Theos-Talk Archives (December 1996 Message tl00153)

What is a family of man?  What does it mean to be brothers and sisters really?
Don't brothers and sisters fight and disagree and play games in rivalry for the
attention of their parents?  I say attention, because sometimes children if they
cannot compete for love will take all the negative attention thay can get.  Even
negative strokes are better than being ignored, arent' they?  To be ignored is
to not exist.  To be in relationship is necessary for the stimulation of the
senses and connection to the form world and through the form world to higher
levels of the formless world.

I came across another tattered and torn book on acid paper that is crumbling
irrepairably.  It is Annie Bessant's THE MASTERS.  It is a short book with a
very long chapter called:  the masters - ideal and reality.  It is heavier on
the ideal than on any physical verification or even speculation on the masters
as physical enetities.  It stresses their role as ideal for the growth of our
own higher faculites.  Yet it seems Ms Bessant  really loves the Masters in some
way, even it they seem at once remote and all too close like a department store
Santa.

Christmas time brings all the usual feelings for me.  I am sure it will come and
go as before.  Christmas was actually borrowed from the cult of Mithras who was
supposedly born on Dec. 25.  Along with the Roman holiday Saturnalia, it seemed
a good idea to put the advent season around this time of year.  Sagitarius is
the sign of common fire which for me means common love shared on the physcial
plane.  What do tinsel and Chirstmas lights mean?  They are attempt to display,
not so much beauty or religious feeling but love - sentimental, family type  -
person to person common love.  Not sexual, not exalted, but a kind of childlike
love of feeling the air with warmth and tenderness.

We have a tradition in the Houston Lodge of presenting poems and songs and
meditation at our 'Christmas celebration".  It seemed to get a better response
than a cold attempt at a Solstice Festival.   Gloria Gaynor and I will survive
the shingles and the rest of this year.

To come to some point, I would like to suggest, along with everybody else that
it would be nice it the world were a kinder gentler place if only for a little
while during the Holidays.  I have spoken  about feeling being primary, a priori
to rational thought.  This is definitely true for common man.  For the Masters,
I would suggest, that intuition is primary or before rational thought.  In other
words they experince LOVE, CONNNECTION, ONEness, before they analyze,
discriminate, moralize, etc.   It is not so they are irrational, but above and
beyond the limitations of rational thought.  They are trully thought's Master,
not its slave.  What is common man slave to?   He thinks he wants to love, but
he FEELS he must manipulate out of fear.  Fear developed over lifetimes of
disappointment brought about by wars, persecutions, prejudices, racism and
sexual issues etc.  We fear first, rationalize next, and then cover it all over
with a thin layer of tinsel, Christmas lights, chocolate, gifts and hesitant
hugs (sometimes).

Marianne Williamson wrote the book RETURN TO LOVE based on her reading of THE
COURSE in MIRACLES which is supposedly channeled material from the Master Jesus
and  her reflection of the insight (the Celestine Prophecy also put a POP riff
on this) that charity begins at home is never out of style.  It is still the
same old story and fight for love and glory etc.  And there is no place like
home.  Home is where the heart is.   And the Masters have a Heart as big as all
outdoors.  What an ideal!

Namaste
Keith Price