Dear Friends,

How quickly time races by and the Christmas holiday season is upon us again! It is as if the apparent speeding up reveals to the observer's eye a single Christmas experience overlaid by the repeated moments of it and yet clarifying the essential nature of it. Different Christmas gifts are given to different people each year and yet the one unalterable element of the Christmas experience is giving - a flowing through us and thence out to others of the Christmas Spirit. And so behind, beneath and through all the outer forms of celebration flow the:

Gifts of Spirit

This is the title for an evening of meditation and discussion to commence at 8pm on Wednesday, 21 December, at the YWCA, 5-11 Wentworth Avenue, Sydney. This day is the first in the Festival week of the New Group of World Servers which is celebrated on 21 to 28 December every 7 years around the world by all those who recognise and support this great subjective group whose effect in the world may be seen in all walks of life where there is progress towards the essential reality of life unfolding through our world. To launch the festival week the Lucis Trust will hold a meeting on the theme Living Synthesis on Saturday 17 December in New York, Geneva and London. In Sydney our focus within that theme will be Gifts of Spirit exploring and experiencing the greater synthesis behind the seasonal moment.

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The true nature of giving goes deeply beyond the surface exchange of material gifts. It is a spontaneous response to need initiated by the movement of Life itself as it flows into and through all things, all beings and all dimensions of its existence from the most subtle to the most extant, from the smallest to the greatest - beyond the furthest reaches of our current reckoning yet radiating from the great, still magnetic centre of all Being. Just as our Sun holds all its satellites in magnetic rapport around it and radiates life-bearing light through them, so does each satellite have its own centre and radiatory impact on all that it attracts - down through the dimensions of scale to the single atom and it's electrons.

The upcoming Triangles Bulletin identifies the qualitative aspect of the new thoughtforms and the essential focus for those who serve the greater good: "Public opinion is often thought to be a fickle thing, moving with the tides, fluid, impressionable, easily swayed by well organized pressure groups and those who speak with charisma and charm. The drama of day-today events seems to bear this out as support for particular programmes in any local or national environment rises and falls in response to which side is winning the public relations game. Yet this is only part of the picture. If we take a longer-term view of public opinion, … Certain ideas stand out over time, like energetic potencies, at the centre of popular thinking. It is as if they have a life and a momentum of their own, becoming magnetic fields, attracting thought and motivating activity. In these early years of what might be regarded as the Age of Interdependence ideas of synthesis, wholeness, oneness, 'unity in diversity', rights and responsibilities, empowerment and participation are like this. They are fields of coherence around which so much thinking revolves, in all societies. … we are seeing the beginnings of world public opinion. Inevitably this also involves opposing counter-forces, reacting to the dominant thrust - like the religious and political groups that rail against the synthesis field. Bearing in mind that so many of the ideas at the core of the world of thought bear the hallmarks of interdependence, our work … is to look deeper and to consider the enlightenment of public opinion. This is to look less at ideas and more at the qualities and atmosphere of popular thinking - at the warmth and illumination emitted from the field of thought. To be more specific, the idea of interdependence and wholeness is one thing. The infusion of that idea with an atmosphere of goodwill is quite different. For then the idea, interdependence, reaches into every aspect of thinking and feeling, affecting the way individuals and societies respond to problems and crises. When goodwill flows through public opinion … it brings sweetness into the field of thought and outer action. This is not the sweetness of sentiment, but rather an orientation of being where at the most simple and basic level individuals feel personally involved. The idea of interdependence then affects the heart individually and collectively. People in large numbers feel to some extent empowered to contribute; they feel a measure of identification with fellow human beings who are suffering - or rejoicing. When an atmosphere of goodwill prevails, differences of opinion are not divisive (even though they may be strongly held) because there is a shared sense of wanting to get the best result possible."

The turning of the seasons reminds us, through its very division and variation, of the single central inspiration that ultimately directs the life-sharing flow. The turning of events in the world are outward effects that can reveal, to the greater eye, the movement of the greater forces breaking against human thought like the ocean's continuous movement attuned to the power of the planet and its response to both its satellite (now devoid of life) and its solar centre (the source of life), its past and its future. The ocean beats on the beaches and cliffs and occasionally rises up in great storms to break down old forms, old understandings and open the way for new forms shaped more to the magnetic core of our planetary being and its own purpose within the greater sphere.

When immersed in that essential Being at the core of our existence - and of the existence of all things - we become open to its life-sharing potency. The more human consciousness expands in its sense of being, the more powers are unleashed, but the expanded consciousness itself is the controlling factor. The Gifts of Spirit are for the spiritual realms - eternal where material gifts are temporal, subtle where the material are dense, all-pervasive where the material are limited. As humanity enters the realms of Spirit so do great powers come to its hands - perhaps misused in ignorance at first until we learn the ways of spirit and then all sense of separation and its inherent conflict drop below thought and eventually out of existence, leaving points of cooperative will within the loving embrace of Life itself moving to its greater purpose.

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The Festival in Scorpio will be celebrated at a meditation meeting at 8 pm on Tuesday, 15th November, at the YWCA, 5-11 Wentworth Avenue, Sydney. The keynote is: "Warrior I am, and from the battle I emerge triumphant."

The Festival in Sagittarius will be celebrated at a meditation meeting at 8 pm on Thursday, 15 December, at the YWCA, 5-11 Wentworth Avenue, Sydney. The keynote is: "I see the goal. I reach that goal and then I see another."

The Festival Week of the New Group of World Servers is held in the period 21 to 28 December every seven years. All true servers everywhere belong to the New Group of World Servers, whether their line of service is cultural, political, scientific, religious, philosophical, psychological or financial. They constitute the inner group of workers for humanity, and of the world mystics, whether they know it or not. This group gives to the word "spiritual" a wide significance; they believe it to mean an inclusive endeavour towards human betterment, uplift and understanding; they give it the connotation of tolerance, international synthetic communion, religious inclusiveness, and of all trends of thought which concern the integrating development of the human being. It is a group therefore without terminology or bible of any kind; it has no creed nor any dogmatic formulations of truth. The motivating impulse of each and all is love of God as it works out in love for one's fellowmen. The materialising of ideas, which have hitherto remained theoretical, is the prime function of the New Group of World Servers. They have to remove the whole theory from the realm of sentiment, of idealism, and of mystical aspiration and must bring the question, as a concrete demonstrated factor, before the public. They must place the emphasis upon the expression of goodwill and the fulfilment of the law of love and not upon affiliation with organizations, with their labels and their doctrines.