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2012: TIME TO MEASURE UP
As we start a new year it is fitting to stop and take stock of where we have come from
and where we seem to be heading in the year before us. The future is always conditioned by the past. But the action is right now, in the present. January has ever been a month for resolutions, whether those
resolutions are held or broken. In either event our choices determine the direction of our lives whether we know it or not.
We have been told we don't really choose to come to The Temple. The
Master draws us here. The only thing we choose to do is to follow, or not follow, that power that drew us here. However, it goes without saying that we could not be drawn to The Temple were
it not for some inner recognition buried deep within us, below the threshold of our ordinary consciousness. Something in us knows that The Temple offers us our particular karmic opportunity to share in
something nearer to reality, a place where we can merge our life into the collective life of all humanity, satisfying an inherent need to feel one with the whole.
In this heightened vibration we are swept
into an ocean of love, expressed through caring and sharing freely and wholeheartedly by all the very unique, interesting, vital, and diverse people already around us. They have been here before us and
understand many of the problems of integrating personal forces into the group aura, because they have been through the process in varying degrees, and are familiar with it. They cannot show us how to go
through that process, because it is OUR process, but they are supportive.
The problems of integrating into this kind of a group are implicit in the situation. Although questions and problems may
arise differently for different people, they are common to us all. This integrating process never stops. No matter how long a person has been associated with the Temple, be it a few weeks or many years,
the process goes on. Those of us who have been here many years may smile complacently and feel the job is done: a kind of “I have arrived!” smugness. On the contrary, we are even more responsible
for our conscious cooperation with the Higher Laws governing the process.
Another important guideline not only for newcomers, but for everyone else as well, is the realization that as we wind our
strengths and weaknesses into the Temple cable our strength can be of some help to support someone else's weakness, and vice versa. Our weaknesses will be supported by other's strengths, everybody benefits,
and the group receives the strength and capacity to endure.
The Temple Teachings are very clear that the Law of Centralization is the basic law of the universe and that since the Master organized the Temple
movement along those lines we have proof positive that all our efforts will be more meaningful and order will eventuate out of seeming chaos.
As the days and months and years go by, we come to see with
increasing clarity that no matter where we are located geographically, The Temple is a way of life that moves in the direction of more basic and vital service to humanity. The Temple is like a great unseen hand
which can hold each of us, as a workman holds a tool for building, but only to the extent that each of us can appropriately and sufficiently set aside personal motives and reactions, desires, and opinions so as to
make ourselves available, do we become a usable tool, a well-balanced tool with a clean edge.
Obviously this honing of the instrument or tool is a slow process and takes patience and effort to understand.
This understanding is especially difficult to grasp when we are in the middle of the experience. It is in the sacrificial fires that the process of honing takes place. The Teachings of the Temple,
v1, pg. 244, tell us that we always gets what we demand, and the demand is made by our own obedience to Divine Law; and in no other way can we obtain satisfaction of demand, but our motive for the demand determines
its final results. Getting something for nothing is NOT an option.
There is a place, an opportunity, a certainty for all of us in the Temple of the People. We have to win that place through our
own heart's laceration, but win it we will, if we are faithful to the trust placed in us.
Then. . .having won that place, we must be prepared to hold it at all costs, and the costs are generally heavy, for no
one of us ever rose above our fellow woman or man without arousing the testing forces to action through each other. Our strengths need to be tested, and they will be, not by some mysterious force, but by each
other, right here, right now, This is due to the inevitable effect of the action of the Law of Balance, which works for the proving of the tool (us) that the Higher Law has created and raised to the proving
point. Having won our place, we must prove our right with tolerance and love to hold it against all comers or testing forces. We must recognize the Testing Force and not call it by our neighbor’s
name. Then, standing on that place, we must turn and help others or we lose our place.
The Master tells us in the lesson on “Divine Law,” from vol 2 of Teachings of the Temple: “You are great
enough in soul if you can acknowledge whatever wrong you may have committed, whether intentional or unintentional, make an honest self-examination; prove your boasted desire for justice by being just to each other.
Prove your love and compassion for humanity by being loving and compassionate to each other. Prove your ability for discipleship by obeying the laws of discipleship. Turn and help us prepare for the Coming of the
Blessed One, instead of making it impossible for Him to come among you.”
Our assignment, which is the possibility of preparing, as it were, for the coming central figure of a new humanity, rests upon
implicit obedience to the laws laid down, and not upon the action of any personality, which may serve to confuse and deflect our progress.
