An excellent suit of armour I shall make

 

7. In earthly life, the first mirrors of our Conscience, the place where we shall see our fear reflected, are our fellow human beings; that is why human relationships are also a great lesson and common to everybody. All negative feelings (anger, jealousy, sorrow, hatred), which will be drawn out from within ourselves through our interaction with people, are none other than manifestations of Fear. In other words, their root is lack, absence of Love.

Every time a person provokes us, drawing out a negative feeling from within ourselves, let us contemplate that in fact this person has become the mirror which reflects a certain pending issue of our soul and in this way he subdues us into the process of realizing it and facing it. Fellow human beings are our co-workers in the completion of the work towards our Self. If our aim is to come to know our self and unite with It, then the exchange of energies with people is a valuable helper in this effort of ours to agitate the subconscious and with the sorting out.

In the largest part of our course, fear dominates our relationships with people, because we fear the still unknown sides of our self. For as long as we are not ready to diagnose and cure our fears, we build an excellent suit of armour around ourselves and each one of us becomes an Emilyan Monae:

With words, with physiognomy and with manners an excellent suit of armour I shall make and in this way I will face the wicked people without fear or weakness.

We often define fear ourselves, as long as we name whatever in particular causes us fear. We are trapped in fear, for however long we grant others the power and the capability to threaten us.

Achilles from the ditch in front of us emerges and with loud shouting scares us.

Nobody has such a power or capability since we do not provide it to him mentally. In reality we "project" an action to him that we ourselves take against our self, we use him as a mirror, where we truly see our person "threatening" our self. In other words, we project our fear to the other that such a thing can happen and in this way we make him capable of carrying it out. At times, we even "force" him to do it, by strongly projecting this negative thought of ours onto him, while he himself would not undertake such a thing on his own. They will want to harm me, Emilyan Monae anticipates.

The more we project the threat against ourselves to the people around us, the more we become unable to love them, because we bind them to the reflection of a negative emanation, we burden them with deeds of negative return and we immobilize them in behaviours, which serve specific aims we have designed for our self.

With words, with physiognomy and with manners the sovereign from Western Libya also built his suit of armour.  Out of fear that he is not worthy of being loved for what he is, he lost his identity, making a desperate effort to construct and maintain his misery.

They generally liked him in Alexandria, the ten days he stayed there, the sovereign from Western Libya Aristomenes, son of Menelaus. Likewise his name, his attire too, decently, greek. He gladly accepted the honours, but did not seek them; he was modest. He would buy greek books, especially historical and philosophical. But above all he was a man of few words. He must have had profound thoughts, people said, and it is natural for such men not to talk a lot.    Neither profound thoughts did he have, nor anything else. A fortuitous, silly man. He took a greek name, dressed as a Greek, he learned to behave more or less like the Greeks; and his soul trembled lest he chance to spoil the rather good impression by speaking greek with formidable barbarian expressions, and Alexandrians start making fun of him, as is their habit, the horrible wretches. That is why he restricted himself to a few words, being awfully careful with the conjugations and the accent; and he got quite bored as he had words piled up within himself.

The suit of armour of the sovereign is built on imitation. Fear cultivates the illusion of resemblance in people and drives them to be subordinated, consciously or unconsciously, to the command of simulation. Out of the desire to coexist harmoniously with fellow human beings, they take refuge in imitation, renouncing the responsibility of uniqueness, but in reality, they desecrate Nature. Until man becomes consciously aware of his uniqueness, he will use other people's criteria in order to judge and decide for his own life, he will compare his life according to data of earthly parameters and he will get carried away by life plans that are in force for other people.

Arrogance is the daughter of shame; praises are not needed any more to those who wished to grow up. The sovereign makes do with the rather good impression, provided that he accepts the honours of people, all the more so gladly, because he is not ready yet to claim what he really yearns: their love. He faces in this way the wicked people, that fortuitous, silly man, reminding us also of that other young man, who had ensured the favour of Alexander Valas and didn't get upset by losing a silly victory, because he knew that irrespective of the struggle's outcome, if he had secretly commanded it - / the flatterers, would have given first prize even to his crippled chariot.

