The Four Centred Disciplines

The Four Centred Disciplines

I am going to take a break from writing blogs for a couple of weeks while I work on my third book in the 33rd Sage trilogy. I hope you have enjoyed the blogs of the Elements of Man and in a few weeks I will return with some new and exciting blogs and hopefully news on the publication date for the 33rd Sage and the Initiate. In the meantime please enjoy the following parable and the teaching on the four centred disciplines. For those who have read the 33rd Sage, now might be a good time to revisit it as the lessons learnt from reading the Elements will transform your next reading.

Blessings and Peace to you all and may the Godforce that lives inside you point you in the direction of your bliss.

In Old China an emperor called his advisors to him and asked, "Who am I?" They said, "You are the Sun, the light, you are the essence."

"Why do you do what I ask," said the emperor? They answered, "Because you are God and we are followers of God."

"If I am God, then I must be all-powerful," said the emperor, and the advisors said, "That is true."

The emperor asked again, "Why do you do the things I ask you?" The advisors said, Because you are God."

"Why do you not just not do them?"

"Because you would have us put to death."

The emperor realized that there was fear. He said, "If I am God, why does not the flower grow where I ask it?" The wise men said, "We will plant it where you want it."

"Why does it not rain when I want it to rain?" The wise men said, "It does not rain because when you want it to rain, that is not what you really want."

The emperor walked away into his garden and looked at the flowers and the birds; he looked at the small stream, at the little fish within it. He saw butterflies and the greenness of the grass, and the softness of the moss. He thought, if I am God, why did I not create this? What is real? I am only God to the people, not to the plants, or the flowers or birds. If there is a God, there must be a God of all; but the flowers do not follow anyone; they do not go here or there for fear of dying. The butterfly does not fear the frog as it flies by, even though the frog will eat it. What is reality?

He returned to the palace and said to his advisors, "What is real. What is true? What is reality?

In your world there is much beauty. But the beauty that you see, hear, touch or taste is only a particle of the beauty that lies around you. In your world are four disciplines that will allow you to find reality.

1. Physical Discipline 

First is a physical discipline, not exercise of the body, but being proud of what you are, and not of what you want to be. The discipline of being able to look at yourself in a stream or mirror and say, I am proud of what I am. Controlling the body and it's movements and not allowing it to move you is a discipline, realizing that you are a carriage that has within a most important rider.

Physical discipline means walking straight and sitting straight, knowing that when you cross a leg or an arm to someone, you are limiting communication. Physical discipline means not running or hurrying; physical discipline means knowing your body, it's muscles, it's bone. It means exercise, not in a religious sense but realizing that you are the God Force, that your body is what it should be and being proud of it.

2. Health Discipline

Foremost within that is respecting yourself. Above respecting all things is respecting yourself. You cannot respect other things without first respecting yourself, healthwise. The foods that Old Chinese suggests are not prescribed by a religion or a discipline. Old Chinese does not suggest that you should not eat meat because it will get you to your higher self, or from this plane faster. There is no diet, no choice of food for a specific, moralistic cause that will get you closer to your higher self.

We know that you are herbivorous and so meat is foreign to your system. There is no needed to worry about the killing of animals. Since there is no death of anything, you should not worry about it. Old Chinese suggest no meat because it causes damage in your body. Meat eliminates calcium from your system, and many other things. The reason for eliminating root vegetables is that the cellulose in them interferes with the correct digestion of carbohydrates.

The food, diet or health you choose should respect your body first. Of secondary importance is the evolution of spirit within the food, but first is evolution of spirit within yourself. Health discipline is the realization that each and everything that is wrong in your body, or that feels wrong with it, is a mental though form. There are no I curable diseases, only incur able people.

You can learn through the discipline of health that when you have a soreness or a congestion, it is because of your though patterns, because of dealing with a person or a resentment. Thought becomes a very important governor of your disciplined health perspective. Eating sugar and salt are equivalent to eating sand; and gluten flour, or anything that contains it, interferes with assimilation of vitamins in most personages.

Respecting yourself nutritionally is not some faddistic religion, not saying I am doing this so will be better than that person. You are doing this because you respect yourself, and you respect yourself because you are the God Force within you. You are your own reality, and so, by respecting yourself, you recognize what the emperor did not. It is easier for a person who is working on their spiritual evolution, or in essence is trying to come in tune.

