A Spiritual Prescription for Bravery and a Good Memory

If I gave you 803 words to memorize, do you think you could do that? 

Some doubt their ability to do so, but it’s actually quite achievable. 

When people perform the practice of The Twelve Blessings, which is a regular thing for many people around the world, we typically say the heading of each blessing and the prayer that follows. This makes a total of 803 words. It’s common for people to end up being able to say these from memory. In The Aetherius Society it’s kind of normal. So it is well within the ability of most people to do this. 

I ask this because people are prone to doubt their abilities, which can be very limiting. But an even greater limiting factor is fear. 

I used to work in the adventure tourism industry, guiding tourists rappelling into caves and so on. And we would see how fear affected people, because of the significant heights, small spaces and so on. Sometimes normal, intelligent people would become virtually paralyzed with fear, sometimes stopping breathing and even passing out. 

It’s logical and, in fact, good sense to be worried about a situation that appears dangerous. It’s a natural self-preservation mechanism kicking in. In the caves it was the people who didn’t show any fear that were more worrisome because they would sometimes do stupid things. They didn’t seem to think of the consequences. So the warning signs the body and mind give us – in terms of the need to be cautious under certain circumstances – are really helpful. 

But we face other kinds of fear – more subtle and insidious kinds. 

These fears hold us back. They limit us. They remove opportunities. They close down our futures. They stop our spiritual advancement dead in its tracks. 

But it doesn’t have to be this way. 

In fact, it has to be a different way. That is, if we want to advance. 

When I first heard of The Nine Freedoms – the channeled messages from a being known as Mars Sector 6, through the yogic mediumship of Master of Yoga Dr. George King – bravery, which is freedom from fear, didn’t seem the most natural choice as the first freedom to me. Perhaps it did to you, but it didn’t to me. It probably should have because it’s not a new teaching – there are plenty of mentions in the bible and other teachings of the need to overcome fear. 

But the more I have studied bravery, the more convinced I have become that this really is essential, and that without it, all other spiritual advancement – or indeed any kind of advancement – will never really last. 

The Exercise

A few years ago, I wanted to understand The Nine Freedoms better so I decided to memorize some of them. I didn’t have an especially good memory. I was probably average in that regard. So I didn’t go into this exercise especially confident, but I was aware that I had managed to memorize The Twelve Blessings headings and prayers, as so many people have, so logically it seemed like it was within my grasp. 

So I started with the first freedom. 

I wanted it to be an enjoyable task for myself. I didn’t want it to feel like it was a chore. So I set a modest pace. Each day, as I drove to work, I would try to memorize a single sentence. Sometimes this was easy, but sometimes a sentence was longer and more complex. And of course sometimes I was lazy or my mind was on other things, so it took a while. 

Eventually I worked my way through the whole of the first freedom, to the point that I could recite it confidently word for word from memory. It was not as difficult as I had expected. 

I didn’t want to just recite it like a robot though, as purely a memory exercise, I wanted to do this in order to understand the wisdom it contained more deeply. This is after all what Mars Sector 6 wants us to do – study his teaching. And even after memorizing it, there is still plenty more to gain from it – and I expect to be studying this in future lifetimes. 

So to help me really go deep into it, instead of just reciting it, I imagined that I was explaining the first freedom to someone, or perhaps giving it as a lecture. So I would say it out loud – because I was in the car alone – and I would say it as though I wanted to express not just the words, but the meaning and the wisdom behind them. 

And I would try to say it slightly differently each time so that I avoided falling into a rut of just mindlessly repeating it. 

This approach was based on a method I learned from piano lessons as a child, and it’s probably something other musicians can relate to.

If a piece of music I was learning was supposed to be played legato – i.e. smoothly with all the notes connected – my teacher would recommend that I occasionally played it staccato, with each note separate from the one before it. 

The idea was that playing it differently like this helps you to understand the piece better so that when you then play it legato again it is from a place of deeper understanding. 

The same approach applied here. But instead of legato or staccato, I would put the emphasis on different words.

For example, the opening words of the first freedom are:

“Bravery is essential in all things.”

Now this can be said with an even emphasis across the words, or it could be said with emphasis on one word in particular, like this:

“Bravery is ESSENTIAL in all things.”

This emphasizes the fact that bravery is not just good but essential. 

But it could equally correctly be said:

“Bravery is essential in ALL things.”

This time the emphasis is that bravery isn’t just important in some things, but in all things. 

It’s the same wisdom, but we’re focusing on a different aspect of this wisdom by reading it in different ways. 

And so if you look at the first freedom as a whole, and how in each sentence there are multiple parts that can be emphasised in different ways like this, you can see that this freedom and indeed the whole of The Nine Freedoms have virtually limitless ways in which they can be expressed. 

Another approach I took in my reciting of the freedom when I was memorizing it, which was also an inspiration from those childhood piano lessons, was to say it very slowly – one word at a time – with a pause after each word. This allows you to feel some of the nuances in the meaning of each word and its place in the sentence as a whole. 

Likewise, sometimes I would say it loudly and strongly, and other times quietly and gently. 

All these different ways of expressing it helped me understand it better. 

I found it a really enjoyable experience, and incredibly rewarding. It was an exercise in dwelling on the thoughts of a Cosmic Intelligence – Mars Sector 6. And every utterance of this great Master is worthy of our study. So it really deepened my understanding of the teaching.

I should note that the same approach can also help you gain more from The Twelve Blessings, and indeed any true spiritual teaching. 

It Improved My Memory

In addition to helping me understand the freedom better, this exercise also improved my memory. 

