Pikes Peak Atrium Group Leader's Message

Eleven score and seventeen years ago, our forefathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and the pursuit of happiness and prosperity, such that every man, woman and child could have the opportunity to succeed beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.

Yet today we see news stories every day that reflect disaster and insist that while the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. Many of these stories deride our culture as a proud, cruel and selfish society. Many decry our direction and warn of disaster after disaster to come. Why is that?

I say it is because of our choices.

I say it is because we have chosen destructive things to focus on.

Let’s talk about visualization from a Rosicrucian perspective. The uninitiated may scoff at it as just another New-Age bit of mouthing cheerful platitudes. But the Rosicrucian student learns to see it as a mental discipline that can be a first step toward huge creative endeavors. Everything you see right now began as a visualization in somebody’s mind before it was ever produced or manufactured.

Eric Butterworth, in his book Spiritual Economics, tells a story of three groups of basketball players. Each group was given an hour to practice shooting basketballs into a basketball hoop. Then the first group was told to go home and continue practicing the same way each day for a month. The second group was thanked and told to go home and forget about basketball for a month. The third group was told to go home and spend an hour each day visualizing shooting hoops for that month.

When they all returned at the end of the month, the second group, of course, had not improved at all. But the first group, which had actually practiced shooting hoops, showed only a slightly larger improvement over the group that only visualized practicing. Is this a powerful demonstration of the human mind, or what?

Rosicrucians take visualization several steps further. We can choose what and how we visualize. We can choose to see the worst in people and ourselves, or we can choose to encourage the best. Rosicrucian students learn how we can reach down into that Cosmic connection we have with each other and see how we are all connected through the God of our hearts.

Others may choose to see disasters, but Rosicrucian students have learned how to choose to see the beautiful.

Eric Butterworth tells another story of a little girl. She leaned against her front doorway, sobbing as she watched her older brothers carry the mangled body of her beloved pet dog out of the street where it had been hit by a car. Her father saw her and came to her, held her close for many long moments to comfort her, but she wouldn’t be comforted.

Finally, the father guided his young daughter away from the front door and the tragic, sorrowful scene, to a view of the back garden through a parlor window. There she saw the beautiful flowers she had helped plant the month before. Soon she ran out the back door, laughing, to bury her nose in the fragrant blossoms. Her father followed her out to share her enjoyment. She looked up at him, still with tears in her eyes, but said, “Thank you, Daddy, I feel so much better already. How did you know to show me these flowers?”

Her father, a Quaker, by the way, just smiled down at her and said, “Thee was simply looking out the wrong window.”

Then there’s the story of Pygmalion, King of Cypress, who carved a statue of a woman so beautiful that every woman envied it and the king himself fell in love with it. He heaped his affections on this statue so well and so long that finally the gods took pity on him and breathed life into it. This may seem an overly simplistic myth, but I think it reflects an important law regarding where we put our attention.

I think we get what we focus on. If we focus on drama, death and destruction, we get more drama, death and destruction. If we focus on strength and beauty and progress, that is what we receive more of.

Fraters and Sorors, I dare you to see yourselves as strong, confident, capable, successful and possessed of the patience and stability to keep on moving in the direction of your dreams! I dare you to dream big, and to spend some time each day asking yourselves what possible small thing you can do that day to move yourself a little closer to those dreams.

Even if your dreams are only thoughts, remember that everything we have today came from somebody’s thoughts and dreams. You see, thoughts lead to feelings. Feelings lead to actions. And actions lead to results.

So choose your thoughts and beliefs wisely. Choose which window you see your world from, in ways that your life and the lives of those around you may be enriched.

Peace Profound to you all!

Dave Wheeler