Chapter 8- Engineering: Recommended, Part 2

Cave exploring is a wonderful teacher of rudimentary engineering. When we are held within a form, such as within the naturally formed structure of a cave particularly, the outer peripheries speak inwardly to us. In other words we can sense the shape of this structure from the inside.

Architecture has long been known to inspire and provoke in this way; cathedrals offer perfect examples to this, with their ribbed-roof, chest-like, forms. Alike to giant men laying upon their backs, this chest cavity draws the man within to be standing (in this perspective) from the place of the heart. This in turn shall affect his prayer and his consciousness, as it takes into itself the overall shell of the cathedral’s beams and walls about him. 

Men naturally sense the walls around them. Added to this, they feel their form. Inorganic angular forms created by walls were meant to enhance the thinking, giving over to particular crystalline structures which were too sharp-edged and mean, (‘mean’ as in standard), whereas many sound halls are suitably developed to imitate the shape of the outer and inner ear.

Further to this it is said to be an easier death, were that one were to part this life outdoors! For without any enclosures surrounding the individual the subtle bodies slip readily into freedom, sensing less deterrence, confusion and persuasion … Conversely it is preferable therefore to nurse an ill person indoors and within a room which is best shaped to suit their healing. Babies respond healthily to being held in a swaddle, and cradled in a dome-shaped canopy.

Would that architects could pay more attention to the inside structures, than expending all of their creativity upon the outer! It is internally, not externally, that the buildings become significant.

And so when we venture into a cave, one which has been crafted by the spirits of time and the elementals of nature, we may come to the sense of the inherent beauty of perfect and particular form.

Making peace with relatives: These papers have largely been written for the care and consideration of the one who would read them. Primarily the objectives are designed to be of worthwhile appeal to the person themselves, for it is our conviction that a value discovered within one man does radiate out into the world and take its effect there too, if proven, if true.

 

This is an important qualification to make … one which could be misconstrued, yet is not intended to be. It is just to say that we expect the text to be viewed for self-profit, and that there is no shame in this, and no sense would that it were otherwise.

Self-profit cannot be gained at the expense of another’s owning. Karmicly it is not practicable. Ethics are taught to us in very simple demonstrations – and each in turn is brought to sympathies for others via such accountability along the way.

Yet, from our perspective, humanity underestimates its self-worth and potential, and has a difficulty in earnestly attempting to further itself in ways which do work well for them. There is much self degradation occurring in countless ways, needlessly. Eventually this will try even the patience of eternity!

It is true to say that if this text was written and read from only the humanitarian and self-less perspective the development of the reader would, in natural consequence, have to improve. The effects of good/healthy contemplations and deeds are (over time) more of the same. The process is enstrengthening overall. The path of the ascetic proved this, in that they could renounce the self and yet at the same time enhance their self into the bargain.

However this approach calls for a definitive self-consciousness which of itself decides the reasoning and weighs the goodness, for itself.

The theme of engineering is one of tangibility – of a goodness which has, by certain effort, materialised. Here we have an opportunity to firstly work upon ourselves, knowing that if done well the whole of the world will benefit. We test wisdom within our own reasoning and keep testing – ever watchful and observant of the results. In this way it is so very important that these texts are abandoned if they are not conducive to your own sensibilities. If they present as nonsense or cause irritation, it is vital that you may respect your own discernment here and go on to find something which does inspire or enthuse you. Do not regard these words because you believe you are supposed to, or in that they come recommended! There is no point, but for you, no point at all.

Similarly, when we suggest that it is recommended that one makes peace with their relatives, we ask firstly that it is done on behalf of your own self and for all that that means. Ideally you may try to please others, appease others or simply heal some past hurt for the sake of their situation. However, unless it is undertaken from yourself sincerely and with self-motivation it will not be ‘real’ and shall not count as it might.

Within our own personal orbits we are positioned greatly by the magnetic influences given out by our family members (whilst they are living). Unconsciously we are effected by this, regardless of how far away we may be from them. Whether or not we have a regular communication our relationship with our parents, our grandparents, our brothers and sisters, aunties and uncles and children of our own, all of these people in existence converge with us invisibly.