Praises are not love; Conscience knows this. Earthly man, however, overlooks it as long as he still needs the falsehood of praise and people's confirmation. And while within himself he knows the truth: that a wheel broke, that he was coarse, that he lost a victory, it is important to him to appear first in people's eyes, to be the young man most glorified. And the sovereign feels he is bored and is not happy, but his soul trembles lest he chance to lose his suit of armour and the truth be revealed.

In his effort to keep the armour of imitation, he expands fear. The lie becomes so convenient and convincing, until some moment, when he loses track of his way; he forgets when he constructed his suit of armour and why. And at some point in time he stops feeling that he is wearing the armour, stops being conscious of his misery. He then considers it natural to have lost his self, without even suspecting that he desecrated his Nature.

8. On the face of two other characteristic carriers of a suit of armour, the Christian bishop Pegasius and the Christian princeling Julian, we clearly see that the more we try to protect ourselves, the more it makes us suffer, because we become the prey of suspicion and fear and we move away from love and unity.

They entered the exquisite temple of Athena the Christian bishop Pegasius the Christian princeling Julian. They looked with desire and affection at the statues – but they talked to each other hesitantly, with innuendos, with ambiguous words, with phrases full of caution, since neither could be certain of the other and consequently they were afraid of being exposed, the liar Christian bishop Pegasius the liar Christian princeling Julian.

And yet, beneath the lies that cover them, the bishop and the princeling feel "happy", because they reached high on the earthly hierarchy, without being concerned by the fact that within themselves the falsehood of fear prevails and the truth of love is missing. Because after all, men honour the happy ones and pseudo-poets praise them.

The abundant praises and flatteries suit everybody. All are eminent, glorious, mighty, beneficent; every undertaking of theirs the wisest.

Our earthly world is being guided today and will continue to be guided by men without love – formal and pompous ugly carved masks – as long as men live in the frequency of fear. The scared and cruel man will dominate, the "clanging cymbal" according to Paul, the "clay" and "corrupted"; the disgusting one, according to Apollonius of Tyana: who even deceives by imposture a few (without enough training).  

This delusion of the two-sided deception is, moreover, betrayed by the boastful words of Emilyan Monae: he believes that he will manage to deceive people, a conviction his mind built; because arrogance is a characteristic of the mind, and not of the heart. That is why we always call forth an intellectual fabrication in order to justify our fears towards our self or boast of the effectiveness of our suit of armour:

... But of all  who approach me none will know where my wounds lie, my vulnerable parts, beneath the lies that cover me.

In this way, it is possible in the earthly kingdom for a man to climb up to the highest ranks. However, in the spiritual Hierarchy of creatures, where no fortune-hunter can fool the Legislators, he lies just as low as he is far from love and the truth of his existence. The mark for the setting of the boundaries of our internal evolution, in our course towards Perfection, is given exclusively and only by our ability to love. And only then does man become capable of loving, when even the smallest trace of fear is lost from within. Even the smallest trace of the sense of threat, of insecurity and of sense of vulnerability can destroy any love.

The armours of fear are as many and different as people are. But they all have a common characteristic: the fact that the man who wears them is not in unity with his self. Unity means becoming conscious. The man who lives in dissociation and duality sleeps conscienceless, quiet, and happy, just like Nero, and can become an unintentional generator of great disaster, like the young Greek sophist in the palace of Salome:

On a golden platter Salome brings the head of John the Baptist to the young Greek sophist who out of love leans with indifference. "Salome", answers the young man "I wanted them to bring me your head". He said this jokingly. And the following day one of her runner slaves comes carrying the head of his Lover all blonde on a golden platter. But the sophist while studying had forgotten his wish of yesterday. He sees the dripping blood and is disgusted. This bleeding thing be gone from his sight he commands, and carries on reading Plato's dialogues.

They smile, indifferent and cruel, although happy, the non-conscious people, the ones who are still in the first stages of evolution. The small past of the human soul's course entails a "cruel" psychism, because the earthly human being is kneaded with the basic characteristic of matter:  hardness.

