The Spiritualization of Our Careers and Daily Life -- Hugh McCague: transcript

thanks for joining us it's great to be learning together again with you we've had a wonderful series of department instruction teleconferences these past several years and something very special our privilege to take part in what we'll do is we'll start first with a meditation and so uh don't close your eyes yet because there's a image that we're going to uh share to get us set and then into uh cosmic attunement and you'll see uh on the left is the mystic of florence nightingale and on the right is the uh master mystic uh yaheshawa you see they're both carriers of the lamp emblematic and symbolic of of conveying the light of a god within we'll tie this image into uh the work we're going to do in our presentation on the

spiritualization of our careers in daily life once you've had a good sense of the inspiration of the image you can let go of the cares of the day and make sure you're sitting comfortably and i suggest you close your eyes take a few deep breaths it can be neutral breasts that is not holding the inhalation or holding the exhalation and if it's comfortable for you i suggest you breathe through your nostrils and that forces us to take deep breaths it's also a good general practice in life if you can comfortably in a healthy way breathe predominantly through your nostrils you'll find immediately there's a relaxation response particularly through the vagus nerve and if you have the ideation on the god within it becomes a profoundly spiritual practice

after taking a few deep breaths spine upright unless you're lying down but if you're in a seated position you can have your palms in your lap face down your legs at right angles eyes close and just let go of the cares of the day you can think of the cares being just outside the room you're in or nearby they'll be there after this session to rejoin you now let's go to the deep still center in us enjoy the wonderful rhythm of the breath similar to the temple of the body that we learned about two weeks ago we're going to rise up soon into the temple of cosmos ultimately to the temple of the god associated with

the celestial sanctum first let's undergo a rite of purification or illustration may the divine essence of the cosmic infuse my being and cleanse me of all impurities of mind and body that i may enter the celestial sanctum and a tune in pureness and worthiness so mote it be now let us begin to rise up beyond the room where you're at or wherever you're situated rosicrucians use the term somatic mean to to be disobedient truth cosmic to symbolize the cosmic mind and action all the natural and spiritual laws keep rising up over the building you're in or the area around up over the city or geographic area keep rising up over the province or state where you are now rise up over the country you are see

the beautiful view from this high vantage point that suggests the cosmic conscious state let's rise up again past the hemisphere that you're in north or south whichever is applicable to you since the great rotation of the earth see the beautiful blue jewel of the earth the temple of the earth that's our home and let us turn consciousness out towards the solar system the great fiery ball of the sun venus and mercury and jupiter and saturn see these beautiful planets it is our privilege to live amongst and feel their influences on a daily basis even now and let's keep rising up faster and faster and sense the great motion of the milky way galaxy which is our home galaxy and see its great spiraling arms and myriad stars and let's pass out from the milky way

galaxy and look back at this beautiful spiraling nature revolving about its great axis and let's continue to rise at tremendous speed well beyond the speed of light which we can do because we're transcending the physical we're working with the cosmic mind and see the myriad stars and stellar phenomena this is pulsars and binary stars and supernovae and also black holes and clusters of galaxies and nebulae keep rising faster and faster and use great inward strength now is not the time to be passive we'll be passive later use great inward force as we're admonished in earlier times by grand master robert daniels use this inward strength that's within you infinite resources of the god within to rise up faster and faster and take in the great stupendous harmony

and order of the cosmos the temple of the cosmos the temple of god and as you travel farther and farther and see the stupendous harmony and order of the universe that we call the cosmos from the greek since the great rotating action or the great revolving action on the cosmic axis the universe revolves about and head towards the center of that great cosmic axis and as we approach it visualize that center as your celestial sanctum the archetypal temple may be an inspiring place in nature maybe a church or hindu mandir or buddhist stupa or some other form of temple

once you reach the center enter into your temple and fill it in to fill in the sights and the sounds make it real just as we do in a visualization since since there are other spiritual seekers and rosicrucian students there of like mind may be participating in a resocution convocation with the chief executive officer order the imperator grand master's there visualize it as you wish but you may wish to take a seat you may wish to sense incense and see the sights of beautiful symbolism and stained glass windows make it real make it vibrant make it inspiring make it an exhilarating place to be once you've filled in your visualization dwell there for a time and peace profound

