strength. The test was to show control of the emotional, astral and desire nature in whatever forms it may take. Often times in our quest to maintain dominance in our own nature we get discouraged and we give up for a period of time.

Lets take the emotion of anger. Many people have a lot trouble with anger and they enter into anger management programs. People go through these programs and it does not seem to help them. Take Lindsey Lohan for instance – she goes through her problems and goes to rehab and a week later she comes out and has the same problem again.

We get discouraged because we try to handle the lower nature and get it under our mastery and then the problem resurfaces again and we get discouraged. So we meet the centaurs which is half animal and half man and the animal part really likes to let loose and party and the man part is responsible and guards the camp and valuables What is interesting is they have this wine and the wine is to be shared by the brotherhood, what is the symbolism behind the wine?

Audience: It could be like Christ energy or spiritual energy or some kind energy of this nature.

JJ: The wine symbolizes the group life. There are certain things that are only beneficial when shared as a group. For instance, we as a group create a life energy that flows through us when we are together that if we try to attain this just by ourselves – it is just not available. Then there are certain things that we can have by ourselves that we can’t have as a group.

This wine was dedicated to the group and wine is often symbolic of the spiritual flow. The spiritual flow is designated to be shared as a group and what they did is they shared it away from the group and instead of having the spiritual flow it became a very carnal flow of lower type energy that reached down to the lower levels, and they got drunk.

They got drunk and out of control symbolizing that the spiritual energy of the life of the God within. When not used properly this gets us drunk on its own power so to speak. So we become out of control and I have seen this in quite a number of people throughout my life.

When they have a touch of the higher energies and do not share it with the group and want to keep it for themselves it makes them drunk on their own power. The life of God must be shared as a group rather than just keeping it to ourselves. It must be shared with all the people willing to receive it.

There is another great lesson to be learned. Hercules had the idea that he was not going to create any harm this time so he went with no weapons and yet his plan did not materialize. Why was that it the he vowed to be harmless yet he wound up hurting and killing some? What mistake did he make?

Audience: He took his eye off the ball?

JJ: No

Audience: He got off the path?

JJ: No

Have you ever this happen in your life? You say I am going to do this and the situation seems to change and you wind up doing something entirely different than you had planned and it didn’t work out?

Audience: Is it like in the Secret where they said people were treating this guy bad and he kept putting attention on the one thing and it just kept coming to him.

JJ: That could be an ingredient but it is not the main ingredient.

Lets say someone comes up to you and really presses a button and makes you angry and you have committed yourself not to get angry but this person says something so cruel or outrageous that there is no way that you cannot avoid telling him off. Have you ever had this happen?

Audience: Oh yes.

JJ: What could you have done to prepare yourself that you could have handled that situation without getting angry?

Audience: If I would have known going in that this person is probably going to say something then I would have been prepared to let it roll off of me because I would have had my guards up and ready. But if I am not prepared and pretend like that person is not going to hurt me then they usually can get to me.

JJ: That is a really good point. If you are prepared for the situation and you have seen it ahead of time then you can also prepare your reaction for it. But if someone comes to you out of the blue with something totally unexpected -what happens is you do not really know how to handle it.

For instance a person came to Artie and asked for a full refund for this symposium just before it started. We did not expect anyone to ask for a full refund and we did had not thought of how to handle it so Artie gave the money back. Afterwards we thought, well that really comes out of our pocket because we already had to pay for the food and the lodging whether they come or not so why in the heck did we do that? We should have at least charged him enough to cover the expenses we incurred for him.

We should have thought about that before hand and because we had not thought about it we were caught off guard for they wanted us to make the decision right then. We did not think carefully enough about what was fair and what was not fair – we were just thinking about what they wanted so the guy caught us off guard.

Have you ever been caught off guard like that? Especially by people that want something from you – that is where it really catches you off guard. So the key here is that Hercules did not envision all the possibilities that could happen to him. He just made one commitment that he was not going to kill anybody or hurt anybody and he was going to be harmless.

Well that is not enough. Just saying you are not going to get angry will not do it. Saying I am not going to react to a situation or I am not going to loan money to deadbeats is not going to do it. You have to visualize what is going to happen to you in the future – see the events before they come – project your life into the future for the day, the week, the month, the years and years to come.