“How can this be fair and true, when I am so different from these people?” you might ask. And how often it happens, that each family member feels this difference from one another – the grandmother and grandfather, etc., all from their hearts crying the same in the quiet. Not one would feel the closeness imaginable in the context of likeness completely. Why then are we so different, and do know it?

Well, here one could say “well, yes we are all different of course, and yet the same as well, etc. etc.” which would be offering really no great illumination at all. Or … 

 

Relative to our foremost attractions to one another, we are brought together, compelled together, by such lively activity as is passing between us. Most lively activity comes of dissension, rather than congeniality. There are exceptions to this when there has been a creative and fiery relationship forged between two aspiring individuals, yet for the most part we are drawn into families because of past frictions – with person or with persona.

Nations who have warred against each other, especially those of neighboring regions, are often reborn into the other’s race immediately after the passing. You can imagine that the concentration given to this other race sets up the very attractive forces which take them into that experience further along. The soul craves experience and seeks it where it can. The ego of a man also wants for more and goes where the activity has past flourished. The people (or their context of living) flames as a beacon to the would-be incarnate. We are attracted into reactive forces, which may or may not be compatible to us; and more likely are not.

Yet when born, we do become attributed with particular racial characteristics and family characteristics now inherited and known to us which hitherto we were without. This is also an experience to be dealt with, as once again it is most likely that these new clothes of the personality are not natural to us in our own development.

There is the thought that some races prefer to repeatedly incarnate within the same body of men and do so without this change to which we refer. This has happened in the most recently ‘older’ races, where the egohood is still reflected in that racial consciousness, but at the same time the process described in the family mix does apply, and even felt more intensely, because there is the soul awareness which hurts when departures from the family thinking occurs.

Perhaps one fundamental problem lies in the expectation that family members should think and live similarly. Harmony is proved most wonderful amongst a collective of differing contributors; it is not so experienced amongst a pool of sameness. When family members try to prove their sameness as some kind of loving qualification amongst each other, it denies their inner life and who they are. It goes on then to cause much of a severance from one another because of the necessary lies within the reality trying to support and sustain the unreal – the unsustainable.

Regarding the differences of all - and the marked friction which has been ongoing and perhaps to be now resolved- (particularly if you do not want to be drawn together so intimately with these folk again) you can begin by a) accepting their inner and outer life as belonging uniquely to them - and not reflecting yourself in any way - and b) expecting them to do the same. In this way we ‘leave our family’ to become more of ourselves, but honor those members as well, as they should be – loved for who they are. This will bring peace. Even if it brings more friction at the outset, it will bring peace. For you have loved them all the more, and you are no longer trying to see yourself in images that do not match what you see inside.

Chapter 8- Engineering: Recommended, Part 1

Activities Recommended:

• Photography and photograph developing
• Horse-riding
• Food parcel packing for charity
• Tours of caves
• Effort to make peace with relatives
• Homoeopathic remedy for ‘tiredness’ of mind

Photography: Of the four elemental qualities, air, fire, water and earth, engineering predominantly features the condition of the ‘earth’ – of that fixedness examinable to the material existence.

In the photographic chronicles displaying this very fixedness we find that there is little or no quality of air (etherealness); no fire (life); no water (fluidity – ongoingness, mutability etc.).

The study of photography excites both the amateur and the professional in like regard with each new depiction. We are ever amazed at the virtue and the arrogance of this impressioning before us. If we are familiar with the subjects personally that have been isolated into that stationary moment, interestingly, we are immediately compelled to review our inner impressions alongside these eternal circumstances at the time we are recalling.

“How did it feel on that day?” will be the first question that springs from within. We shall mentally try to draw together much of what we can in a few moments to complete the ‘picture’ and add to its statement of existence.

Therefore this photo then becomes a springboard into more complex pictures held within our imaginative recall – the catalog of associations and deep memories which cannot of themselves, be comprehensively committed to a singular print.

