811-IS THE NEW AGE REALLY COMING? | View Thread

"Like everywhere in the world these refugees were very angry people. They’d lost their homes, they lost family members"

By Nicholas Petche in Zaatari, Jordan | Yahoo News – 8 hours ago

Camp manager Kilian Kleinschmidt talks us through his biggest challenges.

The relief and the exhaustion were palpable.

Dust from the desert through which they’d travelled to seek sanctuary still clung to their clothes.

And they were the lucky ones – the ones who had just arrived in Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan.

Eight miles south of the Syrian border, the camp is distant enough to be safe but close enough to still hear the sounds of shelling between Bashar al-Assad’s government forces and the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

It is a constant reminder of the reason they left and what awaits them if they return.

The refugees who had arrived that night were given water before receiving medical and administrative checks and joining the 120,000 others clustered in what is now the largest refugee camp in the Middle East.

The entrance to the camp. For many refugees, entering the gates is the first time they feel truly safe. Some families have endured two years of continuous flight within Syria to escape the fighting ... more

1 / 25

Yahoo News

‘I am secure, I can sleep and there is no shooting. I am secure,’ said a father who had travelled there with his wife and four children.

At his feet lay huge makeshift bags fashioned out of curtains in which the family had carried their belongings.

The sounds of children laughing and running around outside drifted in to the subdued atmosphere of the refugee reception area.

He explained how their home on the outskirts of Damascus had been destroyed shortly after the conflict erupted two years ago, and that since then they had become just one more family in the 4.25million people displaced within Syria – nearly a quarter of the total population - desperately trying to avoid the constantly shifting battle zones.

Finally they decided to leave the country, but with vast stretches of the border too dangerous to cross they had to head east towards Iraq. They travelled for four days in a truck with 100 other people wedged in so tight they all had to sit with their legs and arms tucked in.

Camp manager Kilian Kleinschmidt stands in front of a map dividing Zaatari into 12 districts. In front of him are …

They moved by night and hid by day. At times they were shot at by fighter jets – an elderly woman motioned with arms outstretched how they would throw themselves to the ground when attacked.

The family’s escape was a reminder that although the camp – now the Jordanian kingdom’s fifth largest city – has its frustrations, namely tensions over shelter, electricity and water, it is ultimately a haven where families risk everything just to get in.

That particular night 250 people arrived. Earlier in the year the number peaked at 3,000 arriving every night. There are currently around 550,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan, mostly in urban areas. The Jordanian government has repeatedly asked the international community for more aid, saying the influx of refugees is putting a massive strain on already overstretched water and power supplies as well as demands for housing and education.

[Witnesses to war: The shattered lives of Zaatari's children]

Zaatari holds its 120,000 refugees within two square miles and is surrounded by a five-mile perimeter road. What started out on July 29th 2012 as a camp for 100 families - opened at two week’s notice - is rapidly evolving into a temporary city divided into 12 districts. It also now dwarfs the nearby village of 12,000 whose name it shares.

More than two million refugees have fled Syria and now live in limbo in neighbouring countries. (PA)

Aoife McDonnell, a UNHCR worker from Ireland, said the first tents were put up at night by families using the light from her mobile phone to guide them.

It also soon became clear that the fragile desert surface was dissolving into a fine dust through the sheer number of people walking over it as well as trucks carrying equipment.

‘It was like walking on talcum power. You would be caked in dust up to your knees,’ said Aoife. But because of the shortage of water, dampening the ground was not an option so gravel was supplied to the refugees who shoveled it over the ground themselves.

Those same stones would be used as missiles against police and UN officials by gangs of children when frustrations over access to electricity and pre-fab shelters would boil over.

The impact of the conflict has also caused an imbalance in the camp’s population; 75 per cent are women and children.

On average, 10 to 13 babies are born in Zaatari every day. The youngest refugee to arrive was two days old, and the oldest a 105 year old woman who had never left her village. Four months later she passed away.

A youngster hard at work in the bakery carries freshly baked bread with makeshift tongs. (Photo by Jared J. Ko …

It costs US $500,000 (£310,000) every day just to keep the camp running with 500,000 pieces of bread and 3.5million litres of water being distributed every day.

[The trauma of being a refugee]

In the summer temperatures rise to 45C and in the winter they drop below zero.

The sound of shells being fired in the distance as well as the constant influx of new refugees, means the conflict is ever present.

Whether from children or old men, traumatic accounts are never far from the surface.

The sniper who shot at children every time they went to a sweet shop when the owner thought it was safe to open his doors again. The mother who hid her two young children in the fridge during an air attack, thinking that was their best chance of survival if the house took a direct hit. The husband killed in the fighting whose wife then killed herself in grief, leaving behind an orphaned baby who was taken in by an aunt.

People feel angry and abandoned by the international community - particularly among those who have been in the camp for longer periods.

