All Considering » Life style

Do gemstones correlating to the zodiac offer protection?

Katinka - Spirituality — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 13:17:09 +0000

I just started a website devoted to astrological jewelry. Though obviously related to my spiritual interests, this is a commercial project: everything that someone buys on that site earns me a percentage. (my disclaimer)

One of the things I present there are amulets made of semi-precious gemstones. This reminded me of something I used to do in my early twenties. When a girlfriend of mine had a birthday, I would go to the market, to the alternative booth, and close my eyes to pick out a stone for her. It was both a test of my sensitivity and of the lists they keep at such places that correlate birthdays with semi precious gems.

The weird thing was: each stone I picked out ended up being on the list precisely where it ought: corresponding to my friend’s star-sign. I tried this three or four times and each time it worked.

So I do believe there is something to those lists. I don’t think they just piled all the affordable stones and randomly selected which would go with which star-sign. If they had, I would not have been able to replicate their results. And no, I did not look at the lists before hand. In fact, I knew nothing at all about such things at the time. I’m still hardly an expert, because spiritual protection is not really that big a deal for me.

That in itself is probably weird. After all, I was responsible for a morning filling lecture on the subject for the Dutch Theosophical Society this summer, and held a workshop about it that same afternoon. Not spiritual protection through stones btw, but through color.

I have mixed feelings about all this. On the one hand I do believe such things make a difference. I wear a yellow stone on my ring. The color was chosen based on the method described in the article linked above, but citrine is also a stone that corresponds to Gemini, my sun-sign. So yes, I do use this knowledge. On the other hand, I don’t believe they protect against anything major like say health, success, happiness or anything like that. In fact, I believe reliance on such things can be counter productive. I’m skeptical that way.

On the other hand, I’ve felt the difference too strongly myself to deny there’s something there. It’s just less important that working (to get ahead), eating right (to stay healthy), listening to your emotions and your body, and having friends (to be happy). For instance, I read a story recently of someone who has nickel allergy. She’d walked around for weeks with a body piercing that was red and itchy. For weeks. Knowing that allergies get worse with continued contact, she should have gotten rid of that ring the moment she noticed the itch. But since she didn’t, she can now hardly touch nickel containing coins.

No amount of ‘spiritual protection’ can protect against those things that we do without thought, without having a sense about what works for us.

This may seem like a tangent, but I do think sensitivity to precious stones is something most people have. It’s just not something we’ve learned to listen to. I mean, if you’ve not learned to listen enough to your body to get rid of a body piercing that itches, you’re going to have trouble listening enough to yourself to notice the difference between wearing two different color rings, or a new amulet.

What I do believe is this: finding out what works for you, what resonates with your own ‘system’, helps a person stay balanced. It helps us stay close to our ‘center’ and not get too caught up in what other people throw at us. That is: it helps us stay connected with ourselves. That’s the main reason I wear that ring with a yellow stone, and that’s also the reason I would advise anybody to buy one of those amulets corresponding to their star sign.

Is spirituality a lifestyle or a quest?

Katinka - Spirituality — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:45:15 +0000

I have been pondering recently the difference between spirituality as a life style and spirituality as a quest. Consider the following Blavatsky quote (the modernized English is mine) from The Voice of the Silence, The Seven Portals:

Before you stand on the threshold of the path; before you cross the foremost Gate, you have to merge the two in the One and sacrifice the personal to SELF impersonal, and thus destroy the ‘path’ between the two – antaskarana.

You have to be prepared to answer Dharma, the stern law, whose voice will ask you at your first, your initial step:

“Have you complied with all the rules, you with your lofty hopes?”

“Have you attuned your heart and mind to the great mind and heart of mankind? For as the sacred River’s roaring voice whereby all Nature-sounds are echoed back, so must the heart of him ‘who in the stream would enter,’ thrill in response to every sigh and thought of all that lives and breathes.”

Compare such stern words with those who treat astrology or tarot as fun amusements – not to get to know themselves better, to become better people, to find their way in life.

On the other hand when such sentiments as the above are repeated too often, as they are in theosophical circles, what happens is the opposite. So much energy goes into talking about self sacrifice, in denying self, that sometimes something of normal liveliness is lost. Something dries out, because there is no step that can be ignored on the path.

And one of those steps is precisely the second half of this quote: a felt connection with humanity as a whole. That doesn’t start with knowing how badly many people in Africa need food, medicine and education. The real connection with humanity starts at home: the natural relationships we are in. Family, friends, colleagues… Ignoring your own and their humanness is the first step towards a kind cruelty. I say ‘kind cruelty’ because sometimes the smile is there, the words are right, but the essence has somehow fled.