if you find the mind wandering just come back lovingly and gently to your place in the celestial sanctum center of the universe the center of the cosmic mind the center of your being now there's various reasons to rise to

the heights of the celestial saint what is as we're doing now for general enlightenment and experience of peace profound or profound peace another closely related is that you may wish to ask of the god within the master within that deepest part of your nature that's fully connected with a universal consciousness a question if you wish to do so you can do so now but ensure that the question is clear and simple well-defined and has an emotional intensity and not something that you can readily answer by any other means using the faculties of your self-consciousness may be an important life question a pressing decision be that as it may if you wish to visualize the question now on your screen of your consciousness you may want to see it as letters spelling out the words or in fiery

letters to impress on the screen of your consciousness but do so now and when you're ready release the question into your into the depths of your subconscious leading to the cosmic and dwell again and peace profound ready for the answer to come forth just like you're in a great theater and the curtains are about to rise and the actors come out the way that your answer may come out now we're at a later time when it's

best for you you may have found the answers come forward or an important clue or it may come later in the day and be

enclosed in the impression of something you see or something you hear but be confident that cosmic law fulfills any sincere question good conscience cannot be readily answered by other means will come forward as needed before we descend from the heights of the celestial sanctum let us undertake further spiritual operations of the work and worship of the rosicrucian order landmark let us join in the work of the silent council in conjunction with the council of solas that sends metaphysical aid to all those in need let us radiate now love and well-being to all those who have petitioned our grand lodge the rose cushion order or your grand lodge and your affiliate body for aid and healing assistance also radiate out to those all those front line workers

in the health profession and all those that your need know or their need and also all sentient beings throughout the cosmos let us radiate love and well-being now i will conclude this formal period of

the work of the silent council in conjunction with the council of solas by saying if it pleases the cosmic it is done with the assurance the love and well-being will continue to radiate now let us continue to dwell for a while longer profound peace the heights of the celestial sanctum so

now let us express our gratitude for this opportunity to be of service and have the privilege of attuning with the cosmic which is our birthright let us express gratitude to all those who have mentored us and have taught us that have inspired us and those who have loved us and implying the law of gratitude i find that we're further attuned with the cosmic now let us begin our descent from the heights of the celestial sanctum down past super clusters of galaxies the nebuli and individual galaxies and myriad stars moving at great speed ultimately reaching to the great spiraling galaxy the milky

way we'll go back in the great arm that is our home and come to the solar system past the fiery ball of the sun return back to the beautiful blue jewel of the earth they're in the building i should say the hemisphere that we're at and then the country the state or province see your town or specific geographic location in the building and then the room in the chair or however we're situated in the room and we can stay together may the god of my heart sanctify this attunement of self the celestial sanctum so motive when you're ready

you can wish to open your eyes and stretch a little refreshed regenerated and spiritualized thank you great so on the topic of our day the spiritualization of our careers and daily life you've noted in the advertisement i took as a starting point uh profound work by a past grand master of the rose christian order he oversaw the order in great britain raymond andrea and in that book the technique of the disciple he declares that whatever we have and prize dearly can be recreated

clarified and oriented in spiritual vision and become a thing of sheer beauty in the light of the soul indeed as we advance in our maturity as a human being we could also say on the equivalent on the spiritual path an increase in our understanding of the unified consciousness the unified our sense of unity there's an increasing desire to make our lives much more meaningful an increased expression of that unity and one's highest ideals and a greater avenue of service to others the law of service is always centrally stressed you know when i talk about spiritualization with the term you're not so familiar with i'm using in the sense of transfiguration in terms of being a radiant living example of natural and spiritual laws of great sense of love and well-being

and compassion to others being fully human fully matured or on the way another way to look at it as if you're inclined to alchemy particularly transcendental alchemy you can think of transmutation another way from a mystical perspective remember i talked earlier in a session about uh stages of mystical development and pure stage of purification or stages of purification you can think of spiritualization as as purification in terms of following our conscious more uh changing the habits in our subconscious so that they're more life affirming ones sometimes we have habits or ways of life that served us when we were children or earlier in our adult life no longer doing so that need to be changed and that's part of the purification process now an important law in this

