Ikea Canada’s 2022 Slogan

It’s a clever bit of advertising, this. Most of the time, we think the phrase means ‘settisville’ as Jed Clampett used to say, meaning ‘set yourself down and relax awhile’. Ikea’s meaning is different.

Here’s another phrase from the head Beverly Hillbilly:

“Weeeell, doggies! That’s green enough to stick in the ground and grow.”

A Clampett Full of Catchy Phrases

So, this is my theme today:

Personal and spiritual growth, that you can do from where you are now, at home.

If ever there was a time to work on yourself, it was the past two years. And because we’re not out of the woods yet with COVID-19 and its variances, there’s still time to dig in, plant the seeds for a better future and keep watering the soil to bring it to fruition. (I was tempted to use ‘soul’ instead in that metaphor.)

The Four Elements

Like the Pagan Gnostics before them, the original Christians imagined the process of initiation as a series of elemental ‘baptisms’ which lead us through the levels of our identity, which they equated with the four ancient elements: earth, water, air and fire. These were nothing to do with the elements of modern chemistry, but are equivalent to the four fundamental states of matter: solid, liquid, gas and radiation. Fixed physicality is represented by earth, ever-changing psyche by water, invisible consciousness by air and the Mystery, hidden in everything like energy, by fire.

The psychic initiation is the baptism of water, through which initiates are cleansed of identification with their earthly self. The pneumatic initiation is the baptism of air, in which initiates come to know their ineffable essence as Consciousness. The realization of Gnosis is represented by the baptism of fire, in which initiates’ sense of being separate from the Mystery of God is finally extinguished in the all-consuming light of the dazzling darkness. In The Book of the Great Logos Jesus offers initiates the opportunity to be born again through these three baptisms/initiations of water, air and fire.

Jesus and the Lost Goddess (page 113)

If you want to read more about the final initiation, please click on this link: The Refiner’s Fire. “The Seed’s Secret” is the first parable in the post which explains the spiritual journey from seed to plant.

Here endeth today’s lesson.