Think of the people that you know who are close to you in your life, think of the things that they will ask you in the future and then visualize what how you are going to respond. The more you see into your future and plan what you will do and how you will do it in different situations, the more control you will have in your life. If Hercules would have looked into the future and thought, I am going to get discouraged if it takes me a long time and first of all he could have decided that he was not going to get discouraged and if he could have decided in advance not to get discouraged no matter how long it took then he would not have stopped and made friends with the centaur and taken this detour.

Once he made friends with he centaur he should have thought ahead and said to himself, won’t the brotherhood be upset if they find out we are drinking this wine because it is dedicated to the brotherhood? But he did not think about this because he was not looking ahead into the future. This is an important item that many of us overlook. We do not think to look into the future and see everything that is going to happen and visualize what we are going to do, what we are going to say, how we are going to react and how we are going to manipulate the situation to the best advantage of ourselves and the whole.

If you can do this one thing it will give a lot more control over your destiny. Now I really try to do this and still once in a while I am caught off guard. I am not caught off guard too much; certainly not like when I was younger. We were caught off guard because it hit us suddenly and we had just not thought about it and you will always be hit with things that you don’t think about and when you are hit with things that you do not think about in advance you will always make the wrong decision, every single time. Like we made the wrong decision on this and it was an unfair decision that we made to the other persons advantage. But every time you are caught off guard you will make the wrong decision.

I notice in my life that every time I have been caught off guard I make the decision in line with the least resistance. This is the one that is easiest to make and is almost always the wrong one and you end up giving yourself a hard time about it causing yourself more grief than was necessary. So think of the people in your life that may take advantage of you. It is like playing chess – think of their next move and then think of your move. When they make their move you will catch them off guard because then when they make that move they will anticipate that you will do X, Y, or Z and instead you will do A, B, and C, and it will somewhat flabbergast them because they will not be expecting it.

One thing Hercules learned also was to enjoy himself, but he went to the extreme with the centaurs and enjoyed himself too much. He was told to take the time to eat and drink and he did but he went too far. This is one of the lessons that we need to learn in this sign and that is to not go to the extreme and to take the time to enjoy ourselves, to eat, drink, and make friends but also to project ourselves into the future and avoid the pitfalls and still maintain control of your destiny and avoid the extreme.

Then as he was going down the hill with the bore instead of tying it up or killing it he made fun of the it and making fun of the bore, who represents the lower personality, means he made of fun of himself using his lower personality. Some of the best comedians do this, like say Robin Williams, for instance. Some of the best comedians will make fun of themselves and this turns their personality from an irritating thing to an enjoyable thing. So where the strong personality can be irritating, if used correctly is fun to watch and also harmless.

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McCall Gathering 2007, Part 46

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This entry is part 46 of 54 in the series McCall Gathering 2007

The Capture of the Erymanthian Bore

JJ: Labor Seventh in Libra, the capture of the Erymanthian Bore. Hercules was told this time to go and capture a bore that has been terrorizing a community just about like the lion had been doing earlier. This time a wild bore is giving everybody a bad time. Hercules is told to go and capture it. He does not have to kill it this time – he just has to capture it and render it harmless.

Hercules is very concerned about himself and he is not sure is he can trust himself. He said, “Twice now I have killed those I was not supposed to kill. In the first labor I killed my best friend and in the last labor I killed the Amazon queen that was willing to cooperate. This time I will go with no weapons and I will be harmless.”

This is the way Libra’s are – they are the balance between things and they are the negotiators. If there is a big argument that ensues the Libra is the one that will come forth and say, hey guys let’s get along, let me negotiate here and bring peace. This is the Libra nature; they like to bring to balance to things.

So Hercules decided that he was going to be harmless and just capture the bore and not hurt it even though this was a wild bore. Hercules thought this would be a good plan and all would be well this time. So he takes off roaming around searching for it and he has a heck of a time finding it. As he is searching for the bore he gets bored and begins to forget the object of his search as we so often do and he came across this centaur who was a member of a brotherhood of centaurs. All the brotherhood was gone and he was guarding the local home of the centaurs.

