Soli Deo Gloria

By M.T. Augustine

A travel notebook (Europe and USA) with notes on a work in progress: "Toward a Study of the Mind of Man and the Heart of God."

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781456621391

Book preview

God.

PARIS

Whatever you have heard, even if you think they are exaggerations, about the City of Paris, about how wonderful it is and how magnificent the French are; well, I can tell you; it’s all true!   ….and much more! Paris is magic!

So how does Paris evaluate Success and Happiness?   I think it is quite different from New York; with some similarities because everyone is human, hopefully; and one notices when one travels that basically people have much more in common than what they think separates them from other people; in a so-called foreign and separate country.   It is hard to believe after traveling for a certain time that a generation or so ago the world was at war.   And all for what?   Did it advance the human condition one centimeter; au contraire; it destroyed 100 Million people; not to mention art treasures of humanity cities, infrastructure, because these are things, by far secondary and replaceable; still all a waste.

All those lost lives; all that suffering and pain; could it all have been prevented?   At this point in my studies I think yes, the world, humanity, must learn some lesions from all this.   We must learn from all the history of World War I and World War II if we are to somehow avoid the next number; for the world as we know it would not survive another World War; the weapons now are quite beyond devastation and annihilation.

So, how did these wars come about?   What dark side to the brain, the human mind allows for this to happen; for the collective psyche of entire countries to turn to their dark side?   I do not expect to answer all of the questions I will ask here?   But if we do not want such events to happen in the future, we have to begin examining the causes of such behavior; we have to begin studying on a global scale, millions of people, the brain, the mind of man; the collective mind; the human psyche.   We have to begin to understand that these actions, all actions first originate in the brain, possibly we could say, the egoic-mind set, and then appear in the reality of our existence.   But first they happen in the brain.   Well, if the brain is going in a certain direction, say toward insanity, is it possible to somehow turn it off?   I think yes, this kind of understanding is now available to us, should we choose to acknowledge and recognize it.   We can learn from these lessons which cost millions their lives.   But I got sidetracked because when I see Paris I appreciate it so much because I think Paris came so close to being utterly destroyed in the last Great War.   But back to my topic here which is the magnificent city of Light

Some cities have an overall certain overall feeling to them; Paris is like that; and I am going to try and define that feeling.   What is the general feeling of Paris?   All things considered it could be love, in all its forms; Paris is about love; and therefore about God; because the ultimate expression of love is God.   I love Paris; It is a magnificent expression of God’s love.   

Actually the first thing about arriving in Paris is the sense of stepping through the looking glass into History; seeing in front of one all the places one has heard about and read about for however many years; and finally they are right there in front of you; and are better than ever.   The first time one realizes one is actually on the Pont Neuf, for example, is a thrilling experience depending on one’s degree of knowledge of the history of this Bridge.

Ile de la Cite

One of the wonderful things about being in Paris is that you can get up; have coffee, at Starbucks if you want to do the American thing; or a small but strong coffee at a regular French restaurant; and then just start walking; you’ll have a wonderful time; because soon you’ll come upon some famous historical site and your day will be made. The Ile de la Cite is just such a neighborhood; full of wonderful and ancient historical buildings and monuments; but this is also true of wherever you go in Paris!

Montmartre

I had a wonderful room several years ago on my 1st trip to Paris; at the Hotel Roma Sacre Coeur on the Rue Caulaincourt, a short walk from the Basilica.   It was a fairly small room but wonderful; the best item being shuttered windows overlooking a perfect film-set of a Parisian Square with Cafes with tables full of Parisians because it was off-season; Flower shops, the Caulaincourt Metro Station; a perfect introduction to Parisian life.

It was a short walk to Sacre Coeur and for a couple of days I explored this magnificent 12th century architectural wonder.   The fact that in Europe the most magnificent buildings are dedicated to the worship of God Almighty is as it should be; but perhaps without so much dogma of which Jesus knew nothing and would probably not approve much of.

Place de la Concord (Louis XV)

The Place de la Concord, formerly named Place Louis XV, is enormous; one can understand the regular exercise which most of the French throughout history must have experienced on a daily basis, when one walks about Paris.   The rich of course rode horses or in carriages and as the pictures show some of them had serious weight problems; so, there could be an advantage to actually not riding in carriages.   

While on this subject it is entirely possible to have the mind take control of what seems to be a serious problem for many people in modern society; to take control of the weight problem it is necessary to first take control of the mind; and evidently mostly people try to avoid controlling their thoughts.   Of course, once one realizes the ability to access a higher awareness; then all problems in life become solvable.   In fact there are no problems which the Higher Intelligence, which we as human do have access to; there is no problem which cannot be solved or resolved by Universal Mind.

So, we as humans face all kinds of problems; not be daunted; we have within us the ability to access a power which can solve all problems.   This includes even all of the financial problems of the European Union; the Nuclear problems which could become quite serious; even more serious than they are at the moment; and any personal personal and public problems which the mind can experience.

