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 256 / August 2008

Dear Friends,

How often do we find that a transitory impression is really not “the whole picture”? Whatever we may be considering, there is a growing sense of deeper causes behind the events of the immediate moment. This is intensified as we observe investigative journalists in the media “lifting the lid” to reveal the truth behind the outward appearance of things. The importance of “saving face” is waning in the light of a new need to acknowledge “truth at all costs”.

And as we look beneath the surface we find that we are part of a vast interconnected Life. Our daily context is seen increasingly as global; events anywhere in the world are experienced as local issues affecting our sense of humanness; and justice is measured against human values more than cultural mores. It’s not that we now live in a different world so much as in a new dimension of sharing in that world. At the same time our living is experienced as part of a larger time cycle. Immediate events seem to “speed up” as we view them within an expanded timeframe of cause and effect.

The hosting of the Olympic Games by China brings the gaze of the world to bear on the largest national human grouping in the world. It also brings a mass meeting point between the oriental and occidental traditions of culture, political ideology and religion as well as between the great civilisations of the past and the present. In a very real sense the world has come to a critical and historical juncture where the whole, interconnected oneness of our planetary life may be apprehended as never before – where the flowering of the seeds of the past may be harvested. We have a choice before us as to what we will pick, what will be left to fallow and what will be sown anew. As we read in sloca 575 from the book, Agni Yoga:

“Tomorrow’s flowers bloom from yesterday’s seeds. Advanced minds do not refuse to eat yesterday's bread. One must learn to combine all the knowledge of the past with the striving toward the future. Usually people deprive themselves of their best advantages by remaining bound to one point of view.

    How can one succeed if, while the fire is burning, the eye insists on peering only into the darkness? The fire of Teros will illumine all accumulated treasures. It will also, like the inextinguishable Brahmavidya, be a protection against the seductions of Maya.

    As you see, I use the language of ancient parables as well as that of the modern laboratory, so that you may learn to love both and extend your respect for the seed as well as for the fruit. An end must be put to narrow-mindedness.”

While each moment carries a new revelation in our expanding understanding, some moments bear great potential and significance for the race. We are entering a time when it is no longer enough to appear to know – it is critical rather to know in truth. The Tibetan Master tells us:

“The will-to-good of the world knowers is the magnetic seed of the future. The will-to-good is the Father aspect, whilst goodwill is the Mother aspect, and from the relation of these two the new civilisation, based on sound spiritual (but utterly different) lines, can be founded. I would commend this thought to your consciousness, for it means that two aspects of spiritual work must be nurtured in the immediate future, for on them the more distant hope of happiness and of world peace depends.”

Each generation has its harvest and its planting – reaping from the seeds of the past and sowing the seeds of the future. Our children’s generation reaps from the seeds we plant but we cannot know what they will choose to harvest nor what they will sow for they go beyond our limits with a new mind into a different world to the one we thought was there. But if we listen – beyond the surface appearances – we may hear their wisdom and know the future we bequeath and they create. Kahlil Gibran reminds us that:

“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let our bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.”

In these times when we are bombarded with vicarious experience our identity is moving through crisis as it transitions from the personal to the human – from the individual to the whole. The fear of losing ourselves can prevent us from finding our true Self, from identifying with what we truly are. At the same time we are integrating the vast and increasing sum of our knowledge into a new framework of meaning and racial identity – into a new sense of what it is to be human, that essential point from which we think, feel, act and express what we are. As the Tibetan writes:

“We are – if it could be but realised – in process of re-interpreting and re-arranging what can be called ‘the doctrinal structure underlying the relation between knowledge and wisdom.’ This involves the destruction of old concepts … and the assembly of those new and more correct ideas which must inevitably be substituted for the old”

The new concepts and ideas that we sow in human consciousness reflect our new sense of identity – “as a man thinks so is he”. The sowing flows and flowers through the subtle connections that relate us to each other within the One in Whom we live and move and have our being. And the outer forms respond automatically according to the patterns of thought which hold all according to the great intention under which we live. A popular quote from the Talmud tells us that: "Behind every blade of grass is its very own angel that forever whispers ‘Grow…Grow’."

And William Blake reminds us of the greatness and beauty of that identity of which we are an integral part:

“To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.”