Mastering Your Stars

Our beloved Reverend Harriet B. Case couldn't have picked the more perfect quotation from the Bible for the approach to the talk I wish to give you this morning. Now of course I didn't know this until I listened to her because I didn't know what she was going to read, but she invariably picks that which is attuned to the inner harmonies and needs of the group, as I've noticed through through many years, and her reading, I know she says, she goes like this, you know, with a raised eyebrow, but she does, she does indeed. Her attunement is beautiful. And although I didn't know exactly in what way I should approach this morning's talk, because there are so many ways and so many aspects of understanding that relate to the different areas or the different rays from some central theme or central sun, as you know. One has to decide, well, which ray shall we work on for today?

That is, which radius shall we use?

And when there are an infinite number actually stretching from a center, we have to wait to decide ahead of time, I shall speak about this particular subject in this manner, is putting a wall between a true spiritual teacher and the spiritual sisters, brothers, and children. In order to truly teach from the deepest level, one has to be a continuous open stream dream for participation of what is needed at the moment and what is a living creative thing as we go along together. And as you know, this is how we work here whenever I speak to you Sundays or Thursday nights or whenever there's any other occasion to do so. And I've noticed our beloved Reverend Harriet B. Case almost invariably picks a passage from the Bible or sometimes the Book of Tokens which gives me the first spark upwards on the level where I'm willing to start bringing and correlating my knowledge from the inner planes to that particular approach because as I pointed out there are so many approaches and I have gone through so many well I was almost going to say years but I always deny years you know I always tell you I I'm not a minute past 21 in fact I haven't even approached it this is one of the charming feelings of being the eternal fool and Tarot key number zero so I I never like to tell you how many years, except they've been very many indeed.

But remember, some of us start the moment we're born, and that way I can deny age, can't I? Very charmingly, I hope. In any case, our beloved Reverend Harriet B. Case, invariably, in very important talks, picks a passage that gives me the first step upward for the level that I wish us as a group to participate in, and then the energies which I help to bring down to you, help you to experience, sometimes immediately, sometimes it's a seed that takes time to develop, as you all found out who come regularly. There are times when a year or two years later suddenly we have an explosion and we wonder why we didn't see it two years ago but a seed has been growing and you know it is a sort of explosion when any kind of seed first bursts its way out of that original shell you know the shell of the egg then there's another explosion at the point where it's in the ground that it gives its first little green shoot up into the sun, the atmosphere, and the air. And then we have other levels of explosion reaching into maturity where its own creative processes start to grow by forming flowers or seeds. And so we have these different areas and levels and I always wait to see what we need together as a group at this point some of you will have explosions on very conscious levels similar to a flower that's bursting and reproducing its own realization some of you would have the experience in that area that is or that particular subject or topic where it's that first pushing up from the darkness of the earth into the awareness of that light sun warmth others will have that first explosion in the depth of the ground which happens to the seed that has to send down its roots where all seems dark and yet it isn't it's dark temporarily but it is an explosion outward outward pushing us towards the sun.

And this is the thing that has to do with mastering our stars, which is the topic for this morning's talk. Now, didn't I seem to go in a roundabout way? But I didn't. Notice how much information you've received.

Now then, mastering stars has to do with what? In what our beloved Reverend Harriet B. Case just recited to us from the Bible. The first thing I'd like to point out to you is that this is one of the many true Qabalistic texts. That is, it's one of the true portions of the Bible, which remember, are happens to be a collected group of manuscripts dealing with certain spiritual psychic teachings as well as certain traditional locked up kinds of patterns and in order to know which is what as I've pointed out to you before we have to know the Qabalah because the Qabalah has always been back through not less than 6,000 years the Qabalah has always been that esoteric wisdom of Israel it has been that level of esoteric teaching which takes those who are prepared and ready to receive a larger truth and speaks in symbols which always have to be used because all communication is in terms of symbols.

