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

No 209/June 2004

Dear Friends,
Even through apparent separation, bias, prejudice and conflict we can see the synthesising forces of life at work. Motives, rationales and substantiations, even for the most heinous of actions, are often given as based on a sense of service to something greater, subtler, higher or more divine than on personal reactions of desire or fear. However misguided the justifications may be, however clouded by glamour or illusion, they still purport to serve a greater whole and carry a tacit acknowledgement that the whole is greater than any single part within it.

We grow, through experience, from one illusion to another but these illusions are based on constantly expanding levels of understanding. The clan and then the racial identifications transcend the individual sense of identity and need. We might say "blood is thicker than water" or defend "our own flesh and blood" from outside attack - real or imagined. This is a sense of the oneness of a group at the physical level. Then comes an alignment with a religion or a culture, with a philosophy or ideology, and we have moved into an emotional and mental sense of synthesis in which we participate. At the level of soul we begin to leave behind any sense of separateness, for the soul knows only oneness. We are learning that we are not the temporary vehicles used in the physical, emotional and mental worlds but are part of the indwelling life that animates them in order to express and to link them through the dimensions of being to the source that inspires them. The more subtle the realm the greater the capacity to identify with the whole and the closer we come to reality - to Life itself.

This expanding identification makes our living expression increasingly sacred as we conform more and more to the divine inspiration flowing through all. We sacrifice the lesser, smaller identity - make it sacred, by immersing it in the whole. This is our living service to the divine. Service and sacrifice are synonymous. They are the automatic response to Life and Being as we move in concert with the whole rather than against it. When we hold things to ourselves as though we were the prime importance, we are suffering the illusion of separateness and are holding to that which is at best temporary - when, in truth, all things pass and all things come to pass but Life ever IS and moves ever onward.

Joy comes from giving rather than acquiring. The greater joy is in giving to the greater whole. Inspired giving is a spontaneous outflow of a loving heart to meet a need. The Tibetan Master speaks of this freedom to a disciple: "Your major need is freedom, is liberation. I do not mean freedom from incarnation or liberation from the pressures of life, but the freedom which the sannyasin knows as he roams free in the three worlds - unsupervised or unintruded upon by aught but his own soul. It is the freedom which gives mental help, emotional response and physical time as and when the disciple chooses. These are not evoked by habit or the demand of others, but are the free contribution of the soul to a current need. Your response is not always to need, is it, my brother?"

This response has no sense of "giving up" but is an automatic outflow through us of divine inspiration to a point of need. The less self-aware, the more freely and abundantly it flows - "Revelation flows through me, I know it not" - because we are immersed in what IS rather than in becoming, or in the expression, or in the form of it. Nothing is lost in this "giving up" of the sense of the little self and we move into freedom from the frictions of the petty view. The Tibetan explains to another disciple: "A great Law of Compensation comes into play in a peculiar manner and along special lines where accepted disciples are concerned. The emphasis laid upon discipline, upon purification, upon hard demanding work and upon relinquishing that which the personality holds dear, is a needed phase of … development. This is generally and often sadly recognised. But - paralleling the period of pain and difficulty - is a compensatory activity of the soul which brings all life and circumstance into true perspective and changes attitudes so completely that the recognition of adequate reward supersedes the realisation of pain. … The Law of Sacrifice and the Law of Compensation are closely allied."

The greater identification extends and enhances our living beyond the ever-narrowing field of the little, personal self. The lesser fears and desires reduce rather than augment our living. Our fears can turn us into monsters - where we see danger and threat in every face and misinterpret the kindest acts as infringements on our personal "freedom". The dynamics of the passing age were based on a web of fears and desires causing us to seek a sense of security in a "higher authority", to avoid blame by blaming others, to achieve through threat and intimidation and to maintain an image of false security and achievement to hide the sense of lack and failure. The new era emerging is one of true freedom, of joy and achievement. It can be confusing when we are so steeped in the old ways that we do not realise their limiting influences on us.

Energy follows thought - our behaviour reflects this so that we can create, by our own actions, our worst fears. We create our enemies, turning potential friends and allies into feared enemies to be overcome. Energy follows thought - and we put our energy into creating structures and institutions that reflect a sense of separateness rather than common destiny. "Divide and conquer" may be the theme of the material world but it is ourselves who are conquered and imprisoned even as we seek to do this to others - we are enslaved by an illusion that is diametrically opposed to reality.

The symptoms can be found in the real motives and purposes - why did the coalition of the willing invade Iraq? Why was the separate state of Israel created? Why was apartheid instituted? Why do I get angry with my neighbour? Why do I pretend success when I feel a failure? Why do I think I am more enlightened than those of another culture, religion, philosophy? Why do I strive for exclusivity and superiority? What drives us - basic instinct or higher inspiration? And which is based on eternal truth and which on temporary material gain?

The answers are open to a clear-eyed view. Two basic premises govern the creation of the forms of our world: "energy follows thought" and "the eye, opened by thought, directs that energy." Is the divine energy of Life flowing through our consciousness or is it the base energy of the survival of the form through the death of all in its path? The way has been shown by all the great world teachers down the ages who have served and sacrificed under the inspiration of the divine. Thus the illumination of the human kingdom brings us steadily through all barriers to reality. An Old Commentary describes:

"There is that which transmutes knowledge into wisdom within a flash of time; there is that which changes sensitivity into love within an area of space; there is that which alters sacrifice into bliss where neither time nor space exists."