2003-12-10 04:03:00
JJ:
What's the main focus to be mastered by a second degree initiate? You master the emotions. Mastering the physical reality is difficult enough. Mastering the emotions is more difficult. DK says it's one of the most difficult initiations. Emotions have a powerful effect on us all. We can see it's easier for some people to go on a fast for a week than it is to control the emotions. To control the emotions is extremely difficult and takes quite a lot of effort.
Keep this in mind. In between initiations, when you move from a first to a second degree, like Kennedy, you'll have a residual effect on certain areas of your life. So it's difficult to tell if he's a second degree initiate because he looks like he loses control in some ways. It's a little like graduating from Algebra I to Algebra II. Did anyone here take Algebra II? When you finished Algebra I did you know everything in the book? In my situation I didn't know it all. When you move to Algebra II, even if you didn't learn everything in the book, you have the basics down. You have the basics understood enough that you can fill in the blanks in Algebra II. This is how it is with initiations. You don't need to achieve perfection. You have to achieve relative mastery so that between you and your soul you'll feel like you can handle any situation that arises in the physical reality or emotional reality. There will be residual learning from the first initiation to do as you're moving on to the second.
So the main point of attack to learn in the second initiation is to master the emotions. How do you go about mastering the emotions?
Audience:
Think things through before reacting?
JJ:
Right. Remember the idea, before you get angry, count to three? That's a simple mental exercise. As we first begin to master the emotions we make numerous mistakes. The emotions lead us into experiences. There's a reason for these emotions and a reason why we live through a period where we live by the emotions. The emotions lead us into experience. They lead us into place we would never go if we were thinking right. They lead us into marriages that are a disaster. We get into marriages then think, "If I had been thinking correctly I never would've married this person. What lead me into this? Why did I pick this person?" Your emotions led you there.
Maybe you're a female and you go to a bar and meet a redneck guy. He's totally different and more exciting than anyone you've met before. You fall in love and marry him after one week then find out he's not for you at all. You open yourself up to a lot of energy in that person. An interesting thing about this is that you can fall in love with anybody. People think you can only fall in love with a certain person. The reason they think this is that they only allow themselves to open up to certain people. But if you open up to anyone and they open up to you there will be a flow of soul energy between the two of you and you can fall in love.
What prevents this is barriers between the two. If you look at someone and they aren't good enough looking for you you're not going to open up to that person. If one of you doesn't open up there will not be the flow and it's impossible to fall in love. When you say that other person isn't smart enough, not educated enough, not in your standard of living you put up barriers.
Audience:
JJ you and Artie had the experience of opening up together but you didn't purposely do it.
JJ:
Actually, I'm pretty open to everything. (Laugher)
Audience:
Does that concern you Artie? (Laughter)
Audience:
Could it be that the souls have already decided?
JJ:
Both of us were in relationships that we were both closing down at the same time. This caused us to be somewhat open. But before that happened I was having difficulty with my wife as she wasn't supporting me in trying to create a group. A message came to me saying, "Don't worry. If you wife doesn't support you Artie will help you." That made me open up to Artie quite a bit. I told a friend about it making her promise not to tell my wife and she went and told my wife immediately. (Laughter)
My wife started yelling, "What's this about Artie?" I said, "I can't control what messages I get. I got a message saying Artie would support me." So my wife started being real supportive for about three more months then lost interest again. Then when we were at an end point with our spouses I sat next to Artie and all of a sudden the electricity began.
I didn't tell Artie at the time about the message I received. I only told a friend who spilled her guts. We got sidetracked there. Where were we? The second initiation.
The emotions are very difficult to master and in connection with the emotions is a principle called glamour. In connection with physical reality was a principle called maya. Maya is the pull of matter itself. Have you ever watched someone of the opposite sex walk by and pull people their way? That's the pull of matter. That's what you need to master in mastering the physical reality. Not to negate it or pretend it's not there, but master it so you're not adversely effected by it or you're not destroying relationships or trust with other people.
DK makes an interesting statement which is important for people along the path. He says when a person goes along the path he pretty much leaves religion behind and governs himself. The tendency of many would be initiates governing themselves is they tend to go a little crazy for awhile because they don't have anyone telling them what to do so they do what they want. Oftentimes they indulge themselves too much. The advice DK gives is the true initiate will never lower the standard of the humanity of which he is a part. He will always seek to raise the standard and not lower it. I've seen many people in my life become interested in the spiritual path. Many of them start lowering their sights when they enter the spiritual path. They think they can have a free for all, love fest sort of thing or share other people's wives, get into drugs etc. They come up with all sorts of ideas that actually lower the standards rather than raising the standards up. This is a process a lot of people go through. It's a little like a kid who is raised by strict parents then goes off to college. Oftentimes the kid will go crazy and parties and drinks every night and makes up for lost time.
Audience:
JJ, I have a bit of trouble with the standards thing. Being a former LDS I had strict standards I was expected to live by and I was immune. You say keep the standards high and my voice in my head is saying every time I take a drink of wine or wear sleeveless clothes or do things like that I have lowered my standards. My mother quite often tells me it's an LDS thing.
JJ:
You have to look at what's really a standard of spiritual living. Wearing sleeveless clothes is not a lowering of any spiritual standard. They might think it is but what is a true spiritual standard and what the churches think is a spiritual standard are often two different things.
Audience:
So how do you determine that?
JJ:
By the principle of harmfulness. If you're creating harm, then you're lowering the standard. If you are doing something harmless, like drinking a glass of wine a day, then you need not concern yourself. Research has shown that wine is actually beneficial to your heart, so how is that hurting anyone? If you're wearing attractive clothes, how does that hurt anyone? It doesn't but if you see you neighbor's wife and say, "I want her and if we do it in secret it's not going to hurt anybody." Then you are creating harm because you're diverting her attention away from her spouse. In this way you are lowering the standard. But many people, like aspirants, might think anything goes as long as nobody knows about it. They might think no one will get hurt, and many times they do some very harmful things. For instance, I talked to a guy who organized a spiritual group one time. He was an older guy, but had done this when he was younger. He said the group was really great.
They had soul contact and everyone had a really good feeling about it. Then they started sharing each other's wives. He said it just exploded and everyone hated each other by the time it was over. No one thought this was harmful at all yet it did create harm. That's an important principle like DK says. It's sort of an obvious thing that isn't obvious to a lot of people. He says that the true disciple does not lower the standards of humanity. He will support the good standards that they have and seek to raise them higher.
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We are entering upon a course of study wherein the entire tendency will be to throw the student back upon himself, and thus upon that larger self which has only, in most cases, made its presence felt at rare and highly emotional intervals. When the self is known and not simply felt and, when the realisation is mental as well as sensory, then truly can the aspirant be prepared for initiation. DK
Copyright 2003 by J.J. Dewey, All Rights Reserved