As I’m pondering this, not at all sure I live up to the ideals I sketch here, I come back to the basic insight that is the conclusion of many of my ponderings: While on the path extremes are often found, they have to go, because in the end there’s a balance between the impersonal and the personal. There’s a balance to be found between feeling the needs of humanity as a whole and being there facing your own and others’ real needs in day to day life.

Why doesn’t the dream add up to the reality?

Katinka - Spirituality — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:22:57 +0000

I’ve spent a lot of time on this blog analyzing the Law of Attraction, aka ‘The Secret’. One of the issues that keeps coming up for those who spend (in my opinion) too much time on this law, is how to translate the dream into reality. Or as one member of the LOA forum says (edited for grammar and spelling):

At first I am so eager to do a lot of things, e.g. going to work, drawing, sewing, reading, meeting friends… I am vibrant and almost dizzy from all these exciting ideas! Thinking about them makes me feel really good.

And then, when I want to start acting on them, it gets sticky. And slowly, or often not so slowly, these exciting things pile up and become “shoulds”: I should summarize all my inspiring Abe quotes I collected. I should start making some real plans about these business ideas. I should gout and buy the paint for this picture I want to paint. I should make something nice and creative from the beautiful scraps and images I collected.

And now I am feeling stressed. Overwhelmed. I feel the resistance in me. And the more I try to overcome it, the bigger it gets!

That’s what you get when you let dreams, not reality, rule your life. A theosophical teacher once said:

Great things in life are possible only to strong souls and it’s from the trivial events of daily life that strength is won. (L.W. Rogers)

I like that quote a lot, because for a dreamer like me, daily life is a lot harder than thinking about all that I could be, could do, could accomplish. I’m not saying that dreams don’t have their place in life, but I am saying that focussing on the dream too much isn’t going to work. The trivial events of daily life have their place to. In that reality it is a choice: either you draw OR you sew OR you meet your friends. In dreams we can have it all. In reality one has to make choices, set up priorities and live by them. It helps to get organized of course.

It helps to make the dream concrete perhaps. But it also helps to dream the dream only part time. Use that image board if you have to, to clearly put up what your priorities are. But then, put the board away and live your life. After all, it’s not in dreams but in reality that the life you live is shaped.

I like how it works for Oprah (apparently). She made a collage some years ago about how her ideal magazine would look. Then she went on with her day to day business. She didn’t spend her time dreaming that magazine together. She went on making her tv shows and working her but off. But ten years later she had her magazine. And it fitted her image board to a T.

All that can be summed up in how I answered this question on twitter:

Go one step at a time. Instead of focusing on the big dream, focus on the small things you will do today. priorities

Will, diet, renunciation and religion

Katinka - Spirituality — Wed, 27 May 2009 15:32:12 +0000

Traditionally the main religions have advocated renunciation in one form or another. Whether it’s the fasting for Lent or the day time fast in Ramadan – lay people have been stimulated to restrain their appetites at one time in the year. For religious professionals – like monks, nuns and priests – renunciation was a full time duty. At least in ideal, if not always in practice. In many cases the ideal got lost so far that the religious class lived better than many of the lay people. In Tibet for instance the monasteries were not only the most powerful institutions, but also the best taken care of. Socially this wasn’t a bad situation, as they were accessible for people of all ranks as sanctuary as well.

Renunciation is a strange ideal. It’s the ideal of voluntary poverty. Voluntary poverty only means something when there is riches to begin with. One admires the Buddha for wandering through what’s now Nepal and Northern India, not so much because he was poor, but because he left behind riches. If he hadn’t been rich to begin with, he’d have merely been a vagrant.

The American dream is sort of the opposite. It starts with poverty, ideally after immigration, and ends in riches, after hard work.

Renunciation as an ideal is, in a religious context, contrary to the spirit of our times. But other forms of renunciation do have a high status. Those who manage to keep their bodies slim through diet and exercise are praised in our culture. The rigor of the regimen most women need to live up to this ideal, makes the end result even more prized. This too is an ideal born in riches. In poor cultures those who have enough to eat to become what we’d call overweight, have a high status. But in the West food is easy enough to come by, and fat making food is easiest to get. So being thin has become the ideal.