The light of the soul is still too weak to penetrate the thick matter of the bodies of earthly man and to outflank the loss. Desires for matter and love for the positive deceive him. He transforms the universal energy into low, material vibrations and only through his conscious-lower self. That is why he completely identifies with earthly life and its manifestations. He judges through logic, which is his blind sickness and he believes only what he sees; but delusion and injustice is his judgment. His inflexible intellectual structures are hardly influenced or turned around. He lives in the narrow limits of a "personal" life and the "ego" is concerned with its problems only.

His consciousness is confined, as it is found constantly focused on the outside world, on the forms that surround him, on his feelings and thought, on the materialization of his earthly desires. The centripetal power of the "ego" urges his soul towards compulsory experiences, by self-invalidating the right of free will: his earthly desires are bonds for his soul, they possess him, they cover needs from which he cannot unhook himself and they constitute a coercion of his mind in the sole direction of their satisfaction.

Weak, inside the stiffness of Matter, earthly man is far from wisdom and the Power since the real Power is accompanied by knowledge and wisdom; that is why it accompanies those who have proved they are capable of directing it according to the will of God.


Not cruelty. But Leniency, Sorrow, Concession, Kindness (these, of course, prudently, without exaggeration) there is also Power and wisdom.

9. Emilyan Monae, the sovereign from Western Libya, the liar princeling Julian, the liar bishop Pegasius, Nero, the sophist who is reading Plato in Salome's palace, lived beneath the lies that covered them for a long time.  We, as human beings rivet ourselves in fear for a whole life or whole lives and most importantly, the lack of our becoming conscious pushes us to committing small or big crimes against ourselves and others. Our ignorance forces us to sin, to fall wide of the mark, to become "evil".

Socrates said that "nobody is evil of his own free will" meaning that the lack of awareness leads to Evil:

The (so called) wicked man hates badness as much as the (so called) good man. Only his appreciation of what is bad is different. He explains his actions to himself and does not consider them bad. At the same time that he is committing a very bad action - a crime - there are many actions (things) which he disapproves and would not do because he considers that they are bad. So, from one point of view, a/no "bad man" /does not / exists. We are all - variously - all, and all want to be, good.

When you feel you are wicked and it pains you and you have qualms of conscience you are, in reality, wicked no more because you dislike your actions and they no longer belong to you. But when you are wicked with no qualms of conscience and you rather enjoy, then you are wicked unconsciously, so are not wicked at all, for you are not responsible. Then there exists no wickedness after all? *


(*The above texts were originally written in English by C. P. Cavafy).

The stage of ignorance is determinism in the process of evolution and nobody can avoid it. For instance, by the earthly analogy, a man can not come of age if he does not first go through the stage of childhood. If ignorance does not precede and indeed if someone does not remain in it as long as it is necessary, he cannot pass to knowledge.

What exists for everyone is only whatever is contained in his conscience and anything he has not gained yet, does not exist.

From the moment we are found incarnated here, we are all "sick and travellers", meaning weak and on the way, that is why "we have no sin". He, who falls wide of the mark and is not aware of it, cannot possibly be judged, regardless of the fact that one day he will seek to invalidate the bad result of his even non-conscious inconsiderateness. The notion of sin begins to exist from the moment man acquires consciousness of the way and his destiny. In order for someone to deviate from a course, he must have already traced it, and be travelling it consciously. He, who chooses Good consciously, the way of regaining his highest positive-divine properties, becomes conscious of his inconsiderateness, knows deep within himself even his potential mistake and automatically enters the procedure of returning to his target, each time he deviates from it.     
     
The final Good as a highest target, which is always One, is none other than "evil", which our soul transformed into good with hard work and pain. "Evil", the absence of positive-divine properties within ourselves, does not constitute a self-existent condition of the self; besides we define it, being dependant on good. Evil, for example, is the ignorance of good, our doubt about good. Evil is the overtaking or the exceeding of good. Evil is the bad use of good. Evil is the fatigue or the non-endurance of good. Evil is good that is not ready.