A youngster walks away with part of a police station in Zaatari - made of prefabricated shelters - which was dismantled …

‘The world does not care about the Syrian people,’ said one father of three, a truck driver. ‘People are watching the Syrian people being killed and are not doing anything.’

Another man who said he had been a mayor in his village before fleeing added: ‘All countries say they will help but nobody helps. Syrians looked after Iraqis and Libyans [during their upheavals] and now no-one is looking after us. It is just a promise, it is nothing.’

The man charged with the day-to-day running of this makeshift settlement is Kilian Kleinschmidt, 51, a big, straight-talking German who has done several tours in UN hotspots - most recently in Mogadishu, Somalia.

He said when he arrived people were desperate.

‘Like everywhere in the world these refugees were very angry people. They’d lost their homes, they lost family members. There is a lot of suffering in the conflict in Syria,’ he said.

‘That is why we had the period of tension and violence [at the camp’s inception] because we did not understand them and they did not understand us.’

What began as a camp for 100 families has turned into a haven for 120,000 Syrian refugees.
Watch a tour of the camp

8-Year-Old Helping Homeless Kids One Cup at a Time

By Claudine Zap | The Good News – Mon, Nov 4, 2013 6:50 PM EST

Jaxon Evans, left, with helpers and customers at his Kool-Aid stand (Photo: Alandra Evans)

Some kids are born athletes. Others excel at art or science. Jaxon Evans has the compassion gene.

The 8-year-old Bakersfield, California, resident has opened a Kool-Aid stand to raise money to buy toys he plans to give out to homeless children. So far, Jaxon has raised $1,600 and is aiming to raise $2,500 before Black Friday, when he and his mom, Alandra Evans, 39, will hit Toys R Us. (Their local store has even offered them a 10 percent discount.)

“He has compassion for others,” Alandra tells Yahoo Shine of her son, who got the idea thanks to a fellow student who ran a lemonade stand for charity. "It's cool to aid kids," Jaxon says.

More on Yahoo Shine: Kids' Birthdays Turned Charitable

Alandra Evans, who teaches eighth grade at Sequoia Middle School in Bakersfield, supplied the Kool-Aid and Jaxon enlisted two friends to help set up. He even made up fliers to give out at school, while his mom posted messages to friends and family members on Facebook.

“Everything $1. Or pay with your heart,” read the sign next to donated baked goods and hand-mixed punch. That first fundraiser, held in late September, raised $400. Then word got out on thelocal news. When people heard the effort was for charity, “that $1 turned into $10,” according to Alandra.

With two sales down, Kraft has sent the budding philanthropist enough Kool-Aid to cover his next two fundraisers, which will be held this month.

More on Yahoo: Pizza Prank Feeds Homeless

Last week, Jaxon and his mom visited the Bakersfield Homeless Center – which mostly serves women and children and feeds up to 500 people a day – to meet some of the kids who will benefit. After speaking with officials about the center’s needs, the Evans family added nonperishable food and baby products to their shopping list.

Those toys Jaxon wants to buy? “Yes, it absolutely makes a difference,” Carolann Wooton, external affairs manager for the center, tells Yahoo Shine. She said that the center depends on individual donors for 25 percent of its funding. Jaxon’s good deed will be well received. “It’s good for our kids,” she adds.

While Jaxon would prefer to distribute the toys wearing a Santa suit, Alandra isn't completely on board with that idea. But she does know that her son’s heart is in the right place. “His compassion for living things, you can’t teach that in a child," she says. "You either have it or you don’t."

More on Yahoo Shine:

The Fundraising, Surfing Dog

Perks of Doing Good

From Homeless to Howard University

Watch video

Kool-Aid stand becomes charity phenomenon

Jaxon Evans's campaign to help homeless kids has gotten support from Kraft, Toys R Us, and his whole community.
How much he's raised

Posted by Steve Beckow on November 7, 2013

(Continued from Part 9.)

The Trinity of Father, Mother, and Child – 1

I’d like now to turn to the three levels of Reality that are signified by the Trinity. These three levels of Reality – which are best described as God as the Transcendental (Father), God as the Phenomenal (Mother), and God as the Transcendental in the Phenomenal (Child) – are the aspects of God which all of us are tasked to realize in the sacred journey of life.

I’d like first to establish where my view of the Trinity comes from and then I’d like to summarize these views. I apologize that some of the passages that follow may require a little reasoning through.

Let’s begin with Jesus in St. Matthew, who names the Trinity in the following passage of the New Testament.

“And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.

“Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” (1)

That was more than two thousand years ago. Two thousand years later, White Eagle made a similar comment that summarizes their importance for human life: “The goal of man’s life [is] the reunion with the Holy Family, or the blessed Trinity of Father, Mother and Child.” (2) Notice that we’re being told plainly that realization of God in God’s threefold form is the goal of life.

