December 2008 Sydney Goodwill Newsletter

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No 260 / December 2008

Dear Friends,

It’s Christmas time and the holiday season draws near. Yet, from another perspective, the spirit of the Christmas season might be sensed as magnetically drawing us through time and space towards it. Then it seems as though we are suddenly in the midst of the actual experience, with food and gift preparations behind us, living the actuality of what we had been thinking and preparing for over weeks beforehand. It is possible to be so lost in the activity of preparation that we lose sight of the essential meaning and purpose for which we work. Yet it seems that, increasingly, what galvanises our focus and effort is a sense of “worthwhile cause”, of meaningful service which will “make a difference” in our world. We are being drawn to serve beyond the compass of personal desire and to respond to the magnetic call of the soul in all things and its immediate need in the world of expression. And so we celebrate together as the human family.

Humanity is now organising for this in many ways – such as with the vicarious gifts which are given in actuality to someone in need (a stranger, possibly in another part of the world) on behalf of the giver’s notional recipient. Many humanitarian agencies (such as the Red Cross, Care Australia, the Smith Family) create and manage an infrastructure to enable the flow which addresses need by redirecting the material form of our gifts on behalf of loved ones. We are giving on behalf of one another in the shared understanding that the substance of our giving is magnetically drawn to a point of need. The current (and globally shared) financial constraints can call forth compassion, in place of greed, as we respond to a growing sense of right proportion (or right relationship) and true economy.

Our experience of life is increasingly vicarious from the personal perspective and shared when viewed with soul insight. Our interaction with the world is more at an external distance while being more mobile and immediate in a virtual sense (through email, SMS and internet) as we manage time and space with increasing fluidity and command. We experience learning and entertainment more as objective spectators through television, virtual games and films. We identify with our heroes at a point beyond the immediate and personal. We urge them on to feats of greatness as we vicariously live through their different lives and identities – perhaps a dim reflection of how the Solar Angel might seek to inspire, energetically, our personality – its reflection in the world.

The way is opening for a new way of seeing. We are identifying and releasing our consciousness from old conditioning thoughtforms because their limitations become apparent in the light of the emerging new ideas that are forming the basis of the emerging civilisation and our future living. We have been previously conditioned to understanding a “whole” in terms of a hierarchy of importance rather than as an organic whole in which structure is based on relationship created along lines of magnetic response to the radiatory beingness of each and every component atom. “Order” has been understood in terms of a sequential series of connections in line with a hierarchy of importance but we are now seeing a more fluid, organic and enlivening sense of an implicate order based on magnetic relationship within a greater whole. Within this new understanding every part has an intrinsic value to the whole and every part is known, loved and deeply interconnected within the totality of being – no matter how appealing or otherwise it may seem to an external, material eye. The old way of seeing was perhaps just a distortion through the constraints of time and space.

In the microcosm we operate automatically as a whole being. Our physical body, for example, operates as a coordinated whole – a pain in any part is experienced by the whole which moves to alleviate whatever the warning signal indicates of imbalance within the related parts of the system. A sensory pleasure such as the scent of a flower or the taste of a sweet may be apprehended by a particular sense but is experienced by the whole system – each part in their own way and the whole as a single identifiable experience. Our mental body, our thought life, is ordered and exists as a whole yet every thought – whether of world service or what’s for dinner – is attended to by the mental body as a whole. It is simply a matter of focus into time and space. The principles are the same whether we are looking at a universe, a solar system, a planet, a species, a culture an individual or an atom. It is the consciousness which apprehends the experience that qualifies it and places limits. The microcosm ever reflects the macrocosm and vice versa. In the book, Telepathy and the Etheric Vehicle (page 179), we read:

“… We speak at times of an expanding universe; what we really mean is an expanding consciousness, for this etheric body of the Entity, Space, is the recipient of many types of informing and penetrating energies, and it is also the field for the intelligent activity of the indwelling Lives of the Universe, of the many constellations, of the distant stars, of our solar system, of the planets within the system, and of all that constitutes the sum total of these separated living forms. The factor which relates them is consciousness and nothing else, and the field of conscious awareness is created through the interplay of all living intelligent forms within the area of the etheric body of that great Life which we call space.

Every form within the etheric body is like a centre in a planet or in the human body, and the resemblance…is correct and recognisable…Each form (because it constitutes an aggregated area of substantial lives or atoms) is a centre within the etheric body of the form of which it is a constituent part. It has, as the basis of its existence, a living dynamic point which integrates the form and preserves it in essential being. This form or centre—large or small, a man or an atom of substance—is related to all other forms and expressing energies in the environing space, and is automatically receptive to some, and repudiates others through the process of non-recognition; it relays or transmits other energies, radiating from other forms, and it thus becomes in its turn an impressing agent. You see, therefore, where differentiated truths approach each other and blend, forcing us to use the same terminologies in order to express the same factual truths or ideas.

Again, each point of life within a centre has its own sphere of radiation or its own extending field of influence; this field is necessarily dependent upon the type and the nature of the indwelling Consciousness. It is this magnetic interplay between the many vast centres of energy in space which is the basis of all astronomical relationships—between universes, solar systems and planets. Bear in mind, however, that it is the consciousness aspect which renders the form magnetic, receptive, repudiating and transmitting; this consciousness differs according to the nature of the entity which informs or works through a centre, great or small. Bear in mind also that the life which pours through all centres and which animates the whole of space is the life of an Entity; it is, therefore, the same life in all forms, limited in time and space by the intention, the wish, the form and the quality of the indwelling consciousness: the types of consciousness are many and diverse, yet life remains ever the same and indivisible, for it is the one life.”

Within the embrace of that unfolding Oneness we look to a New Year, a New Civilisation and a New Generation, in which our Prodigal being comes to the realisation of which the poet, T. S. Elliot, wrote:

“And the end of all our searching shall be to return to the place where we started and know it for the first time”.

This echoes down the centuries from the Letter to the Corinthians by St Paul:

“For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

And inspired these words by Robert Browning in the poem, Saul, as he touches the essence of St Paul’s experience:

“Oh, Saul, it shall be
A Face like my face that receives thee; a Man like to me
Thou shalt love and be loved by, for ever: A Hand like this hand
Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee!”

* * * * * *

We wish all our friends and co-workers

Joy, Peace and Goodwill – hallmarks of the new life being born.

Don’t forget the ANNUAL SPECIALS available on some book titles with free postage for orders before 19th Dec.

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