Survival On These Hot Summer Days

Respite

Today we have a gentle rain with light thunder here and there. We have had a week of very hot (for Oregon) weather with several days over 100. With the rain comes not only a respite from the heat, but also everything feels green again! I look out my window as I am typing and I feel a cool breeze coming in and the colors of the rooftops, trees and even the parking lot are crisp and clean.

I am not a hot weather person. My mind goes into neutral, if not asleep altogether, and I find it impossible to do much but move as little as possible in order to keep cool. Fortunately, I had the Olympics to occupy my time. I don’t usually watch non-stop TV, but it kept my mind off the heat for the most part. Fans helped!

From The Library

During the hot spell I also managed to pick up some reading from my library, books I have had for forty years but had just never felt motivated to take them on. The books are the five volumes of The Life And Teachings of the Masters of the Far East, by Baird Spalding. It must be the “right” time for me to explore these writings. I found myself experiencing a similar response as I had to The Matter of Mind, by Djwhal Khul. So many words seemed to be coming as much from me as from the pages of the book. By this I mean the words struck a responsive chord of recognition within me. It was like, “I know this!”

These books were published in the early twentieth century and closely coincided with the emergence of early New Thought teachers—Emily Cady, Mary Baker Eddy, Charles Fillmore and others. As I read I found sentences and paragraphs that were almost identical to my remembrance of the writings of these early teachers. At one point I found myself wondering who came first? Of course, that is irrelevant. What is relevant is the correlation of thought and the presentation of intrinsic truths.

In 1958 when I served as a vacation substitute minister in San Diego a young man came up to me after a sermon and said, “Everything you said came right out of The Teachings of the Masters of the Far East. I shared my appreciation for his comments and didn’t think about it again. I had not heard of the books. Now that I am midway through volume three I understand why he made that comment.

Beyond the similarity to New Thought metaphysics, these are books that talk about the ascended masters and their ancient teachings. Much attention is focused on the notion that Jesus and John the Baptist studied in Asia and the Himalayas and that Jesus remained connected with those people after his ascension. This may be troublesome to some folks, but I encourage you to remain open-minded and consider the teachings rather than the stated historical setting. Obviously, I cannot go into detail here about five volumes of information, but so far I find the possibilities for the expression of marvelous powers of healing, love and peace in all of us an encouraging proposition.

I found the dissertation on creation, from the universe of solar systems to the “human” solar system, quite interesting. It reminded me of my personal belief system about the creative microcosm to macrocosm. It correlates with our current understanding of quantum physics as well. It is becoming increasingly “hefty” reading, but totally absorbing. I will undoubtedly share more as I complete the volumes. I won’t wait until it gets hot again, which looks like next week!