As an activity we are asked to objectify the subjective experience and this is a useful example of contrast for the individual that has difficulty admitting the objective realities into his consciousness. This is not to say that the imaging in any given photograph is a wholesome or correct portrayal of a subject. However there is an inarguable element to it (providing it has not been altered from the original of course) – being witness to an aspect of a moment as it was at one time.

Horse-riding, once again, helps the rider to admit to certain immediate objective realities and also calls him to respond to them. There is a cooperation required between both man and big beast, and it is with this cooperative effort there comes a respect for the powerful animal, and a respect for the individual in common.

Dog training does not compare here, because one can impose their will all too easily upon a dog, so that the dog mimics the trainer, rather than independently interacts.

The learned responses from a dog can satisfy an individual in that the dog becomes much of an extension of himself and owners are known to equate their own self discipline with that of their adopted pet after a while. In this relationship the two almost become as one – the dog, being but the lesser model of the other.

However, with the horse and the dear donkey there may well be an amiable compliance, yet it is that it is the animal themselves deciding this congeniality – in riding, in cart pulling, in paddock tilling – the work horse, our gracious friend, deserves acknowledgment for that which he performs willingly. He does not have an ego developing as a man would have, but he does have the capacity to make decisions about his preferences and interactions. Such an animal as the horse would rather take sick and withdraw from life entirely than be forced to succumb to a master that is cruel and distempered.

Even those beloved of beasts who walk the grain stone-milling circuit – hour after hour – do so with a love for the human company around them. 

 

It is interesting to note that the more capable an animal is of deciding ‘yea’ or ‘neigh’ in that which it has its mind to, the more it can respond in loving kind to the people around it. A beast of the wild is too compelled by its carnal instincts to ‘decide’ its relationships accordingly, whilst the domesticated pet is too compelled by the will of the owner to ‘decide’ its mind in its present state of development.

We may learn to develop our choice making, our own ‘decisions’ as long as we are not treated like a dog and expected to perform to another’s will and bidding; or given to an aggressiveness which departs the conscious effort.

In taking this responsibility of choice – finding ourselves in relation to others and respecting the ‘I’ of the ‘am’ (of both us and of them) – then so more also do we become capable of loving as well. Only in freedom do we come to mutual cooperation and then further on to this love.
 

Kissing another person, mouth to mouth, and exposing each to the other’s breath as well as the fluids, is an extreme and deliberate test of tolerance and mutuality of egos. Having said that, we may all understand too readily that it is not by such kissing that we are enabled to meet with the bulk of humanity. In point of fact, as poignant a discovery as it may be, there are little or no folk we should wish to endeavor this ‘testing’ with comfortably. And so, one could say that even though the efficacy of this method is assured, it is not one in which we could share universally.

Such discriminatory processes can be over-keenly receptive and similar to us trying to appreciate the tuba’s playing with our ears held right up to the very opening. It is not to say that we do not share great and glorious affinities with those around us, but we do have perimeters to differences that co-exist amongst the splendid qualities shared that would speak too loudly at close range.

At the opposite to this ‘close range’ can be found the type of love and intimacy which is expressed to the fellow/s whom we do not ever even meet with. The type of charity as is expressed through the food parcel packing is one where we are not given the personal result or appreciation, and could not be further away from the other with which we are sharing a relationship.
 

The dynamic of this kindness of giving is swift and purposeful. There is nonetheless a true relationship between the charitable man and his receiver, even without the acknowledgment from either … and the parcel which is provided in this way, not only gives to the individual receiving, but the world as a whole as well.

Therefore, this is a different form of practicality we can come to in our understandings within the workings of the world, finding that the results of what we do, do not have to be realized by us for them to have a profound effect in many realms, in many ways. We can be both cautioned and encouraged in this. We can discover just how many ways we can enhance the physical conditions here anonymously and find satisfaction, most curiously.

Continued...