When the human race arrives at a state of higher awareness; beyond operating through the egoic-mind structures now in place; then and only then will our present problems on this planet be solved.   Until then most of the human race will just be spinning their wheels and perhaps trying to travel to or arrive at outer space - a place that they are in already.

St. Laurent at le Gare L’Est

St. Laurent is a wonderful little church near the Gare de l’Est; and for several weeks I stayed at an apartment in this wonderful neighborhood just off the Rue de Magenta.   Everything was available, like NYC, including a health food store; of which the French are becoming more conscious.   Although things like vitamins and herbs are much cheaper in New York and the US.   In the US every few years the big companies try to get control of the vitamin and herb markets for obvious reasons.   So far the saner elements of society have been able to keep the misled business sharks at bay; but these companies tend to be run by humans who have not achieved any higher awareness and are trapped in the egoic mindset which means many of their actions appear to be and are literally, insane.   It is all quite sad really; this effort to make bungles of money off of people’s ignorance of what is involved in maintaining health.   Smoking has nothing to do with health; yet, billions are made exploiting peoples’ ignorance.

The general feeling in Paris is quite different from say Boston or New York, which would be my basis of comparison; San Francisco is closer.

When I was leaving Paris; I went into the metro and there was a woman of a certain age in a somewhat worn, long black evening gown with a rose in her hair and the look of perhaps a retired chanteuse, with a kind of sadness in her demeanor, as though her mind were in another place and time; yet, singing from the depths of her heart "La Vie en Rose.   This is my last memory of Paris.   

Versailles

Louis’ Hunting Lodge is quite an impressive place to our eyes and must have appeared even more impressively extraordinary in the eighteenth century.   We in the past few centuries have become accustomed to impressive places; it is all relative; and no doubt the building of the future will appear exponentially that much more grand than what we see today.   That being said; even today, Versailles is an extraordinary collection of buildings; and of course to someone who has history as a bit of a hobby, it is a little bit of paradise.   One can almost see all the historical figures one has read so much of walking the grounds and in the various grande salles of the castle.   Of course, no doubt it was created as a kind of paradise for the king and his court.   Louis XIV seemed to be the most politically astute of the later Bourbons and established a system which essentially centralized the government and allowed him to exercise more power than his predecessors; Louis XV, who became king at an extremely young age, further consolidated this power to the degree he was able; although his real interests were essentially elsewhere; but already as with all human political systems the decline had already set in, as the king fully realized, as we can conclude with his famous, après moi, le deluge.   He recognized that such extreme systems could not last but a few hundred years at most; this is what happens with all extreme political systems; one only has to look at history; it’s all there.

Louis XVI has come down to us as being a bit of a mentally deficient character; but I doubt that this was the truth; he seems to have made some admirable decisions; such as the decision to support the American colonies.   It is doubtful that the Americans could have succeeded if it were not for the help of the French king; so in a nutshell, the American have an enormous debt to the Bourbon king who financially supported their endeavor to an extent that Washington could not have done.   This expense was later falsely attributed, often done in history, to Marie Antoinette; a debt which she most likely was aware of only in the vaguest manner, and had no idea of the sums involved, but paid for this policy with her head.   In any case, the French people mistakenly concluded that these amounts were spent on her wardrobe; but she actually passed over the infamous necklace in favor of a ship for the Americans; so America possibly has a great debt to Marie Antoinette vis-à-vis this policy of France.   Louis on the other hand, one suspects, perhaps knew what he was doing, as he held his Court in some contempt, which feeling was returned with abundant interest, by large numbers at his Court.   It would seem if one reads closely and between the lines that Louis knew more than is generally supposed; seemed to genuinely love the people, and in addition probably wanted to be remembered as a saintly king like one of his ancestors.

I remember looking out the windows of various rooms and grand salles at Versailles on a fine fall day and thinking of all the people in the past centuries who have looked out of these same windows during all the various historical events one reads of.   How extraordinary to be present in a space where so much has happened to human beings, that in some way are all still connected; one can actually feel their presence, perhaps as spirits in the very room where one is having lunch.

I think it was Henry Ford who said that history is bunk; perhaps this is a half-truth, as much of what is passed down seems to be.   One has to be able to read between the lines and discern the actual truth from all the various presentation of so-called truth.   This would appear to be generally true vis-à-vis most areas in life.   There is what we are told regarding people and events; e.g., the French and American revolutions; and then there is the truth about the people and the events involved which one can only arrive at by a kind of smorgasbord approach to all the available literature and material; taking only the best and most true accounts; and developing the ability to discern the truth from the nonsense of perhaps the popular history.   It is rather facile to blame complicated historical events on only a few of the individuals present when, in truth, such events may have been inevitable whether they were present or not.

ROMA

The sounds of Bach’s Sanctus from the Mass in B-Minor is running through my mind….

He came across a phrase several years ago which had the immediately recognizable ring of truth about it, that is: Hildegard of Bingham’s A Feather On the Breath of God.   He rather liked thinking in this light as it seemed to be in full alignment with