newsletterfeb

LUXLAPIS
2nd February 2015

Dear Friends,
Instead of a Newsletter, many of which are being prepared, here is a series of fragments from recent concerns, which read together, offer some flavour of the visions that can nourish us in these present days. I was a bit worried that the little gathering of quotes was a bit too thin on the ground and unprofessional then today I read the following: "The right to dream is a moral fundamental human right, and the Jaipur Festival believes in the human imagination beyond borders, boundaries, nations and ideologies."
In an article by Devi Rajab, in the Cape Times, 3rd Feruary, 2015
See Jaipur Festival HERE
Love and Peace
Samten de Wet

“The nature of the path is more like an exploration or an expedition than following a path that has already been built. When people hear that they should follow the path, they might think that a ready-make system exists, and that individual expressions are not required. They may think that one does not have to surrender or give or open. But when you actually begin to tread on the path, you realize that you have to clear out the jungle and all the trees, underbrush, and obstacles growing in front of you. You have to bypass tigers and elephants and poisonous snakes.”
Chögyam Trungpa, The Truth of Suffering and the Path of Liberation. Shambhala, 2009.

"It is possible to be mad and to be unblest, but it is not possible to get the blessing without the madness; it is not possible to get the illuminations without the derangement," . . . "And so there comes a time--I believe we are in such a time, when civilization has to be renewed by the discovery of new mysteries, by the undemocratic but sovereign power of the imagination, by the undemocratic power which makes poets the unacknowledged legislators of mankind, the power which makes all things new." From: METROACTIVE

“It is through imagination that we can reach the dark regions of the human psyche and face our mortality and the brevity of existence. It is through imagination that we can recover reverence and kinship. It is through imagination that we can see ourselves in our neighbors and the other living organisms of the earth. It is through imagination that we can envision other ways to form a society.”

“We live in an age when a divine vision is dismissed as an hallucination, and desire to experience a direct communication with god is often interpreted as a sign of mental illness. Nevertheless, some scholars and scientists assert that such visions and communications are fundamentally derived from an ancient and ongoing cultural tradition. The hypothesis presented here suggests that humans have a very ancient tradition involving the use of mind-altering experiences to produce profound, more or less spiritual and cultural understanding.”

“The religious impulse of the sixties must be rescued from the wreckage and redeemed. The exposure to Hinduism and Buddhism that my generation had to get haphazardly from contemporary literature and music should be formalized and standardized for basic education. What students need to negotiate their way through the New Age fog is scholarly knowledge of ancient and medieval history, from early pagan nature cults through the embattled consolidation of Christian theology. Teaching religion as culture rather than as morality also gives students the intellectual freedom to find the ethical principles at the heart of every religion.”

“While seeking the flame-like heart-intellect in the psychosomatic darkness, the initiate travels through the inner organs of the sky goddess Nut. Her macrocosmic divine body is related to the microcosmic structure of the initiate’s body. Like the Tantric sadhaka, the ‘traveller’ resembles a finely tuned instrument: the rituals and visualizations, along with breath exercises, lead to the activation of the elevating serpent power of Hathor. Like the Tantric chakras, created by yogic visualization, the inner organs of Nut, related to different night-hours and different kheperu of Ra, are imagined and experienced in this inward odyssey from the tomb to solar immortality.”

“Why do I call him a magician? Because he looked on the whole universe and all that is in it as a riddle, as a secret which could be read by applying pure thought to certain evidence, certain mystic clues which God had laid about the world to allow a sort of philosopher's treasure hunt to the esoteric brotherhood. He believed that these clues were to be found partly in the evidence of the heavens and in the constitution of elements (and that is what gives the false suggestion of his seeing an experimental natural philosopher), but also partly in certain papers and traditions handed down by the brethren in an unbroken chain back to the original cryptic revelation in Babylonia. He regarded the universe as a cryptogram set by the Almighty — just as he himself wrapt the discovery of the calculus in a cryptogram when he communicated with Leibnitz. By pure thought, by concentration of mind, the riddle, he believed, would be revealed to the initiate.”

It is possible that we have been brought together at this time because we have profound truths to teach each other. Toward that end, I offer the wisdom of the African ancestors so that Westerners might find the deep healing they seek.
The spark of this ancestral flame, which I have brought to the land of the stranger, is now burning brightly. Increasingly, I have been and will be encouraging westerners to embody these traditions as a testimony to the indigenous capacity to assert itself with dignity in the face of modernity. In this way the ancestors will know that this medicine has found a true home- that it is more than an honored guest.
At this critical time in history, the earth’s people are awakening to a deep need for global healing. African wisdom, so long held secret, is being called on to provide tools to enable us to move into a more peaceful and empowered way of being, both within ourselves, and within our communities. The indigenous spirit in each of us is calling for cleansing and reconciliation. The ancestors are responding. –