spiritualized approach process is the law of cosmic attunement we applied that in our meditation part of the reason i took a little extra time in our meditation today before the presentation is to have that full direct experience because the resolution order is very practical and it's very important just like one could read a book on the cello and get and read it very intensively over a weekend and get tremendous amount of detail about how to play the cello but that doesn't mean that one could pick up a cello and play it in fact probably probably no more do that and play beautiful cello music unless you had some extensive musical background and you could physically jump to the moon so this is something where practical experience is very important another important law that we apply is the law of love

and it's something that must be central to everything that we do you'll see that it is the central law and it's the key to spiritualization now in terms of service you can think of it as ultimately fulfilling one's purpose and mission in life uh and in doing so we most efficiently meaningfully work towards the uplift and increase well-being of humanity and all life now very important to our spiritualization our life and we're speaking a little bit about that before we started is health and by health of course we mean to be whole and similar to what the grand master mentioned last week

on developing ease in our level in our being that ease is related to your the opposite of dis ease you know to have that that sense of ease and well-being we also stress good character in the order uh the falling of the virtues and building up character um and mental power and freedom of existence these things together you know health good character mental power freedom of existence they concentrate what is true wealth and health is the first thing that we have to build up if we're seeking abundance and living which is an aspect of spiritualization of our lives another important law is a law of compensation we must give to receive and one finds the right balance as we study and learn it's important for us to give

back to others we must at all times keep receptive to our cosmic impressions that's something where the outer self needs to work as a companion to that cosmic mind and ultimately realize that we're one with it all these different forms of consciousness i talked about in during the cosmic consciousness presentation they're all different expressions of cosmic consciousness self-consciousness um that's associated with our brain it's ultimately uh a form or uh of cosmic consciousness that the brain can handle part of all the spiritualization though is that we've got to make sure that we're not held back by our prejudices there may be ones that we raised were raised with or were suggested to us subtly through various influences also a very important part of the mystical

life for maturing is is we avoid resisting lessons we've got to make sure we're not resisting lessons and one way you know we know we've resisted lessons in a big way is that if we have a crisis in our life because crises in our life arise when we've continually resisted a lesson one thing though that the outer self can be re uh try to squirm out of not having important lessons or or think that it's in charge uh whereas the god within us is that uh when we do learn these these lessons particularly ones we've been avoiding we'll find that we're enriched or ennobled it's a little bit like if some of you used to affiliate bodies the order where a gong is used if you can think of that gong having a bunch of jackets on or a bunch of clothing on and the guardian trying to uh sound it you know the sound would be greatly damp and that's that's why when we were when we have a lot of uh uh inharmonious lessons in our subcon our

laws and our subconscious that's that's the effect of the power of that gong is like the radiating of love and well-being inside of us as those as those more harmonious lessons are placed in the subconscious are changed it's laws in the subconscious we're going to need a stronger more rich the light of god can radiate much greater from us we're more truly uh human or fully human that's why an important part of the mystical path is self-analysis and when we're doing our work in our jobs you know including when there's paid employment involved the spirit of we must have very strongly the spirit of service and that we're giving back more than a serial salary interest uh later when we start a discussion so karen's gonna paste in some resources but we'll see with the advertisement or notice for

this pr presentation uh um i'll i'll mention that there's going to be some resources some of the things i've been referring to they'll come a little later in the presentation you'll see them in the chat now i want to mention briefly because there's a lot in this topic but i want to sort of make certain highlights for you and give you some time for our discussion is that depending on the type of career you take up there's certain important understandings you know traditionally when we talk about the intellect it was not the reason a deeper spiritual understanding of the intellect is the property of mind or the capacity of mind that draws us to the divine reason on the contradiction in some ways parallels it but it's actually things of the world things of the self-consciousness so i'll mention a few things that are intellectual in nature but if you can make them live realities in your life

they're important keys that are very transformative that spiritualize their life for example if you're in a career that's in mathematics or statistics or very scientifically and quantitatively orientated one may mention well how can i spiritualize that well one important key is the pythagorean tradition the number is the key to all things both quantitatively but also qualitatively through some symbolic means because in the first ten whole numbers one to ten is the entire embodiment of uh traditional philosophy you know it's striking in this regard when the renowned physicist diana heisenberg was a young man he studied uh plato's timaeus and you know that that's this inspired pythagorean text that talks about the creation of the universe by the demiurge as a mathematical act that made a very deep impression and inspired him very much as a young man that he