Chapter 8- Engineering: Contraindicated

Activities Contraindicated:

• Linguistics
• Commerce
• Soulless sexual activity
• Pseudo-intellectualism
• Cooking meats, butchering & slaughtering
• Suppressive drug taking (anti-depressives included)

For practical purposes, for the engineeringly deficient it is preferable that all manner of linguistical activity is avoided (save using a singular language). Whilst there are many benefits that come from incorporating more than one body of language into our refined thinking, there can be also more overwhelming aspects into the consciousness which interrupt the thinking processes because of them. 

 

All languages hold differing characteristics according to their time of origin and the prevailing thoughts experienced at that period. Every nation has offered the world their gifts and talents, and these qualities specific to each live on within their tools of expression. Much is incorporated into a living language and is carried from century to century, indicative of its parent-thought and parent-creations.

As was previously discussed, it is desirable for the engineeringly inept to begin with a singularity of purpose, rather than attempt to be conversant with many things at the one time. As language works powerfully in and around one’s thinking, it is best advised to feature just the one in discipline, than be libertine between two or more and vulnerable to the conflicting persuasions thereof.

Commerce is contraindicated because the nature of commercial activity itself contravenes good and effective engineering endeavours. It is not possible for a man to be involved in both with self-interest and succeed.

It is true to say that the Cathedral engineers were most ambitious in all that they set out to do and achieved, but their ambition had not to do with the transactional repercussions from that which they saw built.

Philosophically one could argue that structure is co-operative, as is transaction – and yet they are dissimilar and opposing influences in relation to their causative effects. The flows of finances and goods involves cyclical activity which is primarily fluidic when put to use. Commerce moves continually, economics itself is one heaving, breathing and regulating body which encompasses the transactions of worldly trade within … however, even with the necessary pauses at the completion of each conjunction, of each trade made, there is a follow-on consequence which flows through effecting other areas, and so on.

When it comes to the nature of engineering we are looking to a condition of fixedness, rather than flow. In order that we materialise any concept and keep it bound in actuality, its perpetual value shall be in the fixed condition, rather than in its fluidity. There is no transactional activity, as one would contradict and stress the other. Of course all good engineering makes allowances for some parameters of change (winds, sands, climates etc), but the strength of the project is in its permanence and structure, not in its plasticity or changeability.

Soulless sexual activity is a nonsense to the constitution and psyche of an individual. Although it may represent something which is stimulating and releasing, physically it is unsatisfying to the happinesses, whereby in turn, eventually causing much grief because of it. Were someone to feed you a food that appeared as a food – looked and smelt and tasted very good like a food – yet, in reality was but an inert starch, on some levels both your body and your consciousness would know it. After time the reality would prove itself, particularly if this is all one had to feed on.

Not one person can judge this consideration for another. Genuine mutuality and love shared with joy, considerateness and passion brings into the world those wonders which are beyond plans and singular visions in this true combining. A quality of the good engineer is to understand that which he cannot do on his own undertaking. Whereas the fellow bereft of this quality believes that he can manipulate forces and people into his will’s domain. He is unrealistic in his expectations and goes on to settle for the artificiality which he himself has then invited.

We are therefore cautioned when embarking upon those acts which involve a measure of selfless loving to be offered from ourselves in the deed, but conspire to take from them instead. 

Pseudo-intellectualism is but another instance of the artificiality prevailing over the man who would be king, but not bear the responsibilities of his sovereignty!

There is an opinion that suggests that a man’s low self-esteem will lead him into such bad behaviours as this front of cleverness for example, but we would say no, this is not the case. In this instance the weakness itself is born in false ego, in the assumption, not of much goodness within, but rather emphasising self-importance (and generally over others).

This kind of individual after death is often found ordering invisible servants to do his bidding – believing that he has an authority and power which clearly he has not. It isn’t so much a matter of feeling poorly and trying to compensate for the condition, because the compensation could and should be found in improvement were that this were genuine, or in featuring the talents one does have. It is moreover an inflated sense of self-importance which has no real workable substance or practicality underpinning it.
 

Cooking meats, butchering and slaughtering are best avoided as they involve a certain disintegration of life, exposure to bloods and an indifference to death.

