March 1, 2017
Keys to Liberation
The various religions have different ideas of salvation. The most popular one for Christians is that we will be saved if we merely believe in the right version of Jesus. If you accept the wrong version then you will go to hell.
If you ask them what they are to be saved from they’ll usually just say hell.
It is pretty vague exactly what heaven and hell are except that hell is bad and heaven is good.
Other Christians require more than a mere belief and demand members do good works in addition to believing in their version of Jesus.
The Mormons place a somewhat different idea as to our fate. They think that all but a small handful that sin against the Holy Ghost will be saved and go to a place better than this present world. The goal for good Mormons is to be exalted. In this state they will still have sex and family relationships and can progress to become like God. To be exalted they have to go through the temple and keep all the commandments given though the prophet.
Those of us who study the Ancient Wisdom and accept reincarnation rarely use the word salvation. Instead we use the term liberation.
Actually, liberation is closer than salvation to the original Greek word used in the days of Jesus. The word “saved” comes from SOZO which is “to save or deliver.” The similar word “salvation” comes from SOTERIA which is more correctly rendered “deliverance” or “rescue.”
A liberation is very close in meaning to a deliverance. Our goal is to learn all the needed lessons of mortal life through a series of incarnations. When finished we will graduate from the earth school and be liberated from the need of further lessons here. We can then go on to even greater challenges and fulfillment.
Today I’ll present a question for consideration.
How far will a regular religion take the pilgrim toward liberation?
Let us suppose that Jim believes in Jesus, does good works and obeys all the commandments that come down the pike. He does everything he is told to do in his religion.
How far down he path of liberation will this take him? What is his next step likely to be? What additional steps will he need to take to obtain liberation?
March 2, 2017
The First Three Steps to Liberation
Good comments on liberation my friends.
Adrian says that “Liberation is a never ending process.” Very true statement. All of us high and low are seeking to learn more and gain more power so limitations can be removed. The tricky thing is that sometimes the path to the next step of liberation is much different than appears.
Next Adrian says: “Religions can take one so far, then the soul will sense there is more to be had. I consider most earthly religions are akin to kindergarten – they serve a useful purpose but one would be bored if one stayed there beyond the end of term.”
This is a problem that many thinking people have with religion. No matter which church you go to the sermons and Sunday School lessons pretty much repeat the same basic things over and over.
I didn’t attend church until I was thirteen. The reason was not that I was a non believer, but church just bored me silly. Finally, at that age I started attending because of a sense of duty. Then, around age 16, I read the scriptures for the first time and found them very fascinating and thought to myself,” How can church be so boring when they have such great material as a base? Do the members even read them?”
The problem that came later after I absorbed the scriptures, church history and the best from authorities in my religion was that I hungered for more and at that point there was nothing more for me. I found myself on my own to search within as well as without and to my delight I found there is more to learn than I imagined.
Shakespeare was certainly correct when he said:
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Then Bryan gave an amusing account of what may be the result of religious people’s own thoughtforms as they go to their self created heaven or hell. It kind of reminded me of the Twilight Zone episode when the guy died and thought he was in heaven, but later found out he was really in hell.
Ruth mentions the important point that the authority of the beast must be overcome. Good points were also made by Olivia, Tom and Jason.
As students who have been with me know there are three major hurdles that must be crossed before one can really be saved, or have his calling and election made sure.
In speaking of this attainment I am talking about the seeker reaching a point on the path where he is no longer in danger of retrogression but will receive a “Well done, good and faithful servant” when crossing the veil at death.
This point of attainment is much more difficult than believed by church goers. Just going to church, being a decent person and following the rules is at best a beginning step.
There are three hurdles that must be mastered before our Higher Self and Higher Lives will see the seeker as one that can be trusted to not backslide, or choose a dark path.
The first is the pull we receive from the material world that diverts our attention way from Spirit. This deceptive pull is called maya in the Ancient Wisdom.
In this cycle, consisting of many lifetimes of learning, the seeker must master and control the pull of sexual attraction and learn to not misuse these energies. He must also learn the right use of money, possessions and material things. His use of them should not be for purely selfish purposes and he will follow a harmless path as he seeks to provide himself and loved ones with the necessities of life. He must learn to value things of the spirit above the material and when he reaches a point of attainment in this cycle he will have a spiritual experience that will give him great encouragement to keep moving forward upon the path. This experience often convinces the seeker that salvation is secure, but he still has a long way to go.
In the next cycle he learns to master his emotional self, his ego and all the glamours associated with them.
In the third cycle he learns to master the mind and use it to unravel illusion to see a reality not obscured by fog. He learns to be guided by reason and wisdom tempered by basic common sense as it applies to his purpose in life.
Work in these three spheres of mastery may overlap, but one will always master the first before the second and the second before the third.
Question:
How much mastery in the three areas can one accomplish in a religion? What must be accomplished outside of an organized religion?
For more on maya, glamour and illusion go to this link:
March 3, 2017
The Three Guardians
The door to liberation is protected by three guardians that must be mastered before the disciple can pass through into true spiritual vision.
The first is an extremely handsome man, who does everything in his power to divert the seeker’s attention away from the door through the use of vast material powers. He will use beauty, sex, money and power all placed in locations far away from the door so attention will be on them, keeping the door away from the angle of vision.
The second is a beautiful woman who puts the sirens of Ulysses to shame. She deceives through the distortion of love, emotion, feeling and authority. She deceives the seeker into thinking that love has elements of possession and selfishness. She directs the attention away from the door by causing him to love his own ego first while professing the love of Christ. Because his ego comes first his motives are built around its satisfaction. He is deceived into thinking he is more important than he is, smarter than he is, more popular than he is, more loved than he is, stronger than he is and more. He draws to himself friends who feed his ego and continue to take his attention away from the door.
The third guardian is a master magician who directs the seeker away from the door with trickery and illusion. The magician causes the seeker to see things that are not there or to not see correctly see what is in front of him. Worst of all, he sees the door where it is not and nothing where the door really is.
This final guardian will require the seeker to use all the powers of mind, reason and intuition to unravel all of his tricks.
In a nutshell, to pass by these three guardians the seeker must overcome the attractiveness of materialism, master the emotional self and assume the full power of the mind to see through illusion to behold the real door.
How far can an organized religion take the seeker in his quest to pass by the three guardians?
Actually some that make significant demands on the followers assist with the first step. Self-control is needed to master the first guardian and it takes significant amount of it to be a good member of many of them. They will demand such things as:
To be a faithful mate
Various degrees of prescribed sexual behavior, some of which mar require significant discipline.
Giving money to the church. Some require 10% or more. It indeed takes some control of self to part with one’s money.
Various demands on what to eat and drink. Mormons, for instance, are forbidden to smoke, drink alcoholic beverages, tea and coffee. Muslims and Jews do not eat pork. Some religions do not allow any meat consumption.
Many religions advocate some form of fasting or giving up something desired.
They make demands of the member’s time through church attendance and various assignments given.
Overall a religion and give the seeker some structure to his life and assist in developing self discipline which is needed to defeat the first guardian.
Even if his path takes him away from his religion he can still take with him the virtue of self-control. The main difference is he will then decide what needs controlled rather than church authorities doing it for him.
So, how about the other two guardians? Is the religion of any assistance here? It may help a little with the second if the member takes to heart teachings of brotherly love. Loving your neighbor as yourself takes attention away from the ego. A problem though is many who are not members of a religion believe that the religious ones show no more love to their neighbors than they do.
This may be true in many cases, but some members do take teachings concerning love to heart and this will help them on their journey.
A religion can often add to the problems of defeating the second guardian by feeding his ego with a feeling of self importance because he is righteous, saved, had spiritual experiences, or is special in some way.
Religion is of zero help in aiding in the seeker’s mastery of illusion as there is much illusion in the religion itself. The only way one can say that it is of assistance in mastering the third guardian is that the religion itself is an illusive maze that challenges the seeker. If he figures a way out of its prison he has taken a major step to overcoming other illusions.
An organized religion can assist with overcoming the first guardian, but the seeker is pretty much on his own in mastering the other two. His thinking that he is saved, or on the way to an exclusive heaven, is generally based on an illusion that is holding him hostage to the second and third guardians holding him back from real deliverance.
Copyright by J J Dewey
Index for Older Archives in the Process of Updating
Easy Access to All the Writings
For Free Book go HERE and other books HERE
JJ’s Amazon page HERE
Gather with JJ on Facebook HERE