Now, when I talk to you, when you talk to me, when we listen to each other, we're using words. But what are words? Aren't they symbols of images, pictures, and the image and the picture itself is a symbol for a state of awareness or unawareness, consciousness or degree of consciousness, and so on.

So that always you have your communication levels within a physical incarnated system, especially, that has to be given to you in symbol form because that's how we communicate in one level of our beings. But those of us who have gotten that seed to shoot up out of the ground are able to tune in on two levels because remember that seed that sprouts, it's still taking nourishment from Mother Earth in and through the roots that are growing and feeling and living and eating and just having a bowl you know it's delicious don't you think it's delicious to eat well some of you think no but that's just a sad temporary state of affairs I hope the point is the roots are taking in nourishments, nurturings, and having this beautiful sense of fulfillment like the infant that is gulping at the bottle, like the very cultured human being delicately cutting just a little bit of the food and delicately, shall we say, manipulating it around the taste buds, whether it be one or the other there's still this sense of being nurtured and the nurturing has to do with what we take in like the roots of that seed in the ground but remember every seed has to keep sprouting upwards burst out into the light receive the Sun bring in certain vibratory levels of that Sun in order to develop what our modern scientists may call chlorophyll but much else is involved there's an entire electromagnetic system and so as I pointed out some of us will be reacting in terms of the roots in one particular subject whereas in another subject we may take up here together, we could react like the flower that's burst into illumination and sends new seeds to give to others the beautiful, wild, glorious, free distribution of selfhood as far as it can go. That's what reproduction is in plant life, and it is even even enough if we but knew it in all our levels.

And this is what we're trying to learn. Now, mastery of the stars has to do with becoming aware first, then developing a control of.

These systems in our own being, our own individualized being, which respond in a vibratory unison and harmony to that which is within its environment. Now the seed in the ground, when it hasn't burst up into the light, can respond only to the vibratory aspects of the ground itself, though something in it inevitably is pushing upwards.

The little shoot that manages to come up through the earth from the darkness into the light that's just a beginning it's like the beginning of a second birth really as related in the bible and as well known in qabalah it then doesn't give up its system of roots in the earth or the the very shoot that's in the sun would die, wouldn't it?

And here, now, I'm trying to bring you, in ways of analogy, to the secret of mastering what is called our stars.

Because too many aspirants, and this means every one of us, we wouldn't be here if we were not aspirants, too many aspirants think, erroneously, because of taking in wrong conditioning, wrong ideas or immature thoughts or not yet having outgrown ideas that were fine for yesterday because we needed them yesterday but aren't good anymore today for our goals of tomorrow. Too many aspirants seem to think that you have to destroy your root system in order to achieve your response to the Sun once the plant has burst through. And this is why too many aspirants run into so many problems, sorrows, frustrations, disappointments, and even blocks in their spiritual development. You do not do not give up the earth for the sun why should you if you did you're denying a part of god the earth is also a heavenly body and this is something few people have realized after all do you not fly through the infinite universe verse with the earth as your feeding ground is the earth separated from the other planets and the sun and all the other suns we call stars is the earth something separate from this spiral nebula we call the Milky Way? Is the Earth anything separate from all the other Milky Ways or galaxies which we may call Andromeda and galaxy number so-and-so, you know, even numbers are given to living essences. Now think, is the Earth anything separate from the rest of the heavens. We are residents of heaven, even though a good portion of us may still be overly concentrated on the root part of our being as against the shoots, the greens, the growing upward towards the sun. And remember, plants do not receive the sun.

