Well, this is my first post about spirituality as a first-order concern on my blog, cross posted to Reddit. I hope you enjoy it, and please check out r/lawofone_philosophy for more discussion and others’ thoughts. If you’re interested in contributing to this blog, that subreddit is the best place to reach out.

Anyway, this passage from Hatonn has always stuck with me because it shows the unity between second density and third density service and growth. The challenge in our sector of awareness is to not get discouraged by adversity, but to find creative ways to respond to it as second density life does – just with a little more perspicacity.

Spiritual evolution is a disturbing way to think about the progression of consciousness. Evolution is a cruel, heartless, eat-or-be-eaten world. How do we make sense of that in a philosophy in which love and light is supposed to be central? I imagine each of us has to reach out own balance on this, but I find Hatonn’s touching words to be a helpful reminder that we are not alone in our struggle.

The item near the end about the Creator’s pain in separation is particularly poignant because this conundrum of joy and suffering that we work with redounds to the root of beingness itself. We are catching up to Jesus’s casual mention: “Know ye not that you are gods?” We are co-Creators in training, and this is part of the training – not to escape suffering and pain forever, but to learn its fullness as part of our own nature.

I am known to you as Hatonn, and I greet you in the love and the light of the infinite Creator. I greet you especially on this day which is holy within your culture, and [we] are very, very pleased and privileged to be able to be a part of your celebration of that which lives which was thought to be dead.

Within this channel’s mind there is a quote from a poet. It goes like this: “April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead ground.” We would like you at this time to ponder those words, for you must take all things personally if you would find their inner meaning. Rather than skimming the surface of the meaning, be shameless and make those things which are general specifically about yourself and see what applies.

What is the dead ground in your life? Perhaps you know the answer to that already. Perhaps there is all too much of it: the familiar, the simple, and the easy—those things which are concerned only with the transitory experience which began when you first drew breath in a chemical vehicle on planet Earth and which end when your last breath is expelled in this experience. In the illusion—this is called life, this breathing. But in reality the experience itself is without life. And yet, my friends, you are here, and it is a precious and unusual thing that you are.

Many are the souls who have wished at this time to draw breath upon your planet and experience that which is occurring upon your planet at this time, for that which is occurring is a change, just as a change in your seasons may be called a change. You may generalize and say, ‘Why, spring is the same as winter; it is the same Earth, it is the same trees.” But the transformations are remarkable. Out of the dead ground there grow new things that are alive and those that blossom and bloom. That which was skeletal and brown and bare became lovely, bursting with life and hope and promise, and so is your life at this tiny point which is the present.

And why is this a cruel process, my friends? Why is April the cruelest month? Why is change difficult? Let us move our vision to another story that has held the interest of many for two thousand years. It is the story of a master among your men, called Jesus, who was taken to a tree and thereupon fixed until he was dead. Does that not seem cruel, my friends?

You are in the midst of that which is cruel. Cruelty is a part of change. Pain is the price of growth. When the one known to you as Jesus was lifted gently from that tree, he was dead—and yet it is this holiday that you now celebrate on which he blossomed into that which was, not transient, but alive, conscious and loving.

Flowers, my friends, are for a season, and many of them are only for a season—they do not regenerate themselves. But you are not flowers. You are seeds which are sown in the dead ground of a chemical body that you may experience the thunder and the lightening, the rain, the snow, and the wind that only a chemical body can give you, for it is in those circumstances that your emotional reactions are intensified, invariably. And it is through this intensification of emotions, it is through this often painful process of emotional reaction and thought and contemplation that you grow that within you which is alive, eternal and loving.

There is a curious peace to be gained from knowing that you are capable of using those things which are given you, not just those things which are transitorially joyful, but those things which are of transitory pain. This peace, indeed, passes understanding, for it means that in no circumstances are you without propriety, that those things which do not seem to have a purpose do have a purpose, and that purpose is to help you to grow—not in this life only but in the life that is real, that which extends in the infinite present in the great circle of time and space which is now and here forever.

We have often said to you that the Creator is a Creator of total love, and yet there was a pain in separation when that unity which was the Creator consciously separated Itself into an infinity of individuals. There was a wish that the Creator know Itself and a hope that the Creator might love Itself and, thus, It gave Its parts free will. As you gaze into your brother’s eyes you may see the Creator or you may see your brother; it is your choice. Truly, you may love the Creator in your brother and, thus, you love the Creator.

As you see the world of nature about you at this time, you may appraise the Creator, or you may choose not to. Each moment you can make of your life as you will. And that, too, is cruel. That is the ultimate responsibility, for it is only the mature and emotionally strong personality who can remember the Creator and recognize the Creator and love Its parts. The good and the bad, so they seem—they are the Creator.

Some parts of the Creator do not know that there is One, that the Creator is He and that the definition of both is love. Thus, your love of that ignorant brother may be the blessing that helps that brother to know himself for the first time.

How many times have you been in motion today? How many times have you felt the stillness within you that is the Creator—the perfect balance that is the perfect dance of love?

This instrument today spent her morning singing hymns to the Creator. “Alleluia He is risen,” she sang. We say to you, ‘‘Alleluia you are risen.” Your body is transitory. In meditation, allow that feeling of freedom, of love, of sweet companionship, of peace to soak through your chemical body, to soothe those nerves that have been frayed by the intense emotions of your experience at this level. Let hope come into your heart, for the Creator is forever full of hope. Let love heal that which needs healing in your thoughts; let it touch your pain. The original Thought that created you is love. That union can exist again in meditation. This is not an escape, my friends. This is a centering in knowing who you are.

We have heard your discussion this evening and the conversation that perhaps meditation makes it more difficult to live among your people. Do not let this be so for you. Let love give you confidence. Let it give you a smile from the heart. Let it give you, above all, compassion. Just as the one known as Jesus finished his stay to the bitter end and triumphed over cruelty, take whatever cup is given to you and drink it unafraid. If it is yours, take it. But in meditation ask for the discrimination to know that which is yours and that which is not yours. When you feel that you know, you will be as one that has come forth in the spring, in your own way beautiful. Think of yourself as nothing less, for you are beautiful, each of you, as beautiful as the Creator, as lovely, and as loving.

- Hatonn via Rueckert: April 15, 1979

Originally posted on r/lawofone_philosophy.