In this second part of our comments on Emerson’s essay on Experience, Emerson discusses temperament, and how that turns into form. Form is the shape of one’s character on interaction with the world, which in his assertion, he insists originates from within; but also, that the light must burn within and burn outwardly in quietude, taking a modest stance in terms of one’s Gnosis.
Please see the sermon video below, and the notes used to deliver the sermon below that.
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Sermon Notes
Experience Part 2
On Temperament:
1. In Part 1, we asserted that at least in part Gnosis comes about by Divine Providence in the form of Grace & that which is proactively obtained even comes to us in obliquely idle moments.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Our life seems not present so much as prospective; not for the affairs on which it is wasted, but as a hint of this vast-flowing vigor. Most of life seems to be mere advertisement of faculty: information is given us not to sell ourselves cheap; that we are very great. So in particulars, our greatness is always in a tendency or direction, not in action.”
1A. This is not to contradict that wisdom that teaches the will must do and it manifests through what we do. For indeed this is truth. But rather, through what we do, we will find in tendency and direction, a path that takes us to nosis. We don’t just do Gnosis, nor just does Divine Providence give this Grace to us in any particular moment.
The tendency is our power and that must never stop to ask why; lest it becomes weakness, as per the teaching of Liber AL vel Legis.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Human life is amde up of the two elements, power and form, and the propertion must be invariably kept, if we would have it sweet and sound.”
2. Form has everything to do with temperament. Good form is the way we handle the elements and situaton involved in our life’s experience.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Dream delivers us to dreamy, and there is no end to illusion. Life is a train of moods like a stong of beads, and we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus.”
2A. We must then come to the ability to recognize our temperament in any given situation or circumstance in order to better apprehend what we are doing in order to act with greater intent and impeccability. This we can expecially learn from our observations of others, as we interact with them in the world around us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“There is an optical illusion about every person we meet. In truth, they are all creatures of given temperament, which will appear in a given character, whose oudarie they will never pass: but we look at them, they seem alive, and we assume there is impulse in them.
In the moment it seems impulse; in the year, in the lifetime, it turns out a uniform tune which the revolving barrel of the music-box must play.”
3. That most people are asleep to their lives begins with the fact that they are blind to their unconscious temperament. In this flux of moods, we start to become conscious by fixing our attention on the Divine. A wonderful way to do this is through our study of Liber LXV. This also is that which takes the form of our Genius.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“If I have described life as a slux of modds, I must now add, thtat there is that in us which changes not, and which ranks all sensations and states of mind. The consciousness of each man is a sliding scale which identifies him now with the First Cause, and now with the flesh of the body; life above lie in infinite degrees. The sentiment from which it sprung determines the dinity of any deed, and the question ever is not, what you have done or forborne, but, at whose command you have done or forborne it.”
3A. Really, in acting with a Gnostic awareness, one can then take responsibiity for one’s actions. Such acts are not born on the blind entiments of the body or the unconscious mind, but rather under one’s full intent.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The spirit is not helpless or needful of mediate organs. It has plentiful powers and direct effects. I am explained without explaining, I am felt without acing, and where I am not. Therefore all just persons are satisfied with their own praise. They refuse to explain themselves, and are content that new actions should do them that office. They believe that we communicate w/o speech, and that no right actions of ours is quite unaffecting to our friends, at whatever distance; for the influence of action is not to be measured by miles.”
4. Spiritual humility then shows through that silence that is the Fourth Power of the Sphinx.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The most attractive class of people are those who are powerful obliquely, and not by direct stroke: men of genius, but not yet accredited: one gets the cheer of their light without paying too great a tax.”
4A. It has been said that a genius is not recognized in his own time & that a prophet is not recognized in his own country. The mystery of becoming “accredited” in the world has everything to do with the growth of society; fostered by genius and his or her planting of the seed of Gnosis (new Gnosis) thhat will take time till it finally flowers.
4B. Hence, that star cast into the heavens by the Master of the Temple is but a seed fixed into the firmament for such generations that are to come. The man of vision has only him or herself to be satisfied with.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“No man ever came to an experience which was satiating, but his good tidings of a better. Onward & onward! In iberated moments, we know that a new picture of life & duty is already possible; the elements already exist in many minds around you, of a doctrine of which shall transcend any written record we have.”
5. These many minds are the community of the GCL. Let’s continue to nurture the vision of our combined temperament.
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