Medley

What is in a prayer? Persian mystic Hakin Sanai’s advice is, “Don’t pester the universe with your begging. Be thankful for all that has been bestowed upon you. Just ask for more opportunities to be grateful to the universe.”

Tim Wyatt – England

Illustration: Rose Angel by Ethelwynne M. Quail based on the observations of the clairvoyant Geoffrey Hodson 

Apart from desisting from the age-old practice of killing one another to supposedly resolve disputes (which at this stage of the game remains a karmic impossibility for humanity), the world faces another major challenge – making contact with invisible worlds. Not worlds hovering in the heavens millions of light years away but hidden realms and their inhabitants here on Earth.  

Humans hubristically assert that they and they alone rule this planet of ours. And outwardly, that appears to be the case, with animals, vegetable life and minerals assigned only subsidiary and supporting roles in what is widely regarded as an essentially anthropocentric evolutionary drama. For the most part, there is little or no understanding or acceptance of other departments of the natural world – notably the kingdoms of existence below the mineral, known by esotericists as the etheric states.

April Hejka-Ekins – USA

Photo © David Grossman.

Let's begin with a story about Mullah Nasr Eddin: Mullah went to a bazaar to buy cloth. Finding all the booths full of customers bidding and driving up the prices, he stationed himself near the opposite end of the bazaar and began shouting at the top of this lungs about the bargains there, hoping to draw away his competitors. He was so successful that people started steaming down to that end of the bazaar, leaving the cloth sellers' booths empty for him, just as he wished. But seeing all the people hurrying by, he thought: Perhaps there really are splendid bargains down there! So he abandoned the cloth dealers and ran after the crowd.

  MIT scientists have uncovered chemical traces of the original "proto Earth” remnants from before the cataclysmic impact that created our modern planet 

[The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States] 

Researchers from MIT and collaborating institutions have uncovered exceptionally rare traces of "proto Earth," the ancient precursor to our planet that existed about 4.5 billion years ago. This primitive world took shape before a massive collision forever changed its chemistry and gave rise to the Earth we inhabit today. The discovery, described on October 14 in Nature Geosciences, could help scientists reconstruct the earliest ingredients that shaped not only Earth but also the rest of the solar system.

Stoicism is considered to be a philosophy of grim endurance, of tolerating rather than transcending life’s agonies and adversities, and that is perhaps the reason why the Stoic sage, in Western culture, has never obtained the popularity of the Zen master, writes Larry Wallace. He says that stoicism is a philosophy of gratitude, which is rugged enough to endure anything. Stoicism is not grim resolve but a way to wrest, or snatch, happiness from adversity. The truth is, indifference is a power that facilitates a more expansive and adventurous mode of living, in which joy and grief are there along with other emotions, but they are tempered so that they are less tyrannical.

Esther Pockrandt – Australia 

… Reflections on Australian Indigenous Spirituality

This article was inspired by the moving Welcome of theosophists to the traditional lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, the wisdom holders of the Indigenous Nations of the Vancouver area, during the recent 150^th International Congress in Canada, and their subsequent inclusion in the programme.  I live on the lands of the Kabi-Kabi and Jinibara people of the Sunshine Coast in South East Queensland, Australia, and I was deeply touched by this honouring of the earth and all the gifts she shares with us freely, and still, even when we forget to look after her.  We, as humanity and the earth with all her beings are one family, something which indigenous cultures still honour.  The Welcome to Country as it is known here, is almost identical, the same call for respect, a ‘re-memoring’ that we are one family, yet, but visitors passing through.  

NASA’s Perseverance rover discovered leopard spots on a reddish rock nicknamed “Cheyava Falls” in Mars’ Jezero Crater in July 2024. Scientists think the spots may indicate that, billions of years ago, the chemical reactions in this rock could have supported microbial life; other explanations are being considered. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS