True Worship

Where two or more are gathered in my name, there are my amongst you.

And if we knew how many meanings this might have, all in terms of true illumination, it would truly sparkle, I think, and astonish us.

Two Worship is our title for this morning and in essence of course we gave you the actual spirit of worship in our reading from Chronicles nevertheless we need always to show these ideas these principles in terms of our everyday thinking feeling living in order to more fully bring this spirit out into our livingness and thereby start becoming and experiencing and finally completely attaining to the essence of what we are all destined to attain in any case sooner or later and that is in the time sense which we experience we often wonder how many people have an adverse psychological reaction to this tarot piece because it is a representation of what is called the pope and we do know that various dogmatic representations of religious thought have developed a certain emotional response to historical factors which would we realize make it less apt to draw forth certain spiritual feelings.

Nevertheless, the adepts of the Inner School have been very wise indeed in both utilizing this particular tarot, and in keeping it in view of the various changes that have taken place historically are in the religious thought and emotional reactions to religious thought because in actuality we must always remember that all religions all religions no matter how narrow they may seem no matter what elements they may seem to carry which are not in accordance with our own thinking and feeling that the actual symbols utilized by all religions have their basis in the archetypal symbol and the archetypal symbol comes from the universal principle so that although we may grasp that unevolved as human consciousness still happens to be there may be at times a misuse and a misinterpretation of certain symbols that are used in religious thought at the same time the true aspirant must and we repeat must come to a point where he can throw away overcome transmute all adverse reactions because of the way he may think or feel about any specific religion or the way certain groups may practice their religion must overcome these reactions and look to the heart of the meaning of the symbol in order to wash out the various hatreds, resentments, narrowness, the conditionings which we have all undergone as we have walked through our evolutionary experience. So this particular symbol is kept except that it means something very different than what many schools of thought think and those of you who have reached the tarot work which you receive at home covering this particular tarot key will already have more than a slight conception of the true meaning of this particular symbol so here we're going to try to analyze it in terms of true worship and see if perhaps we can learn how to carry true worship into the areas of our life where it is so necessary to carry this particular emotion this development in our mind in our heart in order to attain to that which we aspire towards more fully more completely then let's consider this representation which is called the Pope is also called the Father and in Qabalah remember Father is assigned to the cosmic father aspect to that which is called wisdom and every symbol of Father in no matter where we find it is merely a representation of the cosmic father for example our earthly fathers some of us may not have thought so well of our earthly fathers some of us may still carry deep pain in our hearts thinking that perhaps our earthly fathers did not do well by us did not feed us properly or educate us properly or treat us with proper justice and so on some of us may still carry some of these reactions and here of course is where we fall into many errors and develop many problems when we hold and carry these feelings because what isn't realized again is that modern psychology has hold of a grain of truth when it tells us that a great many of our emotional problems result from our reactions to our parents and you know they take us through an awful lot of gobbledygook those of us who are foolish enough to fall into their hands that is at least the hands of some of them or perhaps even most of them they put us through an awful lot of gobbledygook indeed and confusing when they start us off on the analysis of the experiences we've had as children both in relation to our mothers and our fathers and we if we fall into this trap have a tendency to say uh-huh so the reason I hate authority and the reason I'm a rebel is because I resented papa's authority and they think they discovered something marvelous and they go ahead acting exactly the same as they did having exactly the same problem deluded by an idea that now they've gotten to the heart of some serious problem well you see this isn't really true if for instance and all of us have done it although we may have forgotten it because in the evolution of our consciousness we must remember that as children we have all had certain adverse reactions against parents against those who had the finger of power those who could make us do that which we did not wish to do we have all felt resentment and hatred during the very early years in our childhood at least and most of us of course also though not all of us because we have been taught to feel that this is evil and of course it's certainly immature but then when we are young we're supposed to be immature are we not what's wrong with being what we're supposed to be and certainly a two-year-olds and three-year-olds and four-year-olds are supposed to be exactly what their age happens to be. Nevertheless, because we are taught and in our education we discover that it is very, very bad to have hated and held resentment and so on, and because it's important to us to hold the concept of ourselves which is closer to the ideal image we bury away the old reactions we bury them deeply and we are loath to admit to ourselves that within our hearts reside all the reactions we have ever had from not only from infancy on but indeed from incarnation to incarnation nation the thing then to remember is that there's nothing wrong and there's nothing evil first of all to have experienced certain hatreds we doubt whether there's a single infant who would not have wished their parents dead at some time no matter how much they may have forgotten it because remember a child hasn't even got any concept of what death means it's a reaction to the imprisonment of what we might consider our drive or desire to do whatever it is we may have wanted to do at the moment and without any question there may have been times when our parents may have punished us for something which we felt was an unjust thing because after all every human being is fallible and no parent could have been so perfect that every type of punishment whether it was more or less corporal or the mental emotional type of punishment no parent is so perfect and has such profound empathy that this parent could always have done and said the thing that we're supposed to have done instead in terms of these children and the same is true of ourselves as children as parents those of us who are parents we all would have passed on the same kinds of experiences to our children and have been the recipients of the same kinds of reactions well well one of the reasons that these emotions remain a problem and they do remain a problem as we go along one of the reasons happens to be not only that we have buried them away because we dare not face them but because in essence we like to feel that we have outgrown not just in this incarnation probably but for several incarnations that we have outgrown this surge of resentment towards any human being who dares to limit what we whatever it is we consider our freedom or drive to do whatever it is we happen to want to do we therefore in burying away this particular feeling which we all would have or even in not daring to acknowledge that certainly it is there whether we consciously remember it or not we keep feeding uh old an old karmic pattern and we all do it an old karmic pattern from incarnation to incarnation we keep feeding a type of rebellion against authority which incidentally is very good you know in a way you might say that if there be such a thing as the devil and of course symbolically there is in a sense that no matter what kind of so-called evil comes from this so-called devil the curious thing really is this in the final analysis this force or this principle can do nothing but good or whatever it is we mean by good in other words it can serve nothing but evolution and when we recognize that for instance old redemptments old hatreds are what would stir say rebellion against authority the next thing to remember then is that this rebellion against authority can evolve and must evolve to rebellion against frozen old kinds of feelings you know researchers have shown for example that that physical illnesses are almost always a result of some pattern we brought over from other incarnations we hardly ever realize it some trauma from other reincarnations and it has nothing to do with good or bad incidentally just has to do with emotional shock or intensity and then there are many people they hear this they say oh my then where is justice immediately they want justice they don't know that he who learns how to truly worship doesn't look for the man-made idea of justice because it's something very other but in actuality man is here man is evolving and living not for purposes of finding the man-made idea of justice but for discovering who and what he is and what kinds of experience push him into searching into the laws of his being what occurs then is that he discovers what are the laws of consciousness I mean how does consciousness work he discovers that his own thinking feelings have been the laws of his being where everything he has experienced has become the law that is that which brings the next experience so that researchers if we even go back to the past incarnation show if a person say died of a knife thrust in the heart in the next incarnation almost invariably you'll find that there's some kind of heart trouble the person has carried over an idea with a tremendous intense thrust of emotion that there's a wound in the heart that the heart is torn and so we have many heart ailments that can come and unfortunately so many of us who are pretty tied to the elementary metaphysical interpretations of experience have a tendency to start hunting and and unhappily in everybody else's life more than their own well what's wrong with that person that he has asthma or digestive troubles or continuous ailments that includes this organ or the other organ we start hunting for the other people's wrong thinking or wrong feeling and although this is involved in the laws of consciousness we must never forget that it could be nothing and it often is nothing more nor less than carrying a strong emotional picture in our subconsciousness of some experience which we keep playing over and over again like a record that then is the reason why we need to work at washing out any adverse reactions to universal principles because you see not until we understand what it is we must rebel against rather than the father authority figures not until we understand this are we going to have enough strength to transmute these patterns that keep bringing us the same problems this isn't true only of of physical ailments.

We do the same thing in our relationships. We carry over from past incarnations tendencies to pick husbands or wives or relationships which will bring us the same experience we had before. We get stuck in these reactions that have made a deep impact into the subconsciousness which is the builder of our bodies and which builds our lives builds our environment builds our relationships and the thing is we don't we must realize we don't have to remember past incarnations we don't even indeed have to believe in reincarnation so we know that reincarnation is a fact but we don't really even have to believe in it in order to do something about these patterns All we need to do is to watch and see how are we reacting emotionally, what kind of patterns are we repeating in our relationship.

That is, how often are we bringing, let's say, betrayal in business. Do we do it regularly? Or jealousy in other people, friends. Are they really jealous or are we carrying a pattern in our hearts of needing to feel that other people are jealous of us and so on means this goes on no matter where you look the principle holds true we need to start seeing where it is that we are reacting in the same way on the same beat the same vibration the same level and then we need to start doing something about that reaction well it is true worship which we will go into a little more fully in a bit that gives us the ability of the strength to transmute these old patterns into the glorious new the glorious growth the true evolutionary factor that brings us into our finally into our complete enlightenment and freedom from these prisons So this father figure as an archetypal idea relates basically in its fullest sense to the cosmic father, to the actual wisdom.

And it takes real wisdom, and also it takes the search for wisdom, to truly see what it is that we are fighting, because we're all fighting something.

And the saddest thing that can happen to us is for us to stop fighting incidentally many human beings go in for what is called resignation the aspirants have a very sad tendency to go in for what they consider resignation and actually it isn't a proper attitude at all because you see he who would love as we have mentioned before he who would love with all his heart has to have the opposite also in other words the hate and this is something we do not realize but the difference between a spiritual being and an infant even though the infant may walk around in what is considered an adult body the infant is how young is your consciousness rather than how young is your body as the world looks at it the infant will react in one way the true spiritual adult will react in another way how then does the human being who truly loves react in terms of the hatred if this principle is true in any deep thinking and analysis will show it it is merely this way we have to turn this hatred to a hatred of prisons that is the prisons of consciousness to a hatred of ignorance to a hatred of real injustice because he who accepts without a desire to fight everything that is with a sigh have resignation well it's apparently the will of God or it wouldn't be is really not utilizing the power of God which is the real building creative consciousness within our hearts and souls God is a living essence God cannot be separated from ignorance God cannot be separated from what we call hate. God cannot be separated from anything. The moment we try to separate God from anything that exists, we are worshiping false idols. You remember, it says in the Bible, thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not take unto thyself any graven image.

