Dear Friends,

How like a large extended family is our growing "family of nations" - some older and long established, perhaps looking back to their days of youth rather than recognising the emerging talent and potential of the newer nations; some new ones struggling to be born, often causing painful birth pangs to those involved in their formation; some growing up (seemingly overnight and without our realising) and demanding the recognition due to a young adult; some fight and squabble, forgetting they are of the same flesh and blood as all the others. Some are young and arrogant, others older and authoritative, others timid and shy - but all have unique gifts and qualities to contribute to the human family. They are our brothers and part of the one world we share together. From the perspective of the "One in Whom we live and move and have our being" all are children of the Earth and, looking through the eyes of a good parent, we can see that each has a right to a share of the family livelihood according to their need.

Our own individual families provide a rich learning experience through which to understand right human relations in a richly complex world. In a sense the family is the blueprint for all future relationships which an individual may have. Our worldly persona is tempered by our upbringing. We can be conditioned to tolerance or belligerence, to loving understanding or abuse and violence. Gradually this is being understood - we see how the abused become the abusers - and new light reveals how to heal and redirect the wounded psyches, where there is a response, back to those essential values that nurture life and its more glorious expressions.

Where whole nations or peoples or groups have been abused (whether real, imagined or intensified through morbid obsession) we can see the dynamic that turns them into abusers. Healing the essential wounds is ultimately more responsible than imposing yet more abuse. It can also be irresponsible (and ineffective) for the elder brother nations to leave young nations to "fend for themselves". Recent international conflicts have shown all too clearly how "playground bully" tactics resolve nothing and leave everyone scarred by it with hurts more deeply felt than previously. Some feel reduced to extreme measures because they cannot equal their perceived aggressors in strength and backing - perhaps even feeling that the dignity of life can only be maintained in their own willing self-sacrifice and death. If we join the conflict we but extend its reach and move further from resolution. When seen clearly there are no "sides" in a conflict - all suffer.

Today, as a race, we know and understand so much more than in past centuries. Humankind has been increasingly trained to think and to see through the logical flow on of divisive actions, however many of our number are still awaiting access to the needed education to draw forth wisdom. Our crises help us to learn and grow as a race if we take the greater perspective and see beyond the immediate pain. Suffering and sacrifice need not happen in vain and can help bring greater understanding of the relatedness of all aspects of the whole of which we are a part. The Tibetan Master, Djwhal Khul, commenting towards the end of the wars of the last century explains:
"The world of men has been subjected to such strain and suffering that hundreds of thousands in nearly every land - either factually or imaginatively - could 'feel' no more; the solar plexus centre could take or absorb no more. Nothing was left to the sufferer but the realisation that all men everywhere were in a similar plight and that this community of shared agony brought all men together, irrespective of nation, religion or class. .. Therefore, for the first time in their history, humanity began to recognise a definite phase of universality; mankind as a whole began to 'share in the heart's reaction'. This happened so generally and so acutely that the heart - as a motivating radiance - became a point of human focus. One of the first fruits of suffering, as universally shared, appeared on Earth, and in its appearing all future suffering will be greatly lessened." [Discipleship in the New Age, p180]

We need to look more deeply to find meaning - for true causes of outer happenings - for the ties that liberate rather than the ties that bind. In these deeper layers of meaning, relationship and identity, at the truly human level, we find the point of release from the outer prison of materiality, physical geography and temporal power. The Tibetan again shines light on the way through the chaos and confusion of the outer world:
"(The teaching formulas) express a past, indicate a revelation, and ground the thinking (individual) in the world of meaning because it is in that world that he must learn to work and live; it is from that world that he must begin now to work in two directions in time and space, for the world of meaning is the antechamber to the 'Circle of Liberation'. This 'Circle of Liberation' is ever entered by the individual …, and has been down the ages, but now, for the first time, it is being entered by humanity itself and as a whole. This is the result of the experience of the war, 1914-1945. Humanity, entering this circle, will be confronted by the first major lesson: the Unity of the One Life. … Life and its balancing partner, Death, are old and familiar aspects of general livingness to the masses, and their starting point in all revelation is life, and the result of all revelation is death or the disappearance of veils." [Discipleship in the New Age, p320]

Humanity has learned the power of concentration and focus - the mental capacity to direct thought and energy. But what we think we control can, often, control us. The next evolutionary step is to lift the mind into the light and hold it steady there to be freed from old governing ideas and their attendant thoughtforms (often long past their 'use-by' date) and to be freed to apprehend the next revelation hovering over us. The coming human being is: "…occupied with the expression of soul as that soul should be known in the culture and the civilisation immediately to be developed. They can work entirely free from self-interest; that which they create is not claimed by them but is regarded as an expression of (spiritual) activity; they are free from the spirit to identify themselves with that which they expressed, but having created that which their (inner inspiration) has indicated - they pass on to a fresh expression of the dynamic, ever-moving purpose. They are not occupied with form, but with life, with organism rather than organisation, with ideas rather than ideals, and with essential truth rather than with carefully worded theologies." [The Rays and the Initiations, p294-5]

Such is the new humanity some of whom are already blossoming among us and showing the way. They are serving their fellow men in every department of human affairs, in every nation, in every spiritual tradition. Their heart is the flame at the centre of Life - it radiates and enlightens wherever it passes.

THE FLAME

Raise up the dead land
And shine through the darkness
Life is magnificent
Reach out in promptness
Everything which causes pain
Erased shall be in boldness
Remember with innocence
Direct with abundance
You mirror the limitless
My Love in accordance!

Panyotis Vyras 4 July 2006

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The Festival in Virgo will be celebrated at a meditation meeting at 8 pm on Thursday, 7 September, at the YWCA, 5-11 Wentworth Avenue, Sydney. The keynote for reflection is:
I am the Mother and the Child, I God, I matter am.

International Day of Peace, Thursday 21st September
A 24 hour Peace Vigil will be maintained by representatives of many spiritual traditions with prayer, meditation, song, chant and presentation, from midnight to midnight, in Victoria Park, Broadway. All are welcome to join in at any time throughout the day. For information : www.ministryforpeace.org.au