Greetings, Fratres, Sorores and Friends of AMORC!

The Affiliated Bodies of the Rocky Mountain Pacific Northwest Region are a wonderful way to meet with other Rosicrucians and experience the fraternal aspects of our Order. I am very excited and happy to announce now have a new affiliated body Seattle area of Washington, Rosae Mystica Atrium Group (thanks to the efforts of some very dedicated members)! Their first program as an affiliated body was the annual Meditation for Peace on June 22.

Many people these days, not just Rosicrucians, have heard of or even have some experience with the Law of Manifestation. Consider some comments on this Law by past Imperator H. Spencer Lewis:

"The mystic knows only too well the value and danger, the goodness and the evil, that lies in the power of mentally creating. We know that if we hold in our minds a picture and give it the vibrations of living possibility, and if we prophetically proclaim that it is to be or will be, we bring it about; we create it in the world of actuality, by transferring it from the world of reality to material manifestation. We know that as each hour of the day passes, the things which we have held in our imagination and which we now allow to pass into the chamber of mental alchemy are likely to be crystallized immediately in earthly form. We must, therefore, be pure minded. We must be pure and holy in our imaginary concepts. We must keep the chamber of mental alchemy so clear and so wholesome and of such a high standard that no evil thought, no evil admission, no unholy concept of our earthly imagination may take form there and grow and be born in the world of actuality." – H. Spencer Lewis

In these comments, Dr Lewis reveals some very important aspects of the Law of Manifestation. For example, it is not just random passing thoughts that manifest in the world of actuality. That would be somewhat frightening, given how impulsive and unrestrained our thoughts can sometimes be! He speaks of mental creation as a fairly involved and active process of visualization, focus, and release (as a proclamation). Mental creation is active in that we must give the "picture" we form in our minds a measure of vibration and life. We must hold the visualization in our imagination and then allow an alchemical mental process to occur. As mystics, we also learn that for any mental creation to occur, it must be aligned with Cosmic Law. That is, it must be possible and beneficial from any viewpoint, not just our own. So, what does Dr Lewis mean when he speaks of "value and danger, goodness and evil" with respect to this Law? In this context, goodness equates to some benefit that may be derived without detriment to another. We can (perhaps easily) find examples of this in our own successful applications of the Law of Manifestation. Others may also share that their most successful and memorable results have been obtained when some benefit has been realized personally or for another, without cost or penalty to others. But what are the marks of "evil" intent, and will such efforts truly manifest as envisioned? Generally, these types of visualizations involve some sort of harm or cost to another and we call them "evil" because they are selfish or vindictive or cruel at their core. This sort of effort can only harm oneself, because it is not aligned with the basic Cosmic Law that manifestation only occurs to the evolution of consciousness and the soul. If one is so unfortunate as to experience manifestation of such a negative mental creation, it will result in negative consequences only to oneself, as a lesson on the karmic consequences of negative or harmful acts. This can be painful, yet in an unexpected way still causes growth and evolution.

Therefore, let us guard the mental images that we imbue with the vibrations of living possibility. Let us "be pure and holy in our imaginary concepts" and apply the Law of Manifestation in attunement with the highest goals of Cosmic Law and evolution of the Soul.

Sincerely and Fraternally,

Bill Hallett

Grand Councilor, Rocky Mountain Pacific Northwest Region AMORC

oregon@amorc.rosicrucian.org (Pacific Northwest area, Oregon)

washgington@amorc.rosicrucian.org (Pacific Northwest area, Washington)

colorado@amorc.rosicrucian.org (Rocky Mountain area)

ColoGC777@gmail.com (Grand Councilor's email)

PS - If you have never attended an affiliated body, or it has been a long time, perhaps we can offer better programs and service to you. Please send me a personal email to share your thoughts on making AB’s more interesting for you to attend. Your responses are confidential, and will help make our affiliated bodies better. If you live too far away to attend an AB, please consider our members-only online meetings, advertised to members via email and also on the Rosicrucian Community Portal (normally on the first Tuesday and second Sunday each month)

Brothers and Sisters, Fratres and Sorores;

Each of us has chosen to pursue a course of study that promises to bring us to mystical enlightenment.  Some of us began out of curiosity, some out of seeking mystical “powers”, some out of inner urging, but here we are, all looking for that intangible something that will somehow transform us into something different, something better.

