Mystery Teachings from the Living Earth: An Introduction to Spiritual Ecology

The Law of the Planes offers a useful explanation. The powers of magic apply directly to the planes of thought and emotion, not to the plane of physical matter, and magic can affect matter only where a point of contact exists between these planes. Living beings contain such points of contact, but as far as we know, rocks do not.

In those calmer times, the task of spirituality—and thus of the mystery schools—has been understood as the inner transformation of the individual and the gradual improvement of society.

The word “ethics” itself comes from the Greek ethike, which simply means how people behave; “morals” is from a Latin word that means exactly the same thing. “Virtue,” despite the prissy connotations that the word has today, comes from the same Latin root as “virility.” In this older and truer sense, ethical actions consist of ways of behaving that

Central to that journey of awakening is a process of sorting out what is within the self and what is outside it.

for the time being, as far as we know, life creates life, and only life can do so.

In the same way, many of the same New Age circles that twenty years ago enthusiastically discussed the individual's power to create his or her own reality, and ten years ago were full of talk about becoming an ascended master in this lifetime, have now turned much of their attention to garish prophecies of cataclysmic earth changes and a dizzying a

It may well be true, as today's popular spirituality insists, that our species stands on the brink of a new round of evolutionary change

If you ask the universe for a way to earn the money you need by creating something of value for others, on the other hand, you will normally find that the universe is more than willing to meet you halfway, or more than halfway, because you are seeking to participate more fully in the Law of Flow.

Magical workings directed toward changing the world in the service of individual desires are very often counterproductive.