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

No 171 / March 2001

Dear Friends,

How often are the opinions on which we base our daily life decisions really considered, thought through and tested against that inner "knowing", the intuitive sense? True, most of us read the newspapers (or whatever preferred media) with a somewhat cynical eye - but we may still accept the proffered views as an interim opinion until we learn otherwise or until we "get around to" thinking about it for ourselves. Similarly we might believe views put forward by friends and colleagues who appear to have thought the matter through and so present a pre-prepared logic. But we may never quite get around to testing or disproving their logical pathways against our own life observation and frame of reference. Thus trust and judgement may appear to be in conflict when we view life only from the outside and in terms of habitual personal loyalties.

Such a carry-over from the Age of Authority subtly steers our thinking and life response away from our responsibility (as divine agents in the world) to view the moment's opportunities unencumbered by the distortions of a view that we have grown beyond. The pattern of a presented logic can seduce us into its acceptance without questioning our true compatibility with it. How often when we have delayed too long to register something that has been subtly pressing for consideration, but is eclipsed by the parade of external events, do we later think to ourselves: "I knew something wasn't right with that" or "I knew I should have checked up on this" and so on. What is it we knew? What part of us knew? What is the source and process of this knowing ? What frame of reference has its anchoring point within us - so deep and sure that it seems it requires a crisis to draw it forth?

If this knowing is the true gauge of reality, why do we continue to succumb to the incomplete and superficial "take-away" rationales dispensed by those who, on investigation, may be right but may equally be beguiled by an exclusive selection of details designed to serve a separate and personal motive. When opinions are offered in a definitive self-referencing logic - why do we lazily allow our minds to become passive prisoners of those thought patterns? Of such stuff is prejudice made. Thus do lawyers prepare the presentation of evidence in court in order to steer the mental associations along their intended direction. There is a power in formulation, in woven pattern, and we can become cut off from reality by a clever turn of phrase or an authoritative dissertation if we don't check the source and the implied assumptions behind the logic.

In fact our true guide is our own inner being which is that true essence that is part of, and therefore in touch with, the essence of all things and the cause of those formulations that are true to reality. Writing in the 1940's the Tibetan Master, Djwhal Khul, describes this Crisis of the Ideologies: "Men are today confronted with conflicting and antagonistic ideologies or schools of thought, and automatically - according to their background, tradition, training and place of birth - they regard some one of these ideas as true and all the others as false and wrong. They are apt to forget that according to the locale of birth, the national mode of schooling and the nature of the national propaganda, so will be the chosen ideology. Very few people are free agents, even in the democracies. A man born in central Russia, for instance, knows nothing but Communism; he cannot imagine another suitable form of government; again, a man born in the United States or in Great Britain boasts and is pleased that he was born in a democracy, but the accident of birth accounts largely for his attitude. Men need to remember these things and not blame each other for the place in which they were born! We have, therefore, ideologies and their opponents, great schools of thought and modes of government, confronted by organised opposition. One basic premise can be laid down: The platform of the leading ideologies is not necessarily wrong or wicked; it is the imposition by force and by a police state of an ideology, and its use by powerful men or groups for their own benefit, plus the keeping of the people in
blind ignorance so that no free choice is theirs - which is fundamentally wicked and evil."

It is possible to become enslaved by ideas and ideals through our acceptances of an external frame of reference. It is possible, in the pressure of the immediate moment, to forget the underlying truth that we are all human beings, all creations of the divine source and that we are part of the whole which is our planetary life, evolving through experience towards a true expression of reality - every component following on his tiny scale the same great pattern of growth as the planet itself. It is an unfolding process and can be so misjudged when a single moment in time for a specific element is assessed in isolation from the greater movement sweeping through it.

Everything is interconnected and the subtlest aspects are the most powerful. We can influence with the nuance of a directed thought the wellbeing (or otherwise) of others in the world. We can seek to attribute blame in the external arena - yet the true source of the energy behind events, positive or destructive, is seldom found in its external or more obvious adherents. And we can use the equipment with which we have been endowed to see through the layers of misdirection and dead-ends, of biases and desires, to the eternal truths inexorably working out through all our temporary mistakes and misapprehensions.

The energy of Freedom is pouring through the planet and yet we are only just recognising some of its external effects and, in our immediate personal interpretation, we can misunderstand them. Freedom relates to the free flow of life through the whole system. When we take up our true identity within it, we are open to that flow - it is our free decision and cannot be imposed in any real or lasting sense, however kindly or benign the imposition. The power and purpose of the energy we direct is drawn from the motive and criteria behind our decisions. Are they made according to life principles so that we become part of life's intention working out? Or are they made to avoid immediate personal discomfort or guilt in the moment? Or are they merely an acquiescence in someone else's reasoning? The following communication between a Master and a disciple is an example of how we can allow ourselves to be misled:

"You … have a good illustration of what I mean in the two plans . . . One of them was supposed to be in response to my request for a paper, but another paper which I asked you to write is still unwritten and that paper was more important than the other. These plans were drawn; time was taken in submitting them to various people, and to what end? There was in them nothing new. The minds and some of the best minds in every country in the world are formulating them. Your plans were simply compilations of familiar suggestions which have already been presented in better form to the public. What end, therefore, did they serve? Only to sidetrack you from the simple duty of today; only to feed that inclination on your part to do something great; only to prevent you from a true and practical cooperation in my plans which you know well and which the disciples in my Ashram are pledged to materialise. It is their group duty, not from the angle of authoritative demand, or in a spirit of blind obedience but because from free choice and identity of purpose … they are in my Ashram; they have willingly responded to my planned intentions and in a spirit of dedication to the good of humanity. . . All this indicates to me that you are still prone to slip into the thralldom of the vague vision, the grandiose formulations of something and are negatively responding to the collective ideas of forward thinking men, for you do no positive or original thinking of your own."

No matter how personally impressed we may be by another's authority, cleverness or charisma - we bear the responsibility for the results of our decisions either consciously made or borrowed through acquiescence. Freedom of decision is our destiny and the realisation of it comes through our karmic experience. Then we are free to follow the "Radiant Way". "This is the Way of Resurrection. It is a Way which is composed of the light of intelligent substance, of the radiant attractive substance of love, and the karmic way which is infused by the essence of inflexible will. Forget not that karma is essentially the conditioned will of the planetary Logos as He orders all things toward the ultimate goal of life itself through the process of livingness, of loving understanding, and of intelligent activity."