The plants do not receive the various cosmic rays and manage to bring them into correlated activities if they lose their roots have you ever done gardening and tried to transplant a plant you know what happens when the roots are damaged the whole plant dies the whole plant dies have you ever watched it happen they call it shock the plant goes into shock and then it's given things like vitamin b1 and all we discover that there are certain chemicals but what is it being done there is an attempt at a concentrated nourishment to try to to relieve the shock to the plant of having its root system disturbed, you and I and all living sentient beings, and all things that live are sentient, sentient meaning, a certain degree of knowingness, of conscious correlation with environment, which is part of the total universal all, all of us have our reactions in our roots and then we because we've been misinformed because we've been given erroneous teachings the blind leading the blind and actually this is a way we attain discrimination and develop a powerful surge towards that sun the illumination of God without trying to destroy our roots and here is the greatest problem as I pointed out we have heard the spirit is something that is above and beyond all things physical and material we have heard I'm going to bring you back to this passage that reverend harry p case read in a minute. We have heard that the way to really attain illumination or liberation or God is to think nothing of the physical body, sneer at it, leer at it. We have heard or learned or read or been conditioned into feeling we are so spiritual if we haven't got an appetite. You know, our heart and and mind are too much on God, for example.

Or we're so marvelous, and believe me, there are times I haven't got an appetite, but I'm not pleased about it.

And we've heard and learned that it's supposed to be something so marvelously spiritual if we're not concerned with our material welfare.

And so we lose our root systems, which it is our responsibility to maintain, and we lose nourishment and nurturing from certain levels of our own being and then we wonder what's the matter with us where even though we know we are sincere aspirants we discover we are losing the energy to maintain it haven't you found this so many times most aspirants who've been on the path for a long long time have discovered these periods and then we wonder what's the matter well the basic matter is that we are trying to divide a unity into two separate things it's pretty much like trying to decide that there's a God who has one kind kind of power and a devil who has another kind of power, but that to date the devil is winning all the contests and if that's so, God isn't all powerful. You know, this is we. Without thinking of it that way consciously, this is just symbology, remember. We divide divide our thinking elements, we divorce ourselves from the nurturing of our Divine Mother Earth.

We try to separate that unity of the universe of which we are a part, a begotten child of the Most High. And we try to make out as though the Earth and all kinds of responses to the Earth or unspiritual when nothing can be further from the truth the truth is that the seven holy churches these are cabalistic symbolisms for the seven centers within our physical bodies I repeat the the seven centers within our physical bodies, which our Eastern brethren have called chakras, or their centers of whirling force and light. And too many people and too many systems have experienced them, for there to be any doubt of the existence of this particular fact, that we definitely are what you might call a reflected creation expression of the principle that is identical to the sun with the planets whirling around it. Now, of course, today we say, but we don't have seven planets anymore, since the original seven, after all, first we discovered Neptune, then we discovered, or was it Uranus? No, first Uranus, then Neptune, and then Pluto. So from the seven, it's ten.

But this is still exactly in accordance with tabalistic training and teaching to give you an understanding of how to truly grow, to grow in the way that is assured, where it cannot fail. Male, because the original seven holy planets of Qabalah do involve that level of our being, which is the individualized personal aspect. It's really four with a plus three, but that you get more in the classwork and in the lessons that you receive at home through through the male most specifically, that Dr. Paul Foster Case, our founder, has bequeathed to you.

So we have that as the seven. But then, when we come to the ten, these are the higher octaves of the evolving consciousness of those who are able to respond to the higher vibratory octave level. And only those will be able to respond who learn how to look at Mother Earth and the root system in a proper manner.

In other words, because we have seen those who are barbaric, without question, gross, sneering and leering in regard to certain experiences on the physical plane.

We have come to think that physical plane experience is something terrible and evil, but this is not at all true. As a matter of fact, it absolutely leads an evolving consciousness astray if we try to take this attitude. Because, as I pointed out, what we do is lock away the nurturing from our root system. We cut off our roots, we put ourselves in shock, or other people will put us in shock, if we permit them. That is, if we're receptive to their thinking and feeling levels. Because all of us share our thinking, whether we can acknowledge it consciously or not. All of us share our feeling, whether we can acknowledge it consciously or not. All of us share aspiration whether we know it or not, though some of us have it more strongly than others. Just like some plants have grown a little higher beyond the shadows and get more sun and therefore more other kinds of rays. We're still all reacting to these universal energies and these These universal energies are the very energies we can receive only if we keep our root system in the earth rich, fertile, intact, given all the materials that it needs.

You know how plants get sickly if the ground is poor?

You know, I'm a city girl. That's why I can speak so learnedly about the ground. But my little experience awoke the infinite experience of all of us. And therefore your experience is mine because my unity with you has given me the ability to contact our group awareness and then bring it back to you to help you bring it up to conscious levels and give me the joy of that extra unity with you. So we have this tendency to keep cutting away the root systems of Earth, and thereby we lose out in receiving the rays of the sun, the heavens, on whatever level we're aware at the moment. Now then, what is involved in the idea of mastering your stars?

You know I have an idea if I asked each one of you this question you'd give me a a different answer a few would be similar but most would be pretty different because if we think that what we've got to do is get over being weak we'd figure that was the best way to master and if we figured what we had to do is get over being so strong if there is such a thing we'd give it that interpretation there would be all things in between or getting over feeling inferior or superior or what have you I mean we could go on and on and on we always interpret a thing in terms of our momentary problem or complexity and it takes on this concentration like the concentrated ray of the sun like the prism that concentrates that light down and starts a fire sometimes we fire it too much and we have to start over again on that problem realizing that it needs time to relax and digest you know without over concentrating our attention where we can't sleep or eat you know I've had those times haven't you food tastes terrible we don't even can't enjoy the air the sky I mean everybody says it's light but to us it's dark, although a portion of us sees the sun is shining, we can't enjoy it.

We've all had these times. Well, these are the periods when we have gotten cornered. We've gotten ourselves locked away from the mastery of the influences that we ourselves have brought about through our need to grow. Now mind you, not through being evil, just through our need to grow, but because we have accepted erroneous ideas about what growth is and is not.

We have, shall we say, experimented with things like trying to hit everybody with a hammer, mentally or emotionally speaking, to bring them to our way of thinking or being or doing or acting. So naturally we wouldn't call it that you know we always give this type of attitude beautiful names like well I'm honest and I believe in calling a spade a spade well it mightn't be a spade at all but if you see it as a spade and a determined everyone should see well we see you know we can create quite a bit of problems for everybody around us most of all ourselves because the rest of the people they're having their tests in discrimination determination as to what rays they're going to let in or not in terms of the whole influence inter-influence of the universal energies which you might call stars and stars they are on one level but the point is this there isn't anything we can see anywhere which isn't just a vibratory level, and I shouldn't say just, because there's no such thing as just, but which isn't a vibratory level of an eternal universal reality. Whatever it is we see, if we are looking at a star up in the heavens, we're seeing a vibratory level of something that is beginningless and endless in its beingness because everything is inside of the one life, the one universal life which is the divine creator. And it has its age as one of the holy churches, you might say, or one of the 12 basic waves or vibratory levels or rays of the universe.

You know, the 12 signs of the zodiac, please keep this in mind, the 12 signs of the zodiac are merely an arbitrary division in our minds of a beginningless and endless level from wherever we sit. Now think upwards and say that's eternally think downwards eternally think to your right to your left think backwards forwards just let it go on is there any end except the end that your consciousness staggers at and you're at the center of a sphere then aren't you a center of awareness within a sphere that stops at different levels still you are the center of this sphere all right now we take the spheres of the zodiac which we are trained to understand in the lessons that you receive through the mail and through classwork and what do we see actually there's no sharp line here and there haven't you looked at a globe of the earth and haven't you seen there's a line that tells you this is the equator and then there are lines going from the from the North Pole to the South Pole and you notice how they curve they come together at one point and then they divide more and then they come back together at the South Pole point now Now are those, if you traveled around the world, would you find those lines?

Would you find a sharp division?

No.

You can see the image, I hope you're looking at it. In the same way, the signs of the zodiac are not sharply divided like that. They are a map of the universe.