Hercules made friends with the centaur and he noticed that they had this great big cask of wine. The centaur says, this is the cask that is to be shared by only centaurs and the only time we drink of it is when we are a group and we drink and share the energy of the wine together. They became good friends and after a while the centaur says well we are such good friends now lets break open a cask of wine. So they broke it open and they drank and got drunk and having a great time and telling stories.

Then another centaur came along and he started to drink with them and they were all just having a great time and they were making such a loud noise that the brotherhood of centaurs heard them from a distance and suspected something was wrong. So the brotherhood came back and found them all drinking the wine and they attacked Hercules. Hercules had to defend himself to stay alive and he wound up killing these two centaurs that had become his best friends. He also had to kill several centaurs just to get out of there alive. After he escaped and went up the mountain a ways he thought, wow that was a heck of a deal. I come down the mountain here I did not have any weapons and I was not going to hurt anybody and here I killed two people I love again. I just can’t believe this! This is really irritating!

Audience: Laughter!

JJ: So he says I guess I had better focus on my mission and if I had not given it up and started to take it easy then this would have never happened. So he goes back and refocuses on his mission and finally finds out where this bore is and he continues on his quest to be harmless. He did not want to kill this bore so he sets a trap and captures it. When he captures it he grabs the bore by its hind legs and goes down the hill with it like he is pushing a wheelbarrow and goes through the village with it showing the people. When they see the bore that were terrified of and how Hercules was making fun with it by forcing the bore to walk on its hind legs, the village people just laughed. They thought it was so funny. This is basically the end of the story – Hercules put the bore in a safe place where it would bother no one anymore.

JJ: What do you suppose the wild bore represents?

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McCall Gathering 2007, Part 45

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This entry is part 45 of 54 in the series McCall Gathering 2007

The Girdle of Hippolyte Continued

Audience: The girdle, is that like a belt?

JJ: The girdle is a symbol of unity, unity achieved through struggle, conflict, strife, and a symbol of motherhood of the sacred child to which all human life is truly turned. Now these Amazon women achieved a very high degree of unity and maybe that is why they did not have men around, under their queen.

Audience: Chuckling

JJ: This was a high achievement, and the girdle was a symbol of that. This was one lesson, which the disciple must learn and that is to achieve unity with other like-minded souls and unity with those who were different from him. Hercules was a strong male and Hippolyte who he slew was a very powerful female and instead of achieving unity and cooperation with her so she would give him the girdle he felt he had to conquer her and destroy her and take it by force.

When you read about the middle ages it is interesting to study some men who have gone down in history- lets take Sir Thomas Moore for instance. He is recognized as a great man by a lot of scholars. He wrote some interesting books and was a legal scholar and I think the Catholic Church even made him a saint but what few people know about the guy is he had a torture chamber in his basement and he participated in putting people to death and burning heretics at the stake. He was a little like Hercules and deceived at this point. He was a powerful person but to those who disagreed with him and were heretical he sought to destroy them.

When you read about the middle ages many people were this way. Martin Luther, for example – everybody thinks he was a great guy and he was also persecuted when he began to break off from the church and many of his followers were put to death but then when he got a little power he had people that disagreed with him persecuted, tortured and burned at the stake. So he was not any better than the other guys and yet he is recognized as one of the great souls in our history. But when he got power, just like Hercules, those whose disagreed with him that were different from him, he called heretics and had them persecuted even though he had gone through a similar experience and should have known better.

Martin Luther, Sir Thomas Moore and other people who were respected in history as making a Herculean effort of some kind, but they turned on those who disagreed with them and had them killed – and this often happens. Fortunately today we have laws that protect us from this but we can see that many people who otherwise may be fairly significant souls will still go after those who do not agree with them. And to achieve unity they will get them out of the way rather than to seek their cooperation.

What is interesting about Sir Thomas Moore is he was completely cooperative with his king and the king was finally suspicious that he was betraying him and not cooperating with him and he had Sir Thomas Moore killed. Yet Moore did the same thing to those under him and anyone who was a heretic he supported having them killed. To achieve unity during most periods of history what you did to those who disagreed with you was to have them killed.

