.....
The L/love Brothers
This link will always take you back to the beginning of the parable/allegory/metaphor analyzed below.

This story illustrates the three planes or levels of human love: carnal (lust,) erotic (eros,) and Spiritual (Agapic.)

Main Ideas:

there is a hierarchy of one's capacity to L/love and the quality of that "L/love."  The most primal expression of desire, lust, is not love but an obsession to possess, control, and dominate. Sometimes expressions of lust are sometimes mistakenly as excessive passion, or incorrectly labeled as jealous love. But love, even erotic love, is never jealous.  "Jealous love" is an oxymoron, each term being of opposite natures.   Although there is an intermediate stage of love beyond raw animal lust which is the romantic craving for sexual consummation.  This a pale substitute for it is little more than emotional clinging (eros) to the beloved object.  The ultimate Spiritual capacity for expressing unconditional Love is offered unconditionally as Agapic or Spiritual Love.  In this Spiritual relationship, the beloved is not an object, but each partner is Spiritually linked as One, each beloved of the other as One.
the less the capacity for Spiritual Love, the greater one's entrapment in rationalizing the feelings and drives of the senses that create the experiences of desire, lust, or eros, and the greater the potential for one to be unfulfilled or unhappy in the world.
each person must evaluate their lives, observe the behavior of others, and submit to the discipline of surrendering their carnal needs as a total way if life before they can be open to Love.  Only then can they hope to to advance to the plane of Spiritual Love.
individuals are Pilgrims on a Spiritual odyssey, born again and again, each time to pick up in each new life the level of L/love's quality defined by the level of C/consciousness they had achieved at death of their prior life.
there are no precipitous leaps across the levels of advancement.  Each advance must be earned from the trials of life.  To deny the Truth of one's experience is to only postpone the day of ultimate confrontation with one's Self (i.e. one's Soul) as the only Source and Owner of one's lot in life.

Applications in "The World"

by observing the behavior of others, as part of the first awakening of Spiritual Truth, an observer can notice the difference in the quality of relationships among their friends and acquaintances, i.e., to differentiate among, lust, eros, and Agapic Love, and learn.
those who demonstrate an elevated capacity for Spiritual love will be shown to exhibit that quality in other dimensions of their lives, e.g., they are unconditionally kind, patient, and compassionate toward others, they are oriented toward service, not exploitation.  They have a higher achievement of ethical sensitivity and capacity, and they practice and live their higher values more than they preach them.

Implications for Subsequent Material
In the dialogues and technical discussions on the topics of L/love, notice how, when and where the characters of lust, eros and Agape can be found expressing in the visible aspects of our own experiences in the world.  Examine toady's headlines and find example after example how ego generated fear crushes the potential for L/love to exist in human relationships.  Love is the only condition that can transcend the barriers of diverse cultures and sub-cultures.  Notice how levels of fear and Love express as correlated with a person's (society's) level of Spiritual advancement expressed in other areas of  life: kindness, gentleness patience, acculturation, ethics and overall social generosity.  Don't expect to find much Spiritual Love at the local gun club or sports arena any more than in militant Islam.

This link will always take you to the next allegory/parable in sequence.
This link will always take you to the top of this page to use the links to other explanations on this page.
This link will always take you back to the previous parable/allegory/metaphor on the Master Index page
This link will always take you to the top of the master Index page Table of Contents
This link will always return you to the point of departure in the dialogue that brought you to this interpretation

...
The Shoes

This story illustrates how an impoverished Spiritual Consciousness makes one vulnerable to actively permit their ego to direct one's own destruction while remaining oblivious to the obvious means of escape.

Main Ideas:

