It Is By Doing Our Best and Correcting
Mistakes That We Build a Luminous Future
Carlos Cardoso Aveline
In celebrating the birth of Jesus, the present civilization adopts as a model of perfection a sage who tried to save mankind from spiritual blindness and unnecessary pain.
Those who have real respect for Jesus and wish to celebrate Christmas in honest ways must, therefore, avoid gluttony during the festivities. A reasonable amount of sincerity commands one to keep away from excess in indulgence.
The Gospels narrative shows the life of Jesus as a stern lesson in voluntary simplicity. The Master teaches about renunciation of attachment to comfort. He gives us an example of a personal existence based on noble ideals.
Christmas celebrates a kind of outward poverty which makes it possible for us to attain a secret intimacy with the entire universe.
The second part of December is a blessed time of the year. On the other hand, these special days seem to make challenging feelings like anxiety, fear, anguish and hatred more visible. During the last moments of the 12 months cycle, we are confronted by that which is most luminous in human soul, and most obscure, and sad.
It is up to us to produce the transmutation of selfishness, under the light of eternal wisdom. There is many a lesson to learn. Pain and compassion prepare the alchemical rebirth of the New Year. There will be a chance to start again. It will be possible to avoid mistakes. Life invites us to try our best and to be born again from within.
The Art of Producing the Future
Building that which is new and rejecting whatever has ceased to work are necessary actions in every cycle and aspect of life. Our relation to the past and the future silently renews itself all the time. When the Karma and the Dharma of a better future are ready to operate, they replace the “present” and invite it to become part of the past.
It is our duty to create morally healthy structures on the various levels of life. Wrong inclinations must be corrected and compensated by putting their opposites in due action. By building wisdom, we defeat ignorance. Selfishness is eliminated through altruistic efforts; and with the arrival of a new 12 months cycle human beings are born again on a subtle level.
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The above article adapts the two short texts published with no indication of the name of the author in the December 2016 edition of “O Teosofista”, pages one and two.
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On 14 September 2016, after examining the state of the esoteric movement worldwide, a group of students decided to found the Independent Lodge of Theosophists. Two of the priorities adopted by the ILT are learning from the past and building a better future.
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