The study of them as they appear in all religions falls under what I’ve called “cross-cultural spirituality” and what Sri Shankara, in An Hour with an Angel, called “unification: “My purpose, as you know, is unity. Now, that is going to be a theme of all the masters. So let me be clear about this. There is not one master that returns … that does not come with a theme of unification.” (3)

I subsequently asked Sri Shankara: “Is what Hindus call Brahman, Atman and Shakti the same as what Christians call the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?” He said: “There are no differences.” He added: “It is different words for the same energies.” (4)

Going back into ancient, classical traditions, Sri Krishna described the Trinity in the Bhagavad-Gita:

“Brahman [God the Father] is that which is immutable, and independent of any cause but Itself. When we consider Brahman as lodged within the individual being, we call him the Atman [the Child of God]. The creative energy of Brahman [God the Mother] is that which causes all existences to come into being.” (5)

So God the Father, through his creative energy, which we call the Divine Mother, enters into the body created by the Mother as a fragment of itself which I call the Child of God.

We’ve heard Solomon also describe the event of the Mother building the body that the Father entered into. He named her “Wisdom”: “Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn her seven pillars.” (6) Her house is this human temple, the body, and the seven pillars are the seven chakras known to the ancients.

Paramahsana Yogananda says much the same thing, demonstrating to us that ancient Hebrew kings and modern Indian yogis agree on this subject.

“God the Father differentiated Himself into the Holy Ghost or Cosmic Vibratory Creation [Mother]…. In the womb of the Holy Ghost or Cosmic Vibratory Creation was born the Christ Intelligence of God the Father [Child].” (7)

“The Cosmos is made of the transcendental God, the Father, the consciousness beyond all Creation; and God, the Son, (the consciousness of the Father reflected in the womb of Cosmic Energy as the Only Begotten, only reflected Christ Consciousness) and the Holy Ghost, or Cosmic Vibration. This Cosmic Vibration appears as the Cosmic Sound.

“Microcosmically each [unit of life] … is composed of the elements God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, or of transcendental Cosmic Consciousness, of Christ Consciousness, and of Cosmic Energy.” (8)

“Just as the husband is born again in the wife as the son, so inactive God the Father, active and manifest in Holy Ghost [Mother] became the only reflected, only begotten Son.” (9)

Are Solomon and Yogananda not saying exactly the same thing?

Swami Nikhilananda discussed them as three levels of Reality, but again the explanation is exactly parallel.

“In the Vedas, reality experienced at the transcendental level is called Brahman [the Father]. ” (10)

“According to the Vedas, ultimate reality [the Father] is all-pervading, uncreated, self-luminous, eternal spirit, the final cause of the universe, the power behind all tangible forces, the consciousness which animates all conscious beings. (11)

“As the pure Brahman [Father] in association with maya [Mother] … becomes the individual soul or jiva [Child] … The supreme soul [Father], as we have seen, assumes through maya [Mother] a body and becomes finite and individualized [Child]: but this individualization is neither final nor real.” (12)

“Atman [Child] in man and Brahman [Father] in the universe are completely identical.” (13)

Compare this latter statement with what Jesus said, speaking as the realized Christ or soul: “I and my Father are one.” (14)

Here Swami Nikhilananda gives yet another explanation of how Mother/Father God created life.

“Maya, [Mother] which is not essentially different from Brahman, [Father] is the material cause, and Brahman, as pure intelligence, is the efficient cause of the universe. After projecting all material forms [Child], Brahman enters into them as life and consciousness and animates them. Thus Brahman, [Father] which is transcendental, becomes immanent [Child] in the universe.” (15)

Lao Tzu put the matter this way:

“The Way begot one,  And the one, two;  Then the two begot three.  And three, all else.” (16)

“The Way” is the unconditioned Brahman or Father; “one” is the conditioned Brahman or Father; “two” is the Mother; and “three” is the Child. Where is the difference between what Lao Tzu says and what Solomon says, if we consider that Solomon is speaking metaphorically? “For I was my father’s son, tender and only beloved in the sight of my mother.” (17)

And Pseudo-Dionysius reminds us that all emanated from the Father when he says: “One can neither discuss nor understand the One, the Superunknowable, the Transcendent, Goodness Itself [the Father], that is, the Triadic Unity possessing the same divinity and the same goodness.” (18)

We thus have seen the identity of the Holy Family or Trinity established in Christianity, Hinduism, Taoism, and Judaism. We could as easily have examined Buddhism and Islam or many other of the world’s major religions.

In the next part I’d like to give my own summary of these three. When this knowledge is second nature to us, I’m sure the masters will unfold whatever is next for us to know. That seems to be the way things work.

(Continued in Part 11. Readers are welcome to read ahead.)

Footnotes

(1) Matthew 28: 18-19.

(2) White Eagle, WWE, 23.