This has often been a trap that has been embraced by many great Herculean disciples of the past 6000 years or so and they have fallen into the trap that to achieve unity they have to eliminate anyone who disagrees and just have people that agree around you. You’ll notice that many of the kings throughout history and many of the leadership today are surrounded by yes men, people that just tell them what they want to hear and they never hear the truth and then when the empire collapses around them they are really surprised that the people do not love them.

One interesting example is in 1989 Nicolae Ceausescu the leader of Romania before the fall of the communist empire, he punished and put to death anyone who he thought disagreed with him to the slightest degree and he thought the people loved him. Then when his empire fell he and his wife had to flee for their lives but they thought that the people loved them until they were captured as they were trying to smuggle large amounts of money out of the country. They were put to death and as they were being put to death it finally dawned on them that people did not love them after all but they really believed right up until the end that the people really adored them.

Kim Jon Ill of North Korea I will bet he believes the people really just loves him to pieces.

Audience: Why wouldn’t you love the loving fatherly figure?

JJ: Right when he walks down the street everybody goes through the motions and shows worship in some way. Such leaders think, “oh I am the most beloved dictator,” or brother or leader or whatever he calls himself and he probably honestly believes that he is loved. Now if the people were given complete freedom to speak for themselves he would find out something entirely different.

Audience: I would bet that Ivan the terrible the czar of Russia in the 16th century thought the people loved him.

JJ: Yes I’ll bet he did. Almost all the dictators truly think they are beloved by the people. Hugo Chavez the leader Venezuela is becoming a dictator and he probably thinks he getting more loved all the time and he is getting more hated all the time.

So Hercules had to go and redeem himself; he had to rescue another female. It is interesting that his two great failures in the labors were with females – first with the female mares and then with the female Amazon queen. This is one of the problems that the disciple has is understanding the female energy and how the female mind and emotions work. It is very difficult when you are in the male body to understand how the female energy works.

Hercules fought her like she was a man for if she were a man he would just have assumed that he is not going to give him the golden girdle and he had to just take it. So he approached her as if she was a man but she was not a man and a female if approached correctly she could have been reasoned with in a way that a man can’t. A female will give to you in a way that a man will not. This keeps us men always coming back to the females and even though we have difficulty understanding, we never leave them alone and we always go back and they always come back to us because we both have pieces to the puzzle that is needed to benefit the whole.

So Hercules has to go rescue another female to redeem himself from his mistake. Sir Thomas Moore and Martin Luther and all these guys probably came back in another life and had to redeem themselves for their illusion about unity. Instead of achieving unity by just doing away with your enemies maybe they came back and were part of the founding fathers – who knows? Maybe they did something through peaceful means that created a better system that would save the lives and freedom of many people.

Now we do not know exactly how it happened with these individuals but they would have to come back and redeem themselves. Hercules had to jump in the water in order to redeem himself, he had to jump back into the pool of emotional energy. Females are very closely associated with emotions so he had to submerge him self in emotion to better understand the female and by submerging himself in the emotions and then jumping into the belly of illusion which is represented by the sea monster and the belly represents emotions again – he is completely submerging himself in the female energy to understand it and how to communicate with the female side. His lesson not only applies to other females but also the female side of his own nature which is partially what he had to save to redeem him self.

Audience: May we have a short summary of Virgo?

JJ: A short summary of Virgo is we achieve unity through understanding our female side and having the male and female energy cooperate to achieve unity rather than attempting to slay or subdue the emotional side. We do not slay our emotional nature and this is a temptation of men is to take pride in not crying and keeping our emotional nature suppressed, but the point is that we need to be in touch with our emotional nature and we do not want to slay it. We are not entirely Clint Eastwood where we are steely eyed and completely unemotional. We have to get in touch with our emotional nature and not slay it but get the cooperation of our emotional self and our mental self and have them work together and cooperate to achieve unity.

Audience: I thought service was a keynote of Virgo.

JJ: The labor is not always directed to the keynote of the signs but it is related to the sign as a whole. He learned to transmit fighting into service by saving the maiden.

Audience: You said these labors correspond more to our rising sign than our sun sign, right?

JJ: Yes it corresponds somewhat but the rising sign tells you what your destiny is whereas your sun sign tells you what your personality influences are in this life. What is your sun sign?