Signs of the zodiac are the universe, remember. Whereas the planets of our solar system are the area within which we as individualized begotten children of god are evolving not absent from the influences of the universal sphere because remember cosmic rays shoot in on you and every other kind of energy you can imagine known and and unknown, we're influenced by the total thing, just as a plant is by the total environment, either in the ground or in the sun. You know, you get a lot of smog, and some plants get awful sick, almost as sick as we do, maybe some of them worse.

But you do have a universal aspect, which is not that sharply divided, although, from various wavelength areas around this whole infinite sphere, we do know that there are influences that act in a special way. And then within the periphery of our ground, and yet what our ground is in the solar system, actually becomes our Sun when we think of it from a level smaller or under our human evolution you know everything changes its character in terms of the evolution of the particular consciousness and that's why even our scientists I like to remind you of this tell us that the neutrino which is manufactured in the the center of the sun doesn't even know this earth exists because it is so apparently tiny if size has meaning which it doesn't it travels with a kind of velocity as some spark of some kind of power so extraordinarily that it goes all the way through planet earth as though you and I had been traveling in a spaceship up in and between the stars.

In other words, every atom of planet Earth is to it as separated as the stars are to us. Do you see the significance of a level of concentrated consciousness then and of influences?

Now, we may not know something is there, but it's sure there. That neutrino may not know the Earth is here, but I'll bet this earth has such influence on this neutrino that in some infinite future if such a thing really is as a future and it's really an eternal now in one sense there is this taking in this interreaction of energies and we in our level of human evolution here and now on this planet Earth have to recognize this, that to deny Earth as being a miracle of God and a heavenly body, to deny the miracle of our own physical bodies, to deny the beauty and the importance of loving our bodies and all bodies as concentrated expressions of God, is to deny the root system of our spirit, which is growing itself into a full sunflower. It is to deny it, its complete meaningfulness and nourishment, to give it the power to reach towards the infinite heavens and the larger energies that stretch out in all directions.

We do not remotely master our destiny as long as we have a need to cut off meaningfulness on the physical plane. We do not remotely become the masters of our stars as long as we have to moan and groan about the agonies of the physical, plain experience of planet Earth, of physical bodies.

And though we may think to ourselves that we're sounding spiritual, you know, they say Al Capone was such a marvelous person.

He helped widows and orphans.

Do you know how many widows and orphans he made?

You know we have to stop and reconsider a lot of these things the point is spiritual evolution if we want to separate it from our mother earth is not going to be taking place because we're going to go into shock over and over again we're We're not going to have the strength to withstand the tests and trials. We're not going to have the strength to crack a rock. Have you ever noticed what a plant will do with a solid stone?

Its power is life.

And this is a living creature. It's so great. It cracks stones.

It cracks anything that stands in its way within a certain periphery of power so that we are a guest at this determined being to live and reach to the sun. This is your aspiration and the plant's aspiration.

It is our aspiration as living units of God, but we as human aspects of God, we who have achieved through untold numbers of millennia, the various kinds of experience that have come through them. We who have cracked so many rocks in our travel towards the infinite heavens, our cosmic awareness and powers, it is up to us to stop for a moment and examine what we are doing to the roots of our nourishment.

It's pretty much like somebody trying to come down on a parachute and having some nice long implement well they cut off the parachute you know and then they go boom and get splattered horrible image but that's what we try to do all the time when we think we're being spiritual by denying the physical requirements or nurturing it properly. Now then, what is it then to give ourselves an ability to reach up so we can receive the greatest energies from the cosmos so we can really be master of these powers by being aware of them? Because remember, evolution is awareness plus control of what we're aware of to whatever degree possible within the framework of our present level of growth. Now then, the thing we have to do is to completely and utterly change our ideas about what a physical body is, what planet Earth is, what physical incarnation is, and what our responsibility is and is not to these physical material conditions.

