HARMONY

"I can be like the sun…give love to everyone.  I can be happy with me, it don't matter what you see."   ‘Like the Sun’, Colette

“I wanna run • I want to hide • I wanna tear down the walls that hold me inside • I wanna reach out • And touch the flame • Where the streets have no name • Ha...ha...ha... • I want to feel • Sunlight on my face • I see the dust cloud disappear without a trace • I want to take shelter from the poison rain • Where the streets have no name • Ho...ha... • Where the streets have no name • Where the streets have no name • We're still building then burning down love • Burning down love • And when I go there • I go there with you • It's all I can do.”   'Where the Streets have no Name', U2

The Golden Seat’s purpose, besides being a pleasurable piece of  art, is to harmonize Science, Religion and Philosophy and to seek a grounding in the quest for Truth, Beauty and Goodness.

Finding that ‘harmony’ is akin to finding a ‘street with no name’.  Looking for harmony amongst the conflicting boulevards and highways named ‘Science’ and ‘Religion’, in a landscape of hills and valleys known as ‘Ascension’ and ‘Descension’, mirrors that ancient war between the two incompatible gods:  transcendence and immanence.  Where transcendence is spiritual knowledge from belief or ‘knowing’ and immanence is temporal knowledge from memory, observation and perception.

So where do we find shelter and on what ‘street’ do we find it on? 

Harmony:  Light • Love • Life
"The beginning of wisdom is the most sincere desire for instruction, and concern for instruction is love of her"   Wisdom 6:17

That shelter is the angel ‘Harmony’ and she lives on the street called LOVE.   The center angel of The Golden Seat is ‘Harmony’ and she represents Light, Love, Life.   At the very top of her halo is the word LOVE – the ancient force that harmonizes.
 
We are visual people and we need symbols to transcend.  The ancient Greeks visualized the idea of ‘wisdom’ as a divine feminine entity.  They called her Lady Sophia.  Sophia is ‘wisdom’ in Greek (Hochma in Hebrew).  Our word ‘philosophy’ is from Greek, from philo- (love) + Sophia.  Philosophy is literally the “love of wisdom.”  In his Metaphysics, Aristotle says that “all men suppose what is called wisdom to deal with the first causes and the principles of things”.

In the ‘The Absent Mother’, feminist theologian Asphodel P. Long comments on Sophia’s divinity,
"She is the divine female companion of God, eternal with Him before creation and is herself involved in the cosmos as creator, nurturer, teacher and artificer.  She acts as intermediary between God and humans and is willing to share herself with them and with the world. Human beings must follow her rules if they are to succeed in this life and also possibly partake in an afterlife with God.  It was she who helped God create the universe and she knows all its secrets.  She moves through it and orders it well."

Ms. Long has illuminated the ‘Father-Mother God principle’.  So our Harmony Angel or ‘Lady Sophia’ can also be seen as Mother God.  Mother God goes by many names:  Azna, Theo, Theodora, Sophie, Isis. The Church’s answer to the Mother God was the Blessed Virgin Mary.

In ‘The Evolution of God’, Robert Wright continues the discussion on Sophia’s nature,
“Lady Wisdom, in Proverbs, says, ‘My child, if you accept my words and treasure up my commandments within you…if you indeed cry out for insight, and raise your voice for understanding…then you will find the knowledge of God.’  This is the link between the two wisdoms, the everyday garden-variety wisdom of human beings and the Wisdom of God:  god was so wise that he set up a world in which the rational pursuit of self-interest leads people to wisdom.  This explains why Lady Wisdom, in Proverbs, can play her two roles.  She is both God’s own Wisdom – the Wisdom that went into the initial design of the world, when she as God’s “master worker” as he “marked out the foundations of the earth” – and the giver of wisdom to humans.  For the Wisdom of the world’s initial design was that it would lead human beings toward wisdom.”

Metaphorically, Lady Wisdom - ‘Wisdom’ in Proverbs - is both the being who helped God create the world and the being who now beckons ordinary mortals to embrace her.