3. Harmony

In-tuneness means the ability to perceive, to feel to hear, to touch, to taste everything at each and every moment of the day. This is in-tuneness with everything that is going on around you. When the musical instrument is in tune, it plays a harmonious chord. It is pleasing, it is awareness of what is around, and it allows others to feel harmonious. In tune is to be harmonious with all your surroundings.

It is easier for you to be out of tune in your world, than it is to be in tune. More on your world are inharmonious than in tune. It is easier for you not to have a nutritional body, than have a nutritional body. Most people in your world complain or have something wrong with them. That way, if you are like them, nothing is wrong.

Your world thinks that if you at spiritually disciplining yourself, you should be free from disease. That is not true, for the more in tune you become with your nutrition, the more out of tune those around you will feel. They will centre on you, and find every little thing you are reacting to. Before, when someone said to you, "You are not too smart in certain parts," You would have laughed. Now, like a finely tuned instrument, just a little outward vibration can cause you to come out of tune and play a disharmonious chord. It is easier for you to not be in tune. Those who strive for spiritual nutritional health are like fish out of water. In the water it is easy, but once out of your environment, out of what everyone else is doing, you become not very important.

A harmonious person is one that is aware of everything around them and does not combat things. If someone comes to you in an inharmonious way, and you react to them in an inharmonious way, you only create disharmony. The Nazarene once said, "Resist not evil." Your world thought that meant something else. It meant when evil, or negativity comes to you, do not fight it. If you fight it, you create war, dissension. Relax. Be as the rock on the shore as the wave lashes against it - stand firm - and when the tide goes out, the rock stands alone, beautiful. Watch those things that are thrown in, do not try to combat, or jump against the wave.

Your world finds great disharmony; it is the world of disharmony, or the university of disharmony. In reality, disharmony is one of the great dilemmas of your physical plane. How harmonious are you to yourself? - not to those around you; to yourself. Do you feel the new morning? Do you touch the wind?

4. Balance

The fourth discipline is balance; balance of self. In Old China, there was a teacher who told the student, "If you relax or meditate for four to five minutes each day, you would find great things happening."

The student was enlightened and found that it caused an ecstasy. He returned to the teacher and said, "I was so delighted with the results that I am now meditating twenty four hours a day. And the teacher said, "You are unbalanced."

The person who meditates half a second a day is unbalanced. Those who sleep twelve hours a day are as unbalanced as those who try to maintain on two hours of sleep. Those who eat constantly are unbalanced, as are those who eat not at all.

You have come to be within your world, not to escape it. You have reincarnated to be a part if your world, not to be a recluse, a monk, a mystic or hermit; not to withdraw from community or institutional situations, but to live in your world. By living in it you can maintain a balance. Those who can walk on hot stones, or levitate for hours, or, at a breath, can cause a tree to change from here to there; they too are unbalanced. Why do you need to know how to walk on coals? And what will levitation do for you? It may cause you a nosebleed if it goes too high.

You must have a little imbalance within balance. Approximately 3200 years ago, the creation of yin-yang developed in China, to create a balance of spiritual essence and military difficulties. You should watch this theory that puts negative before positive, and remember, he who walks the middle of the road gets hit from both directions.

Consider your eyes: if your right eye saw equally as your left eye, you could not see. If your left ear hear as equally as the right, you could not hear. If your right arm had the same strength as your left arm, there would be inertia. The same strength in the right and left leg would cause inertia. There must be a little imbalance within the balance. Instead of walking down the middle of your path, go from side to side and you will experience energies of either side without getting off the path.

How do you maintain balance in an unbalanced world? How do you ride a muddy water buffalo? Or shake hands with a tiger? Each individual cries out for balance within, for solitude; not a twenty four hour solitude. Each individual needs no more than one minute per hour of the day, and you can balance. But how? When you fight the subconscious  or the would so hard. Consider these things: First, the higher self projects through you outwardly. Energy comes through you from the higher self, which is a combination of all you are or have been, the God Force. There is no energy returned to it. This is a one-way energy path.

Second, as long as you act subconsciously, energy will try to come through the subconscious mind, which is like trying to pick rice in a rainstorm. The energy - or the power, or the inspiration or the light from the higher self - that activates the subconscious, controlling all of your movements, feelings and moods, will cause impulse instead of intuition. It will cause doubt instead of faith; it will cause negativity. By disciplining yourself for twenty four minutes, you can relax the subconscious and the higher self will circumvent it, bypassing it.

Chung Fu

May the infinite self inside each of you reach out today and touch deeply the heart of another. A new age mystic once said, "Love is the answer, Love is the key."

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