Tag Archives: karma

The Next Mozart?

EMILY BEAR (born August 30, 2001) is a pianist and composer from Rockford, Illinois. Wikipedia notes:

“When Emily was 2 years old, her grandmother recognized her talent at the piano. Bear began to study with Emilio del Rosario at the Music Institute of Chicago.

“Within 4 years she was enrolled for study of classical music at the Winnetka campus.

“Bear started to compose her own music at the age of three. At 8 years, she has already composed more than 350 pieces – and much of her work – both composition and improvisation – is of the more difficult, 20th Century genre, inclusive of Jazz elements.”

Below, a Six-year old Emily Bear has wowed audiences from the White House to her own house. Playing the piano since age 3, Emily also composes her own music. Has WGN-TV discovered the next Mozart?

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Flesh of My Flesh

BECAUSE all organisms are related through similarities in DNA sequences, the whole of nature could be really one family.

New insights of epigenetics have lead to a revolutionary view of human biology. Theosophy concurs with many of these new findings.

“The failures of science and its arbitrary assumptions,” Blavatsky says in The Secret Doctrine (2:670), “are far greater on the whole than any ‘extravagant’ esoteric doctrine.”

The traditional geneticist’s view of evolution “is from the animal,” she reminds us, and “mind in its various phases” is viewed, erroneously, as completely separate from matter.

It follows, then, that the identical genes that were in our ancestor’s bodies, that Blavatsky called “The Life Atoms” —”are transmitted through their descendants for generation after generation…

“…so that we are literally ‘flesh of the flesh’ of the primeval creature who has developed into man in the later period.”

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Written in The Stars

ASTROLOGY is just unscientific superstition many skeptics insist. Real philosophy, Theosophy counters, seeks “rather to solve than to deny.”

“It is an axiom of the philosophic student,” Blavatsky affirms, “that truth generally lies between the extremes.” This is what the ancients meant by Astrology she says.

“Mention the word ‘astrology’ and skeptics go into an epileptic fit,” natural health researcher Mike Adams says.

“The idea that someone’s personality could be imprinted at birth according to the position of the sun, moon and planets,” Adams comments, “has long been derided as ‘quackery’ by the so-called ‘scientific’ community

… which resists any notion based on holistic connections between individuals and the cosmos.”

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A Spirit Undefeated

KERRYN McCANN won the hearts of all Australians in 2006 when she got gold at the Commonwealth Games in a down to the wire marathon win.

Media footage showed Kerryn crossing the finish line, as if that was her life’s main triumph.

Two years later the much loved athlete succumbed to breast cancer, her husband and three children at her bedside.

Kerryn told friend and fellow athlete Raelene Boyle just a week before that she was still hopeful. Then she was so ill in her final days, she could no longer talk — yet through it all, her spirit never dimmed.

Happily, the body, brain and personality is understood in Theosophy as only a vehicle for the immortal soul each lifetime.

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But this necessary instrument presents us with special opportunities in each life to express our  potential. Yet, many are unable or unwilling to seize those gifts in the time allotted to them, as Karryn did.

The illness drew out her determined, deathless and compassionate spirit, an inspiration to those who might not have her inner strength. She knew the deadly disease had come back, but she competed anyway.

The soul’s capacity will be fully availed of, or not, according to individual karmic endurance, W. Q. Judge says. Their capacity and destiny is the result of their “desire and prior conduct.”

The person’s past choices and behavior, he says,”will have increased or diminished” their karmic resources.

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Our individual choices shape not only our own character and capacity, but inspires the emergence of character and capacity in others as well, because we are all connected at the core.

And, “the troubles of nations and families arise from want of capacity,” Judge says, “more than from any other cause.” So the choices we make will always carry a greater influence than just to us as separate individuals. Continue reading

The Resolute Spirit

Jennifer Stuczynski and Pole

HAVING the right tools for a job is essential, just ask any electrician, plumber or carpenter.

Equally important, is that the tools being used are dependable and in good working condition.

Just ask any parachutist, race car driver, mountain climber, or pole vaulter.

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Similarly, the tenor of our body and senses often determine, for better or worse, our spirit’s ability to express its unique genius.

The quality and adequacy of “the brain and body to transmit and give expression” to the immortal spirit, Blavatsky writes, is “the result of Karma.” She offers an analogy:

“… the physical is the musical instrument, and the Ego, the performing artist.”

No skill of the soul she wrote, “can awaken faultless harmony out of a broken or badly made instrument.”  The physical “may be a priceless Stradivarius or a cheap and cracked fiddle,” she notes.

