creatures within us

Creatures Within Us Can Be Avoided

Posted on by Harold Boulette

“Disciple: O Master, the Creatures which live in me do withhold me, that I cannot so wholly yield and give up myself as I willingly would. What am I to do in this case?

“Master: Let not this trouble thee. Doth thy Will go forth from the creatures? Then the creatures are forsaken in thee. They are in the world, and thy body, which is in the world, is with the creatures. But spiritually thou walkest with God, and converse in Heaven, being in thy mind redeemed from Earth, and separated from creatures, to live the Life of God. And if thy will thus leaves the creatures, and goes forth from them, even as the spirit goes forth from the body at death; then are the creatures dead in it, and do live only in the body and the world. Since if thy Will does not bring itself into them, they cannot bring themselves into it, neither can they by any means touch the Soul.” ~Jacob Boehme

The Creatures Within Us

When the disciple asks the Master about the creatures living in him, he isn’t talking about bacteria or even a case of parasitic worms. What he is calling creatures are the demons who try to control us when we are in the physical world. These demons don’t literally live inside us, but it may have been believed that they did at one time. It is an allegorical view of them, much like the popular image of a tiny devil on one shoulder and a tiny angel on the other whispering in our ears.

What this student is asking the Master is how can he fully engage in spiritual development methods when this cleaver demons are whispering to him and trying to get him to listen to more material needs and desires. The master advises him to stop worrying about it because his will is strong enough to ignore the creatures within us. He says the creatures within cannot control us unless we allow them too. Sadly, the vast majority of humanity does allow it. Only a few really fight against them and truly develop their spiritual faculties.

Walking With God

The Master also tells the disciple that while his body and mind are trapped in the physical realm, where they are subject to the attempts of the dark demons and dark forces to control them, their spirit and soul go forth to “Walk with God”. That is allegory, of course. Spirits don’t walk with God because spirits don’t walk, and neither does God. And if it were possible for our spirits to literally walk with God, it would serve no purpose to do so. What it really means is that we expand and raise our consciousness continuously until we reach the highest levels. At those levels of consciousness, we can communicate directly with God and his angels. So the “walking” is really communicating.

When we first develop this ability, it will only last a few seconds, but after time, it will get longer and longer until we are taking long hikes through Heaven with God (sticking with the walking allegory). And when we are visiting those higher levels of consciousness, the creatures within us have no control at all. They can only affect our lower, material self, not the higher, spiritual Self.

The Will Brings The Creatures

The final warning from the Master is that the creatures within us cannot control us unless our will allows it, or we weaken our will to the point where they can easily push it aside. It is like the Native American tale of the two wolf spirits within us, one good and one evil. The one that wins is the one “you feed”. In other words, the one that wins is the one your will wants to win.

Have you ever known someone who says, “I would like to quit smoking, but I just don’t have the will to do it,” or “I want to lose weight, but I don’t have the will-power to avoid eating fatty junk food.” Very often, those same people use their will-power quite effectively on some other goal. So in many cases, it isn’t that they lack will power, but they simply are not using the will power they have to stop eating or smoking. Even those with very strong will-power can’t avoid the creatures within us if they don’t decide they want to. And even those who truly have weak wills can make them stronger with development just as you can make your muscles bigger and stronger with regular workouts. So don’t let the creature within you control you.

Share
rulers of darkness

Rulers of Darkness and Their Realm

Posted on by Harold Boulette

“Then when Sophia Zoe saw that the rulers of darkness cursed her companions, she was angry. And when she came out of the first heaven with every power, she chased the rulers from their heavens, and she cast them down to the sinful world, that they might dwell there as evil demons upon the earth. She sent the bird that was in paradise so that, until the consummation of the age, it might spend the thousand years in the rulers’ world: a vital living being with soul, called the phoenix, which kills itself and reanimates itself for a witness to their judgment, because they dealt unjustly with Adam and his race. There are three human beings and their descendants in the world until the consummation of the age: the spiritual and the psychical and the earthly. This is like the three kinds of phoenixes of paradise: the first is immortal; the second attains one thousand years; as for the third, it is written in the Holy Book that it is consumed. Likewise three baptisms exist: the first is spiritual, the second is by fire, the third is by water. Just as the phoenix appears as a witness for the angels, so too the water serpents82 in Egypt have become a witness to those who go down for the baptism of a true person.” ~On the Origin of the World

Rulers of Darkness

The Rulers of Darkness are the fallen angels who are also known collectively as the Demiurge. The Darkness that they rule is the universe of matter that they created on their own in violation of the Laws of God. Because it was created without God, it is defective, dark. Death, disease, the need to eat other beings to survive, these are all indicators of a realm of darkness, not light. Of course, there is some light here. It cannot be shut out completely, though the dark lords try. But in case you haven’t noticed, even on a mere material level light can also penetrate darkness and lessen it but darkness cannot penetrate into light. On the material level, darkness is just the absence of light, so it cannot exist where there is light. But on a spiritual level, darkness is just another name for ignorance of God and God’s Law. That is what makes it possible for people who are full of light to exist right next to those who are almost completely dark. But it is never possible for one to be full of light and darkness at the same time.

