Contemplation is the highest form of action, because it transcends its nature. Contemplation unites one's action in the manifested world with one's meditation in the higher plane. Thus one achieves this equiposition, this perfect state of being.

Shut up and seek the Divine within, so you may understand, and thus manifest Divinity without. If you have not given up yourself to seek out God, you cannot understand. If you do not understand, you cannot be an effective conduit for God.

If you don't realize that this is the goal, you have a lot of work to do. And there is no excuse for not starting today.

Philosophy is the purification and perfection of human life. It is the purification, indeed, from material irrationality, and the mortal body; but the perfection, in consequence of being the resumption of our proper felicity, and a reascent to the divine likeness. To effect these two is the province of Virtue and Truth; the former exterminating the immoderation of the passions; and the latter introducing the divine form to those who are naturally adapted to its reception.

Hierocles, Commentary on the Golden Verses

One of the most damaging mischaracterizations of Platonic metaphysics is the idea that the material world is a "copy" of the divine immaterial world. While it is not totally wrong to speak in terms of copy, it can be misleading. Far from being a mere copy, our world is forever participating in the divine - to be sure, its participation is temporal and imperfect, but the key point is that it is an ongoing expression of divinity. The language of "copy" tends to degrade the universe whereas the correct understanding of participation actually elevates it.

I would highly suggest watching Keith Woods' recent video on Platonism. The talk includes many important contextual points in addition to a thorough and faithful explanation of Platonism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAI1RvGopjY

Ibrahim ibn Adham also called Ibrahim Balkhi (إبراهيم بن أدهم); c. 718 – c. 782 / AH c. 100 – c. 165 is one of the most prominent of the early ascetic Sufi saints.

The story of his conversion is one of the most celebrated in Sufi legend, as that of a prince renouncing his throne and choosing asceticism closely echoing the legend of Gautama Buddha. He received a warning from God, through Khidr who appeared to him twice & abdicated his throne to take up the ascetic life in Syria. His earliest spiritual master was a Christian monk named Simeon. According to the records of the Chishti Sufis, he is among their early masters.

“ *Yima – the First Man – acted on the advice of Ahura Mazda and built the city of Vara in the Far North surrounded by a wall and brought there the seeds of all the best from people, animals, and plants to preserve them from the fatal winter, the punishment of the spirit of evil, Angra Mainyu, descending upon the sacred land of happiness. Yima built the city of the golden arrow and made the gates luminescent and others into lights. And Spitama Zarathustra asked Ahura Mazda: ‘O creator of the material world, worthy decreer of the Aryans and builder of Asha! What are these lights in the city built by Yima?’ And Ahura Mazda replied: ‘These lights are both eternal and transient. Only once a year do they rise and descend in the city of Vara, the Stars, Moon, and the Sun. The city’s inhabitants believe the whole year to be one Day.*

This fragment from the Bundahishn, the sacred book of the Zoroastrians, can be interpreted in different ways, as can many of Tradition’s other indications that in the Far North in forgotten times there existed an amazing country of paradise, Hyperborea (Thule, Varahi) where the joyful ancestors of the golden-haired, blue-eyed Aryans lived, the divine race of kings and heroes. Herman Wirth treated Tradition’s message literally, and this allowed him to create a unique theory of the origin of mankind, “Der Aufgang der Menschheit,” decipher ancient signs, explain the secret, unfathomable sides of archaic symbols, cults, and rituals, grasp the meaning of sacred rites, and restore the long-lost alphabet of the humanity of paradise. This may seem impossible. Why has such a fantastic discovery remained unnoticed by the general public? How can such stunning, breathtaking revelations be passed over? Why are both ordinary people and the scientific community not told of such a scholar’s name? Alas, once again, political incorrectness.”

- 𝐀𝐥𝐞𝐱𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐃𝐮𝐠𝐢𝐧, “𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐖𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡: 𝐑𝐮𝐧𝐞𝐬, 𝐆𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐘𝐮𝐥𝐞, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐫𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐜 𝐇𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐝”

https://www.istmira.com/uploads/posts/2019-02/1549385905_125833640_102615_0848_bravedefend47.jpg

At death, the finer elements (mind, intelligence, and ego), which, combined, are called consciousness, carry the small particle of spirit soul to another body to suffer or enjoy, according to one's work. Our consciousness is molded by our work... Therefore, our present duty is to cultivate divine consciousness.

This can easily be done through association (sangat sanjayate kamah). Through divine association, our consciousness is made divine, and through demoniac association, our consciousness is made demoniac... That is the duty of one in this human form, a form that gives us a chance to make our next life completely divine.

