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
No 244 / July 2007
Dear Friends,
Have you noticed with what conviction and authority we each rule our own small domains, our “personal space”? Often the more authoritative our stance, the more deeply focussed we are within the narrow compass of our daily personal world. It seems to be intrinsically human to have an opinion on any and everything – no matter how far removed from our experience and understanding – and to make authoritative pronouncements and judgements. Thus do we order our little worlds out of a chaos of forces beyond our grasp. This is the inheritance as we move out of the Age of Authority and into the new Age of Universality and Responsibility – of “people power”.
We make judgements, live by them, learn their limitations and then make new ones. And still we assess as though we “know it all”. The process can be so automatic and woven into our sense of identity that we are quite unconscious of it until someone objectively reveals it to us – such as Barbara Kingsolver in her novel “The Poisonwood Bible” describing some of the reactions to Africa of a missionary family:
“… And to the east of us, behind the river, a rising rumple of dark green hills folded on each other like a great old tablecloth, receding to pale hazy blue. ‘Looming like the Judgement,’ says our mother, pausing to wipe her damp forehead with the back of her hand. ‘It’s a place right out of a storybook,’ my twin suster, Leah, loves to declare in response, opening her eyes wide and sticking her short hair behind her ears as if to hear and see every little thing oh so much better. ‘And yet this is our own family, the Prices, living here!’ Next comes this observation from my sister Ruth May: ‘Nobody here’s got very many teeth.’ And finally, from Rachel; ‘Jeez oh man, wake me up when it’s over.’ And so the Price family passes its judgements. All but Adah. Adah unpasses her judgements. I am the one who does not speak.”
Much that overflows into speech can be a spontaneous outflow of true inner realisation arrived at through clear and directed thought. Such speech can be useful and even inspiring towards growth and progress. Much, however, can be a bubbling over of inconsequential, ill-formed thoughts emanating from an undisciplined thought life. The scope and depth of our understanding is constantly revealed in what we say and do. The Tibetan Master, Djwhal Khul, explains the nature of the discipline of silence:
“… an important factor in (group progress) is the cultivation of silence… essentially silence is not refraining from speech. So many … think that it is, and that they have to learn not to talk if they hope to (progress). Some would do a great deal better if they talked more than they do – along right lines. The silence imposed in an Ashram is refraining from certain lines of thought, the elimination of reverie and the unwholesome use of the creative imagination. Speech is consequently controlled at its source, because speech is the result of certain inner sources of ideas, of thought and of imagination; it is the precipitation (at a certain point of saturation …) of inner reservoirs which overflow onto the physical plane. The retention of speech and the suppression of words, if they are the result of a realisation that what is to be said is wrong, or undesirable, or unwise, or wasteful of energy, will simply increase the inner banking up and will lead eventually to a still more violent display of words at a later date; it may also bring about serious and disastrous conditions within the astral body of the disciple. The silence of thought is to be cultivated and … I do not mean silent thinking. I mean that certain lines of thought are refused admission; certain habits of thinking are eradicated and certain approaches to ideas are not developed. This is done by a process of substitution, and not by a violent process of suppression. The initiate learns to keep his thought apparatus in a certain condition. His thoughts do not intermingle the one with the other, but are contained … in separate compartments or carefully filed for reference and later use. There are certain layers of thought … which are held within the Ashram itself and are never permitted to enter the mind of the disciple or the initiate when not consciously working in the Ashram; others are related to the group and are given free play within the group ring-pass-not; still others are of a more mundane nature and govern the daily life and relationships of the disciple with personalities and with the affairs of civilised living and physical plane events… Within the permitted levels of contact, speech is free and unimpeded; outside those levels, no indication is given that the other spheres of thought activity, with their conditioning speech, even exist…”
[The Rays and The Initiations, page 214-5]
Limitation of thought is, however, momentary – related to only a point, a moment in the ongoing emergence of a soul into expression. At every point of expansion we move into a greater sphere of understanding and everything is “made new” within our new vision. We are then released from the confines of the past view and can become of real service to those still within it. Problems are caused by some limitation or other and are not recognised until the limit is reached. The answer to any problem is then to move beyond it into an expanded sphere of reference. To quote Einstein: “We can’t solve today’s problems using the very same thinking that produced these problems.” The Tibetan explains to a disciple: “Only those who have achieved freedom can return to that group with immunity and helpfulness in their hands – the group from which they have been freed.” [Discipleship in the New Age II, p 464]
Thus do we grow and our growth is both inspired by and serves the Whole in Which we live and move and have our being. Judgements arise from the limits of past experience and are only momentarily and personally relevant. They create separation between the judge and the judged. Right decision, however, is a response based on understanding – the deeper the understanding the more powerfully effective the decision as it draws on the greater reservoir of the Life behind all and motivating all things. It moves towards a more expanded future – even decisions of limited effect and worth can clarify the way forward. The evolutionary forces operate from deep within our being – as the Tibetan explains:
“This evolutionary pushing forward along the Lighted Way, out of darkness into light, from the unreal to the real, and from death to immortality, is an inherent urge in all forms. It constitutes one of the most subtle and one of the least understood laws of the universe, being related to the Life principle, of which we know as yet naught; it underlies the Law of Evolution as well as the Law of (Cause and Effect) and is, in reality, the Law of the Life Purpose of the planetary Logos; It is an expression of his dynamic intention as it forces all substance in manifestation and in time and space to act and react in conformity with His Will. He thus enables His form – the planet which is a compound of all the seven kingdoms in nature – to express logoic intention for the ‘duration of the Great Breath’; of this breath, time and space are the two aspects. It affects the tiniest atom and the most exalted Being within the sphere of His consciousness and the scope of His livingness; ... The human family, after the stage of personality integration is reached, reacts with increasing consciousness of the divine purpose. Once the (bridge to higher awareness) is constructed and the higher initiations are taken, the initiate then cooperates with that purpose in full understanding and intention. He no longer simply reacts to his own interior urges, which force him ever to invoke the higher aspect of life and of consciousness which he senses on ahead. He now knows. He sees; he participates in the Plan; he relates himself to the divine Intention …; he makes the divine Intention his, as far as he can grasp it. This reciprocal interplay produces the mutability of form and the immutability of the divine nature which is distinctive of those liberated Consciousnesses which have freed Themselves from the prison of form.” [The Rays and The Initiations, p 519-520]
The nature and meaning of the next movement forward is veiled only by our as yet undeveloped capacity to see and know it. Only when we move into it does it open up revelation for those following – a revelation which expresses in a manner not hitherto anticipated but in a completely new and revolutionary way – not in terms of the old but in terms of a new which is yet to be grasped and understood. Thus we see all things evolve: from Morse code to wireless, television, the worldwide web; from words to ideas, to the energy of inspiration behind ideas and eventually into that point of dynamic source from which all can be seen flowing out into the manifest world.
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The Festival in Cancer will be celebrated at a meditation meeting at 8 pm on Friday, 29 June, at the YWCA, 5-11 Wentworth Avenue, Sydney. The keynote for reflection is:
I build a lighted house and therein dwell.