S Y D N E Y   G O O D W I L L   N E W S L E T T E R

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

No 249 / December 2007 - January 2008

Dear Friends,

As we come to the end of another year and the start of the New Year, we are reminded of the traditions that mark the turning of the cycles and provide the pattern for our human expression. We review the past and reconnect with our source, we recognise the opportunities of the moment, and we build expectations for the future that set the direction and vision towards which our living aspires. Though we may often feel alone in this we never really experience it in isolation and now, amid the modern intensity of communication, we know beyond doubt that we operate as the One Humanity - each, in his or her own unique way, carrying out their part in the greater pattern of the One Life.

During this annual "stock-take" or "reality check" we are reminded of our relationship with time. A sense of imprisonment in time can be a barrier that limits us in visioning and thence creating the future world, a world which already exists in the mind of God and is the goal of divine manifestation. The feeling that we have so many difficulties to "get through" or to "deal with" before we can arrive at the hoped for destination can daunt us and keep the attainment of the vision ever out of reach. At its worst this can reduce our vision to the ranks of an impossible dream which we, as individuals, may never see actualised. Hopelessness and despair follow fast upon the heels of such a distorted and distant view. Until we see all life as the One Life and live from that perspective, our view can only be partial and therefore incomplete and inaccurate. Such are the false barriers we build - veils of illusion, glamour and falsity which can permeate our living so subtly that our very sense of identity is diminished.

Yet if we look back only, say, ten years ago to 1997, we would perhaps not have known what it would be like to be actually living in the new millennium, in 2007. Yet in that time how many ills have been revealed so they can be corrected; how many actions have been shown to be wrongly motivated so that real solutions can now be focussed; what successes we have experienced in developing our sense of common community such as the Olympic Games, the moves to address world poverty and to mediate conflict, the world Peace movement and the changes it is bringing about in human thinking and brotherhood; what recognition is growing about climate change, our relationship with our environment, the supply of water and renewable energy, the interdependent nature of the world economy and the world nations (both developed and developing) as essential to shared human living.

And the present moment is so NOW that it is as though it has always been. So much so that it is hard to remember how it was before all our current realisations. From the perspective of timelessness we have always been here at this point and at all such points in between. In a series of articles printed in the Beacon throughout 1997 titled "Beyond 'As If': The Monadic Life" (also on independent-spirit.com ) L. Rae Lake writes of a "touch of eternity"

"... Imagine a pebble of timelessness dropped into a pool of time at a specific spot-the ripple effect spreads in all directions, equally affecting past and future…Such a past/future ripple in time (like a whisper in space) may also be noted as an intuitive perception/response to an event before its time, all advantages of the one mind. It doesn't much matter how we prefer to look at it, our shared sense of destiny brings us now to this time, this place. Borrowing the symbol of the even-armed cross (the measure for the vertical life of the spirit and the horizontal life of relationship), we see ourselves vertically encompassing a timeless sense of the now and horizontally participating in humanity's increasingly flexible sense of future and past."

The growing capacity to live timelessly within time, and to experience its cycles as the heartbeat and pulse of the One Life, comes with an expanded sense of one's intimate relationship with the greater whole and all the parts within it. Moments of crisis and heightened awareness open doors into realisation. These are being recorded ceaselessly and all around us in the simplest and most profound ways such as in the novel "In the Company of Cheerful Ladies", a story set in Botswana by Alexander McCall Smith:

"The old woman said nothing for a moment, and Mma Ramotswe kept her arm about her shoulder. It was a strange feeling, she had always thought; feeling the breathing of another, a reminder of how we all share the same air, and of how fragile we all are. At least there was enough air in the world for everybody to breathe; at least people did not fight with one another over that. And it would be difficult, would it not, for the rich people to take all the air away from the poor people, even if they could take so many other things? Black people, white people: same air."

Our planet is the archetype and reminder of our shared oneness, our shared identity, sustained by our shared world. It is our beautiful, precious ship that sails the ocean of life bringing us to a New World of being and to an awareness of a subtlety so exquisite it can only be known through complete identification with it. The journey and the path are described by the Tibetan:

"The disciple knows or is learning to know that he is not this or that, but Life Itself. He is not the physical body or its emotional nature; he is not, in the last analysis (a most occult phrase) the mind or that by which he knows. He is learning that that too must be transcended and superseded by intelligent love (only truly possible after the mind has been developed), and he begins to realise himself as the soul. Then, later, comes the awful 'moment in time' when, pendant in space, he discovers that he is not the soul. What then is he? A point of divine dynamic will, focussed in the soul and arriving at awareness of Being through the use of form. He is Will, the ruler of time and the organiser, in time, of space. This he does, but ever with the reservation that time and space are the 'divine playthings' and can be used or not at will." [The Rays & the Initiations p107]

The wonder of our modern age - with its immediate communication via internet, phone, media; fast travel into all cultures everywhere; migration creating multicultural communities; a global economy, global business, globally available resources - is that we can increasingly see and know the WHOLE life from any point within it. This challenges any previous sense of isolation and individual identity. We are so clearly part of a greater life. L. Rae Lake explains:

"…Liberation from the constraints of Time depends finally on how easily we accept the intimate nature of human intelligence-our inherent, inclusive, mental relationship with those other millions of individualities who etherically constitute the one soul, the true heart center where esotericists are concerned. There are many brains but only one Mind within which we share 'individualized awareness'. In each of us intelligence tends to be exclusive in human expression, inclusive in hierarchical expression and synthetic in spiritual expression. The ease with which we transcend our fragmented sense of individual consciousness dictates how effectively we work within the higher or universal mind. To counteract that naturally forceful, opposing sense of exclusivity (which constitutes the personal integrity of the strictly human mind), we practice inclusively living as if we are the soul. But we cannot experience spiritual oneness if, through habit, attachment, devotion, insecurity, or misunderstanding, we cling to aspiration for group, hierarchical or soul consciousness.

    Just as skepticism forms a protective veil for the unready lower mind, aspiration provides a similar veil for discipleship consciousness. Aspiration effectively prevents attainment. Operating as a personality (or a personal unit of discipleship consciousness) makes it virtually impossible to accept existing spiritual maturity. So long as we aspire to anything we believe is still spiritually beyond us we stay effectively separated from our goal and we remain children in our faith. Whether seeking soul consciousness, hierarchical affiliation, acceptance by a master in some ashram, greater knowledge, wisdom, or shamballic experience-aspiration is difficult to give up. So rationalization sets in: perhaps we're unready or don't know how to proceed; or perhaps we just enjoy the excitement of the chase, our expectations of magical experience, or the never-ending search for arcane knowledge. Too many, however, are delayed by nothing more than rote thinking-sloppy, glorified or misleading spiritual expectations-indicating the most serious need for thinking 'out of the box'."

Let us wish for our world that almost unbelievable wonder which has been emerging from the seasonal "gift box" delivered 2,000 years ago and which comes to the fore at this time of cyclic renewal:

"Fear not; for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people …
Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men."

* * * * * *

The Festival in Sagittarius will be celebrated at a meditation meeting at 8 pm, Friday, 23 November, at the YWCA, the "Y On The Park", 5-11 Wentworth Avenue, Sydney. The keynote for reflection is:

I see the goal. I reach that goal and then I see another.

The Festival in Capricorn will be celebrated at 8pm Friday, 21 December, at the YWCA. The keynote is:

Lost am I in light supernal, yet on that light I turn my back.

* * * * * *

Don't forget to visit our New Website at www.sydneygoodwill.org.au for literature, books, meeting dates, etc!

top of page
Return to Newsletters