Zoe Bloomfield with her cracked $7000 violin. Photo: Nick Moir

But sometimes physical limitations can be successfully overridden. The genius of Paganini, for instance, even burdened by a “cracked fiddle,” would still produce more perfect music from a damaged instrument, than could a lesser musician.

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Intentional Magic

THE word magic is largely misunderstood, because there are various kinds of so-called magic, much of which is deception and trickery.

But there is a magic which might be called the unseen and hidden power to bring to pass certain desired results, without revealing its methods. It is called intention.

Its successful use requires a knowledge far beyond any kind of trickery, and is based on an innate spiritual force in man and nature.

Those who practiced it in ancient times were the initiates, the wise, called Magi — the source of the word magic.

It is relatively easy to learn tricks and spells, Mme. Blavatsky says, “and the methods of using the subtler, but still material, forces of physical nature.”

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Threads of Genius

UNDERSTANDING the how and why of human uniqueness, from the likes of Mozart to the fearless passion of Julia Butterfly Hill, will always be perplexing.

Lacking a seer’s knowingness, we’d be forced to trudge for clues into the far horizons of reincarnation, and sift the karmic sands of countless past lives.

Teilhard de Chardin’s idea that we are “spiritual beings immersed in a human experience,” hardly explains Mozart composing music at age three.

Or why Julia, at twenty-four years old, would opt to spend a dangerous two years alone atop a giant redwood, protecting it from angry, clear-cutting loggers.

We all sport a convincing sense of individual identity. This is the “I am I” consciousness, and is our immortal soul that hovers, hawk-like — silently and all-seeing — above the Salton Sea of each new personality.

Trauma patients with memory loss are convinced of their egoity, even if they don’t know exactly who they might be. Amnesiacs may forget their own name, family, email, and favorite movie — but their sense of ‘I’ persists.

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Emotions of Truth

STUDENTS of metaphysics and Theosophy are sometimes called to task for being too ‘intellectual.’

Some prefer the force of thought to hammer out truth, dismissing feelings and emotions as emanating from the ‘lower nature.’

But as W. Q. Judge wrote in the Ocean of Theosophy, “intellect alone is cold, heartless and selfish.” This is shown today by studies of neurological correlates in the brain.

Materialistic, intellectual data are stored in the brain, but do not stimulate areas such as the pineal gland — known by occultists to host spiritual impulses like feelings of compassion.

We are spiritual beings at our core, but our behaviors on this physical plane — just like the actions of rider and horse — are solely governed by how we have entrained our psychic and physical instrument.

“There are persons,” H. P. Blavatsky writes, “who never think with the higher faculties of their minds at all.”

“This is why it is so very difficult for a materialist — the metaphysical portion of whose brain is almost atrophied — to raise himself,”


“Or for one who is naturally spiritually-minded to descend to the level of the matter-of-fact vulgar thought,” she says. “Optimism and pessimism depend on it also in a great measure.”

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Legacy of Luna 2

ELEVEN years old and willing to help was how Olivia Bouler described herself to the Audubon Society when she contacted them about the tragedy in the Gulf.

The aspiring ornithologist, artist, and saxophone player wept — like many of us — when she heard about the oil spill in the news.

But uniquely, Olivia was moved to help. Knowing birds were going to suffer, she had to take action.

Inspired by her hero, James Audubon, Olivia wrote to the Audubon Society about her fund-raising idea — using her talent as an artist to give bird drawings to those who donated to wildlife recovery efforts.

To date, she has drawn more than 100 different species of birds, and 400 + original drawings. Olivia was recently featured as an AOL Artist, and the company donated $25,000 to the Audubon Society in her name. Olivia’s Profile on AOL Artists

To appreciate the sacredness of nature doesn’t always take the insights of a naturalist like John Muir. Often it only requires an innocence of heart, usually a child’s — as in Matthew 18:3-4, to “become as little children.”

Unlike adults, young children don’t mince words just to win approval. What they see is what they say.

In her restoration of Theosophy in the world, H. P. Blavatsky was not abstract when it came to standing up for the planet —“help Nature and work on with her” she wrote — and stood up for what she saw as widespread animal abuse and cruelty. (See recent post: Animal Souls)

To become true planetary partners, Blavatsky wrote, we must learn from the Book of the Golden Precepts to “regain the child-state” we have lost. Continue reading

Legacy of Luna

THE famous meditation of John Donne, “never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee,” highlights two Theosophical principles:

First, the affirmation that there is no isolation, that nature and all mankind are interconnected — and second, karmic responsibility.

