Wisdom From Atlantis : The Use of Symbolism

The Use of Symbolism :


We find mortals who have taken up the advanced form of thought, (wondering and inquiring of every one whom they feel might give any enlightenment on the subject,) the meaning of symbols and asking : "Why did I have a dream that seemed to be so symbolical? Why is it that so many things come to me in waking hours that seem to be symbols of something, and I cannot find it, cannot grasp it?" We hear this question all about, and many try to find out the meaning of symbols, or that which they take to be symbols.

In our opinion, a symbol is a picture : You attempt to teach your small child a great lesson from its blocks, from pictures, from birds, trying to impress upon his mind the lesson that he can always seek, that he can always bring back to himself when he sees this particular picture; and so it is that some individuals do not seem to grasp the meaning of your own language, that which should be the medium of expression between you. Many individuals are unable, are incapable of reasoning, of concentrating, of knowing the meaning behind the words. Therefore, it is often necessary to give to them a picture that will impress upon their minds the lesson that lies behind it.


We find among you mortals a tendency to speak your English language, or whatever language comes easiest to you. You speak it fluently, you discuss your world topics, the topics of the day, you think you understand one another because you understand the words to a degree that another speaks. You say you can speak such and such a language or perhaps many, and yet we find so few of you who actually know the meaning of the words that you utter, the true meaning that lies behind the simple words, such as the word remembering. When we speak the word remembering to you, it has its full meaning. To many of you, it is going back over some particular incident in your lives, or trying to find out what you thought or did --- that to you would be remembering. But to us it is becoming a member again, re-membering. The word atonement, as you call it, or at-onement, becoming one again. You have always been one and yet in your minds you have separated yourselves until now you must come back and at-one yourselves with the great Universal Spirit, not in reality, but in your consciousness.


Many words that you speak you do not use in their true sense. You do not give them their full power. You use them lightly and that is why in the form of speaking slang as you term it, you use many utterances as the savage would use a grunt. It means something that everyone soon forms the idea of its general meaning, and perhaps the word itself does not mean that at all. You do not use your language to become understood among yourselves. Yet you do not speak a language that you understand between yourselves. We find therefore that it is necessary to give to some of you who have lived so lightly and tried to assimilate in a somewhat meager way with language, an understanding in pictures, in symbols, because we find that you will concentrate upon a picture and that you will do little about it if it is written in your own language.

We cannot hope to express the great understanding that would come to you if you could understand one another's thoughts.Your English Language is not adequate, it is not sufficient, it has not a range of words, and yet it is being used over your country as the preferred language. For that very reason it is almost like your shorthand, and yet very few of you understand, only those of you who have studied it can use it to advantage. So, your symbols.


Do not give so much importance to dream symbols because you receive them; try to receive a lesson from them but remember that they are as blocks to you, they are given to you to help you to understand, to help you to understand your consciousness, because you will work harder if you can hold in your mind a picture.Then as you see a certain number of words on paper, it means a soulless something to you, that unless you receive it with the spirit behind it is nothing and that is why many individuals will read again and again and receive a different meaning each time, because they did not concentrate in the first place, did not look behind it, search for its complete meaning. Therefore it took many readings, many months, perhaps years, to find the understanding, or even a partial understanding of that which has been written in plain English.


You should seek from within out, rather than from without in. Many feel that wisdom is like seeking a gold mine ; it is something to be sought in secret places, unusual places. It is difficult to find it is true, but it is not beyond, it is within the grasp of every individual who will open his own consciousness. It is around him, within him, about him. He need not go out to receive it, it is within. He need not seek in far away hidden places, it is close at hand. For that reason he does not seek, it is so close, and yet mortals will spend months, years, lifetimes, seeking that which is so unimportant, and not realising that they hold in the hollow of their hands the all-important truth. To learn to know yourself. If you know yourself, you will know all men, for while they are different outwardly, materially, individually, yet when you find in another something that rings true to you, you find it within yourself ; it is within you or you could not recognize it in another. Remember, you cannot transcend your ideals or your understanding, and it is only that which is familiar to you that you could hope to understand in another, that which is unfamiliar, you do not understand. It baffles you, you are lost, you cannot see why in another there is something that you have never experienced yourself, something that does not dwell within you, as outward attributes, but the great fundamental truth is One and you will find even your smaller attributes of expression are very like many individuals the world over, when you can know them well enough to know they exist. When you can know another individual a little you will see the traits like your own, you will find a boy in China or any place in your universe is one and the same generally, individually it is different. It is true the nationality brings them up under different rule, but fundamentally you can see the great similarity. Therefore think of it! How much alike all mortals are and how you cannot separate yourself form another in truth, for all are part of the great universal God-head, but like a drop of ocean water helps to make up the ocean, so do you help to form the great Universal Spirit.

