Wise People Place
Their Confidence on the Law
Carlos Cardoso Aveline
* From time to time, readers write to the Independent Lodge of Theosophists narrating psychic experiences, and asking for explanations. This is the usual answer: “Psychic actions, understood as lower self, extrasensory perceptions, should be avoided since they are illusory and provoke vanity. Self-knowledge, altruistic actions and renunciation to selfishness should replace them.”
* Other friends ask different specific questions, as if they were valid in themselves. We then clarify that it is not possible to explain isolated issues outside the context of a thorough study of the authentic esoteric teachings. One must leave disconnected fancies – his own or other people’s – in order to study theosophy. It’s no use asking for short answers to isolated questions, made out of personal curiosity about narrow topics.
* Theosophy is a holistic philosophy of all life and cannot be separated from its object of study, nor can it be seen as a mere accumulation of unconnected ideas. Every student must see the whole picture. Once he does that, the particularities will naturally reveal themselves to him. True theosophists can only help self-responsible people. Mere belief is useless. Before one is able to get real help from theosophy, one must have a significant degree of personal independence.
* Classical theosophy helps us understand and feel that everything is in order and in peace, if seen from a deep and high point of view. Disorderly action and chaos are attributes of superficial life. An inner contact with universal law gives us the energy to constantly organize life, renewing it every minute from the perspective of spiritual soul.
* A strong will results from the ability to concentrate one’s thought on an object chosen by one’s own decision, and to keep the thought concentrated under varying circumstances and in spite of external pressures. It is the fact of keeping the object of thought in the center of one’s considerations – even if there are opposite factors and confusing stimuli – that concentrates will and gathers magnetism. Thus the learner can elevate himself above circumstances and generate the strength needed to walk with independence.
* Legitimate politics is that which discusses the good of a nation or community and organizes the common will to do good. Replacing the discussion of ideas with merely attacking personalities would not be a fortunate thing to do. And yet it has been taking place for years in many a place. Nations and communities need creative, constructive, positive energy. Every citizen deserves to be aware that others are his psychological mirrors. He must improve himself, as a way to improve others. His community is also a mirror to him, and as he sows, he harvests.
* When external life changes every moment, the lesson one must learn is to find stability in his own soul. If the amount of information available is so vast and so aggressively spread that all people get confused, one must identify the kind of information that allows him to expand contact with his own conscience, and reject the data which generate but confusion. Mental pollution is a fact these days. Whenever the excess of noise disturbs the flow of harmonious awareness in the mind, silence will bring peace and allow us to think better. The world is born again to lucidity through the expansion of good sense in each citizen.
* The essence of one’s life is also the highest point in one’s consciousness. It can only be found, or seen, in silence, in humbleness, and in an effortless way; because it is situated beyond the realm of struggle between opposites. The noise and probations of life prepare us to get in syntony with the inner harmony of sacred silence. Warriors of the wisdom are protectors of the higher realm of pure insight and noiselessness.
* When we get rid of the factors that generate suffering, there comes an occasion for the blessings to get to us. As terrestrial factors become less heavy, the celestial light gains strength and good sense naturally expands.
* As we renounce to agitation and unrest, we discover the power of creative action. Leaving aside common place and superficial thoughts, we can see something nearer to truth, which is often uncomfortable. Only those who abandon the false foundations of outward illusion can obey the law of spiritual gravitation and adopt as their reference that which is above, not below.
* Misinformed people vainly lose much energy in immediate hopes and expectations, and in trying to obtain this or that short term goal. The student of theosophy avoids being carried away by the desire that worldly events develop in any particular direction. Instead of obeying to blind impulses, the balanced pilgrim preserves his magnetic energy, and uses it but to work humbly and realistically for a valuable goal. He does that with a long term and positive view of things.
* Wise people place their confidence on the law of cause and effect. The earnest pilgrim preserves and recovers the energy of desires, which the misinformed one loses as he blindly obeys to the wind. Keeping away from the unstable efforts of illusion, the student of philosophy expands his own strength. Abstaining from impulsive action, he discovers the magnificent and solemn side of life. As he becomes more independent regarding the circumstances around him, he has a higher degree of inner liberty. Thus the pilgrim gets to know little by little his real master, his own higher self, his star, his eternal soul and immortal spirit.
* By educating his subconscious levels of perception, the pilgrim gets ready to accept the well-being and contentment that correspond to a truly philosophical view of life.
* The difficult probationary stages of learning occur as long as one part of the soul is in syntony with the eternal, and other sectors remain attached to ignorance, to pain and childhood. The subconscious layers of the mind relate to the past – both recent and remote. Yet subconscious mind is plastic, and one can change it. If the past is seen from the point of view of eternal light, it becomes entirely renewed.
* Self-education, or education of the lower self, must be effectively put in practice so that the old habit of wasting energy with useless issues is erased from one’s agenda. Affinity with victory depends on being able to leave the patterns of ignorance behind and learn the lesson of preserving life’s energy.
A Few Notes on Awareness
* Superficial knowledge has little value. Its main use is to be a step to attain something better. The nature of knowledge is determined by the point of view from which it is sought, gathered and organized.
* A selfish or false point of view inevitably distorts facts and its karmic result is disappointment. On baseless premises people can’t build anything. Whenever the starting point is an illusion, the result is defeat.
* The pilgrim must know himself from a higher and impersonal viewpoint – in other words, to know in some way his own immortal and altruistic soul – in order to really know other human beings and to obtain an effective, elevated understanding of the country where he lives. The rest tends to be irrelevant.
* He who has no good intention – anyone who does not wish to build something generous – is not in true contact with himself, nor with the others. He lives instead in a small world of fantasy (or deceit), and is dominated by childishness.
* The solid foundation, the true premise – that which avoids disappointment – is the quiet and silent voice of one’s conscience. By listening to the conscience, ignorance is eliminated – little by little and often painfully; and the immortal soul can live in the world, in the form of light.
Will-Power and Magnetism
* It is useless to make decisions if we do not use our energies to correctly fulfil them. Persistence and a sense of timing are required. The effectiveness of one’s will also depends on its strength, and on our ability to operate in practical terms, while we keep in syntony with the creative dynamics of true progress.
* Each time we make a constant effort to achieve a noble goal, we generate a corresponding “electric force” which sustains the movements made in the chosen direction. It must be remembered, however, that only the search for higher goals and noble objects generates valuable magnetism.
* The will-power is a magnetic process that multiplies one’s possibilities.
* Produced through self-discipline, the magnetism of will-power excludes short-term anxiety, and remains ready to be used by the pilgrim whenever it is necessary. To be able to wait is as important as to be able to take initiative. Choosing the right moment to act expresses the pilgrim’s intimacy with victory.
A Small Practical Action
* Theosophy must be applied to daily life. Look away from the above text and mentally examine those ideas from it which are more important for you. Write them down in a paper notebook, highlighting that which is useful to you at the current moment.
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“Thoughts Along the Road – 53” was published as an independent text on 10 May 2021. An initial version of it, with no indication as to the name of the author, is part of “The Aquarian Theosophist”, December 2019 edition, pp. 9-11. From the same “Aquarian” the sections “A Few Notes on Awareness” and “Will-Power and Magnetism” are by the same author and have been included in the above text.
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See other writings of Carlos Cardoso Aveline.
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