“It’s one thing to fashion a particular work of art, sculpture, painting, a worthy accomplishment,” Thoreau once wrote, “but much greater is the creation of one’s life.”

“…to exemplify the highest potential imagined, it is the highest of loving artistic accomplishments,” he believed.

A compassionate activist, Julia Butterfly Hill is a living example of Theosophy pure and simple, took the decisive action taught in The Voice of the Silence — sacrificing  her comfort and well-being to “help Nature and work on with her.”

It must have been a profound inner sense of the sacred that roused Julia, as she climbed up those ropes, to begin a permanent encampment in the endangered redwood trees.

“She doesn’t follow any organized religion but says she believes very strongly in the spirituality of the universe.”

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Atlantis Ascending

ATLANTIS sank beneath the ocean waves before its time, say occult records, due to the depravity of many  of its inhabitants.

And here we are, the long since reincarnated inhabitants of that ill-fated continent.

With no divine bailout in sight, the karmic debt of that Atlantic past still looms large, as were its inhabitants’ physical stature.

The old karma is unresolved and still “on the books,” but the real question is: are we going to continue to be part of the problem, repeating our former mistakes, or  commit to being part of a spiritual renaissance?

The momentous failure of Atlantis will continue to throw its shadow on our future. Yet, there is still time to pay off the debts we owe our fellow humans, to nature, and the planet.

“Arise, then, O Atlanteans,” W. Q. Judge writes in his Article Cycles — “and repair the mischief done so long ago!” —But how?

According to H. P. Blavatsky, black magic, “or the misuse of spiritual powers,” Paul Johnson writes, “led to loss of spiritual vision by the end of the fourth (Atlantean) race, as well as the gradual disappearance of the third eye.”

Eventually, its functions, owing to the materiality and depraved condition of mankind, Blavatsky wrote, “died out altogether with the submersion of the bulk of the Atlantean continent.”

On a Tight Rope

We are now in the “ascending” arc of the Fourth Round* explains The Secret Doctrine, between the stages on the “descending” side of First and Second Races in development.

*Jim Stratos‘ Chart of Fourth Round: Click here

Additional study:  “The Races with the Third Eye”

This is where things get interesting — in the great struggle for balance between the spiritual and material sides of human nature.

The cycles of human races are described in The Secret Doctrine, Volume 2:289, and to: “Remember well, as we are in the ‘manasa’ [mind] period of our cycle of races, or in the Fifth…[that]

“… we have, therefore, crossed the meridian point of the perfect adjustment of Spirit and Matter – or that equilibrium between brain intellect and Spiritual perception.” Continue reading

Soul and Shadow

NEARLY all of us humans, occult teachers say, are inexorably reincarnated into new lives of earth, yet invisibly clothed in myriads of memories from the past.

These include snippets of our innate ideas, haunting images of unrealized aspirations and desires, and our unresolved fears.

These torn pages of personal history are the underlying drivers that steer our reincarnations. This is Karma, reincarnation’s unerring “twin doctrine.”

This post has been edited and updated, and republished at:

Karma

Wounded Souls

HUMAN casualties of war wear two opposite yet related faces — those who are injured and killed, and those who injure and kill them.

The devastation for both is long-lasting, evidence shows. Sometimes, as we will see, restoring spiritual peace and health for either side may involve lifetimes.

Wounds received on both sides transcend the body, although physical scars have been shown to bridge lifetimes. War experiences are deeply rooted, leaving souls in desperate need of emotional, and psycho-spiritual healing.

But surprisingly, sometimes just remembering, and owning a past life tragedy, can heal the effects of personal trauma.

One of H. P. Blavatsky’s most powerful stories, “Karmic Visions,” opens in a battle, with “a camp filled with war-chariots, neighing horses and legions of long-haired soldiers.”

An old gray-haired prophetess stands defiantly before her captor, the cruel Clovis, King of the Franks. Taunted by the woman, who refuses to tell where the enemy’s treasure is hidden, Clovis loses patience. The story goes that he kills her by angrily plunging his spear into the her throat. Continue reading

Separation Syndrome

TODAY humanity is divided into sects and cults, castes, creeds and classes, religious denominations and political ideologies. Instead of being bearers of love and cooperation, we still engage in criticizing, opposing and attacking each other.

A united world has been the hope of humanity for ages. Poets and philosophers have dreamed of it. Statesmen and politicians are trying to find a solution to the great problem of disunity.

They have not succeeded because the approach is usually reductionist instead of holistic. Our obsession with the trees of sectarian differences and selfish, materialistic agendas, we never see the forest as whole.