credited to part of his inspiration in the major development of the quantum mechanics and you can see in the modern physics moving away from the newtonian fiction there was increased mathematician abstraction part of that was his experience his inspiring experience as the plato's tomas and the pythagorean tradition you know one of my applied math professors who was an expert in quantum packs and i once asked him you know what do you think is truly there in existence and he answered symmetries you know the pythagoreans would have loved that and one way is a spiritualization so bear bear that in mind i find it very helpful for me as a mathematician and a statistician to keep these in mind you know i know some of you are very involved in psychology and uh i've met various uh rosicrucian students are a psychiatrist and there was a dr rossen who wrote some resolution digest whose earlier years who was a psychiatrist

it's truly wonderful when a psychiatrist or psychologist is very spiritually oriented because they have that deep understanding of psychology that then links them with the cosmic understanding indeed you know an important way to spiritual our lives is to be very attentive to epidemi i should say etymology or the origins of words because psychology and psychiatry have in it the word greek word psyche that alludes to soul you know the study of the soul another thing that if you're a health professional one thing you can very much keep in mind along with the psychologists and psychiatrists we have various inspiring mystics who are healers such as the master yaheshawa that we showed in the image that was a painting by the pre-apholite painter holman hunt or paracelsus a very inspired

doctor we all refining gradually how much we owe to him in terms of our medical knowledge and also people like florence nightingale that you saw a picture of and that's part of the reason i showed at the very beginning before we entered into our meditation she was a mystic that is often not generally known but it's becoming becoming much more apparent for example on the day that she was called to go the crimea to the crimea and form a group of nurses to form hospital in crimea we know that she was reading a very inspired mystical text uh by thomas a campus called the imitation of christ because we have our notations in that book and by those notations we know she's had the mystical experiences in fact she used those uh to be brave when she was amidst um thousands of young persons there were soldiers who had been on the point of transition the great initiation or needing needing

healing but also inspired her to continue with great health reforms such as making sure that patients had good food had good hair air to breathe had healthy conditions to live in fact when she she was on the finishing up girlhood on the coming to early womanhood she had a deep mystical experience that she knew she was since she was guided to god's work that she fulfilled so this is a way that our life is spiritualized and then we have these inspiring healers if you're very inclined towards music one of the keys is the four traditional senses of music you know today when we make think of music we think of instrumental music or music of the voice and sometimes you may make reference to something very musical in the way that the wind was blowing or the stream is making sounds that uh thinking that's figurative music

but traditionally to mystics um there were four musics that uh one was the bot the music of a body which associated with health the harmonious relationships all the dynamic rhythms in the body um traditionally associate the four humors but we can see it now the autonomic nervous system uh the pulse the um the flow of the blood and the um nervous system and many other systems in our body um they have a harmonious order in action and rhythm that was that's a form of music and i'm not speaking symbolically that literally was a music so you had to know the context of this person who was speaking know which music then there was the music that we speak of today of the instrumental and voice music there was also then the music of the world which was the gurgling of the creek or the river the fl the uh beautiful sounds of the

of the evergreens or the weeping will as the wind goes through it or as we made our ascent to the cosm cosmic the beautiful harmony and order of the revolving of the of the heavenly bodies associated with the music of the spheres then there was also uh what was called the music of god the divine music all these forces and forms of music were to drop in that's why when you have a very inspiring piece of music that you're listening today that's instrumental in voice you'll often have a deep sense of elation or well-being that's drawing you to the divine music divine music was also to inspire the artist to create the instrumental music um these these are things that uh that can transform one's understanding and spiritualize uh music your inclinations to other art forms one thing is very helpful is to think of the four traditional senses by which sacred texts

were interpreted these are ones that dante for example talks about and that actually shakespeare applied in his in his dramas you know often it takes a lifetime to finally realize that shakespearean dramas especially view them as a whole they're a passage of purification they're going on in those stories in some ways it's a psychodrama that's going on within us and that those dramas are written from the cosmic state we talked about the cosmic conscious state earlier they're written from that state you see the full overview of humanity the various different characteristics the one graphs in the cosmic conscious state with these shakespeare is portraying that before us that's why they have such a deep impression from us uh even from childhood but those four traditional senses were first the literal the the moral or the tropical logical uh and then there was also the allegorical and the anagogical