It is absolutely true that somebody who is engrossed only with the physical is a very immature, unevolved level of human consciousness, which is like saying they're two years old instead of being 12 or 15 or 21 or, even more happily, about 30. 30. But changing our ideas about the level, you see, doesn't mean that we give it the entire importance. In other words, somebody who has to get out and make it miserable for anybody else and knock them down, smash them out, in order to have whatever is considered a value on the physical plane, like, for example, a lot of money. Well, we've all heard stories about what good good money can do, people can have millions of dollars and be so insecure, you know, that you can't even stand being near them, because the only thing they can think of is hammering at everybody else to try to make everybody else cater and to use the money as a power element to make others cater to their power. Others want power direct, rather than in the the way of money some decide it's money will give them the power others decide it's politics you very rarely have a true uh servant of god and humanity and politics you know very rarely occasionally but it's very rare because usually it's a power drive uh it's the kind of drive that the child has to also trying to feel its oats you know but that jumps up and down and say look at me look at me I can stand on my head and don't most of our politicians do this of course naturally I know we'll all decide it's only the opposite side that we don't go for that does it not ours but maybe we can reconsider it after a while and see it everywhere not have to be that tied to one level but uh there's that level of a material need in other words to make people look and cater there are others want everybody to look up and say I'm aren't you marvelous, marvelous, marvelous.

Well, sure, we all want everybody to look up at us and say, aren't we marvelous? But, you know, it's just not practical because we are all very unique and we don't think everything is equally marvelous.

And we have different levels of what we consider delightful, aesthetic, un-aesthetic, etc. However, by saying that Mother Earth or a physical body or the physical vehicle which we've undertaken, that this is the cause, by loving this physical earth, that this is what makes us unspiritual, this is the greatest nonsense of all.

It's separating the earth that has given us the privilege of this vehicle and growth and experience. It's trying to separate it away from the one life which should not and must not be done. We who are spiritual aspirants have the privilege of bringing the cosmic energies down to earth by being what you might call a sort of grounding station for the higher vibratory levels of the most high the illumination the love of god the universal love each and every one of us because of the level we have achieved in awareness can become just that a grounding station for these vast cosmic energies and by being a grounding station we ennoble the very thing we are supposed to ennoble we start seeing your body and my body as something infinitely miraculous and and beautiful and a privilege to have, take care of, delight in, but always praising the one life, the divine, for every experience. To our prayers right here give us the basic principle, the prayers we have on the Sunday morning talks, the meditations we do, the lessons you receive in the mail.

It gives that idea where that we start looking for the divine light and love and guidance in all the things of the here and now to look at a tree in the proper manner to look at a person to see look at this miracle to see this miracle to look at a little creature, a little dog, a cat, a bird, a fish, to look at it and to let our minds and hearts lift in this wonderment that we had as children, except you become a little child.

This wonderment, and therefore because we see that every physical vehicle is a concentrated expression of the Most High.

We feel His reverent wonder and we bring the illumination of the higher levels of awareness into these areas, helping the evolution of those that haven't achieved ours yet. In other words, we're a sort of way station for the evolution of the Most High and not until we are clear channels bringing the light of the infinite heavens radiating from infinite stars through us irradiating the infinite ground of god because it covers the universe there are planets and ground everything is the ground of god even the spaces between have atoms in them you know and everything is made up of the atoms and these atoms are end vibratory levels at our point of consciousness which really have an infinite and eternal existence nothing stops being because everything is the eternal in the eternal most high and that's us and our job then is to start loving our bodies and the bodies of our loved ones in a special way, with reverence, with tenderness, with feeling of wonder and miracle. And this is the only way to evolve ourselves and others out of this leering, sneering, downgrading of the vehicles of God.

Because if you think that a little dog or cat or tree or blade of grass or fish is less a body of God than you or an angel, this is where the error comes in.

Our awareness, and if we cannot experience it yet in that burst of illumination, which will come occasionally to those of us who work for it, Our awareness, our reaching, our retraining ourselves into this realization by looking and treating others in this manner with this gentle tenderness, yet the strength, this holding away these leering, sneering, downgrading, separating aspects to bring the spirit of God into earth is the job of actually bringing the cosmic forces of the twelve signs of the zodiac into expression in our seven centers or chakras or seven inner holy planets with those three higher octaves that make us a completed tree of life eventually. And we have the means for you to do it here with the various levels of activity.