You could not be separated from it, you could not be released from it, you could not live without it. It is life. It exists, it has ever been and will continue on into eternity. Because of the laws of the universe, it is, and because it is , you are, and because the same law makes every individual born into the world alike, under the same laws governing the same act of correlation. It is true all over the universe you cannot be separated, you all are governed alike, you all live and breathe and have your being fundamentally the same. Without air, without food, without water, without certain elements upon your universe, upon your earth, you could not exist in the form that you now take, which has been created in thought. Therefore, remember that while you are in this body, you are functioning in one way. When you leave it, you function in another, and yet your consciousness always remains yours until you reach the place that you merge and become one with the great All-cosmic consciousness. It is when you begin to understand the symbols of life, which are only pictures that you see that there is no difference in individuals, underneath it all, fundamentally, in truth there is no difference, there is no separation.


To teach mortals that they stand out as individuals and yet when they learn themselves, they know all men, seems to be a paradox. It is not, it is a truth. You are functioning in these bodies to give to you certain expression for your soul's on-going. When you have completed it, or when your body ceases to be of use, you leave it, you lay it down and it goes back into its own individual form, fundamental qualities which indeed are a part of the same great cosmic force that you are. It has a consciousness, it is made of millions of entities over which your great consciousness ruled during the time that you possessed it.Remember that your consciousnesses has been made of myriads of consciousnesses down through the ages and you have attained the position that you now hold and that the only difference between the least consciousness that you are capable of, and the great Arch-angel is the degree of consciousness. That is the only difference; it is in the degree that you possess, that you bring forth, that you manifest. Therefore, when you are conscious of all about you, you are conscious of yourself and you are unconscious so long as everything about you is a mystery, so long as others are a mystery, so long as you do not know yourself you do not know another. Therefore, you know by that very symbol just how much you know yourself for just so can you gauge it. If you do not know another, if you criticize another, if he does not meet that which you think to be righte of, and the great Arch-angel is the degree of consciousness. That is the only difference; it is in the degree that you possess, that you bring forth, that you manifest. Therefore, when you are conscious of all about you, you are conscious of yourself and you are unconscious so long as everything about you is a mystery, so long as others are a mystery, so long as you do not know yourself you do not know another. Therefore, you know by that very symbol just how much you know yourself for just so can you gauge it. If you do not know another, if you criticize another, if he does not meet that which you think to be right, then you do not know yourself, and why do you not know yourself? Because you never know when you will meet it yourself in your life, the same thing that another has done for which you have criticized him. That is why you do not know yourself. If you knew yourself you could not criticize another for you would be honest with yourself and say, "I too am that one, or have been or will be perhaps. No doubt of it." We say perhaps because many of you are not conscious of that which you have done in earlier years, in this life. How could you know then of that which has transpired in another body many long ages ago, and yet the consciousness, that part of you which goes into eternity, carries with it its remembering, carries with it all its experience, its wisdom --- there is none lost.

So when you see another one doing that which you disapprove of, which you would change, which you would teach him to be different in, you are seeing in that other one, yourself in a lesser degree or a greater degree, yet yourself. Remember, rather than criticize the other one, go back within yourself, say to yourself, "That is part of me, if I would change it in another one, I must begin now and change it within myself, for here is where the trouble lies. If I can see it in another one to criticize in another, here is where the seat of it is. If it is something that I dislike in another, here is my work --- not to change the other one, that work is his, inherited by him, and inherited by me is my own work to do. If we all would do our work to the best of our abilities, the world would grow better fast."