Audience: Virgo

JJ: So your personality, how you show yourself to the world, is very strongly influenced by the Virgo energy. Your mission in life is very strongly associated with your rising sun.

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McCall Gathering 2007, Part 44

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This entry is part 44 of 54 in the series McCall Gathering 2007

The Girdle of Hippolyte

The next is the labor sixth done in Virgo, the seizing of the girdle of Hippolyte. There was a group of Amazon women that lived completely isolated from men and only used men for breeding. The queen of the Amazons was named Hippolyte who had this golden girdle which Hercules was commanded to retrieve.
So he went to retrieve it and as he was on his way the Amazons met together and they said a messenger of the gods and a powerful warrior was coming their way. Do they give him the girdle which he seeks or do they fight to keep it? Now they were debating whether to fight to keep it or to give it to him, and as they were debating Hercules arrived early before the debate was over and the decision made.

Hercules demanded the girdle and he began fighting with the queen of the Amazons and as they fought they fought fiercely for a period of time and as they were fighting the queen kept telling Hercules, “we will give you the girdle,” but Hercules had it fixed in his mind that he had to fight for it. Finally Hercules got the best of her and he grabbed the girdle away from her and just as he raised his sword and as he was thrusting in his sword she was making a motion that she was going to give him the girdle. He wound up killing her and retrieving the girdle. He took it to the presiding elders and they said, “You accomplished what you were asked to do but you did it very badly.” The presiding one said, “You killed the person that was going to give you the object of your desire – because of this before you can return to the gate you must redeem yourself.”

So Hercules had to go back and somehow make redemption. As he was wandering around he came across this maid that was captured by this sea monster who had this maid in his mouth. So Hercules saw this and swam out there and when Hercules got there the sea monster gulped the maiden down his red throat clear to his belly. Hercules then grabbed the sea monster, threw it on its back, went into its mouth and down in its belly. He grabbed the maiden and took his sword, cut his way out of the belly and rescued the maiden. Then the presiding elder says, “A life has been taken and a life has been saved and the balance is restored. You can now return to the gate.”

This is in Virgo, what do you suppose the lesson or lessons of this labor is?

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McCall Gathering 2007, Part 43

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This entry is part 43 of 54 in the series McCall Gathering 2007

Mastering the Ego

Audience: It seems to correspond somewhat to fear or to some force that you have a weakness with and Hercules choking it is like the law of attrition where the lion cannot get air anymore and it is now deflated.
Audience: Is the lion the personality?

JJ: Very close, what part of the personality in particular do you think?

Audience: Ego?

Audience: The pride?

JJ: Right, it is the ego, the personality and the faults and imperfections that go along with it. Why was everybody so terrified of the lion?

Audience: Have you ever tried to reckon with someone else’s ego?

JJ: (Laughing) Right, and especially our own. Remember all this is an extension of Hercules so looking at it this way, as disciples, are we afraid of our egos and our own lower personalities? Are we afraid of confronting that within our selves?

Audience: I think we are afraid to let it go – we are so wrapped up and invested in that being who we really are.

JJ: Right we do not want to slay it do we? We do not want to slay it because we identify with the lower self. We think that is who we really are but the truth is that we are really sons of God. We are really not that lion and we have to slay the personality so that what we really are can shine forth. We are really sons of God rather than just animal man.

Remember one of the symbolisms behind all the animals is the lower nature which is the animal self that has to be either mastered or slain. The animal self has to be mastered or slain in all of us. So it is interesting that this ego scared everybody. Externally if a person with a big ego comes in the room – have you ever noticed that nobody challenges the guy? They almost seem afraid if him especially if he is an authority figure of some kind. Have you ever been in a class where a distinguished professor is lecturing and nobody dares challenge him? Nobody dare asks him, “what makes you think you are right on this issue,” or point or whatever. Or a religious authority is visiting or something and no one asks “what makes you think that you are right?” Nobody dares to challenge the guy.

Audience: He is intimidating.

Yes he is very intimidating. Have you ever been around someone very intimidating and you felt like you did not dare ask him a question? Especially when I was younger I encountered a number of people like that and as I get older and wiser I am more prepared to confront the lion of the ego in myself, and others. When you think back to when you were younger in school, college it is amazing how easily people of renown and respect may have intimidated you.