It is not through legislatures that harmony and peace can be established between different nations. What is needed is a sea change of mind and heart, a basis of universal ideas and facts as given out by the great spiritual teachers down the ages.

Mme. Blavatsky, in her Key to Theosophy, Section 12, describes four Links of a Golden Chain that, if implemented, would bind humanity into one universal family. They are:

“Universal Unity and Causation – Human Solidarity – the Law of Karma – Reincarnation.”

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“From Gods to men, from Worlds to atoms, from a star to a rush-light, from the Sun to the vital heat of the meanest organic being,” Blavatsky memorably wrote (SD 1:604), “the world of Form and Existence is an immense chain, whose links are all connected.” Continue reading

Never Ending I

EVOLUTION is spiral, Theosophy teaches and the path of spirituality turns “corkscrew-like.”

Soul experiences are layered securely “within and around the physical, semi-physical, and supra-physical.”

Man’s immortality and the existence of God, are the two primary doctrines that H. P. Blavatsky determined to prove.

Analogizing in her Preface to Isis Unveiled, her first Theosophical opus, she sets the bar to its highest level,  posing immediately the keynote question:

“Who ever saw the Immortal Spirit of man, so as to be able to assure himself of man’s immortality?”

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Often it is only the clear-eyed children, unfettered by dogmas, who are the ones able to perceive spirit, not their parents or teachers.

Please note, this post has been updated and republished at:

The Unwrapped Soul

Electric Human

This article and videos has be updated and re-posted at:

The Body-Field

Healing the Beast

WHEN acting through human brains and bodies, our minds reveal a complex dual nature — a pivotal tenet of Theosophical psychology.

Mind’s higher aspect gravitates toward spirit, while the natural tendency of its physical reflection is attraction to form and desire.

Broadly considered, what is called higher mind is a soul faculty, our intuitional power source according to Theosophy — it is the “god” in man.

The alter-ego, our personal self, epitomized by the gut and brain consciousness, seems to be a conflicted mix of god and demagogue.

This enigma is dramatized by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor in her New York Times bestseller “My Stroke of Insight.” As a brain researcher Dr. Taylor’s focus is of course anatomical, the left and right hemispheres. (See Love and Fury) Continue reading

One Small Voice

GREEN is a multipurpose color, and lately it is the universal icon for a healthy Earth.

The concern we raise in this post is whether we have the collective will and conscience to change our destructive consumerist habits.  Maybe we are not really capable of rising to the challenge of healing our planet.

Save the Earth strategies don’t really address the driver, our economic materialism — when the economy is bad, we must buy more stuff! Just be sure to recycle.

Professions of concern that skirt issues like planned obsolescence, are disingenuous as plastic grass. But no worries. Today we’re all about red ribbons and promises of rose gardens — yep, it’s Valentine’s Day!

Foolishly idealistic it might be, but we ask: shouldn’t the world’s human lovers be paying equal homage to Mother Nature — she who designed and grew those Valentine roses? And not only on these special occasions, but every day?

Many diverse cultures makeup Earth’s great family, and many are suffering. Should not the upscale élite, those few well fed and living comfortable lives — the consumers of flowers and chocolates — assist their less fortunate brothers and sisters? Or, in such difficult times as these, should the prudent watchword be: “every person for himself?” Continue reading

The Liberated

Photo: barrywheeler.net

DEDICATED repetition is the foundation of all accomplishment in true art, science, and even spiritual development.

Yet success may entail much more than just ‘practice, practice’ to get to Carnegie Hall, as the saying goes.

Sweat, talent and technical skill are of course required. But the true artist also has acquired an intuitive sense of how a score ought to be performed.

Because, through an inner soul transformation, she is able to embrace the intention of the original composer, transforming that genius into an exhilarating inspiration of her own.

Every accomplished performer is no longer tied to a written score, and becomes free of the keyboard. The shift signals an artist who has the required technical foundation, and ready to develop the performance in her own inspired way.

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The Language of Life

BLIND chance could never on its own have produced a self-conscious thinking human being, nor would it have any reason for doing so.

Because for the random neo-Darwinist evolution machinery, an underlying intelligence is not necessary.

But intelligence, whatever one calls the force, undeniably exists. The paradoxes of self-consciousness evident in human nature are challenging to materialism—especially the concept of personal responsibility.

But just like every caterpillar’s solo struggle to grow wings and fly, with the progressive development of awareness of truth, and individual spiritual growth, H. P. Blavatsky wrote:

“the true Adept must become,
he cannot be made.”

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