As it is, every one is reaching out of himself to criticize, to change, and very little is done at home, because of it, time apparently is wasted, and yet we see mortals feeling that you are justified, feeling that you are capable, feeling that you attained to the position in life where you are judges of humanity. It is not a position that anyone should assume because when you judge humanity, you admit literally that when you have done little in yourself, that all of this you would change in another, lies unchanged in yourself, lies there awaiting the time when you will return and change it, and when you reach the place that you are working on it, you are then too busy, too well occupied, to reach out into the world and train another. You are willing then to leave his duty to him, when the time comes that he will see it ; for others have left you to do yours, until the time came when you changed it, for after all, you are the one who breathes for this body, you are the one who lives in this body, and by the same token you are the one to change all, for it lies within your own soul and is yours for you to remodel.


If mortals could but know that much time is wasted and the greatest sin that one can perform is to bring judgement down on another when he has not worked it out within himself. Think of your own lives. Some of you say, "Where shall I begin?" We have just told you, begin on that which you see and dislike so much in another. It lies right at hand. When you reach the place where you feel there is no power, that it has no power over you, that it ceases to exist in your consciousness, that you cease to see it, you have no doubt overcome it, but when you yet can criticize it, you have not overcome because you can still see it and recognize it in another. It is still distasteful to you in another, therefore it is still within you and you are not conscious of the fact that it lies there within yourselves. Why? Because most of you have not lived lives to perfect it. If you know that you do not approve of it, then strengthen yourselves before the battle, not attempt to do it when the battle is on. Most of you mortals wait until the great test comes upon you before you seek to strengthen yourselves. But the time to do that is to prepare for it and to so train yourselves that it has no power over you. Then when it comes you are strong. It is not a test to you, you stand above it, you have overcome in  the fact that you have faced it and you have permitted it to loose its power before the test comes, but it will come to prove to you whether you have overcome it or whether you just think you have overcome.


Remember that as long as you can say you have overcome, you feel sure, you think about it, talk about it --- you have not overcome. When you reach the place that when you meet it, you could give it a glance of recognition but pass it on, place it out of your mind, know that it has no power by the very fact that it does not remain within, that it ceases to exist for you, then you have finished, but not until then because the denial of a thing is in fact the recognition of the existence of the thing. So when you deny it, you admit it, you hold it within yourself.


If all your lives could be utilized as a symbol you would waste no time by seeking to reach and to know the understanding that is yours, that you are seeking, that you came here to find. Hunt for it right within yourself and whenever others disqualify, do not reach your standard, so to speak, see to it that your own standard is a standard and not an assumed one, not a pretense, not an out-pouring of that which is for the world to see only, see that you live it, for when others seek to investigate they find as a rule a structure behind very much like your moving pictures --- a beautiful front yet no backing. It is deplorable indeed that mortals can waste so many moments in building structures in their lives that are only so much waste material, that have cost so much pain, in sorrow, in trouble, even as your beautiful pictures are so expensive to produce and after all, none of them can be utilized for anything but for the purpose it is built, and that is to be seen from the front only, and when that is torn down by storm, then do you stand naked in your lack of wisdom, your lack of understanding, in all that is worth while in life. Many of you have frittered away your time and begin to change only when the time comes that you feel that you are leaving your bodies, and see a panorama of your lives and recognise your lost moments and see that which you might have done but did not do, and all that you did do and how little it has availed.


It now is the time when you are in your zenith when you have all opportunity ahead of you, now is your opportunity to begin, now always will be the time when you do begin, so why not this moment as well as another moment? Why can you not see the interest on your investment now and this moment instead of a moment when it is too late to do that which you craved to do?


Symbols of  life! Most of them only symbols, only sign-posts and many of you wrap yourselves around them and can go no further. Tear yourselves loose and go out into the universe, living your lives and being that which is your ideal, that which is yours to attain that which you see within yourselves, not that which you see in another or that which another may see for you, but that which you see for yourself. --- The Great Cosmic Pictures can never be complete until each mortal goes back and lives his life, not as others picture it, but as he sees it, as he pictures it, as it is a truth to him from within himself, not from the brain, for it is, "as a man thinketh in his heart so is he," not as he thinketh in his brain, that is of little power and a know-ledge passes into nothingness because the brain is continually filled with something different out of which the soul can make all that it can sift through of the wheat from the chaff.


Source :  "Wisdom From Atlantis" by Ruth B. Drown. Pg 137-150.
Note from the Author :  "Wisdom From Atlantis" was received through the inspirational Pathway from the Etheric records. While the words are English, the style is Atlantian and the wisdom is eternal.