The secret of becoming master of your stars is to start seeing yourself as a system, solar system, right now.

And as I said, you have help in the teachings we give you.

And as this solar system, not something separate from the rest of the universe, but receiving energies and giving them back, anyone who just wants to take, they remain a root under the ground. But something in you is going to push and burst and push and splinter rocks.

And the more you aspire, the faster it's going to do it.

In order to reach the sun, and therefore your roots will get everything they need more fully, as well as the rest of you taking from the infinite heavens of all the stars which are suns, suns and suns without number. Now then, image yourself, for example, your center of I as being that reflection of the solar sun within our solar system which is your heart center and that your heart center is just a little slightly above the physical heart and a little behind it as a globe and this heart center it's not a physical thing as such and yet we have a physical being because of these seven seven holy churches. It's a Qabalistic text you were given. And although I could not explain all of the meaning to you because certain obligations prohibit it, I explained to you that which we're able to give to prepare you for achieving that level in our work, being brought into it where you will receive more and more, and therefore even more help if if that were possible, and I always say everything is possible because there's no such thing as a limit in a limitless universe.

The idea then is to see yourself, your center of I, that in you that responds with the conscience. By conscience, I don't mean the guilt complexes. I mean that part of you that has that core of knowingness that I am I and this center of I has a driving will to become one with the brilliant sun of life and light, S-U-N as well as S-O-N, if we think of it of the Christ consciousness. It is that true ego seated in the hearts of all men, and there's no human being who hasn't got this core But with some, it is a weak center of light, and with others, it throbs with a brilliant vitality beyond anything that can be described.

And yet, whether it is weak or strong, you know, there is this process going on to strengthen it. Now that center in you that eternal part of you that could never die that portion of you which is a spark of the universal life and light it has its correlation uh within your own electromagnetic system that correlates as far as we can give you with that area I've just mentioned in the heart.

And that, therefore, is your center of spreading light and life, your center where you can receive it more readily and completely from the universal source for us, our immediate sun in the solar system, but more than that, as we gain our awareness, as we start enriching ourselves, we stop being the slaves of the forces of conditionings. We bring in this extra power so that, for example, if a neighbor next door or a relative or somebody we thought was a friend or an employer or an employee suddenly turns on you, God forbid, but it'll happen, and says, you know what, you know, we cannot allow to use such language in the temple, but, you know, the names were called at times, at least emotionally, if not verbally, and too often it's verbal, at least behind our back. But some of us know it even if we're not present. We will, if we start working properly with the mastering of our own nature, we will start realizing that these energies are flowing from different levels all over, back and forth.

But we can make up our minds, and the tarot is a vital part of this training, we can make up our minds to refuse to react back in the same measure. So that, as I said, suppose a neighbor or a relative, a husband or a wife or a child or a parent or a boss or an employee or what have you, decide to become very violently angered and although you know you may have done everything that is so noble and saintly they don't recognize it you know that's always very a very unhappy realization isn't it when we know we've been saintly and noble in some kind of attitude or reaction and we discover they're not even aware of it and you know how often have we given people people things out of nothing but the sweet love of our hearts, really. And we discover they not only have forgotten that we gave them things, but they're accusing us of all kinds of terrible things, of being selfish. Say, suppose we sacrifice something important. You know, and as I have reminded you from time to time, it's like the story, I believe, it's sort of of Voltaire or it might have been Disraeli. Do you remember whether it was Disraeli or Voltaire, Felix, who when told that somebody hated him terribly? Which one was it? Disraeli or Voltaire?

I think so. I'm not sure either way. He said, I can't imagine why. I never did anything for him.

