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

No.170 / February 2001

Dear Friends,
As always the broadcast newsreaders tell us of the surface events of the time but we are now seeing a new receptivity and response emerging in the listening public. Indeed the news "stories" are more up-to-date and are played out over shorter time periods than, say, 50 years ago. An increasingly experienced public observes and assesses larger wholes unaffected by the disjointed effect of the time gaps of older communication methods and so have become sensitive to the outflow of real cause and motivation.

Because we increasingly see these life patterns from the inside outwards, we also plan and assess next and future actions considering subtle causes and effects that play out over larger time periods, larger wholes. People are no longer deluded into seeing episodes in unfolding events as separate, self-contained stories with limited and superficial cause and effect. The deeper tidal sweep behind the surface is becoming known, experienced and consciously applied. Thus humanity moves closer to living the Greater Reality through its own experience, experiment and expression. It is teaching itself, initiating itself into reality.

Being aware of the larger forces, how do we then apply this in the momentary detail of daily life? How do we respond, say, when an individual, tortured by his own grief and emotional scars, deals brutally with us or our loved ones? How do we deal with the less traumatic but more constant pettinesses in daily interactions?

Our response is driven by where we focus our lives. "As a man thinks, so is he" and where we think, there are we. So where is our thought? Is it constrained by the immediate and personal, or do we see the immediate, personal moment as one of many opportunities for greater understanding and purpose to express? Our momentary response tells us where our focus is and what forces we allow entry. We are all subject to the pressures of a personal life and there are moments when we succumb to a "small-minded" view - but we are never isolated. We link and meld the substance of our humanity through the many relationships we share, the groups of which we are a part (family, community, national, international), and there are always those about us who offer a steadying hand, when we falter, or a "wake-up call", when we have slipped too deeply into illusion. It is our own essential nature that draws this to us as life, expressing through us, requires it.

We are never separate and never lost. It only appears that way when we think of our personal selves as the start and end of each moment and each event. In fact we are not responsible for the individual experience; we are responsible for life expressing through the individual experience. The more we understand and experience that "life more abundant" of which the Christ spoke, the more it pours into our living expression, the more our individual capacities and potentials are drawn forth and the more we become what we truly are.

If we see clearly we may find that all the conflicts around the world are essentially caused by differences in the sense of identity. Some may identify with a place or territory, some with a race or nationality and others with a specific form of religious observance. But we are all human beings, created by God with the same capacity for creation (latent or expressing). What we share, what we have in common, is more powerful than all our differences which exist only to express the beauty of the synthesis of all life. Our differences enrich - they do not diminish - our common humanity. Only the small mind's interpretation of great truths can cause conflict but this is a condition of our path of return as we expand beyond what we are not, into what we are.

And just when we think we have all the "answers" we find that what we consider to be our strength can become our weakness and can lull us with a feeling of personal confidence (or is it superiority?). In fact the true self is neither overly confident nor lacking in confidence - it simply is. It seems that the more we think we know, the greater our capacity for arrogance and the more demanding we become rather than serving. A sense of true proportion enters when we know we lose nothing by expanding our sense of identity to merge it with the group life and purpose, with human life and purpose, and eventually with life itself.

Life-sharing means sharing all that we have to give (all the capacities we can draw on) and having access to whatever is required in service to the world - because we identify with life in the first instance. Limitation at any point in time is easily accommodated while we progress towards full understanding and living. However, the life of the whole is definitely impeded by those avoidable hindrances to the free flow of the shared life, such as separative personal desires or demands expressing through an individual's thought patterns. Our life energy is directed by our thought, "energy follows thought". The more we understand these principles the more powerfully do we direct or misdirect life energy. We cannot plead both knowledge and ignorance at the same time! Knowledge brings responsibility for the next step - wisdom.

The Tibetan Master, Djwhal Khul, speaks of the effect of sharing within a spiritual group or "ashram" to clarify our thinking and facilitate the free-flow of life's energies:
"At first the disciple may have little to share, and instead presents a great deal for senior disciples to record, for which they must make allowance and which they have to offset. They have also to regulate the energy which plays upon the entering disciple so that it is adjusted to his point of development and to his . . nature. The group of disciples within the Ashram who are of equal development with the new disciple, act as a safeguarding group, and this is true, no matter what the degree, where higher incoming energy is concerned. When a disciple is temporarily bewildered, this safeguarding becomes a major necessity, and where glamour is present in a disciple's life, it places a real strain on his co-disciples. They have to share the charge and shoulder the protection . .
This ashramic sharing is one of the great compensations of discipleship. By means of it added light can be ". . endured". . . Great united strength can be brought to the service of (God's) Plan, and the . . significance of the words: "My strength is as the strength of ten, because my heart is pure" can be grasped. The perfected strength of the Ashram . . becomes available to the disciple whose purity of heart has enabled him to penetrate into the Ashram; his knowledge becomes more rapidly transmuted into wisdom as his mind is subjected to the play of the higher understanding of Those with Whom he is associated; gradually he begins to contribute his own quota of light and of understanding to those just entering and to those who are his equals.
The strength, availability and usefulness of an Ashram is that of the sumtotal of all that its members can contribute, plus that which Those (of greater understanding). . can "import" from still higher sources. . .
This "sharing" process does not involve what is usually understood as the "sharing of trouble". Personality difficulties and personality problems are not permitted entrance into an Ashram; only evolutionary limitations and lack of perfection (limitations in soul expression, indicating the grade or stage of discipleship) are recognised. If, however, disciples act or react in a way that brings attack upon the Ashram, that is naturally recognised, but these issues are fortunately very rare; they may become more common as the spiritual inspiration to which humanity is now subjected and reacting brings far greater numbers of disciples into relation with the (spiritual) Hierarchy." (written in the 1940's - Ed.)

We are all an integral part of humanity and each of us is a microcosmic representation of the whole. We have the capacity "together and as a group" to anchor reality on Earth - not necessarily by changing our outer actions or organisations but by being one with life and living outwardly from a point of being that is an intrinsic part of the same life shared by the Master of all Masters and the great chain of spiritual relationship demonstrated by all the Great Teachers throughout time. Our limitations are only those chosen to provide scope to create in time and space. We are the past, the present and the future in one.

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The Festival in Aquarius will be celebrated at a meditation meeting to be held at 8pm on Thursday, 9 February, at theYWCA, 5 - 11 Wentworth Avenue, Sydney. The theme for reflection is:
"Water of life am I, poured forth for thirsty men."
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