The First Heaven

Sophia came from the “first heaven”. As it is called the first heaven, we can assume it existed before all other heavens, or spiritual dimensions, at least if we think in linear time. A better way to put it is to say this is the highest heaven. It is the dimension that is also known as the Godhead. All other dimensions were generated from it. Continue reading “Rulers of Darkness and Their Realm” →

Share
affliction and temptations

Affliction and Temptations: How to deal with Them

Posted on by Harold Boulette

“There are things which the Lord so orders that He may not leave Himself without testimony of His divine grace and calling; and there are others which He orders in the way of permissions, that a man may be proved and exercised, that his self-determination may be made plain. Those in affliction and temptations, if they endure, do not fail of the Kingdom of Heaven, therefore Christians in circumstances of distress are not vexed or grieved. If they are tried by poverty or suffering, they ought not to be surprised, but rather to take pleasure in poverty and reckon it as wealth, and fasting as feasting, and dishonor and obscurity as glory. On the other hand, if they should fall into circumstances which in this life are glorious, which incline them to worldly ease, or wealth, or glory, or luxury, they ought not to take pleasure in these things, but to shun them as they would fire.” ~St. Macarius the Egyptian

Affliction and Temptations

There are many reasons why we may end up having to deal with affliction of some sort. Disease, poverty, physical handicap, etc. St. Macarius says this is because God is testing us. He wants to know if we will hold up under pressure. He wants to know if we will change our path when the path gets difficult. That is one reason why such things can happen. It isn’t the most common, however. It is nice to think that we are so important to God that He thinks we are worthy of such attention. It is somewhat egotistical to believe that. And while God isn’t opposed to us having an ego—it is a perfectly natural and useful thing—an overinflated ego is definitely not good. So while there is a slim chance that our problems are due to God testing our mettle, we shouldn’t think that if we don’t have good reason to. Good reason meaning something like an angel appearing to us in a vision and telling us. We should consider other possibilities first.

One other reason for afflictions is simply that we are in the place where they abound. Afflictions and difficulties are the weeds of the material world. They happen everywhere, needed or not. So sometimes they land on us for no particular reason.

The third reason applies only to those engaging in spiritual development methods. There are forces and beings that don’t want us doing that. They are the powers of matter, the demons of materialism. So when you stray from the path they want you to be on, they will smack you down with an illness, financial disaster, or other affliction. Or they will tempt you with material treasures. Affliction and temptations are the primary tools for control of humanity. Sometimes they use affliction and temptations together to get you to behave. This usually makes people unhappy. It shouldn’t. When the dark ones are trying to stop you, you know you are doing what you should be doing. We must be strong and ignore their efforts.

What Doesn’t Kill Us

While God rarely bothers to test the mettle of anyone, it may be other spiritual beings who do so as his agents. They know that affliction and temptations are the tools of the dark beings, so they will use them to test us sometimes. They do this not to prove our faith in God, but to make us stronger. We need to be strong because the closer we get to a complete spiritual awakening, the more desperately the dark ones will try to stop us. We need to be able to resist their attacks. We need to resist the afflictions and temptations. It’s the spiritual version of Wim Hof techniques to strengthen a person’s will-power and physical body by sitting outside nearly nude in very cold weather. It is Mr. Miyagi training the Karate Kid. This may seem harsh, but trying to force you to suddenly lift 200 pounds when you have never before lifted more than 20 is even harsher.

Reject Wealth and Glory

While St. Macarius is correct in saying that we also have to reject the temptations of wealth and glory, that doesn’t mean we have to live in obscure poverty. We can have a nice house, comfortable clothing, and even a little recognition (not too much). We can have it as long as we can avoid getting attached to it. Getting attached to material things is like filling your boat with rocks before heading off on a sail. Even if the boat still floats, it will be slowed down significantly. Yet you can sail over a large rock that weighs a few tons without difficulty because it isn’t in the boat or attached to the boat like an anchor. So we can accept some wealth and glory, just as we accept the affliction and temptations that help us grow stronger, as long as we don’t get attached to the things of the material realm.

Share
higher worlds

Higher Worlds and the Beings that Live There

Posted on by Harold Boulette

“There are entities of the higher worlds in the hierarchy of Being so immeasurably high that to us, they must appear as gods, and collectively—God. But so we, mortal men, must appear to the ant, which reasons on the scale of its special capacities. The ant may also, for all we know, see the avenging finger of a personal God in the hand of the urchin who, in one moment, under the impulse of mischief, destroys its anthill, the labor of many weeks-long years in the chronology of insects. … Who knows and who can affirm or deny?

“The refusal to admit in the whole solar system of any other reasonable and intellectual beings on the human plane than ourselves is the greatest conceit of our age. All that science has a right to affirm is that there are no invisible intelligences living under the same conditions as we do. It cannot deny point-blank the possibility of there being worlds within worlds under totally different conditions to those that constitute the nature of our world; nor can it deny that there may be some limited communication between some of those worlds and our own.” ~H. P. Blavatsky

Higher Worlds

Higher worlds are of basically two types. There are those that are part of our physical universe, and those that are none-physical. The higher level physical “worlds” are giant gas planets, stars, and possibly others we have yet to discover. Our science and logic tells us no beings, or at least no higher-level beings can exist in such places. Only things like microbes and germs could live there. But that is because we think of life only as it exists on Earth. Living beings can exist in such places that are so different from us, we wouldn’t even recognize them s beings if one was standing right in front of us. This is particularly true of the stars. We think stars are so hot nothing can live on or in them, but we are wrong. Beings of a very different nature do live there. Live is found almost everywhere. The life force is every bit as powerful as gravity, and reaches just as many places. Continue reading “Higher Worlds and the Beings that Live There” →

Share