The moment you feel or think that there's anything in the universe that's outside of God, you are making a graven image you are giving substance in reality to force that is outside of God nevertheless and of course our hearts become troubled how can we attribute ignorance how can we attribute apparent injustice to God well we don't in that way not those of us who have developed the real wisdom the figures here kneeling before this cosmic authority the divine will give us the secret and this is the way we learn how to truly recognize the principles which will transmute our ignorant patterns which keep bringing up the misery and sorrow over and over again which we really want to escape those kneeling figures symbolize desire and knowledge desire and knowledge now what is knowledge knowledge is that amount of information we think we have at the moment about a particular something now for instance one person may think that he has definite knowledge that another person is a dirty so-and-so because he did this and that this is definite knowledge to him isn't it and so this sort of person who will say so and so is a you know what and I know this this is the knowledge of her that uh destroys our real seeing of course this sort of person then when he would hear that you cannot take anything away from God that if God is God has to be all and everything there can be nothing outside of God this person will become very indignant and say that cannot be true God cannot be evil because I know that this for instance person is evil and there cannot be any God in this person the more we feel that somebody else is a so-and-so because we have definite knowledge of it the more apt we are to react emotionally in an unfavorable manner to the fact that there can be nothing outside of God the truth might be that even though I might think somebody is a dirty so-and-so that somebody might be a very saintly creature and I might just be interpreting that person's actions as being evil because I am unable to see what truly is good or spiritual or in terms of real love and what is its opposite and that is my lack of wisdom and there isn't anything that we think we know therefore which isn't subject to our own interpretation and because we may interpret things as evil we always like to bring in the fact that to a mosquito a lizard would be an evil being lizards love to catch and eat mosquitoes but to a human being a lizard is a very fine fellow because human beings don't like mosquitoes so whose point of view you see this is the secret the great secret behind being able to see what we call apparent evil and yet not to get upset in the way of falling into the trap of trying to separate god from anything that exists trying to make a division and saying some things are of god and some things are of the devil well some people who have developed a little more intelligence they wouldn't say the devil they would say some things are created by man like in one school of thought they say well that's just created by mortal minds they think they've said something different they say there's no reality there's no truth to any thing that is negative you know all is perfection and the other just doesn't exist they don't see it it doesn't exist they don't fight it either this and we wish you could see some of the problems some of them make for themselves even though they also occasionally have some wonderful demonstrations so this is not the way to interpret life we must always recognize that whatever it is we see is evil or is bad that it is being interpreted from the limited point of view and it keeps us from truly worshiping God because we are giving power to a false idol we are misinterpreting we told the story not so very long ago in a class of the two knights who were going along in back in the days of old and they met in front of an inn and they said good day to each other and one said that is a beautiful golden sign in front of this inn and the other knight said oh the sign is beautiful indeed sir but it isn't gold it is silver and the first one said are you calling me a liar you have just called me a liar and the other one said sir you have just called me a liar and so with great anger because they had to of course protect their pride and they were very self-righteous each of them knew didn't they know of course they knew so in their knowing and in their self-righteousness with their lances they each went after the other one and thrust the lance through the heart of the other and as they fell each fell on the opposite side and the one they both looked up and discovered that each had been right after all the sign was gold on one side and silver on the other and they destroyed themselves and they destroyed each other it because they knew now do you see why it's so important what the symbol is saying when it says that knowledge has to kneel in front of the divine wisdom the symbol for the divine wisdom there isn't anything we think we know we must not be willing to give up at the altar of god if we would learn how to truly worship because you see every time we have a reaction of annoyance irritation condemnation hatred resentment every time we have these reactions feeling our own spiritual superiority over the spiritual inferiority of others and all the hosts of responses that go with it every time we do that we are not worshiping god because we are falling into the trap of utilizing the destructive force for destruction of each other in our thinking feeling instead of destroying the illusion hate must be used to destroy illusion and not to condemn and destroy ourselves and each other and we all do it as we often say there isn't a war there isn't a death that is like the one the legal murder that takes place you know in the prison called capital punishment there are none of these things for which we have not been responsible in our own small way because of the fact that we have held a hatred punishment attitude in our mind and in holding that we have fallen away from what the meaning of true worship can and should be now then what is true worship true worship is the ability to flow with gratitude every moment of our lives gratitude to life true worship is developing the ability to say thank you god for every breath we take for everything that we see even those things that are unpretty because it forces us to look a little more deeply and true worship finally and but it isn't finally because it involves so much else true worship involves the recognition that every adverse condition every adverse circumstance every unhappiness every ugliness is merely the impact the way that the divine in ourselves and in others shakes up the consciousness to force it into looking at the patterns that it is imprisoned in and to change them in other words then to create the more beautiful picture therefore that which we call evil is relatively evil only relatively evil it serves good it serves God therefore when we say praise the Lord bless his holy name we should be able to say it when we're looking out at the world everywhere and when we're looking into our hearts we must learn how to say it when our hearts are weeping with some frustration we must learn to say it when we find ourselves reacting with some kind of resentment or other because you'd be amazed try it and you'll see how quickly the resentment vanishes it melts away when you can say thank you God for making me aware of this adverse reaction in my heart now I do not wish here is the way we need to talk to us to train ourselves to truly worship we need to then say I do not wish and I do not choose to let my creative attention my creative feelings which are thine dwell on this look on this picture I do not choose to because as I do I am rebuilding a tendency to keep repeating unhappy experiences that is therefore discordant experiences and truly I know that as the really loving father on the earthly sense wishes all good to his child and complete fulfillment and he does everything possible to bring this child to the place to to adulthood where this child can earn his living find his mate fulfill his life in every sense as the earthly father certainly has this feeling unless he's ill psychologically naturally how much more then would that amazing creator that wondrous awesome miracle which we call God though we don't even know what we mean by it we give something a name that is utterly indescribable how much more would that which creates the universe has created it is creating it forever will be creating it how much more would that have the intention and be doing the job of educating and training its children remember last Sunday we spoke about the fact that we are the begotten son of God begotten mind you therefore we're not really being anthropomorphic at all when we decide to go along in life assuming and it's more than an assumption that as absolute begotten children of God certainly the will intention and intention and love of God is without question guiding us towards happiness towards fulfillment towards joy towards glory towards wonder but in what way it doesn't just happen to us just as the earthly father applies discipline to that child makes him eat the proper foods make him wear the proper things make him keep clean just that and of course the mother principle is always involved in it uh father mothers are really not separable but this is what this has to do with other types of taught the experiences which we have had in past incarnations the experiences we have had in this these are all the disciplinary trainings of that cosmic wondrous glorious that which was is and will be which we call god they are that which grows our creative ability so that we'll be able to be the engineers of life and the scientists of life and the artists of life because this in essence must be our destiny so worshiping has to do with accepting everything that happens to us as being the divine loving guidance of the oneself self of the universal wisdom and this is true whether we've been betrayed whether we've been gossiped about whether we've been kicked out from whatever it is that we think we love as it is true when we have been fulfilled when we are full of love and so on it is always true but we we lose the capacity for worship and we lose the joy and peace of worship when we get lost in some of our experiences and interpret them incorrectly and so again that other figure as we see the one with the roses on its back this remember we said is a sign to desire incidentally also to love roses are a symbol of love they're a sign to Venus as well as desire even in love we must train ourselves to be able to give that to God and in this way do I love you?

You bet I do but what is I?

