The Call – can you hear it?

          Before I answered the CALL to seek out the father, the meaning of life, find the Holy Grail, call it what you will – I cursed the darkness, I railed against religiosity.  I felt like I was orphaned.  I felt like I was left in a basket on the doorstep of people who did not know or understand me, but loved me and raised me – at times somewhat apprehensively, but raised me nonetheless.  I was a happy child to the world at large, but I had my dark side.  I said my prayers before I went to bed.  I went to Sunday school.  I was for all intensive purposes a good kid.  Nevertheless, I was restless.

        As I grew older, I began to read fairy tales, mythology, science fiction, philosophy, horror novels, I loved getting lost in foreign lands, and other worlds, other realities – but it was not enough.  I felt the pull of nature, I spent a lot of time outside getting lost in the woods; playing in the creeks getting wet and dirty coming home late and missing dinner, only to be banished to my room, my sanctuary, my fortress of solitude, my stronghold and castle keep; once again to lose myself to my inner world, my interior landscape.

        I did not know it then, but I was immersed in the world of spirit, of the soul, I was a PUER AETERNUS – an eternal youth.  I flew high.  I traveled the underworld of the unconscious, I was immortal.  I lived completely in my own little universe.  I slept with a night light because in the dark and in the shadows, I could see spectral beings dancing across the astral plane, and hear the cries of the spirits who could not move on.

 

        In the world of spirit I did not feel alone, but I had no guide; at least not one that I knew of.  I felt things that I knew other kids did not feel, for if they did they did not share their experiences with me.  When I felt like I was going to lose my mind, in a moment of complete vulnerability, I told my father that I needed to speak to someone.  I was told that I had my parents to talk to.  I wonder years later when I sunk into a total psychotic state if my father ever remembered that moment, I have never forgotten.

        My child’s ears or heart could not hear the clarion call of spirit and the invisible world beyond.  As a young adult I ran amok with reckless abandon; it was not until I began to immerse myself in the study of Shamanism that I began to understand that communing with nature and the mercurial spirits of form that I had allies, guides, and messenger spirits there to usher me along.  I know now that all the years that I tested the boundary of my mortality, by pushing the limits with my out of control behavior that I had a guardian Archangel looking after me, and that I had a purpose on this earthly plain. 

        Now as an adult I have heard the call, felt the call, and I know what I am here to do.  At first, I thought I was a messenger.  I was here to spread the word that we must as a race of people, humankind, come together, and put aside our differences, and work as one body to evolve and seek our higher selves.  However, as of late I have been charged to teach, not just inspire, and share a message.  I am no longer a messenger, but have been charged with the duty of being an Emissary.  So, that being said, I am on a mission, as I believe we are all should be.  To look beyond the material world, see the light, and attain a higher vibration, to be in tune with the one song that is the Universe – should be our communal aspiration. 

        I am not out to save the world or any grandiose idea of that nature.  I am here to share with you my story of how I have healed my diseased mind, healed my ravaged body, enlivened my spirit, and plumbed the depth of my soul to actualize and realize myself to know my Quintessence, the fifth element, my higher self, to embrace and come to know that we are all God stuff, we are all AETHER   As the Alchemist would say:  “The All in The All,” we are all connected.  

 

        I have called what I know to be inherent in all of us as – The Golden Impulse – The Soulful force to action to arouse the mind and spirit to seek its Higher Self.

 

          It is said – we are spirits having an earthly experience; if that is true then why is it we find ourselves in this world, in this the state, struggling for the basic of human needs.  Why is that six million people who desire and long for the same thing cannot agree to disagree, and agree to do the work, and rise above the petty contrivances and misconceived idea of separation  and live in peace and harmony and abundance and make a heaven here on Earth.  My answer to that is -Growing Pains – for we are in our spiritual infancy.

        We pay little attention to our souls.  Most of us could barely give an answer to what is a soul; let alone what a soul needs, longs for, or how to care for it.  We are moving at the speed of blight consuming everything in our eye line as we careen through life.  We need to wade out of the shallow end of the gene pool and head for deeper waters.  This is not a judgment, for what is a judgment but a decision.  Life is about choices, and making the right decisions.  I cannot choose for the whole of humanity, but I can choose for myself, and I choose to shine as bright and as long as I can.  I thirst and hunger for a life deep and wide, full of meaning and purpose, and rich in experience.  It is not for me to judge what has value and meaning, but life is short.  We need to wake up. 