That is why our retrogressions to "evil", the outcome of fear, are inevitable. It is so deeply rooted in the human soul that we will be defeated time and time again only to rise once more and fight harder, until we are announced victors of the Light. Let us not forget that even the Lord struggled with Temptation three times.

10. In our era conscience has been focused exclusively on the material aspect of life. Our World is seized by ignorance – and ignorance is the "Evil". It is the era when the Beast reigns, meaning greed, dependence, indifference, heartlessness. And all this is the lack of the Knowledge of Truth. This Knowledge is so important that it made the First Created feel like stealing from the Tree of "Knowledge of Good and Evil", and afterwards to be punished by being sent away from what they wanted to steal. Because Knowledge is created, cultivated, and only then can one taste Its fruits, and not by trying to violently extract something one did not struggle to cultivate.

This is how it happened with the previous Earthly civilization. It, too, was punished by returning to start all over again, in order to be able to become worthy of the Knowledge, and not steal it; also look at the other myth of Prometheus, who stole Fire from the Gods, and was punished. Naturally, punishment is none other than the results of man's action itself, and no God "imposes" it.

Knowledge is indispensable to man, who does not wish to remain blind. Knowledge is the love for God and whoever is looking for Him must seek it. Because we saw that a man may be absolutely in harmony with earthly life, may have in fact climbed to the highest earthly ranks, reading Plato, studying the Scriptures and praying, being "aware" of everything but yet, not understanding anything! Unless he starts the real journey of self-knowledge, the internal work of becoming conscious, so that he clears his heart from fears and re-unites with Love, he will remain exiled, condemned in the darkness of matter and external surface.

However, the gates of Nature are closed to all of those who laugh, indifferent and cruel, who laugh, strangers in a miserable country.

Knowledge constitutes the bulwark of life. There is no way for it to be given to us externally, however, it is revealed to us each time we look within ourselves. External learning is not able to lead us to self-realization and unity. On the contrary, sometimes it provides us with an alibi to avoid the rugged road of experience. Experience is stripped of its substance and is substituted by names, definitions, notions, theories, intellectual forms.

(…) – comments, texts, technology, scriptures, too much interpretation in volumes of hellenisms.

Intellectual ability becomes an ideal shelter, which substitutes reality. The mind, chiefly in its high achievements, misleads: man considers himself spiritual, without in reality having the slightest idea what the real Life of the human Spirit is. Our spiritual thisness, the spirit, is a clearly experiential reality, something very specific and it has no relation to theoretical elaborations.  

The passage from Fear to Love, the purging of the heart of the fears it has been carrying, is a vast journey of experiences, whose residuum is instilled within ourselves slowly and gradually. The activation of knowledge is not the product of mental decision or mental processing, but the product of the work on the equivalent experiences.

The young man of twenty three came to read. But after he had only read for ten minutes, he quit in order to give himself up to daydreaming. To the erotic warmth that came over his flesh today … It is then, however, that he totally belongs to the books, because then man draws up the knowledge from within himself and becomes spiritual: when he lives, when he experiences; not when he reads.

The activation of the fifth energy centre, that which radiates and accepts energies of intellectual texture, is just one stage in the course of evolution of the human being and certainly not the final one. The process of evolution is not completed with the attainment of mental development, but with the faculty of intuitive conception of the truth, and the ability to offer love to fellow humans. It is by then that the mind rises to the ideals and this point is the border, beyond which the philosopher becomes wise and the scientist an intuitive knower.

11. As conscience lives the big Night of fear for a series of incarnations, man confuses the notion of faith with reverence and submission. He considers faith identical to blind obedience to something, which he places higher than himself for functional reasons, and which he hands over to an authority. He is riveted in this way in doctrines, shapes, systems, and formalities of every kind, succumbing to the need to suppress his doubts.

Through rallying, ridiculous systems both in conception and application, like the ones that Julian seeing negligence of the gods, tried to organize, for a while man seeks his identity in things outside himself and considers it natural to be one of the many units, / in the great addition that has so many numbers.

