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 246 / September 2007

Dear Friends,

The subtle attitudes that qualify and direct our attention, energy and resources can be deeply present but mostly unseen and unacknowledged. Yet these attitudes hold powerful sway over the way we share our planetary life and livingness. Under their impress we make judgments of what is “normal” or “acceptable” and, by implication, “valuable” without realising what we do. And so we separate and categorise on the basis of these hidden yet, oh, so powerful criteria. So immersed are we in these underlying thought-forms that we are, in many ways, automatons that respond to their initiating and motivating forces. In the novel, The Poisonwood Bible, the author, Barbara Kingsolver, explores some of these attitudes. The character, Adah, born with half her brain “impaired” is later “cured” and yet she mourns the loss of the unique insights of the old “Ada”:

‘No one else misses Ada. Not even Mother. She seems thoroughly pleased to see the crumpled bird she delivered finally straighten up and fly right.
‘But I like how I was,’ I tell her.
‘Oh, Adah. I loved you too. I never thought less of you, but I wanted better for you.’

Don’t we have a cheerful, simple morality here in Western Civilisation: expect perfection, and revile the missed mark! Adah the Poor Thing, hemiplegious, egregious besiege us. Recently it has been decided, grudgingly, that dark skin or lameness may not be entirely one’s fault, but one still ought to show the good manners to act ashamed. When Jesus cured those crippled beggars, didn’t they always get up and dance off stage, jabbing their canes sideways and waggling their top hats? Hooray, all better now, hooray!

If you are whole, you will argue: Why wouldn’t they rejoice? Don’t the poor miserable b…..s all want to be like me?

Not necessarily, no. The arrogance of the able-bodied is staggering. Yes, maybe we’d like to be able to get places quickly, and carry things in both hands, but only because we have to keep up with the rest of you, or get (punished). We would rather be just like us, and have that be all right.

How can I explain that my two unmatched halves used to add up to more than one whole? In Congo I was one-half benduka the crooked walker, and one-half bënduka, the sleek bird that dipped in and out of the banks with a crazy ungrace that took your breath. We both had our good points. Here there is no good name for my gift, so it died without a proper ceremony. I am now the good Dr Price, seeing straight. Conceding to be in my right mind.”

The world is rich with potential beyond any current conventions and forms. And its unfoldment into living expression flows out from our capacity to see – to catch the vision of it. In the latest Newsletter of the Aquarian Age Community (2007 No2) we read:

“ It is helpful to remember that all that IS, is ever present. An ancient metaphysical truism states, ‘The eye sees what it brings to the seeing.’ The Talmud tells us that we see the world not as it is, but as we are. The Quran tells us that Allah will never change the condition of a people until they first change what is in themselves. (The Quran 13:11)

‘The Universe,’ according to the first volume of The Secret Doctrine, ‘is worked and guided from within outwards.’ This very same concept, repeated in many spiritual traditions, is pivotal to the formation of a Global Consciousness, which is only possible to those who self-commit to this all-important responsibility.”

It is often the unexpected angle that opens a whole new way of seeing and a whole new reality we never knew before. We can research assiduously along all the known paths and then revelation dawns through an unknown detour. So often what we are seeking is not to be found where we are looking. It takes the upset and crisis caused by those external forces to shake the scales from our eyes and rattle the prison bars. Or we may look so hard at it that we are blinded by our own seeking and the bands of habit intervene between us and what we seek.

Most habits of doing, feeling and thinking are built around the satisfaction of a desire. Ultimately it is the habit of responding to the individual desire nature that builds the barriers between us and reality. The Tibetan Master, Djwhal Khul, identifies the inhibiting nature of desire for those developing the telepathic work:

“The strong desire to achieve success in telepathic work, and the fear of failure, are the surest ways to offset fruitful effort. In all such work as this, non-attachment and a spirit of ‘don’t care’ are of real assistance. Experimenters along this line need to give more thought to the recognition of types of force. They need to realise that emotion, and desire for anything, on the part of the receiving agent create streams of emanating energy which rebuff or repulse that which seeks to make contact, such as the directed thought of someone seeking to make rapport. When these streams are adequately strong, they act like a boomerang and return to the emanating centre, being attracted back there by the power of the vibration which sent them forth.” [Telepathy & The Etheric Vehicle p10]

Yet with all the under and over-compensation of effort and the habitual conditioning of the past we are still moved on by that inherent and essential urge to betterment that drives from deep at our core. Gradually we swing into line with its insistent presence and purpose until that spark, the Soul, radiates through all the outer layers – and we find that that “centre” is in fact everywhere present. Consciousness is not an individual thing but is a vast force-field in which we participate as we follow or direct thought currents. And, if we remain still within, we can discern, through the ripples, the mighty tide of divine intention – the pulse of the unfolding Life.

Everything in the natural world demonstrates this great unfoldment – of what already IS and which is in process of expressing outward through the forms. It is a mighty process of Life-sharing. Life breathes continuously through substance, recycling it and creating forms that ever more accurately reflect the essential nature. A seed unfolds its potential into a plant, into buds, into flowers and fruit. The flowers and fruit generate more seeds to perpetuate the constant unfoldment of its intrinsic potential. It provides food for other species in the hierarchy of being. It adapts to changes in its environment or is overwhelmed and transforms into part of the mineral potential of the earth.

Growth, change, unfolding possibilities are the constant outflow of divine intention for our world whose substance recycles through the various forms in Space, while Time measures the cycles of moments, seasons, and eons. Each greater cycle incorporates the lesser and all revolve around the central life which pervades everything. Human beings have their unique role in this immensely coherent system. They have been privileged with capacities for contacting and directing life energies according to divine intention. We are the outposts and anchor points for that divine purpose in the diversely manifest world. This is the area of our Service to the Whole. Nothing is really anything like it appears to an external view. The Tibetan defines the word, Service:

“Service can be briefly defined as the spontaneous effect of soul contact. This contact is so definite and fixed that the life of the soul can pour through into the instrument which the soul must perforce use upon the physical plane. It is the manner whereby the nature of the soul can demonstrate in the world of human affairs. Service is not a quality or a performance; it is not an activity towards which people must strenuously strive, nor is it a method of world salvage. This distinction must be clearly grasped, or else our whole attitude to this momentous demonstration of the success of the evolutionary process in humanity will be at fault. Service is a life demonstration. It is a soul urge, and is as much an evolutionary impetus of the soul as the urge to self preservation or to the reproduction of the species is a demonstration of the animal soul. …It is a soul instinct…and is therefore innate and peculiar to soul unfoldment. It is the outstanding characteristic of the soul, just as desire is the outstanding characteristic of the lower nature. It is a group desire, just as in the lower nature it is personality desire. It is the urge to group good. It cannot therefore be taught or imposed upon a person as a desirable evidence of aspiration, functioning from without and based upon a theory of service. It is simply the first real effect …of the fact that the soul is beginning to express itself in outer manifestation.” [Esoteric Psychology II p124]

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The Festival in Virgo will be celebrated at a meditation meeting at 8 pm on Tuesday, 28 August, 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.

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