God loves you through me means this is giving love to god and this is real worship by the way when I say I as a separate individual love you as a separate individual then I have attachment and I cling and I'm insecure whether it be in terms of friend parents and children sisters and brothers lovers or husbands and mind we worship false idols this is something we very rarely realize we worship false idols and false gods and we take graven images unto ourselves when we fall into the trap which we all do in fact this is the biggest heresy and it is the biggest trap this feeling of separatism in the loving so that we feel a dependency upon this loved one the father or mother or friend or relative or husband or wife and then we commit terrible things terrible things and we react in terrible way and as we so often read in the newspapers some emotional absurd will come up and someone will cry out I killed him because I loved him this is love and they believe it they truly believe it I killed him because I loved them actually when we are loving from the divided separate personal center seriously enough we are not loving at all and so we are not in the true worship we are not going along with that wonderful tabalistic teaching because this comes from qabalah thou shalt have no other gods before me thou shalt not take unto thyself any grave in me and how often and you'd be amazed how often it really is how often do we deliberately make each other miserable because we love each other and how often you know in other words you want to know how we do it like an example it to husband the wives do it the best of course curious isn't it but they do the best jobs on that sort of thing though it's also done very well between parents and children and sisters and brothers but they claim they love each other and then they proceed to draw circles of prisons and to have tremendous fights like I know of a very young couple who they practically had a divorce because at a party the husband being the host and seeing that one of the guests the lady of a lady was sitting alone because her husband was feeling quite ill the husband guest invited the other lady to dance and paid her some attention so she would not feel lost and alone so she also could enjoy the party well the hostess' wife after the party was over raised such hell with her husband it took about six weeks I think before the emotional turmoil finally died down and every time they finally seemed to come to some kind of harmonious agreement all of a sudden she would start working herself up again he doesn't love me he made me feel humiliated he neglected me and she proceeded again to make him so miserable usually at mealtimes that he would have indigestion and her cry was that she reacted that way and for so long because she loved him who was he loving and what was he loving he was loving a separated false image because you see she had an image of herself a picture and this picture required that she be given every bit of the attention that he come first in all ways and curiously enough she did come first in all ways but she wasn't able to see it and instead of being proud of her husband's thoughtfulness in that particular instance she managed to make him quite miserable so as we said husbands and wives have a way of really making each other amazingly desolate and bringing a really an emotional desperateness to the situation all in the name of love well we do this all the time because we are forever trying to gratify our own egos you see we have to build up our vanities we are insecure and we look to something that doesn't exist to build up our security instead of having the true worship now the development of that attitude, God loves you through me and also God loves me through you, this is truly overcoming the worship of the false idols more than anything else. Many people think that false idols have more to do with worshipping things, material things for instance, like houses and automobiles and television sets and so on this is involved but you know this is really far less the problem and this is what we need to realize as occultists this is far less the problem with human consciousness than is the one we've just been discussing about how we treat each other in the name of love which is really uh what we might almost call more truly hate because even the need for a lot of physical material things we grasp these things mainly in order to get other people to feel and think that we are so tremendous so that we can become a false god and an image we want to be worshipped as a god and we want to worship other people as a god and we have a true intuition there but it's in the wrong place that's why we need to transfer this so our desires desires and our emotional responses the red rose it stands for also and the way we love these need to be put before the altar of god we need to relinquish them this is what is called true relinquishment this is truly putting the kingdom of heaven first that is attributing every experience to God experiencing it in me and through me so to worship we must walk through life and we have to practice that it won't happen by itself saying God sees this tree through my eyes God hears this bird through my ears God loves adores you through me that way we do not cut away our living experience we start living in an expanded manner and whatever sorrows come we must learn to say God teaches me through this misinterpretation of life which I'm reacting to as sorrow only because I do not yet understand I've had the false knowledge it's proof that our knowledge needs to be expanded this is all that follows truly means so let's worship as we wake up in the morning let's worship the feeling of life within ourselves because this is a vital and important thing let's worship the awareness that we can look inside ourselves and say I'm a living breathing being I have awareness this is worshiping god let's worship the spirit of motion of growth so this is truly worshiping God and it is not God please give me this and send me that or God please destroy my enemies which we say whether we realize it or not when we shake our head very profoundly and say oh I hate to have his karma I mean we're saying sort of secretly God punish my enemies the enemies of that which I think and feel this is not the true worship you see so if we start working on developing this as a consistent attitude we will discover that all the problems that occur in life are quickly overcome and dissipated and we will discover that we are freeing ourselves from the old patterns and the old ills because if God lives me if God lives me I do not have to be tied to the trust of past incarnations I am making new emotional patterns in what I'm holding my attention to right now I am holding my attention to the worship of God the beauty the glory in this instant then I am overcoming the old patterns of sorrow and of physical disability in the tomorrow, which remember, in the eternal now, it's already existent. So let's learn how to truly worship, not just once a week, not just twice a week, not just once a day, but all the time, waking and sleeping, walking, breathing, eating, living, and particularly then, loving.

The time is running out.