Counted in the total sum and completely identified with the partial – a family, a group, a system, an idea, a theory – man will manifest his duality each time, by experiencing repeated intellectual and emotional polarizations. As long as people remain prey to their internal polarizations, human groups will disagree, will split, will be divided constantly and will make war with each other.

We were exterminated there in Salamina. (…) What were we doing there in Salamina carrying fleets and fighting naval battles. (…) … why should this naval battle be taking place and be demanded …why should we have to get up, abandon everything, and go there to battle miserably at sea.

Disagreement and division are nevertheless an unavoidable way for man, as they derive from the very duality of his nature. Conflicts, contrary to the instinct that calls people to unite and co-operate, are the necessary frictions of matter, the inner processing and the sorting out of the lower self. The duality that torments the internal world – and my heart – like a corpse – is buried – is necessary to be expressed, to become known, to be released in order to be transformed into internal unity. The external schisms, therefore, will be unavoidable as long as the confusion of internal contradictions lasts. Situations like confrontation, dis-agreement, dis-cord, dis-unity, doubt, will accompany earthly man because they will exist within himself.

Patience is needed, self-restraint and steely power, for real tranquility to be conquered; besides, the more man advances, he sees that exercises become demanding. Even when he reaches the point of asking himself why should he have to collide, why should it be demanded he go and battle miserably, he will realize that time and experiences are needed, until the thought the right one had an effect, until he surpasses polarization and installs internal peace within himself permanently. Innumerable times he will see his self regressing and submitting:

to our intrigues we must return – to catch up with our boring political struggle again.

Besides,

At the conference of Naupactus, Agelaus said the right things. Don't fight Greeks against Greeks any more.  (…) It's no longer the time to fight against each other. Words of wisdom. But they did not have any effect. In the terrible, cursed days of Kinos Kefalon, Magnesia and Pydna, many of the Greeks must have remembered the words of wisdom, which did not have any effect.

In the great addition of generalizations and oversimplifications, which provides him with a feeling of security and unity, even a false one, man gathers experiences, collects material of the soul in order to work it out later on. Each one of us attracts and is attracted to the experience which is each time indispensable to him. The structure and the parameters of every experience, which man himself chooses – since we ourselves set the stages which our soul goes through - offer him the perfect conditions and the perfect opportunity to get to know exactly all that he needs to know in the path of his evolution, at the specific moment.

Interacting with others, man will experientiate the whole range of emotions, even their finest hues, so as to conquer his emotional self-sufficiency some day. His intellectual horizon will broaden and his mind will be sharpened, so that he will manage to grasp the meaning of two contradictory terms and recognize them as correct. Most important of all, he will learn to control what incites him each time, and recognize when it is the voice of his self and when it is fear. In this way, he will come to know his Self and trust Love.

That is why the way of disagreement is a deterministic way for man, even in the highest ranks of evolution. For instance, people like Paul and Barnabas, who walked on the steps opened for them by Him – the incarnation of Unity and Love – after a long period of comradeship and collaboration, disagreed and went their separate ways. "And the contention was so sharp between them, that they departed asunder one from the other" (Acts of the Apostles 15:36-41) for an insignificant cause - the choice of the most appropriate student to follow them. They parted, even though they had consciousness of their Task and that is why they aimed at joint efforts and collaboration; not out of mere instinct, but out of knowledge of how important collaboration of souls here, on Earth is.

A reason that entangles us in such situations is the fear that we are being threatened, something that is not valid, because the courses of peoples' lives are always parallel, therefore no one is threatened by anyone else. The conflicts are impossible, an imaginary fear which by itself disorientates the course in the name of some imminent, yet forever non-existent, conflict. Other people do not act towards us, and we must not act towards them either. Each one acts only for and towards his self; so we see how useless and foolish it is to produce any negative feeling towards others within ourselves. When we comprehend this deeply, then we will get rid of the fear constantly being caused by our fellow men. 