(3) “Sri Shankara: Everywhere You Look Will be a Monsoon of Love,” June 26, 2013, at http://goldenageofgaia.com/2013/06/sri-shankara-everywhere-you-look-will-be-a-monsoon-of-love/.

(4) Loc. cit.

(5) Sri Krishna in Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, trans., Bhagavad-Gita. The Song of God. New York and Scarborough: New American Library, 1972; c1944, 74.

(6) Proverbs 9:1.

(7) Paramahansa Yogananda, The Second Coming of Christ. Three vols. Dallas: Amrita Foundation, 1979-86, 2, 3.

(8) Ibid., 89-90.

(9) Ibid., 1, 29.

(10) Swami Nikhilananda, Hinduism. lts Meaning for the Liberation of the Spirit. Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1968, 29. [Hereafter HIN.]

(11) Ibid., 24.

(12) Ibid., 49-50.

(13) Ibid., 53.

(14) Jesus, John 10:30.

(15) HIN, 45.

(16) Lao-Tzu, The Way of Life. The Tao Te Ching. trans. R.B. Blakney. New York, etc.: Avon, 1975, 95.

(17) Proverbs 4:3

(18) Pseudo-Dionysius in Cohn Luibheid, trans., Pseudo-Dionysus, His Complete Works.New York and Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1989, 53.

Footnotes

(2) Loc. cit.

(3) Loc. cit.

(4) PR in Swami Nikhilananda, trans., The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1978; c1942, 134-5.