or the uh the mystical and i'll give you a reference on that but just to give you an example for example we read in the bible about jerusalem literally it was the geographic city and historically it conjured up a wealth of events of past memory an account that had taken place and culminated in this holy city of david solomon and the mission of the master yeshua allegorically jerusalem signified the church or the collective body of spiritual aspirants and initiates morally it represented the virtuous or faithful soul on the mystical level it was the heavenly city the abode of the spiritual elect and the experience of cosmic consciousness there's other levels in fact there's a scientific level in the bible for example may intrigue you that scientifically and cosmologically the heavenly jerusalem is a model of the cosmos or a cosmogram with the 12 zodiacal

gates in the four directions now these successive levels leading to the mystical sense require increasing maturity and responsibility and awareness to be able to penetrate and they require a great deal of steadfastness one has to be relent uh relentless i've mentioned some texts that are related to the western tradition but these go on in the eastern tradition and the tradition i also in the kabbalah but in in the writing in the arts if these levels are kept in mind they'll transform our living they'll spiritualize one word work in the arts this presentation today for example is operating on those four levels as well for those of you that are very inclined towards business there's a lot of inspiring examples of mystics who are business persons for example there's allison albert hubbard a renowned roy crofters who assisted dr h spencer lewis with the

rev um revival of the uh expression of our order uh for this um cycle uh they they were great proponents of the arts and crafts uh movement and you ever have a chance to go to east aurora near buffalo or buffalo new york or niagara falls it's a wonderful experience of how business can be spiritualized and i think you'll have chills going up your your spine because it's so mystical and rosicrucian the way that the place has been set up and works there's also persons like ingrid young talked about last time dr spencer lewis he was a business person wide ranging talents that he then used and applied and helping with the promotion of the rosicrucian order there's often uh stories about business persons that are very profound and memorable you may not think of them such as initiative dramas but they are uh one

for example is a christmas carol by charles dickens where ebenezer scrooge someone who is extremely capable in business but he was not spiritualizing his approach to it so he so he got visited by uh three spiritual beings uh on christmas eve and in the early hours of christmas um it turned out he didn't need to change his job to spiritualize it he just needed to be much more thoughtful the well-being of others as his business partner in a spiritual form came to tell him jacob marley said to the fact that humankind was our business um and he showed him the great chains that he developed through his karmic gap that scrooge would have to undo by uh helping with the healing of timing and and helping with various others that he had the means to and he says you know in it that i don't deserve this to be this hot this happy it was a bit like he removed a lot of those incumbents from his subconscious and the gong now was

ringing beautifully and profoundly and he said to his niece his nephew's uh part partner you know can you forgive a pig-headed pool all these years who had no eyes to see no ears to hear this is truly what we're we're called to in spiritualization now there's many other ways that we can think about spiritualizing in our careers and our lives and one really good source for that is the rosicrucian utopia you don't think of it quite in that way before um there's going to be a a reference to it you can i know others you i think you're mainly familiar but we'll give a link to it uh shortly but in it talks about things about economics and other other effects subjects and careers and how to spiritualize them for the well-being of humanity and work in harmony with with the cosmic you know no matter whether we're in paid employment or not or whatever our situation is one of the ways that we can always spiritualize our lives is through our

contact with people and we do that by honoring the god within within each person and that will spiritualize our living and help spiritualize theirs as well we always have the uh excuse me we always have the opportunity to assist others and encourage encourage them uh in our daily activities and work there may be something that we can say a compliment that we can genuinely give uh listen you know a sympathetic and compassionate ear and that'll help strengthen others and mature us as well you know there's different forms of listening we talked about those four senses uh in terms of music and uh two weeks ago in the sense of the temple the sense of interpretation of sacred writings these there's also these four senses in

in listening the deepest form of listening can be very healing or making hole of another this is where we temporarily let go of our needs and the idea to give advice or to say something about our experience but go with the deeper feeling the deeper heartfelt feeling of our speaker and follow that and they'll recognize if they're inclined that we're ready and willing to listen um it's something there that um often we think well let's jump in and give some advice often we can sort of wait on that because often when we really carefully listen to someone what that'll help to do is we attune with the cosmic they'll attune with the cosmic like two tuning forks that are the same pitch as one as sounded that the wisdom will come out from within them just like we do with some metaphysical healing and then

