McCall Gathering 2007, Part 34

Labor One – Controlling Thought

JJ: So Hercules was sent forth on his first great labor in the sign of Aries. In the sign of Aries he was to capture these man-eating mares and these man-eating mares were owned by Diomedes, the son of Mars. They roamed the countryside and they were terrible mares and they of course were female. This was his first labor and it was to be introduced to female energy because that is the greatest mystery for us guys – to figure out – that is how to handle females.

These mares would roam the countryside and if someone got in their way they would run them down. Everyone was terrified of them plus they bred very quickly and the animals they bred were worse than themselves so the situation kept deteriorating. His first labor was to capture the man-eating mares and herd them into a safe place where they would not hurt anybody.

Hercules says I will get my good friend Abduras to come with me and he calls him to come with him and round up the mares. They rounded them up and they were driving them to the pastures where they were supposed to be safely placed. Hercules was very proud of himself and everything seemed to be under control so he tells Abduras go ahead and finish of the job and he will go and tell the townspeople they are safe.

So Hercules went and tells the townspeople this and he gets all the glory. In the meantime Abduras is herding these mares back and they turn on him and Abduras was not strong enough like Hercules, and they trampled him and mortally wounded him.

Now Hercules was in the town receiving all the glory when he heard of this and he went back to Abduras and as Abduras lay dying Hercules had to herd the mares by himself and put them in the pasture where they were supposed to be. And as the story goes Hercules finished the job but Abduras his best friend lay dead.

Then the Presiding One says the first labor is done, but badly done.

We are going to examine the meaning of all this. The symbology of horses signifies thought. They are thoughts out of control. The horses were female and female symbolizes the emotional nature so it would be the emotional nature controlling where thought goes. For instance, let us say that you do not like someone and your mind thinks about how you don’t like him but your emotional sends it forth in ways of gossip, or spreading lies about the person or things like this.

So these are thoughts that are mingled with emotion that are very destructive and they are like horses that roam around the countryside and if anybody gets in their way they run them down, kill them or injure them and they terrify everybody in the area. This is what happens when the person’s thoughts are out of control and not directed intelligently. They create great destruction and people begin to be afraid of what this person is going to come up with next and begin to avoid this person with these destructive thoughts. So this is symbolic of what the disciple must do for his first labor of Hercules. He must learn how to control his thoughts and his speech so they are harmless. Abduras, any idea what he represents?

Audience: I read it already, the personality.

JJ: He represents the lower personality and it takes the lower personality mingled with Hercules, the soul, working together. These two can round up the mares quite easily, which they both did. Then what happened is Hercules thought he had his unruly thoughts under his control so he thinks the soul is not really necessary to control this anymore, it is pretty automatic so he just let his personality handle it.

So his personality tries to handle things but without the energy of the soul his thoughts begin to get out of control again and start to trample whoever is in their way all over again. When the disciple realizes this, that his thoughts are out of control without the soul being there, then the soul has to return and master the situation again and this time make sure the soul is there when the horses are put back in the right pasture. Notice that when the effort was finished, the soul had to be there to bind the unruly and harmful thoughts so that they could no longer be released to destroy his family, friends, his best friend and terrorize the neighborhood and make everyone that came into contact with him feel uncomfortable. People wonder, what is this guy going to say next and have you ever met someone like this? What kind of harmful thought, statement or phrase is he going to come up with next?

Audience: The personality does not actually die does it?

JJ: The personality has the harmful thoughts that are out of control. It does not die per say but that part of the personality that allows the thoughts to be unregulated – that eventually dies and the soul has to dominate. In other words, Hercules had the idea that the lower self could pretty much handle this and when he found out that it could not – that lower self had to be taken out of the way or dead to the situation. He found out that these unruly thoughts had to be taken out and that they can’t be turned over to the lower self. It does not mean that the lower self is gone completely but the lower self lacks control without the help of soul.

Audience: So this was handled badly?

JJ: Yes it was handled badly.

Audience: so was the personality not supposed to die?

JJ: Ideally if it was handled correctly the personality and the soul work together as one. Now it still does this in the end but Hercules turned it over to the personality completely and the personality had no control over the situation at all. So Hercules, or the soul, came back and the soul dominated and the soul had to dominate completely because now the thoughts were even more out of control than ever before.

They were even worse than they were before they herded them in the first time so the soul had to really amplify its power and dominate. If he had done the labor correctly there would have been more of a balance between the soul and the personality. It was interesting that the teacher said that it was badly done but at least it got done. He will fine-tune this as he moves on and even though it was badly done the lesson was learned.

This happens to us in our own lives as we perform our own labors of Hercules where we learn our lessons. Often the greatest lessons we learn are from a labor badly done and I know that is the case in my life. Some of the times that I have learned the most are when I have bungled the most.

I think one of the biggest mistakes that people make is when an employer or somebody gives someone a job to do and they bungle it completely and they have devastated themselves because they did not do it correctly. The guy who gave them the job says, well you screwed up so I am giving it to Smith over here. He should not do that because this guy has learned a lesson that Smith has not yet learned and he is not going to make that mistake again because it is ingrained in his mind.

When I am in charge of anything and somebody has done that I give them another chance because I know this guy has learned an important lesson and you can tell by his attitude whether it has really sunk in. Now if he is really apologetic and feels bad and wishes he had it to do over again then give it to him to over again. He is much more likely to succeed than the guy without that experience because we learn by our failures and this is what a lot of bosses and people do not realize.

They think if you fail then they will get someone else that won’t fail. Well they will probably fail as well and failure is part of the learning process, as long as you accept the failure and want to improve on it. There are people that you may hire that are happy to fail and do not care of they do fail. These are the type of people you do not want to give a job but if they fail and if they really understand the repercussions of the failure and want to succeed next time then this is the guy you should have to do the labor.

I read an interesting account about a company that spent $200,000 training this guy and then after they spent the money he underwent a tremendous failure. Then the boss gave him another chance and another guy comes up to him and says, why do that, the guy failed? And he says, well we spent $200,000 training this guy and I am not going to throw $200,000 away! And he has learned the lesson and he is ready. And that is what they would have done – they would have thrown $200,000 away on somebody that has learned his lesson.

Copyright by J J Dewey

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