"shoes" represent the material covering over the Spiritual Truth on which we stand as Spiritual beings.  When one stands on Holy ground, the shoes (intellectual misunderstanding due to the misleading nature of words) must be removed. [ref Fillmore, The Revealing Word, page 179]
"Blanch" is the typical person who finds the source of her affirmation and belonging entirely outside of herself, in this example, in her family's approval.  She dutifully wears the shoes [thoughts and ideas] provided to her by her family.
Blanch's loyalty [devotion to the ego intellect] is extended to those who are close to her in the carnal world of sensate loyalty. But the relatives are impoverished of Spiritual values beyond those of mindless loyalty (for safety's sake) to her family.
the "shoes" are symbolic of the ego's  intellectually derived expectation, or any requirement for behavior that we accept without question when placed upon us by those persons, groups, or social circumstances such that we have given them power over us.
the "pain" is the cry from our burdened Soul when we are accept and do to ourselves that which isn't in our best interests.
the "rot"  and "gangrene" symbolize the ultimate effects, putrefaction, of false values on our Spiritual health.  They manifest in the world to demonstrate the results of acting contrary to the alarm message of pain that Spirit is sending to us.
the corruption and failure of Blanch's body's organs is symbolic of how a Spiritual lack that begins by affecting only one area of our lives will progressively harm and destroy other parts of our being. We observe how a victim's entire emotional and physical body will ultimately perish when the first body system critical for survival fails.
the "family" represents that collection of related worldly influences that give false credibility to invalid worldly criteria for choosing our values and actions, i.e., the family provides the shoes of material existence.

Applications in "The World"

examine the norms, expectations and requirements for your behavior that are placed on you by all external influences that you are willing to accept.  Do any of these "shoes" feel uncomfortable, if you dare to acknowledge that discomfort?  Then consider the extent to which these "shoes" define and direct all of your interactions within your self limited reality.
True Spiritual Love places no such requirement of compliance or loyalty for a person to be beneficiary of the gift of Spiritual Love.
like Blanche, many of us blame external influences that we have accepted and which we choose to serve for any adverse conditions in our life.  Our ego intellect can offer incredible justification for us to accept such harm.
each of us must be willing to acknowledge that it is our decisions that determine the quality of our life and our future. We have choices to make or ignore.  When we ignore a choice, or refuse to make it, then we have accepted the status quo as our default choice.
many of us, like Blanch, do not have sufficient Spiritual strength to see to our own interests in the larger Reality of Truth available to us through Spiritual practices and devotion.  Then we do not have the courage required to reject material conveniences to act on our Spiritual insight.
neither Blanch nor any of the individuals in her family ever caught on to the fact that they were living their lives in contradiction to Spiritual Truth. Otherwise, they could never fail to see the harm their shoes were doing, and they could never harm anyone they proclaimed to Love.
even as the story of the "Shoes" focuses on only a single dimension of Blanch and her family, you may be certain that the same destructive pattern could be found in every other dimension of their lives.  A Spiritual dysfunction is not confined to one dimension of one's life.  It is systemic and appears everywhere in decisions that are always made with reference to any convenient external material reality.  Because such persons remain blind and deaf to their inner reality, their Spiritual Truth, they lead themselves to Spiritual death. (They have eyes that do not see, ears that do not hear.)

The Law" of any family (or worldly frame of reference)  will often oppose THE LAW of TRUTH when it is absent of Love, compassion, acceptance and nurturing. So is one's fate when you oppose THE LAW to honor a cause that is not honorable and anchored in TRUTH.   But

Blanch had been given pain by her relatives, and had died in pain the relatives did not feel. Yet they all cried pitifully at her funeral. But they cried for their own selfish selves because their beloved Blanche had gone away. Entrapped by their impoverished Spiritual status, they could not understand how they, the family, its rules, and their Spiritual blindness had killed Blanch, their own dear relative they claimed they loved. They did not understand that

Implications for Subsequent Material
The analysis and assessment of corporate and institutional behaviors can apply the same conceptual principles as expressed in the parable of the shoes.  What are the "shoes" in your life, that you, your family, your group, corporation, or organization invest in that you are required to wear?  We can ask to what extent agency and corporate CEOs, and their mid-level managers who are caught up in the culture of the agency or corporation, and knowingly commit and even demand actions that are demonstrably harmful to themselves, to their own employees, to their customers, to their community, to the economic and cultural health of America, and to the literal Soul of Gaia.. At some critical point, they, and all to which they are connected, must perish.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Sonnets from the Portuguese

Written in the midst of 19th Century romanticism, this poem illustrates an expression of Love that transcends the pure sensuality of erotic love. It celebrates the emergent dimensions of Agapic Love.