        To do that we must first not just change behavior, but change beliefs; we need not have the same beliefs, but at least agree to the universal truths that we can all agree upon.  Let us focus on what we want, what we desire, and come to a consensus.  Let us not waste time, energy, on what does not serve the common good.  Let us answer the call to be and do Gods work.  Let us plant seeds of love, and tend to the ground of all being.  Let us work together daily for the common good, to lift up each other for no other reason than it is the right thing to do.  Answer the call – and see yourself in the eyes of others.  We all share the same soul – what the Alchemists call the – Anima Mundi – the World Soul.  Let us listen to, feel, and embrace that nagging sensation that things are not as they should be.  You can feel that right.  Watch the news…  Read the paper…  Listen to people complain, blame, and shame…  It seems everyone needs an adversary.  If it is not me, it must be you, or it must be that time that that thing happened or what did not go right, or our way.  Be aware of that annoying ego who tries to keep you stuck.  The ego will jam the signal of your Golden Impulse, The Call.  The ego is selfish and self-serving.  It wants you for itself.  It is an over bearing lover, a doting parent that will not let you leave the house or run with scissors.  Be still and know that you are one with God.  Be still and listen.  Sometime you will over hear someone’s conversation and swear that they are talking to you.  On the other hand, you see the same word repeatedly, a word, which you never did really ever use or see before, and now you see it everywhere, and you just heard it in that over heard conversation.  Then you realize you do know that word – you heard it long ago and it makes you think of a friend you have not seen in years, and then that friend calls you unexpectedly.  Or, I love this one it happens to me all the time, I swear I see that person once, twice throughout the day, then I realize what is happening and then I see that person everywhere I turn – at the store, the gas station, at the red light, at some point I realize, I am being paged, summoned if you will.  Maybe that person is thinking of me, maybe that person passed on.  However, because we all have tunnel vision, we myopically move through life with our selective hearing, and selective memory.  We do not heed the call.  Opportunity knocks, synchronicity – Gods breadcrumbs are trampled underfoot, and we live as if we are not expecting to be called.  I am telling you are being called, you are being called. 

        Listen with your Heart.  Be quiet, be still, unplug, unwind, release, and relinquish, surrender – choose to be open, and vulnerable and accepting – choose to see a better world, choose to choose again until you see what you want, want what you desire, desire what you have, desire what you love, love what you are, be what you are being called to do.  Be the light, be the love, Ask, Believe, and Receive with all your Heart, Soul, with all your Spirit with the Universal Mind of God know that heaven is within you, within me, we are one and we are all together, then you will hear the call.  Then you will be the call.

        For those who teach learn, those who learn teach.  The hand that gives also receives.  You cannot live a life of spirit, in spirit without wanting to share.  Now, that you have answered the call, now what, where am I being called to, you may be wondering?  To that, I say: to service.  Remember it is not the destination, but the journey.  A life of service has many and varied paths.  The path is the next step in the process of the journey home.

Jeffrey Scott Turnbull

The Longing for Home & Meaning…

 

                  Have you felt at times that you were in this World, but not of it? It is not uncommon to feel this way. For many of us these are the first stirrings, the first pangs of discontent with the world of matter, or the physical World. Many wisdom schools tell us this World is “Maya,” or Illusion. We ask ourselves – “Is this all there is?” We know there must be more. The religions we grew up with talked about heaven. That if we lived a good life, and if blindly followed the dog-ma we were taught that we would enter the pearly gates, and we would see our loved ones, and be with God; it was just that simple.

We were made to feel guilty if we thought, or felt, or acted counter intuitively to what we were taught. In essence, we had to be good children in the eyes of our religious communities, and especially in the eyes of God. Read your scripture, do, and behave as you are expected, and be a good person. Some fundamental sects do not believe in doing good works; simply by professing that you accept Jesus as your Lords and savior you are born again.

You would think that that would be enough. However, still we ache for something more. Even if we are completely lost to and in the World of matter, and illusion that does every-thing to distract us from the reason why we are here, we still feel a pull, a nagging feeling in the depth of our soul, to desire that which is beyond knowing – in scriptures, in ritual, in community. We desire to have “Gnosis,” or direct knowledge or experience of God.

I would like to put it in terms that everyone can understand: We are homesick… Anyone who has missed their parents when they visited relatives all summer when they were kids, or went to summer camp, or even more direct and heartfelt, we miss a loved one who has passed on. I am man who never really knew his father. My father worked shift work; when he was home, he slept. I was repeatedly told not to wake my father. I was told to be quiet, and stay out of the way. We tend to fear that which we do not know or understand. I never knew my father, really. He passed before I had a child. My daughter told me once that she met him in heaven before she was born…. That gives me pause – for we are born with everything we are, and need, but this world – being the dream that it is we forget. There is a prayer that asks- “Lord, show me my face before I was born.”