Our study brings many revelations.  We discover an ever-expanding breadth of knowledge about our being, about the natural universe, and about our relationship with the Cosmic.  We discover our true nature, our divine nature.   We discover hidden abilities and can extend our influence on the universe far beyond that had before we began the study.

But is this enlightenment?  One must admit that increased awareness of and development of our natural talents is a form of enlightenment, and for some this is enough.  But there is more!  Our path, our destiny, is to become one with Divinity.  Our consciousness is to expand until we realize the unity of all being including our unity with God.

Does our study take us directly to this state?  One could argue that without this study we would never reach it.  One could also argue that the study doesn’t take us to the destination but only gets us close enough that we finally “get it” and can make the final leap to full Cosmic Consciousness.  I am a believer in the last statement.

It is said in mystical literature that our teachers never give us mystical enlightenment but lead us to discovering it on our own.  It is also said that once a person has reached this state, he will not be able to impart it to others for they must discover it just as we did.  This, then, leaves each of us to our own devices to make the transition, or cross the bridge, from normal consciousness to Cosmic Consciousness – to attain true, all-encompassing enlightenment.

So here we are, my friends, studying our mystical teachings diligently, doing the exercises, practicing the teachings in our daily life, and having the confidence that we are getting closer to enlightenment.  We mustn’t give up our study as irrelevant in reaching the final goal as each step in increased awareness and appreciation of our true nature is a step toward full enlightenment.  But in the final moments, at the end of our intellectual study, it is up to us and we must depend on our own instant of illumination, that “ah-ha” moment, for us to make the final break-through.  And it is coming for each of us – it is our destiny.

May you ever dwell in the Eternal Light of Divine Wisdom!
David Schloegel, S.I., F.R.C.
Provincial Master, Traditional Martinist Order

I am pleased to announce that the Grand Lodge recently appointed Fr Phil Goodwin as Regional Monitor for Colorado. Fr Phil will have a message to share in our next newsletter. If you see Phil at an Affiliated Body event, I am sure he would enjoy the chance to talk with you!

Bill Hallett

Grand Councilor, Rocky Mountain Pacific Northwest Region

Beloved Members of AMORC and Mountain Rose Pronaos,

Does this hectic world ever “get to you”? It does to me, especially as of late. I know that sometimes we think we would like to get away from the frenetic pace that today's world seems to exist in, to become as an ascetic, retreat to some place and spend our time in quiet contemplation and meditation. Then there would be freedom from all of the deadlines and traffic, media noise and anxieties that currently invade our thoughts.

But then as usual, reality sets in.

The realization appears that in doing so, in trying to escape from the world that races around us, there would be a denial that there exists a vital relationship between ourselves and the rest of our environment. We would not be relating those things contemplated, to the actual process of living on this precious planet that we have the opportunity to inhabit. Of what use would unrelated musings be to the evolution of the soul? Wouldn’t such isolation also be denying needed life and or Karmic experiences?

Again, we learn that the easy solution is not often the best one.

Thinking back to some great mystics of the past, who lived their lives as fishermen, carpenters, shoemakers or even held positions of  power in the governments of lands, we can be sure that in their times, they also encountered stress and anxieties no less vexing to them then, as ours are to us now.

We are here now, because there are particular circumstances of this existence that are needed by us as we progress along on this great Cosmic Journey. And we have help. The Rosicrucian and Martinist teachings are timeless and dynamic, in that they are principles that men and women can use in their day to day living, as suggestions and guidelines to help us live as an integral and contributing part of this complex creation that vibrates all around us. Exercises we practice and the ensuing calmness we radiate, can have a reassuring effect on people we encounter who are under stress.