The real conflict is something that happens esoterically in man and does not involve others in essence. When man finds himself in an inner imbalance, then he directs the waves of his disturbed energy to the outside, resulting in its appearing in his immediate environment as tense relationships with the others. That is why the man who experiences real tranquility does not face disturbances in his relationships either, even if he associates with persons that provoke him. This man can accept his fellow human beings exactly as they are, and may also talk with them, since, being in a higher vibration than them, can hyper-cover them.

From the depths of the centuries and till their end, His words are the Word of Peace; and he who recognizes Him, does not know Confrontation…

12. For as long as man does not work internally in order to cure his soul of fears, he will mentally recognize the words of wisdom of Agelaus, of Jesus and of all those who lived teaching the right things, but this will not be enough to prevent him from all kinds of conflicts; the City will follow him, he will roam the same streets and he will always arrive in this city, as he will continue to experientiate the materialization of his inner conflicts externally. Because what man deeply desires is to finalize his Faith, but after he explores it first, tests it and confirms it innumerable times so as to let his self go freely with It completely, voluntarily and consciously.

The farther away man is, the more inaccessible and enigmatic he finds the image of God. Because God works in silence and leaves those traces only, that awaken and stimulate the spirit. Respect replaces fear, when man reaches the point of forming a system of values and criterion of evaluation.

Because we broke their statues because we removed them from their temples, the gods did not die for this reason at all.

Faith neither aims at blind obedience to the commands of external circumstances, nor at the withdrawal from the claim of desires, nor, of course, at an insubstantial groundless optimism. Such a faith - which does not permit man to violate laws and customs, and leave the accepted and insufficient straightforwardness, even to break the statues of the gods – is reduced to folly and solace, and draws man away from the Self and the elevation towards God. What meaning could it have for man to keep the laws and the customs, not because he really wishes to, but because he is afraid of the destructive act?

On the contrary, the man who has been awakened becomes conscious of the fact that there does not exist any "faith" for him, which would anticipate his experience. Then, he ceases to be counted in the total sum and he devotes himself exclusively to his internal edifice of faith-knowledge, the only one which can lead him not only to discover the real reason why the gods died, but the way to resurrect them within himself as well. His sole guide in his steps and his sole property is the love of God, as he has known It through his personal path of initiation.

Then, he turns the focus of his consciousness inwardly in the pursuit and realization of his personal destiny in the specific incarnation, the evolution of his personal truth; his fervent desire is to carry his stone to the great edifice of Progress; to find the distinct life task which he has undertaken – words, volition or actions – and attend to it. Mainly, he ceases to spend his energy with people and activities, which wear him out. He then starts to use the supreme opportunity, which was given to him with his human incarnation, in the best way, fulfilling the advice of the Master in his life:
 

And if you cannot live your life the way you want it, at least try this   as much as you can: don't disgrace it in the crowding contact with the world, with so much coming and going and all the talk. Don't disgrace it by taking it, often dragging it around and exposing it to the daily nonsense of relationships and associations until it becomes like a burdensome stranger.

He keeps his mouth closed, his mind open and his powers in vigilance. When the noise silences, when the channels of talking to people close, he understands better what comes from within himself, what is always present at a deeper level.

(…) There are the clubhouses of course, but I do not belong to any club. The certain thing is that I don't feel boredom, because these last years my poetic work engages me the most. (…)

This Voice leads him to work with his inner world, his city, so that his course would be smoothed out. For as long as someone knows his self and the causality of the Universe, he understands that wherever there is inner setting in order, there the external path is revealed, since nothing that is happening, is accidental and in vain. If, consequently, he wants to find new places and other seas, what he ought to do is first organize his "inside", because no help is effective if man himself is not ready for it. One would have noticed in his life that steps always follow an effort of his to put things on a correct basis; otherwise every effort is destined to damnation.  

The aim of self-knowledge, as was already known to our ancient ancestors, was exactly to steer man towards recognizing the "product" of his soul. If our life has a chance to change, if the world has a chance to change, this is only changing "what comes out" – to remember another reference in Jesus' words on the same topic.