"With you is wisdom, she who knows your works and was present you made the world; she understands what is pleasing in your sight and what is right according your commandments"   Wisdom 9:9

In a poem from the Gnostic manuscripts (Nag Hammadi Library) called "Thunder Perfect Mind" we see all the opposites of life and the contradictions of that being called Women:

I am the first and last.
I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am the mother and the daughter.
I am the one who they call Life and you call Death.

Within us - and within Her - there is the Whole and the All.  Wisdom (Harmony Angel) is immanence and transcendence. 

Poetic Personification?   The Golden Seat’s best reply is, “Love doesn’t really need to be explained, the Truth just resonates.” In the pursuit of an ideal that seems beyond our reach, conviction for the religious-minded simply comes down to surrender, whereas for the mystic-minded, conviction simply comes down to knowing.  U2's spiritual ‘surrender-knowing’ echo's Ms. Long's interpretation of Sophia's divinity (Human beings must follow her rules if they are to succeed in this life): “And when I go there, I go there with you. It's all I can do.”

The Angel of Harmony – Light, Love, Life – is a seat of consciousness.  A Christ Consciousness.  A Buddha Consciousness.  A Mohammad Consciousness.  A Golden Seat of Consciousness where the God without embraces the God within – a union of God and self.  All supported by the ‘Platonic legs’ of Beauty, Truth and Goodness.

Besides being the giver of Life, the Miracle Worker, the Curer of all illness, Harmony is also the Fighter of Darkness.  You can visualize Her with a beautiful Golden Sword to combat darkness and negative energy.  It doesn’t matter what you call her, but she will not enter or interfere unless She is called on.  Ok to say “I want this now, Harmony”, or “You go get them, Azna” or "Please tend to me, help me NOW, Sophie".   Don't empower the darkness.  Empower yourself.  Ask for Feminine Energy.  If you're a male, you're not going to drop any part of you manhood.  Feminine Power is the militant power on this planet (the Feminist Movement has nothing do to with the Feminine Principle).

Is this believing in a divine being who can intervene in human affairs?  Yes! (contrary to Deism). We live among magic and miracles every day.  The Universe may seem blind, but it is not.  It has very large ears and very big eyes. Our Angels do watch and protect.  If it feels that you've been abandoned, remember you have a 'contract' to fulfill; often the hardest lives are chosen by spiritually advanced souls (we are meant to fight the flesh, the false ego; we are not meant to come into this life and be a mystic; if you were so mystical and so advanced, you would not be here).

‘Harmony’ wants us to keep our thoughts positive because connecting to or identifying with the positive, the Universe works positively for us; if we relate to that which is failing, dying, chaotic or negative, the Universe works negatively for us. Further, what blocks us from life’s magic and miracles is guilt and determinism (what others tell us what we should be). 
Of course we can’t sit on our butt and simply ‘wish’ for things. And we must be realistic. As ‘Reverend Frank’ said, “…Pray to that part of God within you. Have the guts to fight for yourself. God wants brave souls.  He wants winners, not quitters. If you can't win at least try to win.  God loves triers.”

In story 58 of 'Eat, Pray, Love', Elizabeth Gilbert makes her resolve on negative thoughts,

“I will not harbor unhealthy thoughts anymore…Harbor is a noun as well as a verb.  A harbor is a place of refuge, a port of entry.  The harbor of my mind is an open bay to the island of my Self, which is now committed to peace.  Let the word go out across the seven seas—there are much, much stricter laws on the books about who may enter this harbor.  You may not come here anymore with your hard and abusive thoughts, with your plague ships of thoughts, with your salve ships of thoughts, with your warships of thoughts—all these will be turned away.  Likewise, any thoughts that are filled with angry or starving exiles, with malcontents and pamphleteers, mutineers and violent assassins, desperate prostitutes, pimps and seditious stowaways—you may not come here anymore, either.  If you can abide by these new laws, my dear thoughts, then you are welcome in my mind.  That is my mission, and it will never end.”

  z