The Fourth Way and Esoteric Traditions
What Plato achieved in the imaginative and conceptual worlds of poetry and philosophy far outshone his achievements in politics. The social ideas outlined in the Republic and his other works referencing the state were largely impracticable, and often seem to verge on fiction.
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If there is ever to be an ideal state, it requires not only a Sage King but also citizens who strive for internal justice. Though there will always be people striving for justice in the external world, if one doesn’t strive for justice in one’s own internal world, nobody else will.
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Presence is the illumination of our soul’s efforts to re-member itself. It is the revelation of the divine nature of a human being. It can be the lighting up of an individual’s life with the eternal matrix of being from which the soul springs. This is the uncreated light from which it was born.
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We need a community where practical external good householder is developed. How can this be done? Through the creation of beauty that leads to internal good householder. And this produces an inner sun of harmonious action in the present.
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A Question of Presence is a practical text on work in a Fourth Way school. The author dedicates it to those looking for real change, noting the content comes from his four-year-old Facebook group for Italians on the Fourth Way. The book reworks the themes, debates, and comments that arose among the group’s participants.
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Plato’s principles of the ideal state apply to our inner world as well. Are we able to form a deputy steward to govern the city? To recognize the true ruler, to enable higher states to visit us?
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A Practical Choice How do we arrive at a ‘right location’ for our inner work in the Fourth Way? Horace, a Roman poet at the time of Augustus Caesar, said, “In adversity, remember to keep an even mind.” This is not just poetic or philosophical advice. It implies a practical choice to be made: where […]
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True earth arrests true lead;True lead controls true mercury.Lead and mercury return to true earth;Body and mind are tranquil and still.— Zhang Boduan, Four-Hundred Words on the Golden Elixir This little verse contains everything one needs to know to awaken. However, understanding the meaning is not an easy task and requires a conscious teacher. And […]
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Who is this ‘I’ one calls oneself? My teacher recently said to us, “Remember, anything that says ‘I’ is not you.” When first reading about the division into ‘I’ and ‘David’, I did not understand it exactly. Fortunately, it was clear what we were to avoid. When we begin the work, the tendency is to […]
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Presence and imagination – are they opposites? Sincere work on oneself is work on being, as well as knowledge. Thus a crucial point in the work is to recognize the difference between presence and imagination. Using these terms can help to understand each other when communicating about this subject. Imagination is the state where our focus is on things […]
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