Drugs which suppress the sympathetic and empathetic reasonings are dangerous to all, and particularly in relation to the poorly displaced in engineering, who are generally unresponsive to the conditions of others as it is. As you may have gathered thus far, this is a malady of subjective selfishness which naturally occurs in each man and woman to some degree, but is accentuated by its persistence in some who have not the ability to objectify accurately the perceivable truths in the world about them.

Unfortunately the use of such suppressive medications or alcohols will render the individual more hapless in this regard. Self-internment is painful. A healthy ego may be self-contained in its process, but in its action it is capable of stepping out from itself with great dexterity. The experience of being loving is both joyful and freeing because it releases the individual from this sense of self-internment and the internal stresses and concentrates are released also in the experience.

It is difficult for an individual to become considerate as to the needs of others if they have not the sympathies or empathies to alert them as they present. However, if the desire is there to develop for the sake of the folk around them, it can be achieved and acquired very rapidly. Selfishness is not a terminal personality fault! Neither is it something which the people around the selfish need to suffer from them to support any particular cause as if it is an indelible weakness. To suffer much selfish behaviour is often to encourage it. No man or woman is obliged to grin and bear the outright inconsiderateness of another and accept it as being purely ‘them’!

Medications remove the responsibility from the individual also in this regard. They suggest that he or she is not capable of working upon their own happiness and the happiness of others. We suggest (quite happily and with hope) that this is otherwise.

Chapter 8- Engineering: Prayer

A Prayer for Good Engineering

To Master Gravity

& the Stonemason’s Plinth …

Beloved Order,

You who bring the workman his purpose and result,

You who define landscapes and invoke great machineries,

With intricate systems of Creation and then later created,

In design-given life, that by structure we perceive form …

You, of the great Temples, the very annexes to Heaven,

First ship, first town, first waterway with bridge as road …

With fibrous tenacity, and crystalline strength woven through- 

Be here with us and bless us with this most practical of knowing,

Amen

Chapter 8- Engineering

CHAPTER 8

Engineering

Dietary Exercise Suggested:

A diet of taste and an apothecary of invention.

This exercise best permits portions of food which are extremely small and differing from one another - with great variety. This may be experienced throughout a day for an entire month at a time.

Commentary:

With this dietary exercise we come to examine the many, many foods available and experience combinations which are both nutritiously wholesome as well as quite flavorsome – enjoying foods in their most natural state, broiled or steamed, baked or tossed; combined or sauced, contrasting the uniqueness of each.

The object is never to repeat one dish in a week (not even the same sandwich for example, or daily cereal) and always to keep the servings remarkably less than what you are accustomed to (approximately half, to one third of the size), although you may of course eat other foods depending upon the needs of your hunger.

There is to be no plate mixing – i.e. not to have a variety of bites on the one plate, but rather that the one food chosen is eaten singly, with an interval of at least ten minutes having passed before going on to the next.

In a lesser exercise a party can set a buffet meal to be experienced in a similar fashion, tabling as many different fruits and vegetables as is possible (but not necessarily in very large quantities), and depending upon the time given to the dinner being taken into account also (six serves an hour maximum).

Our sensing through taste is primordially keen. As infants it is as though we are absorbed by our food, and not it by us! Through the soulic perception of the child the nourishment which comes to it is sucked or gulped and later to be mushed, and this nourishment entwines the child to itself – whether it be the milk of a mother, or later, the substance from another kingdom. There are spirit-arms embracing the infant coming from the highest-most aspect of the food taken in.

This is because the very nature of that food responds accordingly with the nature of the child, during the interaction of digestion, assimilation and absorption. It is the Christ-likeness that responds out from the child which draws the embracing forces back into it during this process … providing that it is a ‘live food’ which is being fed, quite naturally. (‘Live food’ denotes that which contains its natural fluids, without having been dried and reconstituted back again).

This lessens with age in respect to our abilities of calling forth the highest of aspects from that food which we take in. A man may well go on to poison himself, if it is that his own consciousness is marred with an evility that shall attract and extract much of the same from those substances he consumes.