I have spent my life seeking that face. I knew early on that something was not right. One day I realized sometime after my father: John Henry Turnbull – had passed that I had always longed for my father. No, I ached, pined, longed, yearned, out and out hungered for the father. Until recently, I have been reticent even to say the word god. I was angry, and I wanted answers.

I wanted to be home with father and feel that love that only union could provide. Wait what about the other parent, what about – mother. She had never left me; she helped me get this far, she has nurtured me, loved me, and provided comfort through my trials, and my quest. I know her well, I call her – Soul. Father spirit, Mother Soul, Sun and Moon, Gold and Silver, Anima and Animus – in the inner firmament that is my Soul, in the temple of my body we are one, I am home.

Jeffrey Scott Turnbull

The Gospel of Unity.

            The worlds’ inhabitants are distracted from the whole point of us being incarnated in physical form – to Love one another.  Can you imagine, if we could stop the wars, stop terrorism, and stop the separation between countries, and people of different religions, and socio-economic groups, and different political parties; if we could get beyond this great divide, we would be in the promise land.

 

            “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”  It doesn’t get any simpler than that.  I guess it is harder than is sounds.  I guess it’s hard to love those we do not know, when we don’t even know ourselves’.

 

            Creature comforts take presentences over taking the time to and giving love to our neighbors, and those we do not know, and more important ourselves’.  For a race of people so concerned about themselves, and their possessions, and their appearance; we are looking in all the wrong places.  Why seek for what we need, and desire out there; when everything we need, and desire lies within.

 

            We are the seeds of the Tree of Life, and of the Tree of Knowledge.  We are receptors and vessels of all that there is and all there ever will be.  Imagine if we were able to share without bias, or judgment; if we were able to give without concern for receiving, and had no attachment to the outcome, and no designs on the future.

 

            If we were able to just be.  Humans being, and not concerned with doing, we could be a community creating a better World for ourselves, our children, our mother earth, and for Source, or God.  We are custodians of our home, our planet; we need to take responsibility for our behavior, but we also need to change our believe systems, thought patterns, and the way we treat each other.

 

            The Kabbalah teaches us to – Study, Pray, Meditate or Chant, and to do good deeds.  In this way we can be in touch, and in tune, with ourselves and our connection with divinity.  We need only to ask and we will receive, give and it will be given.  The Course in Miracles, tells us – that when we perceive an attack, we are attacking; why because we are ONE.  Collectively, conscious or unconscious we are all made from the same stuff; we all share a common heritage.  The world’s three major religions share the same real estate, and origins; however, for thousands of years they have been at odds.  Reason would dictate that this would constitute a sense of family, or community, and perhaps unity.  But, like rival siblings the feud over what is mine, and who is wrong and right, and who has what right to what, separates a large section of the world’s population.

 

            Imagine if we were all able to pull together, lift each other up, encourage and inspire each other what heights we could climb, and the places we could go.  The power of seven million people who Love each other could heal any wound, cure any disease, and could empower us to live forever, and to see Gods face, as well as the face we had before we were born.  We would have learned what we were sent here to learn, and we would not need to continue the dream, this illusion, and we would awaken, and live in the light – eternally.

Amen.

Jeffrey Scott Turnbull

The Hidden Treasure wants to be Found!

 

The Hidden Treasure is the treasure that is hard to attain.  It takes effort and strength to excavate and remove the debris of our persona and ego.  The refuse of our shortcomings and disappointments must be bulldozed over and allow to compost and be used for the fertilizer for the greener times and experiences to come.  For beneath the layers of all that we deemed important and valuable was the treasure all along, but we must labor to actualize it and be with it, for once found it is the currency that must be shared with all.

                Inner Peace – is the Hidden Treasure; it is the lost fortune that can be found in the cave of the heart.  However, the tools of its discovery must be tempered and strengthened with the skill of the mind.  Because it is the mind that can distract the hell hound of the ego that will not allow us to find peace but only torment at the thrall of this gatekeeper that  strives to keep us safe but actually keeps us from our true self and our destiny.

                The Treasure is there waiting for us but we must venture deep into ourselves.  We must search everywhere without attachment to the outcome without expectations of what it is we are searching for and what we will find.  Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living.  We must turn over that which we are afraid to look at as well as touch.  We must explore the shadows as well as the light within ourselves.  The ego wants us to fear ourselves and change when we should accept whom and what we are.  The ego need not be tamed or beaten into submission or taught to heal; we need not master anything but ourselves and our thoughts to still the sea and the reservoir of our being.