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: IS THE NEW AGE REALLY HERE? 11/7/2013 2:17:36 AM
	A desert haven for 120,000 Syrian refugees fleeing the raging conflict "Like everywhere in the world these refugees were very angry people. They’d lost their homes, they lost family members" By Nicholas Petche in Zaatari, Jordan \| Yahoo News – 8 hours ago Camp manager Kilian Kleinschmidt talks us through his biggest challenges. Watch video: Welcome to Zaatari View Photo The entrance to the camp. For many refugees, entering the gates is the first time … The relief and the exhaustion were palpable. Dust from the desert through which they’d travelled to seek sanctuary still clung to their clothes. And they were the lucky ones – the ones who had just arrived in Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan. Eight miles south of the Syrian border, the camp is distant enough to be safe but close enough to still hear the sounds of shelling between Bashar al-Assad’s government forces and the Free Syrian Army (FSA). It is a constant reminder of the reason they left and what awaits them if they return. The refugees who had arrived that night were given water before receiving medical and administrative checks and joining the 120,000 others clustered in what is now the largest refugee camp in the Middle East. The entrance to the camp. For many refugees, entering the gates is the first time they feel truly safe. Some families have endured two years of continuous flight within Syria to escape the fighting ... more 1 / 25 Yahoo News Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Pinterest Close Previous image Next image ‘I am secure, I can sleep and there is no shooting. I am secure,’ said a father who had travelled there with his wife and four children. At his feet lay huge makeshift bags fashioned out of curtains in which the family had carried their belongings. The sounds of children laughing and running around outside drifted in to the subdued atmosphere of the refugee reception area. He explained how their home on the outskirts of Damascus had been destroyed shortly after the conflict erupted two years ago, and that since then they had become just one more family in the 4.25million people displaced within Syria – nearly a quarter of the total population - desperately trying to avoid the constantly shifting battle zones. Finally they decided to leave the country, but with vast stretches of the border too dangerous to cross they had to head east towards Iraq. They travelled for four days in a truck with 100 other people wedged in so tight they all had to sit with their legs and arms tucked in. Camp manager Kilian Kleinschmidt stands in front of a map dividing Zaatari into 12 districts. In front of him are … They moved by night and hid by day. At times they were shot at by fighter jets – an elderly woman motioned with arms outstretched how they would throw themselves to the ground when attacked. The family’s escape was a reminder that although the camp – now the Jordanian kingdom’s fifth largest city – has its frustrations, namely tensions over shelter, electricity and water, it is ultimately a haven where families risk everything just to get in. That particular night 250 people arrived. Earlier in the year the number peaked at 3,000 arriving every night. There are currently around 550,000 Syrian refugees in Jordan, mostly in urban areas. The Jordanian government has repeatedly asked the international community for more aid, saying the influx of refugees is putting a massive strain on already overstretched water and power supplies as well as demands for housing and education. [Witnesses to war: The shattered lives of Zaatari's children] Zaatari holds its 120,000 refugees within two square miles and is surrounded by a five-mile perimeter road. What started out on July 29th 2012 as a camp for 100 families - opened at two week’s notice - is rapidly evolving into a temporary city divided into 12 districts. It also now dwarfs the nearby village of 12,000 whose name it shares. More than two million refugees have fled Syria and now live in limbo in neighbouring countries. (PA) Aoife McDonnell, a UNHCR worker from Ireland, said the first tents were put up at night by families using the light from her mobile phone to guide them. It also soon became clear that the fragile desert surface was dissolving into a fine dust through the sheer number of people walking over it as well as trucks carrying equipment. ‘It was like walking on talcum power. You would be caked in dust up to your knees,’ said Aoife. But because of the shortage of water, dampening the ground was not an option so gravel was supplied to the refugees who shoveled it over the ground themselves. Those same stones would be used as missiles against police and UN officials by gangs of children when frustrations over access to electricity and pre-fab shelters would boil over. The impact of the conflict has also caused an imbalance in the camp’s population; 75 per cent are women and children. On average, 10 to 13 babies are born in Zaatari every day. The youngest refugee to arrive was two days old, and the oldest a 105 year old woman who had never left her village. Four months later she passed away. A youngster hard at work in the bakery carries freshly baked bread with makeshift tongs. (Photo by Jared J. Ko … It costs US $500,000 (£310,000) every day just to keep the camp running with 500,000 pieces of bread and 3.5million litres of water being distributed every day. [The trauma of being a refugee] In the summer temperatures rise to 45C and in the winter they drop below zero. The sound of shells being fired in the distance as well as the constant influx of new refugees, means the conflict is ever present. Whether from children or old men, traumatic accounts are never far from the surface. The sniper who shot at children every time they went to a sweet shop when the owner thought it was safe to open his doors again. The mother who hid her two young children in the fridge during an air attack, thinking that was their best chance of survival if the house took a direct hit. The husband killed in the fighting whose wife then killed herself in grief, leaving behind an orphaned baby who was taken in by an aunt. People feel angry and abandoned by the international community - particularly among those who have been in the camp for longer periods. A youngster walks away with part of a police station in Zaatari - made of prefabricated shelters - which was dismantled … ‘The world does not care about the Syrian people,’ said one father of three, a truck driver. ‘People are watching the Syrian people being killed and are not doing anything.’ Another man who said he had been a mayor in his village before fleeing added: ‘All countries say they will help but nobody helps. Syrians looked after Iraqis and Libyans [during their upheavals] and now no-one is looking after us. It is just a promise, it is nothing.’ The man charged with the day-to-day running of this makeshift settlement is Kilian Kleinschmidt, 51, a big, straight-talking German who has done several tours in UN hotspots - most recently in Mogadishu, Somalia. He said when he arrived people were desperate. ‘Like everywhere in the world these refugees were very angry people. They’d lost their homes, they lost family members. There is a lot of suffering in the conflict in Syria,’ he said. ‘That is why we had the period of tension and violence [at the camp’s inception] because we did not understand them and they did not understand us.’ Read more 'I can sleep and there is no shooting' What began as a camp for 100 families has turned into a haven for 120,000 Syrian refugees. Watch a tour of the camp
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: IS THE NEW AGE REALLY HERE? 11/7/2013 5:09:06 PM
	Kids sweet fundraiser 8-Year-Old Helping Homeless Kids One Cup at a Time By Claudine Zap \| The Good News – Mon, Nov 4, 2013 6:50 PM EST Jaxon Evans, left, with helpers and customers at his Kool-Aid stand (Photo: Alandra Evans) Some kids are born athletes. Others excel at art or science. Jaxon Evans has the compassion gene. The 8-year-old Bakersfield, California, resident has opened a Kool-Aid stand to raise money to buy toys he plans to give out to homeless children. So far, Jaxon has raised $1,600 and is aiming to raise $2,500 before Black Friday, when he and his mom, Alandra Evans, 39, will hit Toys R Us. (Their local store has even offered them a 10 percent discount.) “He has compassion for others,” Alandra tells Yahoo Shine of her son, who got the idea thanks to a fellow student who ran a lemonade stand for charity. "It's cool to aid kids," Jaxon says. More on Yahoo Shine: Kids' Birthdays Turned Charitable Alandra Evans, who teaches eighth grade at Sequoia Middle School in Bakersfield, supplied the Kool-Aid and Jaxon enlisted two friends to help set up. He even made up fliers to give out at school, while his mom posted messages to friends and family members on Facebook. “Everything $1. Or pay with your heart,” read the sign next to donated baked goods and hand-mixed punch. That first fundraiser, held in late September, raised $400. Then word got out on thelocal news. When people heard the effort was for charity, “that $1 turned into $10,” according to Alandra. With two sales down, Kraft has sent the budding philanthropist enough Kool-Aid to cover his next two fundraisers, which will be held this month. More on Yahoo: Pizza Prank Feeds Homeless Last week, Jaxon and his mom visited the Bakersfield Homeless Center – which mostly serves women and children and feeds up to 500 people a day – to meet some of the kids who will benefit. After speaking with officials about the center’s needs, the Evans family added nonperishable food and baby products to their shopping list. Those toys Jaxon wants to buy? “Yes, it absolutely makes a difference,” Carolann Wooton, external affairs manager for the center, tells Yahoo Shine. She said that the center depends on individual donors for 25 percent of its funding. Jaxon’s good deed will be well received. “It’s good for our kids,” she adds. While Jaxon would prefer to distribute the toys wearing a Santa suit, Alandra isn't completely on board with that idea. But she does know that her son’s heart is in the right place. “His compassion for living things, you can’t teach that in a child," she says. "You either have it or you don’t." More on Yahoo Shine: The Fundraising, Surfing Dog Perks of Doing Good From Homeless to Howard University Watch video Kool-Aid stand becomes charity phenomenon Jaxon Evans's campaign to help homeless kids has gotten support from Kraft, Toys R Us, and his whole community. How much he's raised
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: IS THE NEW AGE REALLY HERE? 11/7/2013 5:50:12 PM
	Dear friends, here is part 10 of this enlightening article by Steve Beckow The Purpose and Design of Life – 10 Posted by Steve Beckow on November 7, 2013 (Continued from Part 9.) The Trinity of Father, Mother, and Child – 1 I’d like now to turn to the three levels of Reality that are signified by the Trinity. These three levels of Reality – which are best described as God as the Transcendental (Father), God as the Phenomenal (Mother), and God as the Transcendental in the Phenomenal (Child) – are the aspects of God which all of us are tasked to realize in the sacred journey of life. I’d like first to establish where my view of the Trinity comes from and then I’d like to summarize these views. I apologize that some of the passages that follow may require a little reasoning through. Let’s begin with Jesus in St. Matthew, who names the Trinity in the following passage of the New Testament. “And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” (1) That was more than two thousand years ago. Two thousand years later, White Eagle made a similar comment that summarizes their importance for human life: “The goal of man’s life [is] the reunion with the Holy Family, or the blessed Trinity of Father, Mother and Child.” (2) Notice that we’re being told plainly that realization of God in God’s threefold form is the goal of life. The study of them as they appear in all religions falls under what I’ve called “cross-cultural spirituality” and what Sri Shankara, in An Hour with an Angel, called “unification: “My purpose, as you know, is unity. Now, that is going to be a theme of all the masters. So let me be clear about this. There is not one master that returns … that does not come with a theme of unification.” (3) I subsequently asked Sri Shankara: “Is what Hindus call Brahman, Atman and Shakti the same as what Christians call the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost?” He said: “There are no differences.” He added: “It is different words for the same energies.” (4) Going back into ancient, classical traditions, Sri Krishna described the Trinity in the Bhagavad-Gita: “Brahman [God the Father] is that which is immutable, and independent of any cause but Itself. When we consider Brahman as lodged within the individual being, we call him the Atman [the Child of