SYDNEY GOODWILL UNIT OF SERVICE

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

No 226/ November 2005

Dear Friends,

A final invitation to join us on Saturday, 15 October, 1pm-5pm, at the YWCA, 5-11 Wentworth Avenue, Sydney, for:

Resurrecting Life - The Emerging Culture of Peace

Working with mediation and conference we will focus thought, energy and vision behind the initiatives around the world which are inspired by the Spirit of Peace and which work with the Spirit of Resurrection to bring human culture back to the reality of Life and its wholeness and to dispel the illusion of death and separation. The afternoon is arranged around two interrelated sessions with a short break between. The sessions are based on:

What is emerging on our planet? - transferring our consciousness into that of the future humanity we will explore the new culture it creates and the new civilisation that results.
And what are we doing to bring it to birth? - looking from the new human consciousness "back" to 2005 we will identify, focus and strengthen the emerging signs of our new civilisation.

If you would like to attend please register your intention by phoning us on (02) 9540 2391. We will need an indication of numbers to ensure that suitable space and set-up is arranged. There is no charge but donations to offset costs are welcome.

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Hurricanes, torrential rain, floods, earthquakes, unseasonable drought and famine are some of the "natural" effects impacting our sphere of existence at this powerful time. Terrorism and unilateralism are some of the human contribution to the turbulence and upheaval. The planetary life of the One in Whom we live and move and have our being is stirring and all the familiar modes of our living are being called into question. Humanity is confronting a rethink of its values, its scope of living, its identity and its very reason for being. At such times the "reality check" might begin with "What's the point of it all?"

"What's the point?" is a question which seethes through human consciousness - whether it is acknowledged and actively explored or whether it surfaces through other guises in the day-to-day engagement with life in our world. And a point is a powerful place to focus on or to be at … it has location but takes up no space or time. It exists and can be known but has no physical form. We can speak of a point in space or time or consciousness and it is always a centre around which a view is assembled of everything else - a "reality". It is the point at the centre of a sphere of life, the gravitational magnet that assembles a life view, a family, a culture, a philosophy, a theology, a planet, a solar system, a universe.

Everything emerges from a point of essential being, from a centre of life which creates and animates it and which permeates and pervades the expanding outflow. The point is everywhere present yet is not constrained by space, time or dimension. Everything is imbued with the purpose, intention and direction of the point at the centre. It is the kernel or the blueprint for its unfolding expression. In "The Journey Continues" Merle wrote:

"Underlying the outer structure of our world are great inner thought patterns through which the evolutionary experiment upon our planet moves into expression. It is humanity's role to work progressively with ideas and concepts and through time to build ever more truly to this great inner blueprint."

As the unfolding central life expands outwards it moves through phase after phase of its radiating expression constantly transforming the forms born from its ceaseless impact on substance. There is always a new movement in its advancing expression. In the July Newsletter from ISTS (International School for Transformation & Synthesis) a text from Isaiah is revisited:

"He reports God as saying, 'Forget the former things; do not dwell in the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.' (Isaiah 43.18,19) God's 'new thing' at the moment is twofold. It will provide both profound new spiritual signposts and rivers of life in what has become a spiritual desert.
'New things' are not continuations of the old, repackaged. They rarely come from the direction we have been expecting them, but burst forth almost fully formed after gestating silently and hiddenly. Unable to be contained within old parameters and expectations, they pose a serious threat to crystallised or decaying forms, and to all with an investment in the comfort of the familiar."

Merle also highlighted this new era we are entering and creating as we go:

"Dramatic changes are occurring, not only in outer affairs but also in human consciousness and the definition of how we relate to one another, person to person, nation to nation. The outlines of new patterns can be seen emerging affecting all areas of human expression through politics to economics to diplomacy and beyond, reaching into the very core of our living and into our everyday lives. No one is untouched and the vision of the one world and the one humanity hovers on the border of awareness awaiting human recognition and expression."

What we now sense emanating from the centre of our life is not just new but it challenges all our past orientation in the material world. The new is a complete shift of identification from the centre of the separate individual life to the centre of Life itself. A whole different "world view" is being assembled through human consciousness as it synthesises itself into a coordinated whole. New aspects of our being emerge for our exploration, understanding and expression - sharing, freedom, brotherhood and interrelatedness, organic living, sustainability, holistic thinking, sensitivity to inner thought currents, immersion in the life of everything, custodianship, service, knowing.

The borders of old concepts are dissolving - economics, politics, law, religion, education, communication, security, nationality, culture - leaving humanity responding creatively, or feeling uncertain, or reactively clinging to the familiar. But humanity is a whole and eventually will move on together and as one. As Merle wrote:

"Once we enter a conscious awareness of the nature of Life itself we have realised that 'sharing' is an inevitable and normal expression of all life.
… We elect to move with it and break through or stay where we are which has never been so uncomfortable as it now is.
… Humanity itself is a group, the world disciple, progressing through time and growing in conscious awareness through life experience on this planet and this is not clearly seen while we focus our sight myopically on specific individuals, groups or peoples at any particular time.
…That which it has to convey is 'lived into being', lived into human consciousness, bearing significance for the future expression of the race. It works in and for the future - a deeper, wider, more expansive area of working than experienced before.
… But until we recognise the oneness that underlies all forms, basically that oneness that sees no separation and that knows there are no divisions in spiritual existence, we will not truly understand the nature of Synthesis, of the first aspect of divinity from which will emerge the new approach to God and the new civilisation.
What is Synthesis? It is never diminished; it contains all within it. It is beyond differentiation yet it is that great unity which incorporates every part. It is the One and the many. It is Life itself."

This Life ever exists and the Way into it has been demonstrated by the vanguard of the race who leave gems of their wisdom for when we "have eyes to see". The following is requoted from a recent publication from Meditation Mount. It is from the "Diamond Cutter or the Diamond that cuts through illusion sutra":

Subhuti asks the Buddha: 'World-Honoured One, if sons and daughters of good families want to give rise to the highest, most fulfilled, awakened mind, what should they rely on and what should they do to master their thinking?'
The Buddha answered: 'This is how (the awakened ones) master their thinking. However many species of sentient beings there are, whether they have form or do not have form; whether they have perception or do not have perception … we must lead all these beings to the ultimate awakening so that they can be liberated. And when this innumerable, immeasurable, infinite number of beings has become liberated, we do not, in truth, think that a single being has become liberated. Since if one who holds on to the idea that a self, a person, a living being, or a life span exists, that person has not truly awakened.

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The Festival in Libra will be celebrated at a meditation meeting at 8 pm on Monday, 17th October, at the YWCA, 5-11 Wentworth Avenue, Sydney. The keynote is: "I choose the Way which leads between the two great lines of force."

The Festival in Scorpio will be 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."

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