While the Master draws us to this center which He has set up
for a particular quality of work to be carried out here, we do have the choice of whether to join His team, but if we do choose to join in this effort we must follow the rules accurately and consistently. This
is not a case of deciding to follow one rule and not the other, or this one now and not again later. These rules are spelled out in the Teachings, which must be studied diligently, then put into practice as
far as we are able to in our daily living. The Teachings, to be effective, cannot simply be an intellectual exercise. They must be translated into usable skills of functioning as parts of a whole. It is
in this workshop within the Temple group or ANY other group we find ourselves working with, through the struggle between the higher and lower self, that we find the crucible in which are the fiery testing forces
that work to sort out the gold from the dross. It is here where we sort values, set up new standards for achievement and get deeper into the process called "Know Thyself." Painful as this
process is at times, if we pay close attention, we learn that it is a sacred and precious opportunity for self-revelation, and deepening self-knowledge. However, it is necessary for us to get to the place
where we can look at both poles with compassion, discrimination, and impersonality.
When we become become a Templar we find that we have signed up for a never ending course of
instruction, a course from which there are no graduation exercises, only ongoing study and application of that study into meaningful action for humanity’s needs as seen by the Great White Lodge of Masters. We
elect to work out our destiny through group living under the Law of Centralization which is a law of order and balance. We no longer move forward as a separate individual. This is our work as individual
Temple members, to learn to work as a group. And yet the paradox is we come into the world and must go out of it alone. We come into each degree of the White Lodge alone. We will go through
every initiation of our long line of incarnations alone
. . .and yet we must do it together!
As we plug into the circuit of Universal
Force, we aspire and work for strengths that will be adequate to carry the higher energy, and trust we will have enough integrity of material in ourselves to keep our weak places from burning out and
blowing a fuse. We often make pledges with our souls that our personalities want no responsibility for. But of course this discrepancy can't last long. The gap has to be bridged soon or
later. It will probably be sooner than we think because we cannot be hooked into this Temple circuit only for the pleasure we get out of it. And then the struggle begins. Our choice lies in how we are
going to approach the struggle: with joy and faith or with martyrdom, moaning and groaning. We have another opportunity to get acquainted with our higher and lower selves and hopefully close the gap somewhat, so
next time round we won't swing in such a wide arc between our pair of opposites.
It becomes very obvious that the group integrity must be the dominant factor in our value system of priorities. It is at
this point we learn that there are no little things, as the Master Hilarion tells us over and over again. If we will take up the simplest duty at hand and do it lovingly and well, we have contributed to the
good of the whole. Our duty lies close to our doorstep every day, every hour. Again the Teachings tell us that the big things of life are made by the doing of the little things in the right spirit.
These are the miracles of daily living. Someone once said: “Small miracles occur for ordinary people day by ordinary day. There is grace in knowing what might have been but wasn’t and bliss in living a
day when nothing special happens but life just works.” At this time in our inner unfoldment, although it is not given to us to be able to see why “life just works”, we must have faith there is much greater
harmony and light available for everyone, through our efforts.
An important learning for all of us is to realize that in such a tightly knit group, no two people are alike; they don't think alike nor do
they react alike, although their ideal is the same. The group can be likened to a well cut diamond. It has brilliance and beauty only because it has many facets and, in the group, each person is in the
process of polishing his or her own individual facet. Each one of us has our own karmic responsibilities to work with and live out from the standpoint of our own relationship to those responsibilities. A
lot of rough sandpapering goes on at the personality level till we learn to tend to our own spiritual business. Ever heard that before? “Mind your own business!” makes a lot of sense. But it
must be with Love and acceptance.
It is relatively easy and simple to see from our own point of view that our neighbor is working his or her way through an experience in a stupid and weak way, making
apparent errors in judgment or technique. However, how can we be sure that we are so right and that our point of view is the correct one? Maybe our interpretation needs to be readjusted and our own
motives purified. It has been said that we cannot see in another that which does NOT exist in ourselves. In any event our love for our neighbors must never be dimmed but be dynamic, wholehearted, and
freely given. The only kind of love that covers this spectrum must be a soul love, and not a sentimental one. It is the quality of this soul love that keeps our relationships, one to the other,
stable while each one works out life according to his or her own lights. It must be the kind of love that contains the energy and force that is akin to that which guides worlds, bringing integration, unity,
and inclusiveness.