Humans on the whole aren’t good at remembering. We can all remember some things that happened when we were children. So we have the ability to do that. And we have ample storage available to us, yet most of our experience is forgotten. In fact, even what happened yesterday can be hard to recall sometimes. 

If you want to test your memory, tonight, try to walk through everything that happened today, step by step, from the moment you woke up and you might be surprised – or even appalled – at how bad your memory is! 

I found this practice, of memorizing Cosmic Wisdom, to be a good way to improve my memory. I still have a lot of room for much, much more improvement in that area of course. 

Once I had memorized the first freedom and felt really confident in it, I also started to recite it in other places – if I woke up in the night I could start going through this mentally. If I was out for a walk for exercise, I could recite this. And I still do this kind of thing today. 

The confidence of getting through the first freedom meant I moved onto the second freedom and then the third, memorizing each of these. 

Now, I don’t say all this to try and show that I have an amazing memory – I’m certainly not saying that. 

I’m sharing this experience to show that this kind of thing is very much within everyone’s reach. And it’s a great way to study spiritual teachings. 

The Practice of The Nine Freedoms

One thing I found in doing this, is how much of a “practice” The Nine Freedoms are. 

The Twelve Blessings are a wonderful teaching, and Dr. King has taught us how we can use them as a spiritual practice. Because there are prayers contained within them, they naturally seem like a practice in comparison to The Nine Freedoms which seem more intellectual, more like a teaching than a practice. They’re giving us advice on how to act, but the text itself is not obviously a practice. But I have found that The Nine Freedoms too can be very much a practice. 

When you say them out loud as though you are teaching someone, you have to really embody the teaching in order to convey the meaning. You can’t just mumble the words or your imaginary audience won’t take it in. 

This makes it kind of like an affirmation. You’re making a statement, and saying it with conviction, repeatedly. This conscious repetition will push the message into your subconscious mind. And this is the essence of what an affirmation is – it’s the conscious mind, telling the subconscious mind something. 

The subconscious is like an obedient servant. It takes the direction of the conscious mind very seriously and tries to follow its command. So if you are sending it this message time and time again, then you are putting a very positive and constructive message into your subconscious mind which will – not might – which will have an effect. And it is not just a statement from anyone, this is a profound Cosmic Truth from a highly elevated source – a Karmic Lord! – so all the better. 

Radiating Bravery

Going back to when I worked in adventure tourism, we used to go through the same caves time and time again so it got a bit repetitive. We got very used to doing the same rappelling day after day. 

The first time you rappelled into them during training, you were nervous and scared. But after lots of repetition you got confident about it and good at it. So much so that tourists would sometimes look at you in awe because you seemed to be fearless to them. But it wasn’t that at all – it was just a gradual confidence that took time to build, and in fact they could reach the same result if they chose to. 

Because for many of them it was their first experience of rappelling, they would be afraid, and they would look to you for assurance. It would be almost as though they were feeding on the confidence that you projected. You would be very calm and relaxed, even at the top of a rappel with a big drop below us. Not because you were any better than them, but because you had gradually conditioned yourself, through repetition, to become accustomed to it. 

Their hearts would be beating and they would be sweating nervously and so on – just as you did the first time – but because you were now more confident, this apparent bravery seemed to almost radiate out from you towards them and help them. Even if you weren’t doing this consciously, it seemed to happen. 

So I believe the same is true of all other aspects of bravery. If we develop this freedom within ourselves, and live it, then we must in some way radiate it out. This can help others. 

In fact, it’s the same with the following freedoms such as Love and Service, and indeed any positive attribute. By manifesting it, you can also radiate it to some extent and affect others. Conversely, you can radiate a negative attribute, of course.  

You Should Try It

I found this whole memorization thing such a fulfilling experience, that I encourage everyone to try it. 

The antidote for fear is bravery. But how can we manifest bravery? Just reading the freedoms alone won’t do that. We have to live them. And I found this memorization exercise helpful in this regard. 

Doctors sometimes say something like:

“Take two of these tablets twice a day then call me in a month.” 

I think we could take a similar approach with this kind of spiritual teaching. If we look at fear and a poor memory as diseases, then the spiritual prescription could be: 

“Memorize the first freedom and recite it twice a day then call me in a month.” 

Based on my own experience, I am confident if anyone did that they would notice positive results. 

So many things are fear-based and it can be so debilitating that it can have severe psychological effects and really hold people back. We’ve all seen this in others, and in ourselves. I recently listened to Dr. King’s address on jealousy, and he described it as being fear-based. So fear has a myriad of forms. Some are obvious and others are subtle. But the common attribute all forms of fear share is that they are limiting. They hold us back. 

Why allow fear to control us? After all, as Mars Sector 6 says in the text: 

It is just as easy to have a state of mind unclouded by fear as it is to allow it to be warped by this intrusion.

Fear is something we have to face time and time again on the spiritual path – the ultimate challenge being when we raise kundalini to the high centers. At this point even someone spiritually advanced can end up turning back in fear if they have not developed sufficient bravery. 

Facing the small challenges of life bravely allows us to exercise this attribute and strengthen it so that we can count on it when we need it for bigger challenges later on. 

The more I have studied the freedom of bravery, as given by Mars Sector 6, and the accompanying commentaries by Dr. King, the more I have realized how profoundly true it is, and how brilliantly inspired is the great Mars Sector 6 who gave it.

About the author
Julian Rosser is a Priest and a Director of The Aetherius Society based in Los Angeles. He has previously worked for The Aetherius Society at its European Headquarters in London and prior to that was on the volunteer staff at the New Zealand Branch. He is a regular blogger, presenter and author of One Elephant: a Spiritual Journey to the Cosmos from the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.