Tag Archives: purification

Thorns, and Scars

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Posted by on in Community, Historical, impediments, Inspiration, Matters of Faith, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving

April 15, 2022- The weary Teacher completed the task assigned Him, by the feckless Roman Governor of Palestine. He carried the wooden cross that was to be His final abode on Earth, laid upon it, at the designated spot on Mount Calvary, was nailed to it hand and foot, and watched as slaves using ropes, raised Man and Device to uprightness and secured it in the ground.

It was asked of the onlookers, “Who do you wish us to absolve, this day?” Legend says that the crowd chose a suspected insurrectionist, Barabbas, to be released, leaving the Teacher to be left to die on the cross. The rest that transpired is solemnly commemorated, by all who love the Teacher, as Good Friday, the day on which the sins of the faithful were subsumed by His death.

The Creator has forgiven His creatures, throughout the life of the Universe. It has always come at the expense of the suffering of the Divine Teachers, sent to show us just what the cost of ignorant and feckless behaviour is. Jesus the Christ wore a crown of thorns and later appeared to His Disciples, showing them the scars on His hands and side.

Some Hindus believe Krishna, the Founder of the Hindu Faith, was tied to a tree and shot with arrows until dead. Al-Bab, the Herald of the Baha’i Faith, was executed by a firing squad of 750 soldiers. Baha’u’llah, while not executed, was tortured at various times, before and after He proclaimed His Mission. Such acts have always been carried out by the powermongers of the time, who know that the Teacher has come to bring purification to the human race, thus potentially ending their reigns and bringing true knowledge and power to the common folk.

Today is the most widely observed commemoration of such a travesty, and may its lessons be truly brought home to human consciousness, after nearly 2000 years of its Story being told.

Tremors

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Posted by on in Inner Struggles, Inspiration, Spiritual, Striving

July 9, 2017, Wilmette-

To reiterate, as I am drastically revamping the earlier version of this post:  I will recap the past several, enjoyable days, July 5-8, in my next several posts.

For now:

I was somewhat relieved, and gratified, to actually meet a person who had been rather skittish, with regard to such a handshake.  Turns out, she does seem overbooked.  It is either sink or swim, for most of us, so she is swimming, furiously.

I am still frightened by people who pretend to be friends, and exhort the rest of us, with intense, challenging inspirational rhetoric.  Someone posted online, about Mother Teresa.  I remember her as a rather somber, sad woman, not so comfortable with the adulation of an unskeptical public.  I mention this, because we do tend to move in on people who look shiny, on the surface.  Europeans look at Americans, and are stunned by the glad-handing and false promises that occupy many of us, who are out to get a leg up.  So, motivational speakers and preachers get caught with their pants down, some of them literally so.  That’s the thing that frightens me most:  Not traffic, not thugs, but the duplicitous.

I feel much better, this afternoon, having had an extended conversation with my online friend- far from duplicitous, and the epitome of real.  It could not have ended, any other way.  I look forward to continually learning from her, and other correspondents.  This is about purification, and strengthening- a process that lasts a lifetime.

Some tremors are necessary in life.

 

The Road to 65, Mile 224: Light of the World

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Posted by on in Personal goals, Social

July 10, 2015, Prescott- Today, we Baha’is observed the 165th anniversary of the Martyrdom of al-Bab.  On July 10, 1850, the Persian government, at the behest of powerful clerics, conducted the execution of Siyyid Ali-Muhammad, given the title al-Bab “The Gate”, in Arabic.

Briefly, He was Forerunner to Baha’u’llah, the Founder of our Faith.  Al-Bab challenged the orthodoxy of Islam, noting how far it had strayed from the Teachings of Muhammad.  He called for the purification of the human heart, as an essential prerequisite to the dawning of an Age, in which the human race would become unified, and would enjoy the Kingdom of God on Earth, as promised by Jesus the Christ.

This won Him the allegiance of thousands of Persians and Arabs, and the admiring notice of many Europeans.  It also won Him the enmity of those whose vested interests were threatened by such a call to change.

The execution did not proceed without a hitch.  Al-Bab warned his captors that He would not depart this life until He had completed certain matters, with his secretary.  They took Him out to the killing plaza, anyway, and He was joined by a young man, who insisted he be allowed to die, alongside al-Bab.  The firing squad commander, who was Christian, pleaded with al-Bab that he not be forced to complete the execution.

Al-Bab responded, “Follow your instructions, and if your intention be sincere, the Almighty is surely able to relieve you from your perplexity.”  Thus did it transpire, that the volleys were fired, and when the smoke had cleared, al-Bab and his devotee were found, not dead on the ground, but alive, and with al-Bab in a room with His secretary, completing His business!

Once this was finished, al-Bab and the young follower submitted to again being escorted to the execution zone.  This time, a Muslim commander ordered his regiment to carry out the volley.  The bodies of the al-Bab and His devotee were fused together, with only their heads untouched by the bullets.

With the complicity of the prison yard’s guards, some other followers of al-Bab spirited the remains out of the area.  These were carried, from place to place, in secrecy, for 59 years, until ‘Abdu’l-Baha, the eldest son of Baha’u’llah, placed them in a vault, in a crypt on the slopes of Mount Carmel, near Haifa, in what is now Israel, in 1909.  The remains so rest, today, in the magnificent structure, known as the Shrine of Al-Bab, or “The Bab”, as He is called, in English.

I view this series of events as further evidence of the re-appearance of Divine Light in the world, just as it appeared at the time of Christ, before that, in the times of Moses, Krishna and Buddha, and after that, in the days when Muhmmad walked the Earth.  That mankind chose half-measures, in embracing the Teachings of these Sacred Beings, does not take away from the efficacy of those Truths.  God is nothing if not patient, though.  He certainly has been so with me, and is no less so with the human race as whole.