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 247 / October 2007

Dear Friends,

We are fast approaching the 21st September and the worldwide observance of the:

United Nations International Day of Peace

As part of the worldwide focus, we in Sydney we will be participating in:

The Sydney Peace Vigil

Friday 21st September 2007
At the University steps in Victoria Park, Broadway, from 5am to 5pm.

All our readers, co-workers and friends are invited to join this inspiring invocation and demonstration of our essential unity which is the basis of the coming civilisation. Come in spirit - and in person if possible.

Many spiritual and religious traditions will be participating with prayer, meditation, song, story, music and presentation - see running order for the day, attached. The time outside the period of the public vigil will be devoted to silent, inner reflection.

From a time perspective, New Zealand and Australia are situated to open the focus and begin the energy inflow that will be taken up around the world as the Day of Peace unfolds. This day is perhaps the most significant of the year for the new civilisation which is emerging - growing out of the old and taking humanity in a tide of new realisation, new consciousness, that recognises the whole of Life and our part within its expression through our beautiful blue planet, one of the glorious jewels of the solar system.

Conditioned as we are from past millennia to the pull between the opposites, we may think of, and respond to, things by reacting to their opposite rather than responding to the part they play within the whole interrelated pattern of life expression on our planet. Peace can be mistakenly seen as a kind of vacuum where there is no conflict engaging our attention and directing our forces - a kind of rest or pralaya without the tension that draws and directs energy. This is a view derived from the past conditioning of competition, conflict, action and reaction that has driven the instinctual form nature since we emerged from the proverbial (and primordial) swamp! But it is not what drives the truly human. Humanity's unique offering is a consciousness that can expand to the proportions of a God and can realise the balance of all life - within the dimension of form life as well as embracing all the dimensions from the essential spirit through to its diverse manifestation.

Peace is not life divided but Life itself - whole, dynamic, pulsing with the will and purpose of God manifesting in every possible and conceivable form, harmoniously flowing together under that single will and being of which we are a part. The glory of the human kingdom is its conscious ability to know God and to grow with an unfolding understanding of the emerging divine expression. The natural world demonstrates for us the constantly evolving revelation. It is dynamically alive and growing. It is not definitive, complete or authoritative but is inspiring, nurturing and magnetically draws us out into greater and greater realisation. It is constant renewal and expansion.

Our consciousness has become so divided by conflict and particularisation that we may still see things in terms of parts instead of wholes. Our very identity can be trapped in a sense of the partial life being the priority. Yet by attending to the whole we attend also to the part though in a far more complete and meaningful way. We truly serve when we serve the whole of life and let go of those forces that are self-serving, however subtle they may be - even the desire to help others so that our individual conscience is more comfortable or the desire to satisfy a sense of individual worth. The Law of Service is coming into fuller expression as human beings identify with the greater life of which we are a part and thus serve.

The Tibetan Master tells us that: "A law is only an expression or manifestation of force, applied under the power of thought by a thinker or a group of thinkers." [Esoteric Psychology II page 193] and that: "a law from the divine angle is the motivating, qualified agent of the divine will" [The Rays and the Initiations page 375]. And in more detail:

"A law presupposes a superior being who, gifted with purpose, and aided by intelligence, is so co-ordinating his forces that a plan is being sequentially and steadily matured. Through a clear knowledge of the goal, that entity sets in activity those steps and stages which when carried forward in order will bring the plan to perfection. The word 'law', as usually understood, conveys the idea of subjection to an activity which is recognised as inexorable and undeviating, but which is not understood by the one who is subjected to it; it involves, from one standpoint, the attitude of the submersed unit in the group impulse and the inability of that unit to change the impulse or evade the issue; it inevitably brings about in the consciousness of the man who is considering these laws, a feeling of being a victim - of being driven forward like a leaf before the breeze towards an end about which speculation only is possible, and of being governed by a force which acts apparently with an unavoidable pressure and thus produces group results, at the expense of the unit. This attitude of mind is inevitable until the consciousness of man can be so expanded that he becomes aware of the greater issues. When, through contact with his own higher self, he participates in the knowledge of the objective, and when through climbing the mountain of vision his perspective changes and his horizon enlarges, he comes to the realisation that a law is but the spiritual impulse, incentive and life manifestation of that Being in which he lives and moves. He learns that that impulse demonstrates an intelligent purpose, wisely directed, and based on love. He then himself begins to wield the law or to pass wisely, lovingly and intelligently through himself as much of that spiritual life impulse which his particular organism can respond to, transmit and utilise. He ceases to obstruct and begins to transfer. He brings to an end the cycle of the closed self-centered life, and opens the doors wide to spiritual energy. In so doing he finds that the law which he has hated and mistrusted is the vitalising, purifying agency which is sweeping him and all God's creatures on to a glorious consummation." [A Treatise on White Magic pages 10-12]

Partial living swings between the "half-empty" and "half-full" views. We may see the world as in a dire state with continuing conflicts, global warming, arms build-up, poverty, disease and death. But there is a "dark night of the soul" that is only seen as dark because of a growing awareness of a greater light. The darkest hour is said to be just before dawn. Why is that? Is it that the presence of an all-consuming light about to break is already showing up the darkness of current limitation and that these familiar limits are about to be broken? Questions form only when we already sense that there is an answer ready to descend into consciousness.

What is this sensitivity that precedes our mundane awareness and opens the next door ahead for us? It seems that the "dark night of the soul" comes upon us at the moment we are ready to give up hope and can see no way out and yet that is when we are most receptive to the Universe and its ability to surprise us with solutions beyond anything we have previously understood and to reveal what we didn't realise we already knew! Is it possible to live in a state of constantly unfolding revelation? Or can we at least live in a state of readiness for the next wonder to dawn? The only limitations are those we think are there and they are only as strong as our habits of thought allow them to be. There are two sides to blindness - blindness to the next revelation and then, after revelation, blindness to the previous illusions.

St Paul was "blind" for three days after penetrating the revelation of the synthesis of all life - making a third rent in the veils of illusion holding humanity in thrall. This was a blindness to the mundane in the light of a greater vision. There comes a moment when the striving disciple reaches a point of apparent darkness and then realises that he has arrived at "..a centre or point of such intense brilliance that everything fades out.." The Tibetan Master reminds us that "Law, Love Union or Synthesis - all these great energies have seeped into the human consciousness and now provide the platform upon which the new civilisation can be founded, the new approach to God be taken, and new human relations be implemented." [The Rays & The Initiations pages 172, 194]

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The Festival in Libra will be celebrated at a meditation meeting at 8 pm on Wednesday, 26 September, at the YWCA, 5-11 Wentworth Avenue, Sydney. The keynote for reflection is:

I choose the Way which leads between the two great lines of force.

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