by Harry Palmer


The following is excerpted from The Avatar Path: the Way We Came by Harry Palmer.

HP-3Harry Palmer, author of the Avatar materials  I was thinking about thoughts. Well, actually I was just watching them go by. It occurs to me that there is some hierarchy of thought. Kinds of thought—maybe like the different kinds of clouds. There could be cirrus thoughts, nimbus thoughts, cumulus thoughts or just plain foggy thinking. Totally fogged-in thoughts, zero visibility. Maybe that's the condition of not being able to see beyond our own conclusions.

Anyway, certain thoughts are a lot better—or at least they make you feel better—than other thoughts. The thought, "I was right" feels better than "maybe I was wrong." It's also more effective to think, "I can do it" than it is to think, "I tried and it can't be done."

Some thoughts we create, and some thoughts just seem to come in because someone left the door open. It's as though we each live in a boardinghouse mind, and thoughts are the roomers (play on words). Some are uninvited guests, and some are more welcome than others. Some of them just stand in the hall and repeat the same line from a song over and over. Do you wonder why you entertain them at all? And when a thought moves in and takes up permanent residence, you have an opinion!

Angels acension NTS090A 2One of the definitions of the word "angel" is a messenger, or thought, from God. In place of thinking of thoughts as intruding guests, we could think of them as angels! We wouldn't be the first to think that way. Instead of saying I had an idea, we could say, "An angel appeared to me." Instead of sharing our thoughts with someone we could share a choir of angels with them. And rather than saying the world began as thought, we could say that the angels built it.

There is a hierarchy of angels that is analogous to the hierarchy of thoughts: ranks of angels corresponding to kinds of thinking.

Let's see if I remember: An archangel is just above an angel, and the next one higher is called a principality—a prince of angels. Then there are "powers," "virtues," and "dominions." And the three top ranks are "thrones," "cherubim" or "cherubs," and "seraphim" or "seraphs."

Cherubim and seraphim are very powerful and guard the throne of the creator. As long as they are on duty, nothing gets by them. Cherubs often are depicted as winged faces, sometimes carrying a flaming sword. Seraphs are described as pure, white-burning love light that cannot be contained.

And whose throne is it that they guard? Who is the ruler of your thoughts? Have you abdicated your throne? What thought sits on your throne? I am. And when you rule from your throne, what thoughts protect you and keep you strong? Love and faith. They are your cherubim and seraphim!

Angel ranking began in the fifth or sixth century, and most church scholars think it began with a writer calling himself Dionysius the Areopagite. There are many biblical references to angels, particularly in Isaiah, and "winged messengers" are common in hieroglyphs. But it was apparently the Areopagite who cataloged them into nine ranks with each rank responsible for part of creation. I suspect that Dionysius the Areopagite was creating an allegory to avoid offending church elders. Only a select few understood, or even suspected, that there were psychological counterparts to his angel ranks.

I guess we can imagine the kind of thinking that Lucifer, the fallen angel, represents. Have you ever felt that your own thoughts were rebelling against you? Are addictions, desires, and cravings anything other than a descent into the lower regions of self-deceptive thought? Craving thoughts are Lucifer's, right?

I guess if we consider that fallen angels correspond to self-deceptive thinking, we'll get some idea of the direction in which self-deception leads. But before we hit bottom, we can save ourselves by calling forth our cherubim and seraphim (love and faith). These are the mental attitudes that guard our thrones.

...there are different kinds of thoughts and different kinds of thinking.

So what I was getting at is that there are different kinds of thoughts and different kinds of thinking. You can create a thought. You can just sit there and totally bloom a thought, and it's not necessarily motivated by anything outside of you. It's a thought-angel that you send forth. It's not a thought that is dependent on, or a reflection of, the world around you. It's a thought-angel that you originate.

You can create a thought for no reason (a thought- angel), and then you can create a reason for having created that thought. The second thought is inspired by the first thought (a response), but the first thought—that's your seraph! It was not a response to anything else. It was not a comment or an opinion about reality. It was a thought-angel that you created.

Angel Flying NTS061B 2Now this idea comes as a surprise to some people. They start wondering if their stimulus-response model—where the world is stimulus and thought is response—might have some holes in it. I'd say it does. For one thing, they're going to have a devil of a time explaining where the world that causes them to think "came from." They're going to have to create a creator. That is a pretty neat trick. Let's not go down that path this time. Let's just sit on our I-am-thrones and send our cherubim and seraphim to create the world the way we want it. The world begins as thought-angels. Your thought- angels! That's where reality comes from.

Create the thought, "I am happy." Now that's a seraph thought. You just create it. You don't have to consult reality to see if there is any reason to create it; it is true because you say it is true.

Now create the thought, "I create love." That's a cherub thought. You created it. You also could create, "I can't create love." Either way, the truth of the thought is the thought; it is not dependent on the world.

When you cause you to think, you're God of your universe. You send forth angels.

When the world causes you to think—the world you created—you have fallen into the regions of self-deceptive thought. Do you see the difference? A created thought (an angel) creates a reality, but a response thought creates a lie. What is the lie?

It's simply, "I didn't do it!"

Well, you might be able to pull that on your mother, but you're wasting your time trying to convince me.

When you are God of your universe and you decide something, your angels make it happen. But you have to be God of your universe to do that. Some people try to make something happen with a response thought (a lie) rather than a created thought (an angel). It's the difference between a fantasy and a thought that creates a reality. A thought-angel becomes a fact.


So there is a person on an airplane, and he looks out the window and the engine is on fire. Boy, does that cause some response thinking to occur! "I'm going to crash!" Fortunately, that is only a response thought, if it was his deliberately created thought he wouldn't have a chance. He would have created the fact of the crash.

The way to handle an emergency is to hurry back to your throne and take charge of the angels that have already been created. Something like this: "I am. I am on an airplane with an engine on fire. I am frightened. So be it." (Now for some new angels.) "I am going to make it! I am safe! The airplane is safe!"

You have to be a creator to create anything. The question is how powerful of a creator can you become? People who attempt to create "because of..." don't create very much. Mostly they create worries. They worry themselves and they worry others. They will try to convince you that some reality is more powerful than you are. Ultimately, that is a lie.

There is a funny little game that goes on all the time. Someone creates a thought. The thought creates a reality. The reality causes other people to think. Of course, if the reality is getting them to think, they are not the creators of their thoughts. Unless they create that they created the other person to create that reality.

It's a funny little game, don't you agree? You only lose when you won't take responsibility for creating the other guy.