Live the teachings, and thereby be an island of peace and tranquility, radiating Life, Light and Love, exhibiting Wisdom, Strength and Beauty to those you encounter, and then take the time to notice any results.

Be patient.

Within the Bonds of our Beloved order, I am wishing you all a summer of Profound Peace.

Yours in Service

Bob Stanko, FRC

Master, Mountain Rose Pronaos

Beloved Fratres and Sorores,

"We, as humans, have two duties with regard to Universal Love. The first is to love ourselves so that we can love others. The other is to cultivate tolerance, for although it may not be possible to love everyone; it is imperative to hate no one." -- Christian Bernard 

This is similar to a point in the Rosicrucian Code of Life: "Be humanistic. Regard all humanity as your family. Beyond race, culture, and belief, all human beings are brothers and sisters. Consequently, they all deserve the same respect and consideration."

I feel it is important to remember these things in our daily lives to help create more tolerance, which will lead to more love in our lives. One inspiration was Daryl Davis who demonstrated this point when he convinced 200 KKK members to give up their robes. There are things that are outside of our control; however, we can focus on Universal Love in our daily meditations and actions for ourselves and others. Furthermore, through friendship, love, and compassion, we can help others raise their consciousness and reduce hate in the world. How can you show up with more love for yourself or others?

Wishing you Peace Profound,

Frater Nathan Klotz

Pikes Peak Atrium Group Leader

Dear Fratres and Sorores,

One of the concepts that I often contemplate from our Martinist teachings is that of Thought, Will and Action. I often ponder the interplay of these forces, and the effects I observe in my own life. For this message, I would like to explore these through my experiences with questions of: what are thoughts, where do they come from, why do we have them, when do they form and how do we change them.

I started paying more attention to the concept of thought when I was in college. Before then I feel that I was more robotic in my thought process. Or maybe just looking back now upon my earlier self, I consider that my thinking was more bounded than it feels to me now.  I feel like my thoughts were more like a script where my beliefs about the world, society, religion, and everything was fed to me and I followed along.

My first foray into truly starting to re-evaluate my thoughts came from reading the book ”The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity” by Catherine Ponder. I don’t remember exactly how I came across that book, but I believe it was something that caught my eye while wandering through Barnes and Noble. Since then, I have read many other similar books, and they all have very similar concepts about how to use the power of thought to manifest the future you desire.

After reading these books and applying their methods, I noticed a remarkable change in my life in that I started achieving the goals and desires I had. Creating vision boards and focusing on the outcomes I wanted to achieve helped me to realize that the power of thought has so much more potential than I had previously considered.  Naturally I started making the achievement of higher and loftier material desires the focus of my thoughts.

Eventually though, I found myself having a difficult time trying to determine what I really wanted to manifest and why. I began to struggle with the thoughts of “if I have the potential to manifest anything, then what does my heart truly want to manifest”. While it seems easy to jump to any particular want or need, I found myself struggling with answering a true “why” that felt right.

This question of “why” for me really stemmed from another core Martinist tenant of Providence, Will and Destiny. Within Martinism is the belief that “by misusing our will, humanity moved away from providence to be submitted to destiny”.  Contemplation of that phrase has made it a challenge for me to navigate what I should will for.  Maybe the hard situations I experience are there for a good reason, and willing myself out of them avoids the true purpose I am faced with in any particular challenge or situation.  It seems there are more factors that need to be considered for “what to will for and take action on”.

As humans, we all have wants and needs, but beyond those, we most often take action based on emotions. Science has shown us that emotions come from chemical reactions like dopamine that can flood our brain and make us feel relaxed or in a state of pleasure, cortisol that can flood the brain to make us agitated or panicked, or other man-made chemicals like LSD that can change the nature of reality as we experience it. Since chemicals can greatly change our thoughts, where do our thoughts originate?