                With a grateful mind and welcoming soul, we enter the cave of the heart and with compassion and with grace we accept that we are children of light and that we are the miracle.  In peace, we know that love is the universal song and with a sense of unity, we welcome the fact that we are all brothers and sisters and with forgiveness on our lips, we speak to the divinity in all.

                Peace should not be the exception or the rule but the law that governs all with joyous splendor and with tranquility that abides in the heart of everyone.  We can as a race, a culture advance and evolve to do great works and move humankind and the planet and its inhabitants into a new age of abundance and prosperity.

                Inner Peace – The Hidden Treasure is a jewel that must be polished daily with compassion and equanimity to quiet the heart, still the mind, and to soothe the soul.  It is the treasure hard to attain and once attained it takes beautiful acts of grace to sustain.  We must be vigilant against any fears that we may have as well as any negative thoughts.  If we can refuse to think any old negative thoughts whilst we choose not to create any new ones we are polishing the jewel, and if we are able to be constantly in a positive state of mind while thinking new and glorious thoughts the jewel will shine into eternity.

               Jeffrey Scott Turnbull

The Philosophers Stone

            The Philosopher’s Stone is the completion of the Alchemist’s Great Work, the Royal Art, or the Magnum Opus.  It is perfection, purification, and wholeness.  It is also known as – the Great Elixir or Quintessence.

            The Stone was believed to be able turn lead or base metals into gold.   The Philosopher would start with the Prima Materia or first matter, work at its transformation, and transmute it into a higher state of being.

            In essence, the Philosopher’s Stone is the perfected man.  Christ in certain circles was referred to as the stone, and the Holy Grail at times was referred to as the stone.  The Holy Grail was believed to be a stone in Lucifer’s crown as he fell from grace and to earth.

            The Stone or elixir is believed to heal, purify, and provide immortality.  It increases everything that it touches.  It is pure and higher consciousness.  It is the quintessence – the fifth element.  It is the treasure hard to attain.  It is within each and everyone one of us.  It involves transforming our ego and materialistic word view to one of seeing the beauty and divine in all things.  It is our latent god nature.

            Alchemy is a process as is psychotherapy.  They both involve changing the dross of our life experience, memories, thoughts into the gold of possibilities and potential.  It is dirty and thankless work.  However, work that must be done if we want the greatest of all substances and feelings and experience on this and other planes of existence.

            We must work at purifying our minds, souls, bodies, and spirit to become whole and complete the great work of becoming divine beings on this earthly plane.  As the axiom or second rubric in the Emerald Tablet states – That which is below corresponds to that which is above, and that which is above corresponds to that which is below, to accomplish the miracles of the One Thing.  And just as all things come from this One Thing, through the meditation of One Mind, so do all created things originate from this One Thing, through transformation.

            Just as we must transform our nature and our awareness to that which is possible we must transform the way, in which we see and live in the world of men and of nature.  We must come to realize that we are all one created from the one thing, we are the all in the all.  The divine nature within is us is transcendent and immanent.  It is within us all and it is our better angels waiting to be realized and actualized.

            We come down to this world to be born and birthed to do the great work and to purify ourselves so that we may learn why we are here and to experience what it is like to be human.  So that we may rise above and descend again to the below thereby combining the powers of both the above and the below to become perfect, pure, whole and infinite eternally we become the Quintessence so that we may one day rise and return to the Aether.

Jeffrey Turnbull

Infinite Eternally

 

I wake with forgiveness on my lips

From dreams of Angels and Books

Of worlds beyond reckoning

I sought to cleanse my center,

And still the troubled tide.

But yet the truths I cannot see

Are truths I can’t deny.

 

 

I have found heaven, the firmament, and bliss

In dreams and of no mistaking

In reach beyond my grasp

The lotus of awakening.

I seek the peace that abides.

Still what I know is there is here

I am the self that hides.

 

I am the truth, I am the light,

I am the circle without sides.

I am the drop, I am the sea,

I am the wave, I am the tide

I am the one, we are the all

I am and will always be

 Infinite eternally.

 

Jeffrey Turnbull

Coagulate

Dissolve and Unite

Evolve and take Flight

From the depths to the heights

To the dawn thru the night

In blindness and insight

My heart self a lights

To the crown of my mind

What was lost, I may find

My true self – divine

Is yours and yours mine

 

Jeffrey Scott Turnbull