I wonder whether these things aren’t praised because they show an effort of will. My first hour in the morning is spent wandering around the house. Getting dressed, making tea, washing my face, setting the table for breakfast and starting up the PC – not necessarily in that order… And I’m liable to forget one or two of those as well. Life puts more constraints on most people of course. When there’s work to get to, the clock becomes important (*). When there are kids to feed and get to school or soccer, that too puts many constraints on things. However that may be, to add regular exercise to the morning ritual shows real will power and dedication. This sort of thing may get easier with practice, for those of us who DO NOT do all that, it still looks like a lot of effort.

Biologists have figured out, however, that regular exercise gives a reward in the form of hormones that make you feel better. Exercise literally makes one feel better. Perhaps renunciation in general does that – because fasting also gives a natural high, I’m told. It also makes it harder to attend to responsibilities, unlike exercise. Exercise gives physical energy, while fasting obviously takes it away.

In Theravada Buddhist countries there’s a strange cycle – monks start out as a renunciate: they live apart from other people off very little. But the better they succeed at renunciation, the more the people around them worship them. They become what’s called a ‘good dharma field’ – that is: giving to them is extra good karma. So they get a lot of gifts from the surrounding people. This obviously makes their renunciation less severe. If it goes on long enough, others will start being displeased with the lack of renunciation, and go off and start a new revolution. But the same dynamic ends up making that initiative too end in relative wealth.

What all this shows, I think, is that we have a strange relationship with that which sustains us. On the one hand a lot of things are taken for granted: food, a roof over our head, our social position. On the other hand, part of us knows that other ways are possible. The American dream reminds poor people that some do get out. It lulls rich people to sleep: some get out, so why not all… On the opposite end of the spectrum, renunciation is a reminder that riches too are a choice. The food we eat is a choice. And that which is rare gets admired: people stepping outside the box to be different.

*) I work at home and therefor get to set my own time.

Seduction, advertisement and black magic…

Katinka - Spirituality — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 15:49:38 +0000

The advantage of having a spiritual blog are, among other things, that I get free copies of spiritual books occasionally. So far that’s limited to spiritual fiction though, in my case. And it’s not exactly the best fiction I get sent home for free either. I recently received ‘The Happy Soul Industry‘ by Steffan Postaer. I read it out in one go, which means it’s compelling reading. Would I read it again? No, not really. It’s a bit like those books which build in the success of the ‘charmed’ series on TV. I read them, I like them, but I don’t think they’re high standing literature. I would never review them here.

Why is this book an exception? Because it touches on an important theme: the eternal question in Western Society: what is evil and where does it come from? It’s an eternal question because the very question has, as usual, the answer buried inside it. If you look at the world through the paradigm of a war between good and evil, then evil is something that needs to be fought. If on the other hand you see misfortune and greed as the prime suspects, you come up with totally different responses.

Steffan Postaer frames his book in as classically Western a paradigm as possible: God, the Devil and an angel are the prime characters in his novel. It’s set in 20th century USA (or perhaps early 21st century). God, as the source of everything, is the mother of the devil as well. This is a slightly Gnostic (and more logical) version of our old creation myth.

Shifting capacities, miracles, seduction – they all play their part. The main theme is that God has chosen a new way of bringing her message to the people: advertisement. It turns out that actually the devil has a near monopoly on the advertisement industry. After all, it’s all about seduction and greed – two of the specialties of the classic devil. Weren’t the seven sins used some time back to sell ice cream? How diabolical can you get?

What I don’t like about the book is that all the responsibility is ultimately that of God or the Devil. No ordinary people involved at all. But the book has a point. The Advertisement Industry uses state of the art psychological knowledge to get us to buy as much as possible. Whether it’s good for the whole of humanity or not. Profit is the ultimate bottom line. Money as the measure of all things. That’s our culture and spiritual people all over try to find their own way of not getting caught up in that, while not hurting their own bottom line.

For me this is perhaps, and that’s why this book gets mentioned here at all, the hardest spiritual question of all: when does using knowledge turn into misuse of knowledge?

The classic theosophical answer is: Motive. Motive determines whether an action is positive or negative. Motive determines the direction a person grows in. Motive alone. But effects count for something as well. After all – cause and effect together make up the law of karma.

Blavatsky wrote about this stuff in a rather black and white way. Literally. In one Secret Doctrine Studygroup we came to the conclusion that her definition of black magic was: misuse of power. What is misuse in her book? Selfish use. What is selfish? When the self comes into play at all. White magic is then the use of power and knowledge for the good of mankind. Or in Buddhist terminology I’m sure she’d have liked: the use of power and knowledge for the good of all sentient beings.

I’ve looked up examples Blavatsky gives of black magic and most of them would be called psychological in our time. That is: black magic is often the misuse of psychological insight to hurt people or get your own way. Doesn’t that sound like advertisement?

