January 2009 Sydney Goodwill Newsletter

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No 261 / January 2009

Dear Friends,

Perhaps, if we look deeply, we might find that most problems in the world arise from an “identity crisis”. Human beings seem to need to seek and cling to a sense of identity rather than living automatically from natural and inherent being as do the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms. Once we have found something we can relate to and identify with we seem to latch on to it against all odds or reason and then rationalise the universe to substantiate it. Wars are fought over elements of national, cultural or religious identity – over place, priority and importance relative to the central sense of who we think we are. But who are we really? What is the common essence that makes us human in the first and most basic instance before we apply the value-add richness of culture, language, place and custom? What is it we share as a species and which guides us through our trial and error search for who we are – that elusive something which, once found, will bring us home to ourselves. The poet, T. S. Elliot describes the journey:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

Humanity is truly the prodigal son of our Father spirit and we travel a long journey which is actual as well as allegorical, mythical and symbolic. The power that story has over us indicates its deep hold on who we are. It is part of our essence. Down the ages we have dreamed “story” and been seduced by many “stories”. It is part of what we share – the story/journey of the ever-unfolding revelation of who we are and of the divine purpose which weaves us and all the natural world into the great pattern of life unfolding on our planet.

How do we identify it, understand it and become it? Perhaps it is none of the things we have sought. And perhaps we have to look in all the possible places before we find something large enough to reveal that we are essentially none of the things we thought we were. Perhaps we are simply and essentially a point of being which sees, knows and directs energy and everything else is but the media for the flow through of the Life in whom we live and move and have our being. The Tibetan Master points to the basic dynamic which creates our “story”, our history:

“we… start with the premise that ‘energy follows thought.’ This is the first and most fundamental, as well as the most ancient, premise... The second is related to the first ... ‘the eye, opened by thought, directs the energy in motion.’”

Despite the barbarity of some of our actions, the coarseness of some of our emotions and the deviousness of some of our thinking, humanity as a whole has travelled far in understanding. Yet the greatest realisation to date still seems to hover just beyond expression, although it is now dawning – that nothing is isolated, separate, individual, personal or localised. Everything has an effect on everything else. We know this conceptually though we may not always live it into reality. So we begin to understand that we are our brother’s keeper because, essentially, we are our brother. We see in those we admire that which we aspire to and in those we condemn that which we fear to give expression to. We have seen people of fine potential brutalised by pain and denial until the only way to find the dignity of life seems to be in death and destruction – a false escape leading into a downward spiral of more of what we desperately wish to escape.

We may hide within the prison of comfort to avoid seeing our own selves in such circumstances and build walls of judgement to defend our cowardice because we know deep down that those we condemn are part of our essential being too. The more violently we condemn and wish to separate from, the more powerfully is the sense of connection making its presence felt. “Locked together in conflict” indicates a failure to recognise the true nature of the relationship. Family conflicts as well as global conflicts can be traced to those qualities that are the same but simply applied to different material objectives.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (and, by implication, Human Responsibilities) pinpoints what is undeniably and essentially the aspiration of every human and hence of humanity itself. Great formulations down through history have carried the mantric power to shape and direct human civilisation – however clouded may be our vision when we “see through a glass darkly”. The great Scriptures, philosophies and wisdom teachings of the ages have carried the thread of our journey, our story, and always reminded us of who we are essentially, though often forgotten in the powerful surge of the sea of material living in which we have become immersed while, all the time, the water of life is available to all.

As the one humanity, we could say: “I am my brother. I, the essential life, express now through this person, now through that and through all people everywhere through all time. I am that life. Increasingly I know and understand my brothers from the perspective of the life we share. With growing, loving understanding we make our way together and as one.” Or perhaps we might say “Having pervaded this world of the little manifesting self with one fraction of my greater Self, I remain, greater, wider, inclusive and therefore overshadowing all my daily living.”

In the ancient stanzas of The Voice of the Silence, translated by H P Blavatsky, we read:

“The Mind is the great Slayer of the Real. Let the Disciple slay the Slayer. For: When to himself his form appears unreal, as do on waking all the forms he sees in dreams; When he has ceased to hear the many, he may discern the ONE—the inner sound which kills the outer. Then only, not till then, shall he forsake the region of … the false, to come unto the realm of … the true.

Before the soul can see, the Harmony within must be attained, and fleshly eyes be rendered blind to all illusion. Before the Soul can hear, the image (man) has to become as deaf to roarings as to whispers, to cries of bellowing elephants as to the silvery buzzing of the golden fire-fly. Before the soul can comprehend and may remember, she must unto the Silent Speaker be united just as the form to which the clay is modelled, is first united with the potter's mind. For then the soul will hear, and will remember. And then to the inner ear will speak THE VOICE OF THE SILENCE

…When to the World's turmoil thy budding soul lends ear; when to the roaring voice of the great illusion thy Soul responds, when frightened at the sight of the hot tears of pain, when deafened by the cries of distress, thy soul withdraws like the shy turtle within the carapace of SELFHOOD, learn, O Disciple, of her Silent ‘God,’ thy Soul is an unworthy shrine. When waxing stronger, thy Soul glides forth from her secure retreat: and breaking loose from the protecting shrine, extends her silver thread and rushes onward; when beholding her image on the waves of Space she whispers, "This is I,"—declare, O Disciple, that thy soul is caught in the webs of delusion.

…Saith the Great Law:—‘In order to become the KNOWER of ALL SELF thou hast first of SELF to be the knower.’ To reach the knowledge of that SELF, thou hast to give up Self to Non-Self, Being to Non-Being, and then thou canst repose between the wings of the GREAT BIRD. Aye, sweet is rest between the wings of that which is not born, nor dies, but is the AUM throughout eternal ages. Bestride the Bird of Life, if thou would'st know.”

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