G.K. Chesterston, the English writer, spoke eloquently of the challenges of neighbors in this passage: “We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door
neighbor. Hence he comes to us clad in all the careless terrors of nature; he is as strange as the stars, as reckless and indifferent as the rain. He is Man, the most terrible of the beasts. That
is why the old religions and the old scriptural language showed so sharp a wisdom when they spoke, not of one’s duty towards humanity, but one’s duty towards one’s neighbor. The duty towards humanity may often
take the form of some choice which is personal or even pleasurable. That duty may be a hobby; it may even be a dissipation. We may work in the slums because we are peculiarly fitted toward work in
the slums, or because we think we are; we may fight for the cause of international peace because we are very fond of fighting. . . . We may be so made as to be particularly fond of lunatics or specially
interested in leprosy. . . . But we have to love our neighbor because he is there---a much more alarming reason for a much more serious operation. He is the sample of humanity which is actually given us.
Precisely because he may be anybody he is everybody.”
This soul love that we struggle to achieve for our neighbors is a door for the inflow and outflow of Light and Power. Our precious
human brothers and sisters (and that includes everyone) are our best testers as well as mirrors in which we might see more fully into ourselves. If we are truly honest with ourselves we find this is not a
comfortable process, but, by the same token, a deeply enriching one. It is in the crucible of our daily living that truths like this can penetrate into our consciousness, opening our inner ear and
bringing us closer to true heartfelt humility.
As the years pass and we pay any kind of attention, we find the Temple is devotion, inspiration, and solace of a very intimate and dynamic quality that
goes deeper than words can tell. In participating fully in group living, we have the continuing opportunity to learn obedience to the Master and to our Higher Self. Our privilege is to adapt, to
adjust, and to reshape in the personal things, but never to waver the direction, or to yield one inch, where a principle is involved regarding a test of persuasion, flattery, or attack. As we do so we find in
increasing measure, that The Teachings of The Temple are a help in understanding the Higher Law. Our first priority must be to become more and more worthy of membership on the Masters’ team playing for the
high stakes of building better conditions for all humanity. The interesting fact is that we cannot decide at this time that we want to quit the team. We are in the process of living out the result
of our soul choice to be here, to learn these lessons. On a personal level we can certainly choose to leave, or withdraw because some other person is driving us nuts. But that compassionate Higher Law
will ask us to pick this commitment up again and again and again until we do a good job.
By linking ourselves up with the Divine high tension circuit we find that there are potencies unparalleled in this
circuit. We must learn to see in the direction that is implied in the very nature of the Temple itself, expressed in each of us by the bonds which drew us into conscious relationship with this group.
When we do link ourselves consciously to these forces, it is imperative to use them for service to humanity expressed through our neighbors under the laws of discipleship, which are mercifully rigid for our
own protection, for they brook no evasion or excuses. This game is played by strict rules; we cannot decide we don’t want to play; and yet. . . there is love, joy, light, and laughter in the game, if we will
but choose to look.
We find in the framework of this endeavor that a great sense of awe and wonder comes to both mind and heart as we realize what a privilege it is to be involved with the work of helping in
our own small way to move the work of the Shining Ones a bit closer to the Ideal. We build on the foundation stones of those who have gone on before us. These stones are made of their love, idealism,
intelligence, insight, sacrificial service, and their lives; solid planks on which can be erected the building of the true Temple of Humanity.
A wonderful truth is that we can apply these guidelines
regardless of where Life places us geographically, and function these Temple lines in any group, neighborhood, community, nation or continent. This is Truth in action, and is truth no matter where youare
in manifestation.
So this January, 2012, we need to feel that we are rededicating, reconsecrating our life in faith and resilience to help carry on the ideal we all cherish. Various groups have
seized the attention of the media with dire predictions of apocalyptic things to come during 2012. I passionately believe in the Divine message that it is time we walk the talk. John Michael Greer, in
his recent book Apocalypse Not: Everything You Know About 2012, Nostradumus and the Rapture is Wrong said, “The enduring popularity of
apocalyptic predictions is attributable to a combination of dissatisfaction with life as it is, on the one hand, and an unwillingness to tackle the hard work of changing it, on the other. The great spiritual
teachers of all times have taught that the world will become a better place when we each get off our backsides and get to work making it a better place, but that’s a daunting prospect. It’s much easier to
believe that God will hand us a shiny new world and all we have to do is wait for him to get around to it.”
In this amazing New Year, let us realize with more and more clarity that we are God, in God, and of
God. It is time for us to prove it, consciously. This must be our New Year’s Resolution for 2012.
Eleanor L. Shumway
January 8, 2012
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