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

A person who thinks he needs money to feel self-respect will normally have to work hard to see past the illusion, and he will have to recognize that self-respect depends on the state of his consciousness, not the state of his bank balance.

These cycles of challenge and adaptation can sometimes add to the sum total of human knowledge and insight, and in this sense, at least, human societies can be said to progress.

Many of those who claim to be able to create their own reality at will, by contrast, insist that relatively simple, easily learned techniques are all that is necessary to make the world obey the individual's desires.

Evolution does not proceed by leaps and bounds, but by

a set of ideas that essentially treat the cosmos as though it was some sort of infinite Internet store that never gets around to sending the bill.

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

There are many more in turn who let themselves be distracted from their capacity for magnificence by social pressures or misguided notions of what is and is not important, and they never manifest their inner gifts at all.

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.

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