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

No 216/January 2005

Dear Friends,
The significance of the Christmas Season echoes in the Angel's words recorded in St Luke's gospel:

And thus was heralded the first appearance of Christ - in notes inclusive of all people and of the earth and mankind as a whole. This was before the Christian churches, denominations and sects had formed - before the great diversity of response and reaction became expressed through various interpretations, institutions and organizations. A single all-inclusive note was sounded and the echoes took many forms and modulations. And, like echoes, they resolve, merge and recede yet the memory of that first clear note remains. Mankind is learning to sing that note - ever more clearly, ever more inclusively and ever more truly so that in the many forms we will hear, see and know oneness and accord with that great, divine Will pouring its intention throughout the world.

We might bemoan the hardships and tragedies of living in the world yet it often takes crises to shake us out of the prison of our daily myopia to see the glory that is around us. As this sloca from "Leaves of Morya's Garden" describes:

"When we are within a house we see it not, being within."

But once we step (or are forced) out of the ordinary, the inner beauty of life reveals itself unexpectedly and we are transported:

"Across the deserts, seas and mountains,
You transport yourselves in one breath.
And there, face to face, we meet.
There is no space. Time exists not."

There remains only the beauty and power of life expressing through everything. We see human beings not as opposed or competing wills but as souls struggling to create ordered understanding of what is only beyond ken at a point in time but is always within reach. There is always an unfoldment and a new revelation "just around the corner". It is not ever as we might expect...for it would not then be a revelation!...but it comes upon us unawares "like a thief in the night" and in these unlooked for ways human consciousness is changed forever. In "The Journey Continues" the Group experiences this movement forward:
"Another understanding which dawns upon the Group...is that the teachings and the principles that guided the Group through its earlier stages, now absorbed in their essence within the group awareness, drop into the background of the group life. They are known as guiding principles and working tools but it is recognised that there is no longer any necessity for the Group to discuss these matters which allows for 'free space' through which the newly emerging realisations or revelations may enter. Discussion within the Group enters into that which can be known and not merely that which is known."

When the focus is moved into the next achievement (rather than a review of the past to apportion blame or exact retribution) a very different energy flows through consciousness. All things become possible and past (apparent) failures are transformed into learning steps towards greatness. Magnetically everything about us is drawn into this flow. We begin to see through what appears to be obstruction and it disappears. This new living energy is enlivening and empowering. It is what the Christ referred to as "life more abundantly" and its revelation is linked to the purpose of His coming and the guiding purpose of all great World Teachers. Over fifty years ago the Tibetan predicted the coming times (already with us awaiting our realisation):
"...the usefulness, the practicality and the naturalness of right human relations will become so evident that world affairs will rapidly be adjusted and the new era of goodwill and of peace on earth will be inaugurated. The new culture and the new civilisation will then be possible.

This is the picture of no optimistic, mystical and impossible event. It is not based upon wishful thinking or upon blind hope. Already today, the disciples of the Christ are preaching the doctrine of right human relations; men and women of goodwill are endeavouring to show that only through goodwill can true peace be brought about in the arena of international life. In the presentation of true 'livingness' which the Christ will demonstrate to the world of thinking men, there is necessarily no room for exclusiveness or for separativeness, because that 'life more abundantly'...is a free and flowing current, sweeping away obstructions and barriers, and establishing an unimpeded circulation of truth and life itself - the essential quality of both being love.

All the world religions have posited the fact that God is Love essentially and that God is life essentially as well as intelligence. That life carries within itself the essential quality of the will of God, as well as the love of God. Both are equally important because that will is qualified by love....

The establishing of right human relations is an aspect of the divine will for humanity and the next facet of the divine expression to manifest itself in human affairs - individual, communal, national, and international. Nothing has ever finally impeded this divine expression, except the time factor, and that time factor is determined by humanity and is an expression of divine freewill. The intended, divine expression can move rapidly or slowly into manifestation, according as man decides; hitherto, man has decided upon a slow - a very slow - manifestation. It is here that the freedom of the human will shows itself. Because divinity is immanent or present in all forms and, therefore, in all human beings, that will must eventually be fulfilled; because of the tremendously material intention...of all forms at present, that Will has hitherto been retarded in its expression; it has not been the will of men to establish right human relations. Hence the discipline of war, the torture of the forms, and the misery in human living today."

The cyclic pattern of life in form draws our consciousness in and out of time. The great religious festivals and observances come in cyclic inspiration drawing us out to touch the divine essence which magnetically transforms our world and ultimately brings transfiguration through our essential divinity in full expression. Let us see the future in men's eyes rather than the past. Let us see the promise of what is real rather than the illusions swept up out of the dust of fear. "Fear not" the Angel said and then we shall see the joy within each other and our world. Fear leads to possessiveness, exclusivity, conflict, torture and death. Yet ask anyone if they truly seek these and they will tell you truly they do not. Great freedom is at hand - freedom and life - when we release all that we cling to. Love flows with it automatically and embraces all we meet. What then are the next achievements for the human race and its world?

Peace is not an external condition or circumstance but a vibrant point of divine will that resonates from a point within and radiates an energy, on the tide of which greatness expresses. To quote from St Luke again: "and the glory of the Lord shone round about them". Life and peace cannot be trapped and contained for separate use or gain. They flow through all, vivifying and enriching in that movement. They can only be shared and as we learn to share our world and the responsibility for it so we express life in and through it - life more abundantly!