Everything interacts – it is not just a case of what a fruit or vegetable may do for us, but much more of a question of what we do to it, and then how it reacts within us as a result.

The first understanding we may arrive at when consuming singular portions at intervals (which, by the way, we recommend for infants as a regular diet, yet with a daily repetition) is one of recognizing certain properties within the foods, and within our own responses as well. If the palate is confused then the overall impressioning shall be confused also.

Questions:

• What is the difference between the combining in a single recipe and the combining on a plate?
• What is the difference when the combining occurs in the stomach anyway?

The soulic forces which are characteristically expressing themselves in this world, circulate, aspirate, permeate, only in fluids. Within the body the first soulic interaction occurs within the saliva in the mouth intermingling with the substance placed on the tongue.

When we combine food in any given recipe the mixture is taken into the mouth at the one time (for the purpose of this exercise that is) whereas, if we are to eat different portions from the one plate concurrently, they shall be markedly changing – unless one put a little of each on to the fork and then shoveled it in all together (which some people do instinctively – children for example will mash all of the food in the bowl together and eat it that way).
 

Also, from this introductory idea you can see that the emphasis here is on the activity within the mouth, rather than the combusting later to occur in the stomach’s performance. All the way through there shall be parts of the material absorbed or discarded, however the transaction which is vital to the very etheric qualities as imparted in the food occur in the meeting of the tongue, the saliva, and under the tongue (rapidly passaging the body), whilst the vaporous activity travels up through the sinus passage and through to the pineal region as well. 

What is not to be seen or measured physically here is the reactive process entered into between the consumer and the consumed. As the very nature of the substance begins to penetrate the auric membrane of the consumer there are immediate decisions to be had as to whether or not these vitalities and their characteristics are desirable, or compatible, with the nature inside the individual. These decisions are first met with and dealt with in the mouth.

All along the digestive pathway there are reactions to this substance which encourage our own ‘inner’ discrimination and tolerance. Substances which are assimilated via the skin or directly fed into the veins deny the individual the response/reaction and invocatory powers which would otherwise be experienced through the mouth and out through the south pole of the trunk.
 

The child in utero is not obliged to make these discernments before his incarnation, and when born into this world goes on to delight in the findings of most mouthy engagements – in sensing their holiness because of that of his own. He will try this method with objects as well as food – trying to divine their characteristics – which will or will not be successful, depending upon whether or not the substance encountered is of organic origin or chemically/synthetically contrived.

As an adult he will lose something of his differentiation (as well as his powers of high invocation) and he shall forgo his single-mindedness through this lively experimentation. The consciousness itself becomes somewhat fragmented and he begins to attempt many tasks at the one time, not only is this apparent in the diet, but also when one tracks the thinking alongside the activities effected as well.

The consciousness itself is never interrupted out from being itself – the flow has eternal origins and persists onward likewise – but what is meant by ‘fragmented’ is to say that it is called hither and thither by the many undertakings the individual has bought into at any given time. It becomes episodic, rather than concurrent, and the reasoning processes themselves are given over to a preferred cross-referencing with the intuitive faculties, or to the lower animal. This of itself is not unhealthy, and yet the ideal lies in the individual being able to exert his reasoning uninterruptedly when choosing to do so at any given time. If a person is given to ‘flighty’ thinking which dashes its way subjectively too frequently to allow for anything else, there will be tensions that shall arise inwardly, spiking the thinker into yet more sporosis (sporadic intermissions). The effect is compounding.

Reason, however, alleviates this and draws the thinker away from their subjectivity and out into the world at large. It is the nature of reason to be freeing, rather than restrictive, for it is as one continuum, a wave that shall take our former selves into the oceans beyond our usual range and carry us into further capabilities than ever before arrived at.

The other benefit to be had in this exercise is in that we may begin to awaken simply to difference. The properties of engineering entitle this, as its magic in the world is determined by effort, exactness and differentiation. It is by differentiation that we learn not only what something is, but also what it is not – being the testing of certain reality and the discovery of that which will lead to a more reliable effort and exactness in our work within the world further along.