The Bridge
to An Infinite Bliss Can
Be Found
in the Cycle of 24 Hours
Carlos Cardoso Aveline
Carlos Cardoso Aveline
“It is not
possible to live each day correctly,
except by
looking at it as if it were the last.”
Musonius Rufus (28?-100? AD) [1]
“There is nothing like one day after the other”, says a proverb. And there isn’t, indeed.
One can have
more information, or less, on the art of living and the road to wisdom. Such
information may be reliable or not. In any case, the great battle one has to
face is the single battle of each new day in life.
The struggle
for right action is simultaneously physical, emotional and mental. One
must establish better habits. It is necessary to reduce or eliminate wrong
patterns of vibration. By preparing himself through correct actions,
proper thoughts and noble motives, an individual purifies his instrument -
the lower self - and gets gradually rid of unnecessary illusion and pain. Thus
he attains an inner, not outer, peace.
Human suffering will be his to the end. He will learn to be bigger than
pain.
One single and
long-term effort, made from the right point of view, sets everything in life in
place; but for this to happen, one-pointedness and a broad mental horizon are
equally necessary. The point and the circle are one. Concentration, and a wide
vision, must occur together, even if equilibrium between both is at first
precarious. An open mind is absolutely
necessary to see, to discern, and to decide what is it that must be the
enduring center of one’s lifetime. Once we know that the effort is made in the
right direction, each day’s work is one more - and decisive - victory.
Concentration
is different from ambition and stubbornness, for these two feelings are blind,
and concentration is not.
A lasting,
natural and almost effortless concentration emerges from sincerely renouncing
to that which is philosophically unimportant.
But concentration
also depends on seeing the significance of each minute in life. If we have a
clear and noble goal, we know that each second counts. An hour is like an eternity.
There are aeons in a week. And, on the other hand, an entire lifetime is but a passing
moment.
Time is
elastic, therefore, and not mechanical. Each cycle of 24 hours contains a whole
manvantara and a pralaya. It is a basic unit, a brick of time, with which we
must make a good karmic building, the whole present
incarnation, and then present it - at
its end - to its rightful owner, our own Higher Self and spiritual soul.
“As above, so
below”, says the hermetic tradition.
The whole is
present in each of its parts. Just as every atom is a miniature of our solar
system, each day contains the seed and substance of all eternity.
The literature
of theosophy aims at serving as a tool for students to build correct 24 hours cycles of life - one
after the other - until the artificial separation between “Present Moment” and
“Eternity” dissolves in one’s mind as a piece of ice under the sunlight.
The practical
perception of one’s life as a passing bubble in the boundless anonymous oceans
of Space and Eternity is a daily challenge.
And this is not
all.
Each 24 hours
of our physical existence is itself a bubble in the same oceans; and a most
sacred and valuable one, we should add, for the bubble contains the oceans.
Thus, old Pythagorean
questions have a decisive importance at the end of each day’s effort. They
include these ones:
1) How have I
lived today?
2) What have I
done right?
3) What were my
mistakes? How will I correct them tomorrow?
4) Do I have a
clear and correct model of what should be a day in my life?
5) How am I
following such a model and discharging my duty?
A day in life
must be made as much as possible complete in itself, just as any work of art
should. It must have symmetry and equilibrium between sound and silence, action
and perception, aspiration - and renunciation.
Marcus Aurelius
Antoninus, the Roman emperor and philosopher, wrote in his Meditations:
“The perfection
of moral character consists in this, in passing each day as the last, and in
being neither violently excited nor torpid nor playing the hypocrite.” [2]
In another
occasion that Stoic thinker said to himself:
“Every moment
think steadily as a Roman and a man to do what thou hast in hand with perfect
and simple dignity, and feeling of affection, and freedom, and justice; and to
give thyself relief from all other thoughts. And thou wilt give thyself relief,
if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last, laying aside all
carelessness and passionate aversion from the commands of reason, and all
hypocrisy, and self-love, and discontent with the portion which has been given
to thee.” [3]
NOTES:
[1] “Tabla de Cebes, Disertaciones y Fragmentos Menores de Musonio Rufo,
Manual y Fragmentos de Epicteto”, Biblioteca Clásica Gredos, 207, Editorial Gredos, Madrid, 1995, 250 pp., see
p. 149.
[2] “Meditations”,
by Marcus Aurelius, in the volume “Lucretius, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius”,
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1952, 310 pp., see p. 284, paragraph 69, book
VII.
[3] “Meditations”,
by Marcus Aurelius, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., book II, paragraph 5.
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In September 2016, after
a careful analysis of the state of the esoteric movement worldwide, a group of students
decided to form the Independent Lodge of
Theosophists, whose priorities include the building of a better future in
the different dimensions of life.
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