It feels very chicken and egg to debate which came first, the chemical that caused the feeling or the feeling that produced the chemical. It is important to consider the fact that they are both valid. We can artificially add the chemical to induce the feelings or we can “think” our way into the feelings and thereby induce our bodies to supply the chemical. It really amazes me that we can truly turn our thoughts into things in this simple example.

Thoughts also feel like they can be completely random at times, and I believe this is part of the evolutionary process.  This concept really took root for me when learning about how machine intelligence learns. I watched a video where a program was written to simulate “pleasure” -  “1” or pain - “-1” or neutral - “0”.  When having the program attempt to solve a maze, it was eye opening to see how the developers were able to teach the program to solve the puzzle.

The programmers created a maze that had 4 parts: 1) spaces the program could move to, 2) walls that prevented movement, 3) a “pain” spot (call it a pit) where the program “died” if it fell in, and 4) a “reward” spot that was the end of the maze where it “won”. The algorithm was written to avoid the pit and seek the end as it navigated around the walls. They would run the simulation over and over again and allow the algorithm to create a map of each square as it progressed and step through the maze one square at a time going forward, backwards, left or right.

The interesting thing was when they added a variation to the program such that at a random interval, when the program tried to go forward in the maze, it would go right or left instead. Imagine that if you were walking in a straight line and suddenly when you went to take your next step forward, you randomly ended up to the right or left of the direction you were walking.  This variation caused quite an interesting response.

Once The program found the pain spot in the maze, it would never take a step forward next to the pain spot since it might move left or right and fall into the pain. It would run head first into a wall as many times as it took to randomly jump left or right to move around the pain rather than take the chance to randomly fall into the pit.  Since the program had no negative penalty for time, it would run head first into a wall hundreds of times before hopping right or left, thereby always avoiding the pit.

The programmers also showed how adding a “living penalty” could drastically shape the behavior of the program. With a “living penalty” of .01, after 100 steps the program would feel pain akin to death, therefore it drove the program to no longer bang its head against the wall to avoid the pit. Similarly, with a sufficiently high “living penalty”, the program ran straight to the pit as fast as it could because the pain of each step was more than the pain of ending the run.  Ultimately, the goal of the penalty is to optimize finding the quickest (and least painful) path to the solution.

This example of a machine algorithm learning to optimize solving a maze helped me realize that sometimes our thoughts are random perturbations in our own chemical processor.  These perturbations help us “run the numbers” to see if following that thought’s direction would cause pleasure, pain, or neutral outcomes and optimize our path forward. Sometimes our brains throw us some serious curveballs.

After this realization, I no longer worry about “why did this thought pop into my mind” or fret about “where did that thought come from”. Now I realize they are my brain iterating through many different paths, trying to solve various potential paths in the maze of life and I just ignore the ones that are “headbangers”.  It really helped me make sense of the seemingly strange or odd things that just seem to come unexpectedly out of nowhere.

While our thoughts may feel completely random, and while many teachers have shared that our thoughts create our future, we must remember that thoughts are the first step in the journey and that real progress is made through will and action. Thoughts over time represent “Will”, and through our will, “Actions” unfold. These actions come not only from ourselves, but through the universe also replying to our will.

Misuse of our will for selfish or other negative reasons can also take away from our ability to move closer to the divine. Simply using our will to remove all negatives from our life might override the true purpose or lessons that are intended from those situations. Finding the balance between filtering our thoughts (both the intentional ones and seemingly random ones), focusing them to become our will, and ultimately taking or receiving the resulting actions is truly a difficult challenge. 

It is important for us all to move in the direction we believe we are called by the divine.  By continuously allowing ourselves to hear our thoughts (both good and bad) and focusing on the ones that move us in the direction of connecting with the divine, both ourselves and the universe will eventually lead us to the paths intended for us, with providence eventually leading us there.

Thanks,

May we all ever dwell in the Eternal Light of Divine Wisdom!

Paul Fuqua, Master

Rocky Mountain Atelier Master