Main Ideas

the images are abstract (as is the nature of most language reflective of Spirituality)
it causes the reader to reflect on universal themes of Spiritual connectivity, e.g., "depths my Soul can reach...; ...end of being, and ideal Grace; ...feeling out of sight;...etc."
no references to erotic imagery are found

Applications in "The World"

erotic love can be divisive and fuel conflict, as in the territorial competition for mates found in the baboon society, a singles bar, and in corporate board rooms among other locales. It is found in the classic story of the struggles over Helen's elopement with Paris from Sparta to Troy as described in Homer's account of the Trojan War [The Iliad. (see Bulfinch for a summary)]  Cut throat competition for power and control in the halls of government and corporate hierarchies often includes exploitive sex as an instrument of collaboration and conquest, or as a prize of victory.
Agapic Love is free of erotic distractions, can be shared, and is inclusive, and has the qualities defined in First Corinthians, Chapter 13.

Implications for Subsequent Material
The continuation of earthly humanity depends upon the presence and effects of erotic love. But the presence of a strong overlay of Agapic Love need need not be mutually exclusive.  For humanity's survival, the future must eventually raise up a generation of Lovers whose primal erotic emotions are made servant to the Spiritual strength of Agapic Love.  Some of the social institutions proposed to promote the bringing about of this condition will be found in the applications section, re families (in Phase II of OT/MP.)

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
 

The Buddha Child

The Buddha child is emblematic of the natural state of our birth when we are born with a positive karma and a potentially elevated Spiritual Consciousness.  This has to be the Karmic legacy of prior lives that demonstrated Spiritual achievement and growth.  But then the task of such a Buddha person is to protect, further nourish, and develop those Spiritual qualities in the presence of new material challenges. The newly returned Soul may even face of serious and persistent challenges from the various stresses of the world.  They may have come to endure particular kinds of suffering that serves the interest of others, or to advance by learning another set of Spiritual lessons that require that kind of suffering.  However, the ego driven and limited intellect can never sort out satisfactory answers to these kind of questions.

Main Ideas:
Each of us when born, attempts to act out the legacy of our birth at what ever level of Spiritual Consciousness one has already achieved.  Various possible states of C/consciousness are present at birth depending upon the Karmic cycle just completed and that remaining.  The following possibilities are noted:

some of us are truly "Buddhas," fully capable, empowered and ready for another life of Loving service
some of us were Builders who return with fresh assignments to help fill the urgent needs of humanity
some of us were warriors in the service of honorable causes [Recall the introductory dialogue, part 3 of 3, re the necessity of killing.]
some of us were warriors in the cause of selfish and destructive causes
some of us were ordinary people, not especially challenged during the course of recent prior  harmless lives.  We can expect an opportunity to rise rapidly in unfolding Spiritual Consciousness
some were criminals devoted to the exploitation and manipulation of the weakness of others. Criminals are devoid of useable Spiritual consciousness. They are unable to comprehend the role of decency, trust, compassion, forgiveness and all of the higher Spiritual conditions.  Discharging their evil Karma and awakening to this innate but abused and ignored Consciousness that is resident in their Spiritual Truth to become their life's challenge.

Applications to the World:
The earth is a laboratory (one might also say placenta) for nurturing, growing and perfecting our Spiritual Conspicuousness.  Such goals are to:

meet and surmount the challenges we find that perfect our Spiritual growth
act to serve the Spiritual growth of others with unconditional Love through the various possibilities that open to us
learn from every failure and success the relationship of our thoughts, behavior and values to Spiritual Truth.

Implications for Subsequent Material:
"Love" is the focus of the final dialogue in OT/MP.   But the challenge involves self examination as to where you are in the Spiritual Path.  Your review of the preceding material will take on a new and richer frame of reference for the effort that brought you this far.  Pilgrims wishing to seriously involve themselves with the discipline of and practices associated with Spiritual Awakening and growth are referred to other resources dedicated to that specific goal.  [e.g., Zukav & Francis, 2001;    Also see http://www.zukav.com; Tolle, 1999]

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
 
 

The Nullbenign

This is a parable about the impact of a Soul's Spiritual Consciousness on their community.  The name "Nullbenign" describes the person's external appearance to those with undeveloped Spiritual Consciousness. The name includes the word "null" which means zero, empty, or having no value. It is combined with with the word "benign" which means kind, gentle, and therefore, harmless and innocuous.