Quite confused so you know haven't we reacted that way of course this that this happens and someone near to me wanted to give a gift of money to somebody also near to me not long ago and said you know I'm not sure I'm afraid I don't want her to stop hating me I love her you see the idea when you start recognizing that some people unfortunately lots of people instead of having that open-minded humility that receives and then washes out with love and gratitude instead of this when they have to start gathering together the negative levels of the energies because of an unknown or unconscious or not recognized envy and hatred of anybody body being big enough or superior enough to have had them in this terrible low position where I had to be the recipient of age you know it's terrible isn't it we like to feel noble and figure we give it you know all our childish daydreams don't we become a prince or a princess and then nobly you know just enlarge us sort of give out with all this graciousness showing everybody how wonderful we are remember your daydreams maybe some of you've forgotten it all children have it. It's delicious, really. It's delightful, because it shows a basic spirit of desiring to be generous, even though certain fears and insecurities may stop us later on.

And then we have to learn how to be discriminating in our generosity, even. Just as the sun is quite discriminating, you know, it doesn't give off all its energy at once. It gives it for a certain length of time in a very rhythmic and ordered manner. Well, the idea basically in mastering the stars then is to recognize that everything is consciousness and levels of reaction to consciousness and that when we are face to face with the tests and trials which we definitely will always have and wouldn't life be boring without them although I know some of you say well I'd like to be bored for a while I agree but if once we're bored for a while with no more tests. We'll go out and make trouble in order to get more tests, because growth is the, by I mean trouble for ourselves, growth is the thing that we surge towards with our hearts and souls. We want to become more and more, whether we know it or not. And those of us who come to a temple of God that serves the Western mystery evolutionary level, we know it or we wouldn't be here working on it consciously. And this is a fantastic step.

But what we need to realize then is that the energies of the whole universe, from the various stars and planets they surge in all the time, we certainly do receive influences that can make us depressed or joyous, that can make us hopeful or pessimistic, that can make us feel nervous and tense or relaxed and almost vegetable-like. But our reaction to the energies our own special Sun here in our Sun Center with our seven inner holy planets are the seven holy churches which make up our individualized sphere of being that's evolving we can choose what energies we will react to and what we'll just throw right out and refuse we can put up our little bits of controls as we learn to understand them and thereby start experiencing things of the most fabulously beautiful kind where ordinarily the average astrologer might have said to you wow you watch out for this one you're going to have this impact you're going to have that impact mars will do this and saturn will do that and and my god you know Maybe you better go to bed and stay there.

But it reminds me of the story of somebody who had his chart read. It's not a true story, but it's true in principle.

And was said, boy, don't go out on this particular date and this day because, I mean, this is a dangerous day. You are in danger of dying by accident.

And so be careful. All the forces, the astrological forces are terrible.

And so this person, certainly, he realized how accurate these things could be, and he decided, boy, I'm not going to risk anything. And he just decided he's going to stay home and stay in bed, and the whole house caved in.

Now, I'm not saying that to say it doesn't do any good. That isn't the point. You see, because this person wasn't able to change the image and say, well, you know, so and so to that, I'm not going to accept that. I'm a divine creator with the divine creator. As far as I'm concerned, I travel with my strong son and my nurturing and nourishment with me. And any energies I don't wish to accept, I let them bounce off and let them go back. Because you know, you bounce a ball off a wall, certain energies bounce off of us and others we take in and assimilate into our being, dependent on what we have fed our patterns. So if we are going to refuse to react back to the people who hate us or who envy us, if we are going to refuse to react back to the people who have these negative, immature and childish needs, the storm wears itself out.

It isn't that we won't be uncomfortable, comfortable, but we refuse to feed it with our own images, you know, to become in like kind. And this is the way you master your stars. Does it sound like hard work? It isn't. It just means you want to, you have to want to. You keep coming here to the Thursday classes, Sunday talks, and you'll see how easy it really is. It's much easier than going through the hells we do. We can walk in joy, in light and laughter and let's learn to do it. We don't have to be slaves anymore.

Masters, Sons of God.