Happiness and an invitation to join me in a Spiritual Journey
Would you like to Join me in my Astral Brotherhood/Sisterhood?
The Astral Monk
July 15, 2012
It’s been said by people as
diverse as Dale Carnegie, Ingrid Bergman, and John Gray, but it’s a powerful truth:
‘Success is when you get what you want.
Happiness is when you love what you get.”
Spiritual people seem to be
happier than materialistic, earth-bound people are because they are free from
the confines of time and space that create an illusion of power, wealth, permanence
and “reality” in the period we spend occupying our corporal bodies. Being loosed from the churning cycles of rise
and fall, good times and bad times, and the vain hope for having and holding,
building and sustaining the delights of “here and now,” without a spiritual
awareness of the timeless and universal realities that one can enjoy even as
one exists in this puzzling, baffling and frustrating condition we call “being
alive,” a spiritual person possesses and enjoys life on a higher plane, where
happiness is eternal and beyond he grasp of misfortune and inevitable death.
I welcome you into the
Spiritual Life. As a Spiritual
Counselor, I extend my love to you, and want to share with you the joys and
freedom only Spiritual beings can possess.
It is a delight to reach out to you, to feel the
thrill of Spiritual Union. I trained to
be a Roman Catholic teaching brother, and wore the monk’s black robe and cloak
and little white “rabat” around my neck. It was a glorious experience, a time of joy
and fellowship, and now, forty-four later, I am sitting along in my apartment,
in a community of people “55 or Better,” far from churches and shrines, missing
the mission I once enjoyed, bringing meaning and joy and insight into the lives
of young people. I am determined to heed
the call again, to follow a new path, a Spiritual Life, remembering that, “To
whom much has been given, much shall be expected.” Somehow, people are attracted to me, find
comfort in my words and open their hearts to me. At seventy-five, I am not the handsome,
talented young man I was as a De La Salle Brother. My spiritual life is so much more mature now,
and the vicissitudes of youth are behind me.
My travels in Europe, Asia and the United States of America have
expanded my consciousness and mellowed my temperament I am embarrassed to think how limited I was,
and still am.
As the grind and fires of
life temper the steel and purify the gold, my decades have worn off some of my
rough edges and purified my motives. I
have lost much of the “attitude” I once exhibited, and am more understanding of
the way people in higher echelons of systems handle difficult situations. Some dance around issues, some pretend there
are no issues, and some boldly tackle difficult problems, with some success and
often without success. “That’s life!”
I hope you contact me if you
feel troubled by relationships with individuals, with the expectations or
demands of your spouse, your children, your boss or your pastor. Maybe I can just be a good listener. Maybe I can offer you some sympathy. Maybe we can pray together about a difficulty
you find.
Maybe you, too, are ready to
help others, joining me in my journey into Spiritual Counseling. I consider myself a kind of Astral Monk,
convinced that other individuals of various kinds populate the Cosmos, and
visit our planet. Is that too far
out? Evidently, it is a notion ridiculed
and shunned by those too rigid or timid to study the matter. That’s okay, but I know the Astral realities,
I’ve accepted the fact that we are spirits in corporal bodies, composed mostly
of water, with some carbon, oxygen, iron, sulfur, chromium, sodium and nitrogen
stirred in, operating within our various organs and systems by processes programmed
into our cellular chemistry, our nerves, and our brains. Beyond that, we are spiritual beings, with “souls,”
that are capable of doing unimaginably mystical or paranormal things even now,
during our cosmically brief lifetimes.
If you would like to join me
in my Astral Brotherhood/Sisterhood, email me. Until I set up my new mail boxes, you can senjd me "snail mail" at 1026 Clayton Lane, #3207,
Austin, Texas 78723.
We can get to know one
another. I have no material wealth to share, not trove of secret knowledge, no
special psychic or paranormal powers.
Don’t come to me with hope of being wealthier or more prominent in
society. I have only my heart, my
kindness, and my integrity to share.
Hoping to hear from you with
comments or suggestions, I am your Monk friend,
Brother James, the Astral Monk.
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