How I Changed the Inevitable
Evolution is no escape from death; eventually we will be annihilated in the Face of God. All things come from the Absolute and to Him must inevitably return.
We now step more fully into the realms of invocation. This forest is largely unknown to us, but we can discover markers that help us along the way.
How did we get here?
We got here by finding our way through the first steps. That being we recognized our dual nature. We are two electrical bodies housed within this existence. One is the sleeping machine. One is the unrealized essential Self. We have learned to awaken the machine. Once awaken the will of the machine subsides and we can begin to see the the Essential Self. As the essential self begins to flourish, we begin to grow and the process of transformation is laid into place.
As we stand within the Essential Self, we perceive a New World, an undiscovered country as it were. As we look around, we start to see various doors opening and in a sense calling us forth.
One such calling is the Invocation of the Higher. Yes, the chapter speaks of the invocation of the Absolute, but we will leave that for much later. Now we will look forth to what we can do. Here in each class we are able to invoke something of the higher. Each time, each class, we use the words of the chapter to help focus our efforts, but our Work is the invocation of the Higher during this time together. “Something” comes through. Thus, we invoke the higher being that for now we will call, the Class space. During that space information is available to us. When we work more actively together other entities can be invoked, such as in chapter 12, of the Life in the Labyrinth, and the invocation of the Simurgh, which you can see here.
The reason for invoking is to build up our inner capacity. The more we can contain, the more we can carry, then, simply, there is more that we are able to carry. Eventually, we will have more capacity to hold more, to contain more. Each time, we give over a bit of ourselves to that higher purpose. We work to become less of our Earthly self so more of the divine may enter in. We become slightly less of Me, and gradually become NoOne.
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The Hidden Work Chapter 8
The title of this chapter is tantalizing—How I Changed The Inevitable. Two questions immediately confront us: first, what is inevitable, and secondly, how can it be changed? Of course, we understand that by definition the inevitable cannot be changed, so what is the author trying to tell us? If the inevitable is that all things die and return to God, as the author clearly states in the header to the chapter, what is left that can be altered? If events cannot be other than what they are, if the Creation is a frozen tableau—a story already written with the cast of characters eternally locked in place — what is left that can be changed? With this implied question the author leads us through several connected ideas before presenting us with an absolutely remarkable answer, one completely lost to our religious traditions, and more importantly, one that places a radical demand upon us.
Not even our evolution provides an escape from eventual annihilation. Even if we evolve to where “death is a changeless aspect of total diffusion, … no one stands before the Face of God and lives (p70).”We are taught to invoke angelic presences to strengthen our ability to survive this experience, not unlike going to “angel gym” to develop spiritual tolerance, but even this does not adequately prepare us. During the invocation of the Absolute in Prayer-Absolute we are literally feeding our Beings to the Absolute. We must become no one if we are to survive. This process of becoming “no-thing”, no one person in particular, pretty well sums up the direction of all the work we have done together thus far as a class; slowly stripping away every-thing that we are not—all the identifications, attachments, repulsions and attractions of the organic machine while we are still here on earth walking around. Of course, doing this while we are young and healthy can be an interesting philosophical exercise, good for showing gravitas at social gatherings, but doing so when we are older or very sick is another matter entirely. When our time comes, we find out with stark clarity just how strong our worlds of illusion really are.
We eventually come to understand, if only dimly, that the only thing that can be changed, for both the Absolute and for us, is our mutual redemption through the prayers of the One for the many, and the many for the One. We glimpse that the only thing that can be changed is the only thing that matters—a more robust Presence of each within the other. The voyage of redemption ,or liberation or at-one-ment if you prefer, is a well-marked path that goes both ways, a two-way street we travel with the Beloved.
Our aim has been to live our lives consciously, and our work has been the transformation of our Being by Presence, thereby allowing higher influences to enter us and illuminate our lower functions. Also, by Prayer Absolute, our Being is then fed to the Absolute as food, and the two currents are established– each feeding the other– placing Heaven upon the Earth. By not identifying with our inevitable and necessary failures, the notes Re24 and Mi12 begin to sound in us, forming the vessel of the Soul. By feeding our Souls to the Absolute in prayer, Mi12 is transformed into Fa6 and Si12 into Do6, creating an entirely new octave of which we now know nothing, but which can proceed by harnel-miatznel through two more notes without the addition of energy from the outside, thereby filling the vessel.
Susan and Harry
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Audio File Chapter 08 01_02_13
The log from the class can be found here.