While we are at it: note that this is a rather stricter definition of black magic than the classic Crowlean one. Crowley had it that black magic is only black when other people get hurt. Advertisement doesn’t directly hurt people though, it merely seduces them in doing things that ultimately aren’t good for them, like getting into credit card debt.

The question this book asks is a valid one: could those same techniques be used to inspire people to live right? Without any ulterior motive? Without the wish to sell more books, or even pay the rent, or ‘build good will’?

Environmentally aware – spiritual virtue no. 7

Katinka - Spirituality — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:30:53 +0000

Is this a cliche? Is environmental consciousness a central spiritual value? Or is it only a virtue when people act on it? In any way it’s the most modern of values on my list. A century ago the concept hardly existed – although of cource air and water pollution are as old as the industrial revolution.

Blavatsky wrote about the value of forests for instance. They were important, in her view, for their effect on consciousness. She said:

It is especially in the countries unblessed with civilization that we should seek for an explanation of the nature, and observe the effects of that subtile power, which ancient philosophers called the ‘ world’s soul.” In the East only, and on the boundless tracts of unexplored Africa, will the student of psychology find abundant food for his truth-hungering soul. The reason is obvious. The atmosphere in populous neighborhoods is badly vitiated by the smoke and fumes of manufactories, steam-engines, railroads, and steamboats, and especially by the miasmatic exhalations of the living and the dead [she means because of burial. She prefers burning the bodies, I forget the word - Katinka]. Nature is as dependent as a human being upon conditions before she can work, and her mighty breathing, so to say, can be as easily interfered with, impeded, and arrested, and the correlation of her forces destroyed in a given spot, as though she were a man.

Isis Unveiled Chapter VII, p. 210, 211

For me the problem of the environment is one of the central issues of our time. Technical advantage is great – I happily use it daily – but if we make our planet inhospitable in the process, we have a big problem.

I sometimes worry when I read about occult explanations about why we have a changing climate. Those denial of physical causes for the same may make people complacent. After all: if there is an occult cause, we don’t have to do anything. I don’t think that denial is particularly spiritual either: we have to face facts. This cold winter fits weather models that predict warming in the long run: while average warming is predicted, they also predict that in the current period there will be extremes in both directions. The fires in Australia and California in the past years fit the heating trend too of course.

Generosity and detachment – spiritual virtue no. 5

Katinka - Spirituality — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:30:36 +0000

Generosity is, for once, a classic virtue. In Islam it’s called Zakat: the duty to give a percentage of your possessions to the poor.

Generosity is linked to another classic virtue: detachment. In both Hinduism and Buddhism attachment to stuff, money and status is seen as a problem. Letting go of that in the form of generosity is spiritual work. In Christianity too giving to the poor is a central virtue.

Attachment to status is subtler. A lot of people notice this only when it becomes a problem: the boss that ends up in a retirement home. The socialite (is that still a word?) that can’t keep up anymore because of Alzheimer.

At such moments letting go becomes a necessity. This is the reason that in countries like Japan Buddhism is for old people: that’s when letting go becomes the central life lesson.

In my series on spiritual virtues, norms and values.

© admin for All Considering, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments |
Posted in : Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and India, Islam and Sufism, Life style

Thinking for yourself – spiritual virtue no. 2

Katinka - Spirituality — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:29:48 +0000

Of all the virtues and values I’m discussing in this series, thinking for yourself is probably the least ‘spiritual’. A lot of people associate spirituality more with ‘intuition’ (or even emotion as some have noted in the comments) than with thinking. Yet thinking for yourself is a central concept in many new religious movements. It belongs in the same lineup as ‘not dogmatic’ and ‘scientifically sound’ (think Quantum spirituality and stuff).

The rational is central in our culture: education, tests, measurement and science. All of those are known for systematic and rational thought. Drawing your own conclusions is demanded in university. Continual questioning is a matter of course.

We are continually trained in this and it is at this point that traditional religion has most to loose. People become Buddhist with the relief of knowing that they get to decide for themselves whether the teachings of the Buddha are true or not. The same is true for Theosophy and Wicca - to name just two.

Christianity and Islam – both with teachings that one vows to believe in, in order to belong – fight against modernity (well – not all of them, but a sizable minority). The point is: tradition sets store in certain ideas, concepts and interpretations without granting the right to each individual to figure out what the truth in them is. A lot of people simply can’t accept this any more.

We have been trained to think for ourselves to such an extent that we rise in protest in groups where we can’t.