they'll truly own those insights and use them to change themselves in the laws in the subconscious because they already have the deep wisdom within themselves you know in this regard a very inspiring figure is fred rogers who's been increased interest with him in a movie um but he was actually a presbyterian minister he was deeply spiritually inclined he started his days always around five in the morning with reflection and prayer and going swimming um but he had a deep sense of calling his pastoral care was it implicitly did not hit anyone over the head with it would cover it explicitly was to minister through people and children and pastoral care through children television which he did in a new and creative creative way that was very respectful very healing and wonder inspired message um only for children but for their for

their parents you know another spiritual way to spiritualize our life is to think of ourselves as a leader now to the other self that can often seem rather daunting because we think we think wow i'm not a leader but we can always be a leader in the sense of setting a good example and we can always help leaders and be a good worker with them also when we come more into the cosmic state or listen to our heart into the words of the master within we'll be strengthened to be more of a leader in our community in our uh settings you know what's striking i mentioned about these various things sometimes people have highly spiritualized their lives and they don't realize it in fact even fulfill their missionary life you can think of a mission in the sense of uh fulfilling the true purpose or the main purpose and ones in one's life and the main reason one incarnated for i remember one of my architecture

professors um being taken aback when there was a retirement party for him in the retire in the architecture building which had three floors they'd never seen anything like it all three floors were packed with the students coming back after decades far and wide they had been so inspired by him you know he's he said to me that way i feel like mr holland's opus remember that 1995 movie with glenn hall and the teacher i was a music teacher i always writing wanted to write his opus and he was starring richard dufress but sometimes we've accomplished our great work through those who we've guided and inspired in our lives for the architecture professor he was also an architect and his one of his magnum opuses was a ukrainian catholic church that's on the very west side of brampton the greater toronto area i had the i had the privilege and delight of taking um stephen armstrong one of the staff

members of our order there and uh stephen was greatly inspired by that building as i was uh because there's a true true temple on earth inspired by the divine archetype through my architecture professor and stephen said that uh to me as he's going he said i'll remember this for the rest of my life that was so wonderful and beautiful and so sometimes in our work we know we know but sometimes we don't know the things we've said are done we inspire people from then on and then they tell others to help inspire them just like we mentioned albert albert hubbard and alice hubbard today for example i'm going to say a few concluding recruiting things now uh then we'll have some time for discussion here um you know i mentioned various laws for us to be attentive the praxis of the rosicrucian teachings those things will spiritualize us may not even have that in mind but they'll do that um

you know just as i mentioned breathing through the nostrils and the relaxation practice you do that throughout your day with the idea of god on your mind you're meditating all the time that's a wonderful spiritualization practice a deep sense of calm that helped guide us in wisdom one thing that is spiritual very spiritual about visualization practice and we discussed in our order is that we become a co-creator with god you know one of the inspired rosicrucians that work with dr h spencer lewis and his work in business and he was a leader in business in the early 20th century this particular prosecution he said he always made the cosmic a partner in everything he did that's one way to think of spiritualizing our lives and business you know creativity often we think of that was for someone who's very creative in the arts but every day we apply creativity in terms of how we uh do things how we do things with our home our home with our friends and we make a meal

that is truly a god-given quality that helps spiritualize us we be creative one of the various to spiritualize life is always to be making sure we're doing meditation readily and heating our intuitive impressions and very important acting on them yes and we talked earlier about love being the greatest law of the universe and that's always something to keep forefront of our mind to be loving just as we radiated love and well-being in our minute meditation today to keep that as a as what some call the art of radiation of love and well-being as we ideate on god but that's always be that in itself will transmute us transform us spiritualize us you know as we mature and evolve as rosacea to say unfold the petals of the rose that's at our heart our understanding becomes more expansive

timeless and universal our way of life becomes more wholesome life-affirming and healthy in the manner full intended for humanity's mission and purpose on earth in this manner the petals of the rose unfold we learn the lessons of life and our living radiant and body embodiments of them in the experience of the unified consciousness and mystical union with god in this manner our careers and daily lives are spiritualized become highly meaningful become greater expressions of unity and the god within and are of the greatest service to others thank you everyone

you