God]. The creative energy of Brahman [God the Mother] is that which causes all existences to come into being.” (5) So God the Father, through his creative energy, which we call the Divine Mother, enters into the body created by the Mother as a fragment of itself which I call the Child of God. We’ve heard Solomon also describe the event of the Mother building the body that the Father entered into. He named her “Wisdom”: “Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn her seven pillars.” (6) Her house is this human temple, the body, and the seven pillars are the seven chakras known to the ancients. Paramahsana Yogananda says much the same thing, demonstrating to us that ancient Hebrew kings and modern Indian yogis agree on this subject. “God the Father differentiated Himself into the Holy Ghost or Cosmic Vibratory Creation [Mother]…. In the womb of the Holy Ghost or Cosmic Vibratory Creation was born the Christ Intelligence of God the Father [Child].” (7) “The Cosmos is made of the transcendental God, the Father, the consciousness beyond all Creation; and God, the Son, (the consciousness of the Father reflected in the womb of Cosmic Energy as the Only Begotten, only reflected Christ Consciousness) and the Holy Ghost, or Cosmic Vibration. This Cosmic Vibration appears as the Cosmic Sound. “Microcosmically each [unit of life] … is composed of the elements God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, or of transcendental Cosmic Consciousness, of Christ Consciousness, and of Cosmic Energy.” (8) “Just as the husband is born again in the wife as the son, so inactive God the Father, active and manifest in Holy Ghost [Mother] became the only reflected, only begotten Son.” (9) Are Solomon and Yogananda not saying exactly the same thing? Swami Nikhilananda discussed them as three levels of Reality, but again the explanation is exactly parallel. “In the Vedas, reality experienced at the transcendental level is called Brahman [the Father]. ” (10) “According to the Vedas, ultimate reality [the Father] is all-pervading, uncreated, self-luminous, eternal spirit, the final cause of the universe, the power behind all tangible forces, the consciousness which animates all conscious beings. (11) “As the pure Brahman [Father] in association with maya [Mother] … becomes the individual soul or jiva [Child] … The supreme soul [Father], as we have seen, assumes through maya [Mother] a body and becomes finite and individualized [Child]: but this individualization is neither final nor real.” (12) “Atman [Child] in man and Brahman [Father] in the universe are completely identical.” (13) Compare this latter statement with what Jesus said, speaking as the realized Christ or soul: “I and my Father are one.” (14) Here Swami Nikhilananda gives yet another explanation of how Mother/Father God created life. “Maya, [Mother] which is not essentially different from Brahman, [Father] is the material cause, and Brahman, as pure intelligence, is the efficient cause of the universe. After projecting all material forms [Child], Brahman enters into them as life and consciousness and animates them. Thus Brahman, [Father] which is transcendental, becomes immanent [Child] in the universe.” (15) Lao Tzu put the matter this way: “The Way begot one,  And the one, two;  Then the two begot three.  And three, all else.” (16) “The Way” is the unconditioned Brahman or Father; “one” is the conditioned Brahman or Father; “two” is the Mother; and “three” is the Child. Where is the difference between what Lao Tzu says and what Solomon says, if we consider that Solomon is speaking metaphorically? “For I was my father’s son, tender and only beloved in the sight of my mother.” (17) And Pseudo-Dionysius reminds us that all emanated from the Father when he says: “One can neither discuss nor understand the One, the Superunknowable, the Transcendent, Goodness Itself [the Father], that is, the Triadic Unity possessing the same divinity and the same goodness.” (18) We thus have seen the identity of the Holy Family or Trinity established in Christianity, Hinduism, Taoism, and Judaism. We could as easily have examined Buddhism and Islam or many other of the world’s major religions. In the next part I’d like to give my own summary of these three. When this knowledge is second nature to us, I’m sure the masters will unfold whatever is next for us to know. That seems to be the way things work. (Continued in Part 11. Readers are welcome to read ahead.) Footnotes (1) Matthew 28: 18-19. (2) White Eagle, WWE, 23. (3) “Sri Shankara: Everywhere You Look Will be a Monsoon of Love,” June 26, 2013, at http://goldenageofgaia.com/2013/06/sri-shankara-everywhere-you-look-will-be-a-monsoon-of-love/. (4) Loc. cit. (5) Sri Krishna in Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, trans., Bhagavad-Gita. The Song of God. New York and Scarborough: New American Library, 1972; c1944, 74. (6) Proverbs 9:1. (7) Paramahansa Yogananda, The Second Coming of Christ. Three vols. Dallas: Amrita Foundation, 1979-86, 2, 3. (8) Ibid., 89-90. (9) Ibid., 1, 29. (10) Swami Nikhilananda, Hinduism. lts Meaning for the Liberation of the Spirit. Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1968, 29. [Hereafter HIN.] (11) Ibid., 24. (12) Ibid., 49-50. (13) Ibid., 53. (14) Jesus, John 10:30. (15) HIN, 45. (16) Lao-Tzu, The Way of Life. The Tao Te Ching. trans. R.B. Blakney. New York, etc.: Avon, 1975, 95. (17) Proverbs 4:3 (18) Pseudo-Dionysius in Cohn Luibheid, trans., Pseudo-Dionysus, His Complete Works.New York and Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1989, 53.
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Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: IS THE NEW AGE REALLY HERE? 11/8/2013 4:44:27 PM