Freedom – spiritual virtue, value or norm no. 1

Katinka - Spirituality — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 15:30:00 +0000

In my series about spiritual values I want to start out with a virtue that is perhaps the strongest ideal in the series.

Is freedom a virtue? In a traditional religious setting taking responsibility would be considered a virtue. Freedom and responsibility can’t be separated. Those who have freedom, have a lot of responsibility. With responsibility comes the freedom to make mistakes.

Us modern people demand freedom. We demand the freedom to sin, to divorce, to change jobs and so on. Freedom is an aspect of modernity. Never before were people so free to fill in their own lives according to their own desires. Never before was there so little social pressure. And yet we don’t feel free.

On the flip side of that freedom is the virtue of tolerance and acceptance of others. The word ‘tolerance’ suggests an unwillingness to accept that other person, even while it speaks of leaving them be. Acceptance is a nicer word. I think it’s central to the new spirituality to accept that each person is free to choose their own path and with it comes the insight that not everybody is automatically going to choose the path we do. This is hard to practice – but then most ideals are. It keeps us on our toes.

In the Hindu tradition of yoga freedom is center stage. Moksha literally means liberation. This is not about the liberation of responsibility (though that’s one precondition for the path, traditionally), but the freedom from the burden of emotional and mental confusion.

I put it between brackets, but it is important enough to bold: Freedom of responsibility was in Ancient India a precondition for the path of yoga. That doesn’t mean one could just leave all responsibilities in the world. Just the opposite: only those who no longer had the responsibility of wife and children (because those children were safely married off) could really focus on the path. The Brahmin was obligated to his caste to first get a son and make sure he grew up soundly.

However sexist this image is (and it is) there is still a lesson there: responsibility can’t be ignored. Those who have kids can’t just leave them behind, unless there are others willing to take up that responsibility.

The freedom from tradition becomes almost absolute in some people into alternative spirituality. People forget that there are lessons hidden in taking responsibility. Devotion and years of commitment don’t combine well with freedom. But those who work year after year in the same religious organisation are more likely to learn from the other people there than those who only come by when it’s ‘fun’.

In short: while I think this value is one that many people embrace, I don’t think freedom is all that interesting as a norm. While my life is full of freedom (it comes with the territory of being your own boss), it only becomes interesting when you take responsibility. Perhaps the (dutch?) saying ‘the master shows himself in limitation’ [In de beperking toont zich de meester] is relevant here…

Spiritual virtues / values / norms: perspective on alternative spirituality

Katinka - Spirituality — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 15:12:29 +0000

Auch. That was way too long a title.

Anyhow, I was thinking about some of the responses to my post about the difference between religion and spirituality (and how little difference there is). While I don’t agree with Jan Peter for instance – spirituality is more than something emotional – I do think I know what he’s getting at. Boshemia points out the main issue I think: people don’t like the word religion because it reminds them of all the do’s and don’ts of their church background. For me that’s not such an issue, because I was raised agnostically.

Still – what ARE the ideals inherent in alternative spirituality? I mean – there are values. I don’t mean the long lists of virtues in Buddhism and Hinduism. However interesting, they are too specific to be applicable to all alternative spiritual paths. The coming two weeks (I’ve got 8 posts planned) I will be discussing the virtues or values inherent in the whole alternative spiritual movement. I hope you all won’t be too bored.

Here is my list. I will be devoting a blogpost to each in the coming two weeks:

I would love to hear about virtues or values or norms you think are essential to alternative spirituality. One of the things that connect all (or most) of the above mentioned values is – I think – that in the dichotomy religion-spirituality they would be listed closer to spirituality. (Though I don’t want to suggest only ‘spiritual people’ live by them, obviously)

[I started this series thinking that it was about virtue, but as I wrote about it, and pondered, I found that the word 'value' is probably closer in most cases. Some of these are even norms. Words...]

All Considering » Life style

Do gemstones correlating to the zodiac offer protection?

Related Posts

Is spirituality a lifestyle or a quest?

Related Posts

Why doesn’t the dream add up to the reality?

Related Posts

Will, diet, renunciation and religion

Related Posts

Seduction, advertisement and black magic…

Related Posts

Environmentally aware – spiritual virtue no. 7

Related Posts

Generosity and detachment – spiritual virtue no. 5

Related Posts

Thinking for yourself – spiritual virtue no. 2

Related Posts

Freedom – spiritual virtue, value or norm no. 1

Related Posts

Spiritual virtues / values / norms: perspective on alternative spirituality

Related Posts