PP 297537/00068
PO Box 627
Caringbah NSW 1495
Tel: (02) 9540 2391
Fax: (02) 9524 0025
www.sydneygoodwill.org.au

No 176 / August 2001

Dear Friends,

How much more frequently now do we speak in terms of wholes and of principles. It is now "the world economy", "world peace" and "human rights" that are spoken of quite as much as "my salary", "my satisfaction" and "my rights". Even those who abuse the essential truths for personal gain have been known to rationalise their separative acts in terms of the betterment of something more than themselves (though their real motive may be obvious to a more discerning view) and so they endorse the greater truth even as they exploit it.

Our actions, our thoughts, our sense of being are becoming human-sized. When one of us thinks, humanity is thinking. When one of us feels, humanity is feeling. And when one of us acts, Humanity is acting. There are certainly many and diverse variations but we see them more and more as variations in the one human response to life. We are emerging from the illusion that each one of us is a separate, self-contained expression with little or no inspiration from, or effect on, any other human being. We are not always aware of it but the ripple and reverberation of our consciousness flows out into, and in turn is affected by, this world in which we "live and move and have our being". We may maintain the appearance of separate living but increasingly we know each other in a new and intimate way because we are integral parts of the one humanity - living in the one world; enlivened by the radiations of the one sun; and dreaming yet under the effects of the one moon.

The phenomenon of "real life" television in its various modes of documentary, true story, live performance or even the current "Big Brother" programmes opens our lives to common view. Surveillance cameras, security TV, air, road and building patrols, credit checking and identity verification processes increasingly remind us that we are uniquely identifiable and, at the same time, part of a large body of being that requires increasingly complex control systems in order to operate smoothly and safely. Humanity, as one, is learning to know itself - to understand, co-ordinate and direct itself according to its own goals and plan.

We have moved through the preparatory phase of the indiscriminate herd identification, through the development of the unique, self-aware individual's achievements and we are now entering the age of conscious identification with the greater spirit manifesting through all things, through our world as a whole - the age of universality and of a new sense of freedom. We are initiating ourselves into a new identity whose vision encompasses a new world. As the Tibetan Master, Djwhal Khul, describes:
"It is first of all the entering into a new and wider dimensional world by the expansion of a man's consciousness so that he can include and encompass that which he now excludes, and from which he normally separates himself in his thinking and acts. It is, secondly, the entering into man of those energies which are distinctive of the soul and of the soul alone - the forces of intelligent love and of spiritual will. These are dynamic energies, and they actuate all who are liberated souls. This process of entering into and of being entered into should be a simultaneous and synthetic process, an event of the first importance. Where it is sequential or alternating, it indicates an uneven unfoldment and an unbalanced condition. There is frequently the theory of unfoldment, and a mental grasp anent the facts of the initiatory process before they are practiced experimentally in the daily life and thus psychologically integrated into the practical expression of the living process on the physical plane. Herein lies much danger and difficulty, and also much loss of time. The mental grasp of the individual is ofttimes much greater than his power to express the knowledge, and we have consequently those great failures and those difficult situations which have brought the whole question of initiation into disrepute. Many people are regarded as initiates who are only endeavouring to be initiate. . . They are those well meaning people whose mental understanding outruns the power of their personalities to practice . . . They are those disciples who talk too much and too soon and too self-centredly, and who present to the world an ideal toward which they are indeed working, but which they are as yet unable to materialise, owing to the inadequacy of their equipment. They affirm their belief in terms of accomplished fact and cause much stumbling among the little ones. But at the same time they are working towards the goal. They are mentally in touch with the ideal and the Plan. They are aware of forces and energies utterly unknown to the majority. Their only mistake is in the realm of time for they affirm prematurely that which someday they will be."

The great diversity of human expression finds us at all and every stage of realisation. God is still
"speaking". Our world is still emerging into completed expression through time and space. Creation, manifestation, is the process of resolving the dualities through right relationship and eventually consciously relating spirit and form into divine manifestation. When we seek happiness we automatically know sadness, as it is the shadow that confirms happiness into being. This is the dual world of the polar opposites. All creation emerges into this binary world where the gulf between the opposites draws them into engagement - male/female, good/bad, war/peace, matter/spirit. They define separation and difference and (at the same time) create bridges and relationships and connections that begin to express the oneness in which they are conceived and which confounds the apparent binary divisions that only exist in the temporary (and therefore constantly changing) world of appearances. This world is but the changing "tip of the iceberg" or the fleeting external expression of the more complete, more real underlying world of cause and purpose.

There are dangers in overrunning ourselves and our ability to live our understanding into existence. There are perhaps less obvious but equally challenging dangers in holding back from living the vision when our conscious understanding and realisation make it possible and within our power to do so. Our identification with humanity and with the groups in which we serve makes more understanding possible of achievement and therefore of living expression. We may have the vision of what's possible for humanity but baulk at an individual commitment to it. The issue lies in the still divided nature of the realisation - on the one hand we can, on the other we can't. So much promise is hamstrung in the moment of its forward leap. Because we have held too long to the separate self awareness when already committed to group identification.

Just as humanity is a whole entity with its own soul and being so does each group within it have the capacity to express this if we focus completely, and without reservation, on what emerges from group soul, group inner purpose and group identification. It works out and can transform the external forms of thought, feeling and behaviour if we do not seek to impose the control of an intermediate, untimely and even (at times) personal interpretation - thus limiting the transformational grandeur of what would otherwise have been possible. The way we did things in the past is by its very definition no longer appropriate and new forms must be allowed to emerge, to evolve to express the experience of life as it blossoms into a group awareness and then through the individual component members. And in that sequence.

It is the future and the purpose that calls and therefore it is a "preparatory sensitivity" that we must be prepared to develop without being deterred or excused by what we don't yet know or experience. Greater awareness is possible because each can be a "conscious aspect of that of which he forms an integral part." As the Tibetan explains: "Revelation is a progressive matter. . . even high initiates fail to comprehend that which lies plainly before them. Disciples can, however, dimly sense the nature of the Transfiguration which characterises them, from the hierarchical point of view, and Masters also can dimly sense the nature of the decision with which They are faced. It is this preparatory sensitivity in the disciple which produces true perception at all the various initiatory stages."

Unless we hold to that point of poised readiness for the next, and greater, expansion it will not happen. It requires a sharpened expectancy that allows nothing of the limiting fears and desires of the lower nature to intrude. Indeed complete immersion in the group being and its realisation ensures there is no hindrance and no barrier to the stalwart pilgrim who can so dedicate his being.