	The Purpose and Design of Life – 11 Posted by Steve Beckow on November 8, 2013 Hildegard of Bingen’s depiction of the Trinity (Continued from Part 10.) The Trinity of Father, Mother, and Child – 2 We thus have heard the masters of antiquity and modernity identify the Holy Family or Trinity. Now let me give a description of these three levels of Reality. The Father The Father, when in its original and unmanifest state, is called the Impersonal God, the formless God, or the unconditioned Brahman. It’s also called the Transcendental Absolute when unmanifest or formless. It’s further called Mahashiva, Parabrahman, Paramatman, the Supreme Self, the All, the One without a second, all that is, etc. The Father, when manifest or given form by the Mother, is called the Personal God, God in form, or the conditioned Brahman. In its absolute formlessness, it’s spoken of as Sat-Chit-Ananda or infinite wisdom, being and bliss. It is transcendent, supreme, unchanging, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, with and without form, with and without attributes, and altogether unfathomable and indescribable. All of the Father’s manifested states and unmanifest nature share the same attribute: namely, stillness. When movement stops, the manifest dissolves back into the unmanifest. The Father is formless, permanent, but beginningless and endless. And no matter what name is used to point to it and no matter the deficiencies of the pointer, the object pointed at remains the same. Only the names differ. The Mother The Divine Mother was called by Jesus and his disciples the Holy Spirit, the comforter spirit, the spirit of truth, the Word of God, and the Amen. She (“She” is not a she) was called by Solomon and the Old-Testament prophets, Wisdom, the Voice of one crying in the wilderness, and the noise of many waters. She herself acknowledged on An Hour with an Angel: “”Yes, I am … the voice crying in the wilderness. … Sometimes you tend to think of me as the Holy Spirit, but there is more to me than that.”(1) By Hindus, she is called Shakti, Kali, Aum, the Sound-Brahman, Sphota, Prana, primordial energy, the universal creative vibration, Prakriti (Procreatrix), and the creator, preserver and transformer of matter, mater, Mother. She agrees that it is her that is being spoken of: “I am thought of in many forms — … as Shakti, as Mare, which is very close because it is the word of ocean in your world and language. It represents the movement and the giver of life, the creator of life, of love, of form, of substance, of essence.” (2) The Mother has form; the Father in “his” original nature (“He” is not a he) is formless. When the Mother is coupled with the Father in form, they are often spoken of as the cosmic male and female, Shiva and Shakti, yin and yang. I have often spoken of the Mother as being the Phenomenal, which means all of matter, the whole of the created world, anything apart from the formless and immaterial Father. The Father is characterized by stillness but the Mother by movement as she herself explained: “I am known by the movement within you and the movement within your Earth, within all things, within all universes.” (3) Sri Ramakrishna explains the matter this way: ”The Primordial Power is ever at play. She is creating, preserving, and destroying in play, as it were. This Power is called Kali. Kali is verily Brahman, and Brahman is verily Kali. It is one and the same Reality. When we think of It as inactive, that is to say, not engaged in the acts of creation, preservation, and destruction, then we call It Brahman. But when It engages in these activities, then we call it Kali or Sakti.” (4) The Mother is created; only the Father is uncreated. She (“She” is not a she) can be realized as the light in all creation, the highest enlightenment short of the Father. In fact she is all we can know because the Father is unknowable, as she herself attests: “When you are with me in the fullness of union, as full as you can know it while in form, then you are connected, and in, not only my creation, but my wisdom and my love, in that is all. It is all you need to know or can know or will know.” No matter what name is used for the Mother, the same phenomenon is ultimately being pointed at. The Child The Child is the individuated soul, called by Jesus the only begotten Son of God, the Christ, the Savior, the Prince of peace, the treasure buried in a field, the pearl of great price, and the mustard seed. It’s called by Hindus the Atman, the Self, and Brahman-within-the-individual. It’s known to other religions as Fire the Son of the Lord, the firebrand plucked from the burning, the lamp always burning on the altar, the God-spark, and the flame in the heart. I called the Self the Transcendental in the Phenomenal, the Transcendental itself being the Father and the Phenomenal being the Mother. This is equivalent to saying the God-spark within the heart of the individual, the treasure (the Self) buried in the field (the Body), the Father in the Mother’s womb as the Child of God, etc. No matter what name is used for the Child or Self, the same phenomenon is being pointed at. We can now understand more of how we (God the Child, the Christ, or Atman) left God the Father (Brahman, Allah, the Transcendental Void), travelled out into the domain of God the Mother (the Holy Spirit, Shakti, the Phenomenal World), went through lifetime after lifetime in matter, mater, Mother evolving, until we realize God the Father in one final, complete and permanent moment of illumination, return, and submerge ourselves in Him. It is this Trinity that we realize in enlightenment to perfect our knowledge of the God that we are. I’d like to pause here. I may resume the series later by discussing several design elements of life to cement our understanding of how life is designed. Footnotes (1) “Transcript of the Divine Mother on An Hour with an Angel, May 7, 2012,” Sept. 15, 2013, at http://goldenageofgaia.com/2013/09/transcript-of-the-divine-mother-on-an-hour-with-an-angel-may-7-2012/. (2) Loc. cit. (3) Loc. cit. (4) PR in Swami Nikhilananda, trans., The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. New York: Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, 1978; c1942, 134-5.
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A desert haven for 120,000 Syrian refugees fleeing the raging conflict

"Like everywhere in the world these refugees were very angry people. They’d lost their homes, they lost family members"

'I can sleep and there is no shooting'

What began as a camp for 100 families has turned into a haven for 120,000 Syrian refugees.
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A desert haven for 120,000 Syrian refugees fleeing the raging conflict

"Like everywhere in the world these refugees were very angry people. They’d lost their homes, they lost family members"

'I can sleep and there is no shooting'

What began as a camp for 100 families has turned into a haven for 120,000 Syrian refugees.Watch a tour of the camp

8-Year-Old Helping Homeless Kids One Cup at a Time

The Purpose and Design of Life – 10

Footnotes

Lee Harris: Energy Forecast November 2013 – Where the Feminine Impregnates the Masculine…

The Purpose and Design of Life – 11

Footnotes

What began as a camp for 100 families has turned into a haven for 120,000 Syrian refugees.
Watch a tour of the camp