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 255 / Jul 2008

Dear Friends,

The last and most obvious aspects of our world are the final result of a long process of creation. In the natural world landforms such as mountains are formed by causes deep inside our planet and then refined by the interaction with the external conditions of wind and rain –also arising from movements deep within our globe under its relationship with parent Sun and sister Moon. They clothe themselves in plant-life through the beneficence of the Sun. The subsidiary lives of the animals then have food and shelter. Thus unravels the unfolding chain of existence and expression of life through our beautiful Earth. These external forms are constantly being refined and reformed – through the lesser cycle of the seasons and the greater cycle of the ages during which our relationship with other ‘heavenly bodies’ in the Universe changes bringing our planet into different conditions and forces. We see around us in the Cosmos the beginnings and endings of planets, solar systems and galaxies as a great expanding movement ripples out from what must be a centre of awesome potency.

We live in this ocean of forces, movement and change – indeed we are the effect of it. Yet more than that we have the capacity to know it and to understand the deep web of interconnection, of relationship and of love that holds all the myriad lives within it, to cooperate and co-create within it. In a recent article Steve Nation wrote:

“Transition is a word that we hear so often nowadays. Friends speak of being in transition between jobs … relationships … even of their sense of identity. And we read of a world in transition … or of living at the time when one age has clearly ended while the new has yet to emerge — is in process of emerging.

Deep forces are at work within and all around us. The psyche and culture of separateness is brushing up alongside new understandings of wholeness and synthesis. It is happening in every area of life … every area. This plays out on the world stage as a curious dance, steps of cooperation often going on unnoticed while movements of conflict attract all the attention. And it’s not something happening only in the externalities of the world – the dance lives within us. Our lives are the raw material of some massive process of transition and transformation. It’s personal … and it can be painful.

Transition can be thought of as a trajectory of becoming – an energy dynamic leading from the known (drawing heavily on the memory of the past) towards that which is to become known … towards that which we sense intuitively to be a future possibility.” [see www.whenthesoulawakens.org ]

Rather than being moved blindly towards future possibilities as just so many leaves dancing in the wind, we have the capacity, and therefore the responsibility, to co-author this future – and to do that we need to see or envision what it is. On the same website Cho Tab Khen Zambuling writes: “… A major social revolution is now underway and is gaining steam.  This social revolution is different from those of the past.  And this new reality must be understood.  The goal of this new revolution is to establish a collective future for humanity without borders (frontiers) as traditionally conceived.  It aims to protect, manage and allocate our various common goods and resources (air, water, ozone layer, global climate, global peace, stability, security, equity, and human rights), and to diminish significantly the impacts of our common ills (poverty, environmental destruction, insecurity, and injustice).”

By changing the thoughtforms underlying our identity we actually change the nature of our world because it sets up different networks of connection or webs of relationship and meaningful association. We can then see things that perhaps were always there but were not apparent through the lens of the old ideas about our identity. An example of what can be missed in a partial view comes from Philip Hellmich: “…most conflicts in the world were and are handled peacefully or at least non-violently, a fact easily forgotten when travelling to war-torn countries or watching the evening news.” [“Love & Conflict: Insights from Africa on transforming Self and Societies”]

The world has been through a long century of clarification of what does not work for the whole of our planetary life. The time is here for the building of what will work for the world and to recognise it through the chaotic winding down of the old. It is a time for creative new thinking and seeing. This also speeds up the illumination of what must pass to enable what is true and more real to appear in the forms of our living. The new world is already here and awaits only our recognition and realisation. It is fast moving into our daily reality and is accomplished more and more quickly as realisation increases the pace. We can achieve in a matter of months what would have seemed impossible as little as five years ago without long sustained effort – such as changing the way we use the collective resources of our planet, refusing to accept unfair and unjust humanitarian situations wherever they occur.

A clear vision magnetically attracts commitment and then the will to achieve it pours in, moving everything into the new forms and the new paradigm. As W. H. Murray wrote in The Scottish Himalaya Expedition, 1951.

“… We had definitely committed ourselves …This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.

 Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!”

And as Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee tells us: “There is a Sufi saying ‘It is the consent that draws down the grace.’ If we can say ‘yes’ to our own light and acknowledge that it belongs to all of life we step out of the imprisonment of our individual self into the world that needs us, that needs our light. Then we begin to live in the presence of the divine, a divine that is not constricted by our patterns and plans, or our images of duality. This light—free—can flow where it is needed.”

Quantum Physics brings similar revelations through the lens of “matter”. Dr Mani Bhaumik writes:

“……one of the most mysterious aspects of quantum physics is that elemen­tary particles, such as electrons, are absolutely identical everywhere in the universe, no matter when or where they are created….… This mystery… was solved… when physicists determined that underlying quantum fields give birth to elementary particles.… Thus, for example, all electrons are but excitations of an Underlying field, naturally called the electron field, which fills all space and time"

…… The same holds true for all the fundamental particles of which matter is made… a quantum field constantly borrows en­ergy from space, creating pairs of virtual particles (matter and anti-matter), …. as soon as there is sufficient energy surplus made available by any source, stable par­ticles are able to emerge from the quantum field and have a ‘real’ existence in the universe. Without energy there are only virtual particles.

…… No one, …knows exactly what energy is, but it reveals itself to us through the forms it takes. We can measure the surge through an electrical circuit …feel the heat energy of the sun's nuclear alchemy or thrill to the kinetic energy of g-forces produced by a roller coaster. The names given to these forms of energy are artificial distinctions that make it easier for us to get a handle on what we cannot see; there is only energy doing work of different kinds.

…… empty space is not empty at all. It is a seething cauldron of quantum activity….The unmanifest quantum fields interlace throughout the cosmos like multidimensional fabrics woven on a celestial loom, and strangest of all, … each infinites­imal weave of the fabric contains, so to speak, the whole cloth, just as the poet William Blake saw ‘a world in a grain of sand.’” [from the book, “Code Name God, The Spiritual Odyssey of a Man of Science”]

We direct energy through the focus of our thought but what is our thinking directed towards? The essential question becomes: what kind of world are we committed to – what are we building from within outwards? Or what is the future possibility working into expression. It is not only a personal world view but a universal one in which all is accommodated in right proportion and relationship with the whole of the life in which we live and move and have our being. The New Civilisation is inaugurated as an increasing and critical mass of humanity becomes the New Human. What can we expect of that new human being? Perhaps a sense of common humanity? Of the preciousness and value of all members of all kingdoms? Of understanding and responsibility to the whole? Perhaps a capacity to live simultaneously in a number of dimensions – individually, collectively and synthetically?

Perhaps a deep sense of identity beyond any external roles or cultures into which we are born? Perhaps as Cho Tab Khen Zambuling writes “To embody The Spirituality of Transition is to attain the ability to become the other without losing your own identity. It is to become a Global Being. It is to become a Being without borders.”

The Festival in Cancer will be celebrated at a meditation meeting at 8 pm, Thursday, 17 July, at the YWCA, the “Y On The Park”, 5-11 Wentworth Avenue, Sydney. The keynote for reflection is:

I build a lighted house and therein dwell.

Southern Highlands Goodwill Unit of Service will also hold a Full Moon Festival Meditation for the Festival in Cancer at 8pm Thursday, 17 July, at The Highlands Healing Connection, 7 Wattle Lane, Bowral. To enquire – please phone (02) 4861 3574.