So the lion represents the ego. Say you are having a party and when a dominant personality enters the room. People get the impression he speaks with authority and he speaks with a lot of ego presence. Everybody just listens and if people disagree with him they will say nothing. I have been in situations where nobody was speaking up and I thought, boy does everybody in this room think exactly the same way that this guy is talking? And so I challenge the guy and have an argument with him and later people will come up to me later and say, you know I really agreed with you and disagreed with him all the time and I am really glad that you spoke up and challenged the guy. It turns out that few really did agree with him but nobody challenged him because he was the like the lion that everybody was afraid to challenge.

Audience: Dan: Sometimes there is just doesn’t seem like there is any point though.

JJ: Yes, sometimes there is not any point and I do not do that all the time because it may be seen as rude or not do any good, but I do it when I feel that the guy has a powerful ego and he needs a little humility. I am on the mental plane like Arnold Schwarzenegger is on the physical plane and if the guy deserves it then I am going to let him have it. But if he is just rambling on and not making any point then fine but when I feel that these people are following him like sheep and the guy deserves to be questioned because he has such a powerful ego, then I am going to ask him a couple of little questions that is going to upset his little applecart.

When you do this, these guys usually get very upset and insinuate, “who do you think you are questioning me?” They are like the Nemean Lion in this labor of Hercules. Like I say though, it mostly applies to us because all of us have the ego to be conquered and mastered again and again.

We are told that we not only meet the lion in this labor but we meet the lion again and again as we go throughout our discipleship. It is not just slain once and then put away for good. We slay it and then it is dormant for a while and then in another lifetime it will wind up surfacing again. So all of us have to deal with it over a period of cycles until the ego is completely mastered.

Now what did it mean when Hercules wore the skin of the lion?

Audience: Well you still have to have a personality.

JJ: Right but he discarded the old skin and put on a new skin, what does this mean?

Audience: As you change you discard the old personality and put on a new one?

JJ: Often in different types of initiations in groups like the Masons you are given a new name and in the scriptures Abraham was given a new name, Jacob was given a new name. It was changed from Jacob to Israel.

Audience: Star Wars.

JJ: Star Wars?

Audience: Yea, you know where the dark lord sith says to Anakin Skywalker “I shall call you Darth Vader”

JJ: Yes the dark side copies the light.

Audience: You have seen too many movies!

Audience: Yes, I certainly have!

Audience: Laughter!

JJ: When Hercules was young he had become an aspirant and this caused him to change his personality and to put on a new skin right there. But then when he eventually had strong soul contact he shed his old personality and put on a new one. One of the things the Tibetan says about the personality is the disciple manufactures his own personality after he advances so far.

In other words, he decides what his personality is going to be. And so his personality then becomes developed again to become a useful tool for service, where his old skin was no longer useful and he felt he had no control over it. But the new skin he puts on shows us that he still has a personality that he likes and is useful in the service of mankind. He no longer says, “I am what I am and there is nothing I can do about it.” Have you ever tried to point out a needed change in a person and they say, “Well, that is just the way that I am, that is me.”

I will tell one more story then we will continue. When was on a mission for the Mormon Church every companion I was assigned to had at least one irritating thing about them. On a mission you change people you worked with about every 3 months and I got this new guy and I really liked him and I thought this was somebody that I liked completely except he had one little fault. He sang all day long. He sang Rogers & Hammerstein and at that time I did not like them very well for I liked rock & roll. He would sing this stuff all day long and we would be walking along and he would be singing, “Some Enchanted Evening” (JJ singing the line)

Audience: Roaring with laughter!

JJ: Now I was a little bit intimidated by the Nemean Lion in this guy and I did not say anything for about six weeks and finally I could not handle it anymore for it was just about to drive me crazy. Finally, I said, elder, you are a good singer of classical songs (putting it to him as gently as I could) but your singing is driving me crazy! Could you please not sing so much? And he told me – he said, “That is just who I am, sorry.” Then he began to sing again, “some enchanted evening.” (JJ singing the line again)

Audience: Roaring with laughter!

JJ: I felt like hitting the guy and knocking him out and boy was I ever happy to get transferred away from him! Laughing!