Main Ideas:

the Nullbenign expresses a quality that is latent in each of us, but seldom fully or even adequately developed. Its even less recognized.  It is the quality of Spiritual Potency.  To survive it simply needs to be saved harmless from the ego and its slavish devotion to personal power, to reacting to surrounding political forces, and the agendas of those with worldly ambitions.  To flourish it needs only to be nourished by conditions of Love and kindness that is its true nature.  Left alone, it functions effectively within the arena of intellectual talents and skills with which the Nullbenign is endowed.
more importantly, because its most empowering qualities are Spiritual, the impact of its qualities are transcendent of the individual, and act through the Holistic Network of Spiritual Energies to nourish all who are near or in contact with it.   The primal quality is that of L/love and harmony which flows to all who are in reach. They are transformed in spite of themselves.  In this way, the presence of this Spiritual quality helps create the conditions of harmony, trust, and success, that the city [metaphysically, a collection of thoughts and ideas] enjoyed prior to the onset of the secular persecutions.
the persecutions symbolize the imposition of ego driven agendas of power and control as directed by the rational intellects of the power mongers. In the absence of Spiritual Consciousness, power driven ego agendas are usually promoted by power mongers with ruthless disregard for the needs and rights of those who stand in their way.  Those power mongers and controllers of low spiritual consciousness see nothing wrong with imposing their will by means that harm others. Religious persecutions of every kind are energized by this dynamic.  In their bondage to their ego minds, the means are justified by the ends the power mongers have defined as "good."
but the "ends" of worldly agendas exist solely in the rational intellectual ego mind whose perceptions are limited to the sensate world.  They exist such that may only be poorly related to the complete (Holistic) requirements of the totality in which they exist.  Thus they are defective and certain of an eventually and often painful death.  During the process of that death, which may be lengthy, in spite of their efforts, power mongers and their values steadily degrade and impoverish the quality of all lives on whom they must depend, control, and exploit. This decline must and will continue until; they are utterly destroyed.  They are the source of the conditions they themselves create to preserve and advance power for themselves, and that mistaken investment costs them their sought after goals.
the departure of the Nullbenign leaves the town impoverished of the Spiritual power that is required for any human system to exist in harmony with itself (i.e., within its own subsystems) and with the larger SupraSystem in which it is embedded, and with which it must interact in order to survive and thrive. Thus the city declines in spite of the best intellectual efforts of the city's controllers, and regardless of the most ruthless application of political and other forms of carnal manipulation, power, and control.
on the contrary, the arrival of the Nullbenign in the new city (different collection of thoughts and  ideas) finds a neutral environment to express his Spiritual Consciousness. Conditions there are marginal because in the absence of a connection to Spiritual energy, the town's intellectual strengths have been inadequate to produce the ideal harmony, skills and coordination to create a Real success.  Then the Spiritual presence of the Nullbenign steadily supplies the missing Spiritual ingredient. The town steadily recovers its capacity to create the effective intellectual programs and policies that are needed to create harmony and success. [NOTE: the well known Christmas film staring Jimmy Stewart, It's a Wonderful Life,  is a more familiar expression of this idea.]

Applications in the World:
Any Spiritually impoverished society (collection of cities) cannot recognize the Nullbenign amongst them, and such cities suffocate the Spiritual qualities innate to the Nullbenign.  Such a society interprets a person's harmless and loving nature as weakness to be exploited or trampled as needed.  But the Spiritually awakened society acts to create the conditions in which the Nullbenign is protected, not only to be safe, but to be nourished so he/she can flourish. By this means the Nullbenign Consciousness spreads its innate power of Spiritual energy and Wisdom to all who come near and who are thus blessed.

Implications for Subsequent Material:
In our 21st century world, the social, political, and economic conditions required for the Nullbenign personality to flourish can no longer be left to chance.  These conditions are now significantly absent in American society. Conditions must be consciously created that allow the presence of that Spiritual influence to survive, thrive and penetrate all intellectual activities associated with the management of our society.  Organizations and institutions can also be scanned for the presence or absence of the Nullbenign effect. The applications section (in Phase II) will promote explicit ways and means to accomplish this goal of releasing the Spiritual energies of those who are already blessed by them.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
 
 
 

Tibet's Great Yogi, Milarepa

Milarepa actually lived in Tibet between 1052 and 1135.  The story is symbolically illustrative of one of the great pilgrimages of a human Soul from carnal obsessions to Spiritual Transcendence.