Swami Prabhupada

Golden Verses of Pythagoras with Commentary

Thanks to https://t.iss.one/GreekLeague and https://t.iss.one/wisdomofthegods for their efforts.

https://telegra.ph/The-Golden-Verses-of-Pythagoras-with-Commentary-04-09

Friends, Titans, Countrymen,
lend me thine ears;
I have come to bury Columbia, not to praise her.
The evil that Gods do live long after them;
the good is often buried with them; and let it be so with Columbia.
The noble elders have told you that she was evil, if it was so, it was a grievous quality;
and grievously she has answered for it.
Here do I make my exaltation, under the dominion of the elders and their followers-
For the elders are honorable men-
so are they all honorable men-
in honoring the soul of the Titan of the West.
She was my mother, nurturing and just to me:
But the elders said she was evil;
and the elders are honorable men.
She gave us nurishment, riches, and endless territory for us to denude and make our own;
by which we enriched ourselves, grown strong, and were given reign of our own lives.
Did this in Columbia seem evil?
When the small souled Tyrants of false Gods and shallow hearts dominated you,
Columbia answered your cries, and taking up the sword, she freed you.
Evil should be made of sterner stuff.
Yet the elders said she was evil:
and the elders are honorable men.
Through her, Columbia gave solace and power to the three great peoples of Europe,
Latins, Germanics, and Slavs, each given power to make of their lives what their souls could muster.
Was this evil?
Yet the elders say she was evil; and the elders are honorable men.
I speak now to not disprove what the elders have spoken, but here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love her once, and not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to honor her again?
Are we to call ourselves men when it is by our shortcomings, and those of our blood, that Columbia be ravished by a Punic tyranny?
Of what quantity can we call ourselves lovers, when it is our hearts we have sold for a thirty-pieced silver?
Bear with me, my heart lies there with Columbia's ravishment, and I feel only shame that I had once abandoned her when she had never once failed me.

-Ronin

The first initiative of a man seeking the Way must be to reject the habitual image that he has of himself. He will be able to begin to say "I" only when the magical word corresponds to the inner imagination of self-awareness unconstrained by limitations of space, time, or power.

Human beings must retrieve the sense of the reality of themselves. At present, they only limit and diminish themselves, feeling different and smaller than they really are; every thought they conceive and every deed they perform adds one more bar to their prison cell, one more veil to their vision, one more denial of their power. They lock themselves inside the limits of their bodies and attach themselves to the earth that carries them: it is as if an eagle fancied to be a snake and crawled on the ground, ignoring its wings.

It is not only that man ignores, deforms, and denies himself, but that he also reenacts the myth of Medusa, turning everything around him into stone. He observes and sizes nature with weights and measures. He limits the life surrounding him to petty laws, and overcomes the mysteries with petty hypotheses. He freezes the universe into a static unity, and puts himself at the periphery of the world, shyly, humbly, as if he were an accidental secretion, without power or hope.

Man is the center of the universe. All of the cold or incandescent material masses of the myriad worlds out there do not weigh on the scale of values as much as the simplest change in his consciousness. The limits of his body are just an illusion; man does not merely rest on the earth, but he continues through the earth and into cosmic space. Whether he moves his thought or his arms, an entire world moves with him; thousands of mysterious forces hasten toward him in a creative gesture, and all of his daily actions are just the caricature of what really flows divinely toward him.

Thus he should look around himself and free everything that surrounds him from its petrification. Before knowing it, he must imagine that there are conscious energies in the earth, in the waters, in the air, and in fire, and that the so-called natural forces are just modalities of our own substance projected outward. It is not the earth that makes the plant live, but the forces in the plant that draw from the earth the elements necessary for its own life. Something else needs to be grafted onto the sense of the beauty of things, namely the sense of the mystery of things as an obscure and yet intuited reality. Not only must what we can see and know act in us, but the unknown must also be bravely affirmed and felt in all its power.

We must emphasize the need for a special attitude to this point of view, as to any other esoteric one. What matters is to inaugurate something that will often help along the way of spiritual development, namely a way of possessing a concept that amounts to more than merely understanding or remembering it. It is necessary to establish a rhythm: in other words, to present a concept periodically and rhythmically1 to one's consciousness, which then grasps it willingly, and not only as a thought but also as a feeling. The contemplation of one's being and of the world in the manner that I have described generates a sense of greatness and power. We must retain this sense within us, in order to be intensely penetrated by it.

In this way we will be able to establish a relationship of realization with this new vision, which at first will flow into the subconscious, then after some time will be incorporated increasingly into the feeling, in the manner I have described. A new condition will then arise: what was first a mere concept will eventually become the presence of a force, and a state of liberation will be reached, on which the new life may be built.

All the exercises of inner development will be paralyzed unless one breaks the shell of limitation that daily life forms around one, and that still remains in the human subconscious even after a change of perspectives.

- Julius Evola, Introduction to Magic

https://odysee.com/@ashalogos:92/obstacles-along-the-way:e?r=7GMWxWe1ScWv4XQqzrNsN8vHVFAPv6YS

An update from the front: Punished Asha Logos responds to recent attempts to stop his work. He re-asserts the gravity of our situation and the reality that we are truly already at war (whether you like to think of it that way or not), but also reminds us of the power of maintaining a hopeful and positive outlook in the face of such adversity. Consider this an urgent reminder to watch or re-watch Asha Logos' videos. He may very well be the greatest content creator we have, and his ability to continue his great work is in jeopardy. He's doing a lot more than making videos too; behind the scenes he is responsible for bringing people together with the goal of building new institutions. With the utmost sincerity he may be our best warrior actively fighting in this war where so few others are. If you are fortunate enough to be generous you could not find a better fighter to support.

"Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men" - Seneca