Ancestor Worship

This blog is called Meeting the Masters which indicates its origins, but I don't write much these days about the spiritual beings I call the Masters. That is partly because my experience with them ended over 25 years ago though perhaps I should say my conscious experience since I believe they are still a factor in my life, just one of which I am not outwardly aware. That means they could be a factor in many people's inner lives, acting as guides and instructors. Perhaps we contact them in sleep or perhaps they communicate on the spiritual plane in the form of impressions which we then must pick up and interpret as best we can. That way we can grow as individuals because we are responsible for ourselves.

This leads to the other reason for me not writing much about the Masters now. This is my blog and while I do think they have prompted me from time to time, I do not know what might come from them and what comes from me. I am neither a medium nor a messenger which is as it should be in the modern world in which we are called to the path of spiritual adulthood.

Enough of that. What I thought I might do here is examine what the Masters are and how they stand to us, and I say us because although I may have had the experience of talking to them in my younger days that doesn't mean I am associated with them more than anyone else. If, as I believe, they represent the teachers of humanity (under Christ), then any spiritual aspirant is associated with them to some degree. We all have our teachers and guides in the higher worlds.

So, what then are the Masters? First off, they told me to think of them as messengers from God, and I do. But that just describes their function. What are they in themselves? I have considered this and I have decided that the best way to think of them is as spiritual ancestors. The group that spoke to me would be my ancestors and, no doubt, the ancestors of many others, but other people might have other, different but similar, groups as their ancestors.

As above, so below runs the famous saying. Everything true, natural and good in this world is a reflection of a higher reality. We have biological families and ancestors, and I am sure we also have spiritual families and ancestors. Not linked by blood as in this world but by something else which would be a similar point of spiritual origin meaning here origin of the soul, the individual component of our being. There will be a spiritual version of blood, perhaps some quality of light, and this is what binds spiritual families together. Sometimes these families may coincide with our earthly families, but sometimes not for reasons of learning since that is what we come here to do. What a wonderful thought it is to know that we have a loving family in the higher worlds, one to which we completely belong and from which we cannot be separated. The bond is actually closer than to any earthly family since spirit is thicker than blood.

The Masters then are the senior members of that family. They are our spiritual ancestors which is why we owe them honour and respect. They have gone before us on the journey of life and reached the destination or destination as it applies to the human state. There is no point at which spiritual growth and expansion stops as long as life is in a state of manifestation. Heaven cannot be a static place because it combines being, eternity, the absolute, stillness, oneness, with becoming, change, development, growth, variety, individuals, to make something more than either of these on their own. Love comes out of that. Can there be love in pure being, absolute oneness?

In the pagan past we venerated out ancestors and this was a good instinct. Sometimes we thought of ourselves as descended from the gods, or some of us at any rate, and I see this as founded in something real too. The gods in this sense might be those who have gone before us, who have achieved, and this is how I perceive the Masters. They are forerunners who have done what we are trying to do. They are the realised end of the human state which is attainable by all of us if we do the work. I like to look at the origin of words to see what the root meaning behind their current meaning might be. The modern English word 'worship' derives from the Old English weorðscipe meaning the condition (scipe) of being worthy (weorð), hence of being due honour or respect. With that in mind, thinking of the Masters in terms of ancestor worship seems appropriate.

You might say what need have we of such beings if we have Jesus and that is a fair point, but I would counter that Jesus worked through his disciples as well as directly so the one does not preclude the other.