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

No 182 / February 2002

Dear Friends,

Following the extremes experienced during the New Year holiday season - of celebrations, of bushfire disasters, of hopes for peace and resolution dashed yet again - there can be a tendency to sink into despondency as we find that while the thoughts and hopes are there for a future that powerfully pulls us onwards, yet from our point of view the actuality is still sadly lacking. So we can find ourselves still battling doggedly on against all that impedes us from some better, vaguely sensed future - without realising that we may have lost the way, that we are no longer sure of what the future is or how to get there, that we may even see it as a glamorised past time that must be regained in order to restore a form of order because order is part of our essential need, purpose and being. The more we focus on the obstacles, the impediments, the failures, the guilt, the disappointments, the more they ensnare us. And this is where we lose the clarity of knowing where we are going and how far we have already come. This is where we can fall into a deep sense of separation from our goal and from each other and when, as we cross the abyss, we look down and lose our connection with the other side.

And yet great progress has been achieved in our thinking, in understanding our humanity and in practising it. No longer just a few outstanding individuals but now a significant majority of the world's people are learning that we cannot live separately within our one world, that everything happens in a global context. We accept that we are all human beings no matter our race, place, religion or nation and no matter how well we measure up against what we feel "human" should be - we accept global human-ness. In the midst of all the war mongering we accept that the goal involves an end to war (however achieved, for whatever motive). In the complaisance of our own safety we yet accept that the safety of all peoples is crucial to (and perhaps even more important than) our own individual safety in the longer term. Despite all the pollution that is generated we accept that this cannot continue or the life of our planet is threatened. We accept that, while business still exploits staff, resources, environment and economic value for the privileged few, all are entitled to a living and a meaningful place in the whole. In truth it is our increased clarity of what is needed that is highlighting the obstacles more and more clearly.

Almost without realising it we are beginning to think and act globally - not as individuals and small groups lacking influence but as a significant majority of increasing understanding and motivating power. The old dynamic that furthers the fortunes of separatism and exclusivity of the "select" few may still be automatically rolling on through the huge rational, organisational and operational structures it has established over thousands of years but human consciousness has changed irrevocably and new modes of operation, new dynamics are being created, trialled and developed both within the old forms and as external alternatives. These have been building and refining for only a century or two but have already made great changes to the way we live and see our world.

Still the battle seems to have been going on for so long that we have become accustomed to fighting, destroying, repressing blockages and impediments - caught in a pattern of eliminating the negative. Such a pattern does not accommodate a view large enough to embrace how far we've come and what greatness is approaching. The immediate action is crucial but its reason, purpose and manner of approach are bestowed by the greater vision else we are lost to battle fever and forget how to sow and harvest the life of the future.

What is the future? What do we require of it? Great expectations have been framed for it by the visionaries who drafted the constitutions and charters of the New World nations, of the United Nations, and who phrased all our global agreements and conference outcomes. We have stated what we want. Now we are testing out how that should be in actuality. Many experiments have been tried and from them we have learned that either they needed further development or our understanding needed to be expanded in order to more effectively implement them or even that the manner of their practice seduced us away from the envisioned goal. Our goal is serious indeed and crucial not just to us but to our planet and its role in the solar system. Each experience and experiment along the way is not more important than this. Present events may influence the way we get to our future goal but if the goal is clear we will achieve it.

Even as we are distracted (perhaps enthralled) by the horror of terrorism and the reaction to it, of desperation breeding desperation, of the prisons of fear, anger and worry - the soul of humanity is looking at all of this and refuting it. Deep and subtle are the tentacles of past mistakes tightening around the human heart but that heart is now swelling with life's beat, a beat firm enough to break those bonds so that in the midst of pain we can know joy. And joy comes from knowing our goal and that it is inevitable.

While much of the human race seems caught in the no-man's-land between the grip of the old experience and the new promise, while we feel that like a bad dream no matter how fast we run we can't escape what we would leave behind, the truth is that it is the glory of what's possible that has us running towards it and desperately leaving the old behind. And there is the key - desperation, impatience and all the energies that batter and beat can be replaced in an instant with clarity, joy and potency. The forms and foibles of living become irrelevant in themselves when we harbour only those energies and that intention which is true. Desperation is only replacing one tyrant for another. It is practising disease when what we require is to heal the system. The point of engagement in the battle is not at the point of action (though that happens), nor at the point of our reactive feelings (though they are involved), nor in the world of conflicting arguments and rationale (though these too are used), but at the point where we identify with spirit - the spirit of humanity, the spirit of the planet, the spirit imbuing the substance of the universe with life, the spirit flowing through a personality in the world so that events are nothing short of "soul-sized".

Is it life we express when we act, feel, think? Are we consumed by the vision of wholeness or by the disproportionate demands of individual parts - our possessions, our fears, our pride, even our ideals? In enlivening the whole we assuage each part but if we attend exclusively to any part we diminish the whole. The whole never turns its back on the past and never ceases to embrace the future but is completely present in the NOW - the place at which consciousness stands and from which it expands out to embrace the universe. It is a great continuity of being that any current point of understanding, of explanation by apologists, cannot be the final, complete or exclusive expression. Experts become ex-patriots of being but the true teacher is one who never ceases to learn and grow.

Life is only just beginning to express in the human kingdom - to be truly born. And each one of us is responsible for it. No one can take that responsibility away from us or assume it for us. We are still hiding from ourselves in the Garden of Eden if we believe they can. We are still identified with what we are not if we cling to personal image and possessions, if we demand separate recognition or if we fear failure. The externalisation of spirit and the hierarchy of life that serves it is an event in consciousness - a realisation of Life. Such a heaven is not approached through worldly ways as this sloka from Agni Yoga illustrates:
"Broadly has spread the praise of daring. The least of the disciples have turned to the path of searching and have approached Us, asking that We judge their striving. Each brought his dreams: 'I will destroy all earthly temples, because Truth needs no walls. I will water all deserts. I will open all prisons. I will demolish all swords. I will blaze all trails. I will wipe away all tears. I will travel through all lands. I will inscribe the book of humanity.' But the least one of them turned to the shining stars and said, 'Hail to you, brothers!' And in this salutation of daring his ego vanished. Let the path of the Universe be acknowledged in this daring greeting!"