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in the Wilderness: the Rough Places, Plain
Din and Chesed:
The Church at
Sardis
Take my
yoke upon thee, and learn of me.
And to
the angel of the church in Sardis, write: these things saith he that
hath the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars; I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.
Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to
die: for I have not found thy works perfect before Elohim. Remember
therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent.
If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and
thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.
Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled
their garments; and they shall walk with me in white: for they are
worthy. He that
overcometh, the same shall be clothed in
white raiment; and l will not blot out his name out of the book
of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his
angels. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the
churches.
The small, but full, brown pea rolled out of
the prayer wheel's open gate, from the right towards the left, and
stopped a little distance away from its cage, directly beneath the
sleeping man. Its embryo was not damaged in the least.
It was thankful
for this sign of health; for it had much work to do before the morning
and would need all its strength. It must grow to full maturity within
the man and multiply exceedingly; for tomorrow was a day the man would
walk among the people. His every word and deed would be judged by the
Watchers according to their proofs of this, his night's work.
The man's mind
would be the seed's sunlight; his life experience would be its soil; and
it would drink of the man's reservoirs of compassion. Every seed knows
the parable of the sower, and this seed knew it would survive the night
to grow in beauty and in strength: the light in the man was bright; his
soil, rich; and his compassion, deep. The collective memory of the
seed's kind was clear in its understanding, and it was content that he
could follow his ancestors' best example. The Vine would be well served
by morning.
The light in many men is weak because they
imagine many centers in which to focus their souls' energies. They
wonder whether they should focus their consciousness upon or against a
thing, or whether they should be in fear or in hope concerning any
development that might occur. The ancients Aharon and Moshe had warned
of the folly of this manner of focus; but a later king had sorely tested
the people by fashioning convincing images of aspects of the True Light
and placing them far apart, one from the other. Confusion followed.
The distance
between these images and the true image of the Light at Jerusalem made
it difficult for the people to see how the lesser lights were lacking in
comparison with the True. The idols of judgment and of mercy could never
convey the unity of the Elohim of judgment and mercy.
The people were
careless in their life before such calves of fire; and so, they were
deceived, and their lives became vain. They would build a while at this
center, then at another; then they would abandon their labors entirely
for uncertain lengths of time, only to build anew at yet some other
unsuitable location when the True Light would momentarily reappear to
their minds, convicting them of the impropriety of a previous focus.
The young
vine knew well the true significance of those images made by Yavram: it
could feel its proof in its first branches. Every vine is fashioned to
focus only upon the True Light, which is as the center pillar of its
growth. It consumes that pillar inch by inch, moment by moment, as it
grows. Without the center pillar of light, the vine would surely
languish; but without the supportive pillars of left and right, the vine
would sprawl aimlessly upon the ground. Even this parable, however, had
been more truly stated in the temple of Light established in
Yahrushaliem.
The growing vine's
ancestors had taught him that the pillar on the left hand, as vines look
into the sky, represents the services of tillage; the right-hand pillar,
the services of irrigation. These two functions are essential to the
process of growth, but the beginning of growth comes only in response to
the warmth of the central pillar's light. Moreover, as the pillars at
the sides stand by to assist the vine in its season of growth, it is
surely the True Light's crossings in the sky that answer need, enabling
the branches of the vine to lean somewhat on the lesser pillars in the
breathtaking process of maturation.
The man's focus
was strong; for the left and right functions in him were fully dedicated
to their services in the Earth. When the downward thrust of these
functions reached the man's foundational center, they willingly turned
of themselves to channel their full energies upwards along the center
path in the man, thus uniting every faculty in the service of the single
Light in him.
It is told among the vines of Earth that the
three pillars are universal in all things. A growing thing that imagines
itself as containing only one of the three knows little of himself. Such
a one is searching his soul as from without-- from the right or from the
left. If one should rise by such means, such means there is no strength
to contend with the forces of life. A house divided so cannot stand.
All things have
their own, proper center in the single Light of creation. Focused
therein, all things are both clean and supportive of life. It is
prophesied that when this knowledge spreads upon the Earth from the
greatest to the least, that Earth will reel under the weight of its own
productivity; for all life will then unite in knowledgeable cooperation,
as One in One.
Tomorrow's
increase would serve that day. Already, the vine's blossoms had opened.
Already, they had been pollinated in the interchange between form and
function. Already, the young kernels were nearing completion. If the man
should also be blessed in his slumbers as he had been blessed in the
evening sacrifice, the morning would provide him abundant seed to take
to the marketplace to exchange for garments and to give as alms for the
renewal of friendships.
As the vine began
to wither in its full age, it was content. The night had been one that
would be remembered among the ancients of the peas. It is not that this
particular specimen would be celebrated in the stories of the species,
but that the True Vine had been faithfully served by the life of one of
its brethren in the service of One.
The monk stirred from his sleep. He had been
dreaming of a herd of deer standing quietly by the window and looking in
at him. Morning had come upon Earth, and he understood that the deer
were waiting to be fed. He smiled at the Watchers and untangled his long
arms and legs from around the Lotus. As he stretched into the Light of
another new beginning, his hands were filled with seed.
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