Rev. Stephen Carroll

Making Sense of Time

2011-11-27T19:25:00.001-08:00

In this slice of now, I'm 51 years old. I remember 4, and 7, and 13, and many other ages. In the roughly 447056.45127 hours I've lived, nothing differentiates ths hour from any other that came before. I'm still me. Still walking the world. Different places, different people about me. Some lost, some new, but still the same me. This is the seemingness. Measuring against my old behaviors, against my old thoughts and ideas, now is best. Sometimes suffering has been bigger or smaller than now. But suffering or not has not ever changed me. I'm still the inhabitor of this house of matter. The Spirit within, filling all the cellular rooms and the auric space around the man. I have new thoughts, new knowledge, new wisdoms, new patterns of living. None of this has changed me. It has only served to focus me more. To align me more. I remain here, standing in my Crossroad, deciding where to go and what to do. How does the knowledge that the me-ness doesn't change affect my thoughts? It soothes them. It is so easy to see why the minds of many believe in life after death. In life so many things happen. Yet we remain. How can this not be so in death? It's like a bird who flies South each Winter. They've always done so. The weather and climate changes didn't change the migration. The age of the bird didn't. Yes, death will eventually change the migration. But then, does it? Who knows what death does? Fifty one years have passed and from my perspective, it went by rapidly. Why does it seem so? There were many days that didn't seem to pass with speed. They drug on... Yet I was there, too. In my teachings, I often reference time. I discuss it's flow. And often I realize that people have eternity within. They are Eternity as spirits. To us, as spirits, of course time is longer and shorter, fleeting and stable, always changing. We are moving within it as we generate greater and lesser amounts of life power, what I have come to call, The State. And time, like matter, flows in accordance with the divine radiance of State. TIme changes. We, as the livers of life, do not. We learn and grow. We remain. Comfort beyond warmth is the knowledge of our Eternity. Am I 51? No, not ME. But I have lived 51 years here, this time. Thinking of you and your Crossroad. Stephen

2011-11-12T09:24:00.001-08:00

11-12-11: What is the message of Spirit about human suffering? My experience tells me that the spirits say nothing about this. They answer with a thick and abiding SILENCE. That IS the message: the idea that they don't focus on it and nether should we. Yes, we must help others and help ourselves, otherwise, we have no hearts, but we must IGNORE the question of "Why did this happen?" and focus on living our lives. Analyzing is only good when we are engaging in codependent or addictive patterns that we want to change. Then, analysis is our friend. But when things happen outside of obvious self-causation, it is insanity to try to find out why. It's a big world, there are more factors involved in anything that happens than we can yet know. So, we must turn away from such questions. The spirits, God(s), Higher Power, does not punish or challenge us with troubles. Troubles happen. They are an opportunity to LIVE OUR LIVES. When we entertain the whys too much, it's like engaging in a frenetic close dance with a razor blade studded partner: not a good plan. Living means adapting. All human problems are about adaptation. The spirits love us. They always help us. But they are silent about the problem of pain. Good. We must learn silence, too. So, whatever you are going through, remember, the living process contains oscillations. We are more than these shifts and as the old Book of Common Prayer says: "changes and chances". We always must be open to our greatness which exists at ALL TIMES. Connect with your greatness and your depth. Move through the suffering. Freedom will dawn. In Spiritual Love, Rev. Stephen Carroll

2011-11-11T16:58:00.000-08:00

11-11-11: An auspicious time to begin a blog about my life in Spirit and my ministry. The picture above can be found on my website, theopeningofways.com. It is a photo of a road in Africa. It is a metaphor for my life. Certainly, my life has greatly been about Africa. I've never been there in this incarnation. Have only known a few people from that continent. But as far as spirit contacts, so many have come to me from the good soil of Africa. Each of our lives is a road. Mine. Yours. What soil makes up your road? Sometimes our blood talks in our consciousness and we find ourselves responding to mysteries that arose in a particular geographic area because of the "blood song," the ancestral memory that is informing us. Other times, our spiritual lineage speaks through geography that we have only accessed in other lifetimes. Both of these influences are our heritage, our destiny, and our means of connecting with the inner worlds. Whether it's the Netjers of Khem, the Loa or Orishas of Nigeria, or the Eggun and place-spirits of the Congo, my life has opened mostly on a road like that depicted in the photo. What can you see in this photograph? Brown and green. The red-brown of the earth and the green of the plant world. The earth: made of those who have gone before us. The plants, arising out of the remains of ancestors. One can't be without the other. It is the same in the Sidhe Faith of my biological ancestors. These major mysteries are the same the world over. The living riding on the dead. The dead the foundation which the living are rooted in. We've just finished Fet Gede, or as some call it All Hallow's Eve, or Dia de los Muertos: a time for honoring and remembering the dead and our connection with them. In our Guides meetings we have experienced a phenomena of 3 different Fets for Gede: these were conducted by the spirits and our response to each night was different. The first night, it was about the death of our lives: the ending of cycles in our lives: failures, loss, wounding, and how to respond to these manifestations of the ray of destruction. The second night was all about the preservative ray: remembering, resting with, and honoring the spirits of our ancestors. It was about ease and laughter, and easing heartache. The third night was all about the creative ray: resurrections, the Pert Em Heru (not the "Book of the Dead" but of "Coming Forth By Day". It was about starting up the engine of our lives in a new way. This time of year tends to take us through these cycles rapidly. Destruction :: Preservation :: Creation. And the message is: you are going to oscillate and shift, always,while in incarnation. That is your destiny: everyone's destiny. There is nothing wrong with it. Don't fight it. Cooperate. So here, right after Fet Gede, I see the presence of a new start in the light of the three 11 day: 11/11/11. 11 is a well known number of Thelema. In the tradition of Thelema it gematrically equates to the Great Work. Did not Nuit say in Liber Al Vel Legis that it was her number? There are many other gematria that indicate a connection between the power of Thelema and the number 11. So, today, 3 of the 11s are representing a trifold formulation of Thelemic power. This calls us to reach up, to look up, to climb up into a higher creation, having just arisen from the tomb of Oct. 31. In the words so familiar to my Will, I say, as token of this: "Let us open a way and go in upon it." Best blessings on 11/11/11! Rev. Stephen Carroll