When Hercules finally went to slay the lion he had to chase it around and this is what we have to do with the ego. We have to pursue it because the ego is very elusive and it makes a lot of noise but once it finds out that you are going to master it and destroy its power over you, you find out that all that power was just noise and it is really afraid of you.

So you have to go after the lower self because the lower self wants to remain in control. You know if you pay attention to your lower nature it is almost like it is a separate entity. For instance, have you ever noticed that if you get angry you feel those stirrings inside of you and if you silence yourself down for a moment and let those emotions continue to rumble you will notice that it is like there are little lives inside of you with a life of their own.

There are little deva and elemental lives that are giving the anger that energy and this is an interesting thing to contemplate that when you feel these emotions they really have a life of their own. We are a composite life of many other smaller lives.

The easiest life to feel is the anger and even afterwards it lingers for a period of time, even if you get yourself in the soul. If you separate yourself and be the observer then you can see that your emotions are really not you but they are a vehicle composed of smaller lives, yet very potent. When these lower lives see that you are after them as a whole to master them and dominate them then instead of them coming after you, you must go after them for they become afraid of you.

The lower parts of our selves do not want to be dominated and they will resist domination completely and change shape or do whatever is necessary. Finally the lion goes and enters into a cave and what does this cave mean? A cave is normally symbolic of consciousness and whenever you have a dream and you dream of going into a room or a cave or anything like this it is a symbol of you entering into a conscious state which is hidden from your normal vision. In other words if you dream of entering a basement it is a symbol of lower consciousness. If you are going up stairs then you are going to a higher state of consciousness but there is usually something in these rooms that is hidden from your normal state of consciousness. So if you ever dream about going into rooms or a cave pay attention to what is going there because there will be clues there to what your subconscious mind is trying to give you that you are not catching onto in your physical life.

So the ego goes into this cave and Hercules goes after it in the depths of his own consciousness to try and find the ego but he cannot find it and the ego has disappeared. So the disciple searches for the ego to master and when he goes inside of himself he concludes that maybe my ego is not here after all and maybe I am okay and everybody is okay.

Then he finds the lion roaming around outside again terrorizing the neighborhood and he finds that he does have an ego to master after all. So what he finally does is to seal an exit. He recognizes that the ego is in his consciousness and the lower self has to be dominated and he is going to find it this time and is not going to allow an exit.

He goes into his own consciousness and examines himself and comes face to face with the problems created by his own lower personality. He finally realizes and comes face to face with the fact that his lower personality is creating a lot of problems for himself, his friends, his family, his community and it terrorizes and creates difficulties and problems.

Have you ever noticed that people often want to avoid someone with a very powerful personality? People think that the guy with a strong personality is well-liked but the truth is that few really want to be around him because of a powerful personality. They may want to be around him in maybe a professional relationship that serves their need but in the private intimate relationship the lion has few true friends for himself until he dominates the personality because people are agitated, irritated or scared of the powerful ego.

So the disciple comes face to face with that in himself. You will notice that many people that do become teachers have powerful personalities and many of them are hard to bear in normal or intimate circumstances. I hope I am not too hard for you people bear for I have been accused many times of having a powerful ego myself and I am sure every teacher has, but eventually everybody must come face to face with that ego and not allow it to exit and dominate it and slay it. Then one must take its skin and make clothes for the outer personality in a way that is intelligible and usable for the disciple.

You will notice that when Hercules goes into town wearing the lion’s skin that the lion’s skin is now a usable thing and does not scare anybody because that old life that was in it does not exist anymore. The new life of the soul which is now Hercules is now covered by the skin so when the soul is covered by the personality and within the personality is the dominate soul of Hercules then the people rejoice and are happy to have the skin of the lion there where before they were afraid or they did not like the lion in their community.

Audience: Could this labor correspond to the dweller on the threshold or not?

JJ: It could. Several of the labors in here could correspond to the dweller for the ego could be part of the dweller experience. I would not say it is directly related to the dweller because the ego does not attack us, it feeds us whereas when we go after the dweller it will attack us head with in a full frontal assault. It is a little bit similar but the personality itself is not the dweller. If I remember correctly one of these other labors, maybe involving the hydra, could more correspond to that dweller.