Main Ideas

Marpa (the teacher) is symbolic of Spiritual Truth as Spiritual teacher to his disciple. The tasks he (life) assigns act to relentlessly purify Milarepa from the influence of his ego agendas and intellect. If Milarepa acts from ego alone, i.e., for carnal pleasure, glory, or power, his ego is not sufficiently strong or wise to endure the reversals systematically imposed by Marpa. Only Spiritual insight that the True nature of the goal is Spiritual will be sufficient to keep Milarepa committed to the demanding narrow path of Spiritual ascendance. [ref Mat 7: 13-14]
Milarepa's early experience as a Sorcerer assigned by Marpa to casting destructive spells on evil people still does not spare him a debt of Karma, even though he was ordered to commit such actions by his teacher Marpa.
the "houses" [recall the house of three rooms] Milarepa attempted to build are symbolic of the quality of our physical and mental bodies which are progressively purified by the different building initiatives (specific challenges accepted in one lifetime, and/or challenges faced across many life times.)  The houses become progressively more complex and excellent as Milarepa's Spiritual growth in substance.
the story exemplifies the difference between the imposition of punishment (energized by anger and resentment) and Spiritual discipline (energized by Love, hope, and good will.)

Applications in "The World"

the greater the level of Spiritual unfoldment or consciousness developed by you, the greater your capacity to tolerate and develop Spiritual discipline, and
the greater the effort by you to apply discipline to the Spiritual challenges to your life, the greater will be your Spiritual unfoldment during the course of your life.

Implications for Subsequent Material
There is considerably more depth and subtlety to the symbolism underlying this story.  The metaphysical interpretations of the story of Milarepa are more fully detailed in Dialogue 6 which is devoted to the details of Karma and Reincarnation.  We benefit when we examine the events and path of our lives in accordance with the example of Milarepa.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
 
 
 
 

The Twin Parables: The Incubator, The Little Bird

The incubator symbolizes the context of each of our new born lives. Each of us are like unborn "chicks" locked in our egg shell of sensate materialism.  Then when (and if) we hatch, we are like the little eagle. We alone must discover and act upon our inherent Truth as Spiritual Souls.

Main Ideas:

we begin entrapped within our comfortable world inside the shell of our sensate ego. But we constantly get disturbing clues that there is more to what is going on around us than we can directly know from being imprisoned within the limits set by our ego intellect.
we have the choice to risk emergence into the light of Spiritual awakening, or to remain in our comfortable psychological shells. Even though we become progressively less comfortable, we often feel safer than launching into the threatening unknown. As a devout neurotic once proclaimed, "I despise my neurosis, but at least I understand it."  If we refuse to "hatch," then that edition of our cycle of earth lives will be snuffed out, destroyed.  The incubator is turned off. Then we are left with our inadequate spiritual status quo to wait until another opportunity to hatch is presented.
the eaglet is symbolic of our early years prior to Spiritual awakening when of necessity, we are kept in relative comfort and safety by our parents
eventually "Reality" serves notice that we must quickly discover and act on the bases of our True selves, our Spiritual Truth.
when at last we can no longer tolerate the abuses of our impoverished ego that is immersed in fear, we still try to endure by obsessively devoting ourselves to the world of the ego and its carnal satisfactions [as in the parable of the master power broker and his four victims.]  Then we (our Souls) finally choose make the fearful leap of faith to discover our TRUTH, that we are Spirit, and then we are released from bondage to the earthly materialism. Then we soar as our True Spiritual selves.

Applications in "The World:"

there are constant clues (personal emptiness, disconnection, and anomie) derived from how unfulfilled we are by our worldly investments in ourselves. We can devote our entire lives to discounting the obvious, until we finally are forced to ask ourselves whether or not we may be cheating ourselves,  that there may actually be a larger purpose for our earthly life than just serving ourselves.  Only then do we finally suspect that there may be special joys in the activity of Spiritual expression and fulfillment in service to causes greater than ourselves.
unless we ourselves act, no one can do it for us.  Only each of us alone must at last accept that we are the "Captain of Our Soul."  With an inadequate Spiritual Consciousness, Spirit can only inform indirectly through the chronic discomfort created within our ego obsession with fear and materiality. We must detect where we are along our path. We may be informed whether or not the time has arrived for the full, complete and unconditional commitment.

The Allegories and Parables are concluded.

This link returns you to the Master Site Map to begin the seven major dialogues if you have not already begun them.  The conclusion of the dialogues (dialogue 8) will then direct you to the concluding master allegory: "The Final Meeting of the Secret Society of Power Brokers and Power Mongers" and their presentation of their, "Infernal Catechism." Since the significance of this master allegory is reflective of all prior concepts presented in the seven major dialogues, I recommends that you first review the seven dialogues before visiting this summary allegory.