March 2009 Sydney Goodwill Newsletter

download a Word document copy of this newsletter

No 263 / March 2009

Dear Friends,

The devastation of the Victorian bushfires, the floods in Queensland and the many natural crises around the world have brought into sharp focus the power of the natural world but also the immense potential of the human heart, mind and soul to meet it in right relationship. It seems – in this new year, decade, century, millennium, age – that we are learning a whole new orientation, a new discipline of creating the future. We are recognising that forward movement cannot be successfully undertaken while we operate in old modes, looking over our shoulder for imagined threats, fighting rearguard actions in defence of material acquisitions. We are realizing that backward-looking, judgemental energy in even the smallest things can sour and blight the possibilities nascent in every moment of living. For once even the smallest glimpse of the future vision is grasped, its power can draw us on, pour through us and bring a lightening into our living that overflows out along the myriad channels of interconnection throughout our world. This new revolution surges through the human mind on, out and into all that it conceives and sees, recognizes and realizes – no longer reactively defending past accumulations but actively sensing our shared future and creating its new manifestations. We are hearing the birth music of the new rather than shouting down an imagined opposition. We are moving from defensive fear to creative power.

So many articles and programs in public media are addressing the truer source of personal happiness – a greater sense of being and of relationship with our world. Professor Mirko Bagaric writes: “Happiness involves doing, not being lectured at - and it is an emerging science, not a cult... The Buddhists monks who for centuries have been preaching the art of happiness have got it down pat. …But if you're not impressed enough to get a one-way ticket to Tibet, read on. Wide-ranging studies of thousands of people across many countries have allowed happiness experts to develop a roadmap to happiness. … Once we are above the poverty line money makes only a small contribution to our level of happiness …. In fact people who focus on the accumulation of wealth are actually more likely to be unhappy. Materialistic values are counter-productive as over time they heighten insecurity, one of the primary causes of unhappiness... So if money doesn't do the trick, what should we be aspiring towards? The things that are conducive to happiness …(include) a faith that entails communal support, purpose and acceptance.… The final thing you should do is find at least one other person who is worse off than you are and help them out. Acts of compassion and kindness benefit both the giver and receiver.” [Sydney Morning Herald, 28 Feb 09]

A deeper search for harmony and beauty is revealed in this Sufi Message by Hazrat Inayat Khan: “It is the opening of the communication with external life which makes man wider. Then he does not say of his friend: 'This is my friend, I love him', but he says: 'This is myself, I love him'. That is the time when he can say that he has arrived at the realization of love. As long as he says: 'I feel sympathy with him because he is my friend', his sympathy has not yet fully awakened. The real awakening of his sympathy is on that day when he sees his friend and says 'this is myself'. Then the sympathy is awakened, then there is the communication within one's self.…

It seems that what science realizes in the end, mysticism reaches from the beginning. This accords with the saying of Christ: 'First seek ye the Kingdom of God and all will be added'. When one hears of the present discoveries about sound and color on the scientific side, one begins by being surprised. One says: 'What a new discovery! Something we have never heard of. It is something quite new'. And yet, when you open the Bible there it says: 'First was the word, and the word was God'. And if you open still older scriptures of the Vedanta, you read in their verses that in the Creator there was that word, or that vibration. When we come to the Qur'an we read: that first there was the word 'Be', and then there became. … The religions of the world, the prophets and mystics who existed ages ago knew these things. …But when we realize that - as Solomon has said - there is nothing new under the sun, we begin to enjoy life seeing how, time after time, the same wisdom is revealed to man. The one who seeks through science, the one who searches through religion, the one who finds it through philosophy, the one who finds it through mysticism - in whatever manner they seek the truth, they find it in the end.”

Infinite creativity unravels across the universe through which the human soul reaches beyond time and space to meet and meld with its source, Father, Spirit. We need not be bound by the limitations of history or current convention but can be inspired by examples such as Christopher Nolan, “…an Irish writer who, mute and quadriplegic from birth, produced a highly praised volume of verse and short stories at 15 and went on to publish a prize-winning autobiography, Under the Eye of the Clock… At 11, supplied with a new drug to relax his neck muscles, he began writing with a ‘unicorn stick’ strapped to his forehead, pecking a letter at a time on a typewriter as his mother held his chin with her hands. …The brain that one doctor had predicted would remain infantile turned out to contain a distinctive literary voice awaiting release… ‘My mind is like a spin-dryer at full speed, my thoughts fly around my skull while millions of beautiful words cascade down in my lap,’ he told The Observer of London in 1987… ‘Images gunfire across my consciousness and while trying to discipline them I jump in awe at the soul-filled bounty of my mind’s expanse.’” [Timelines, Sydney Morning Herald, 28 Feb 09]

The new creativity of the soul is emerging in waves of breathtaking beauty. Hints of its source, the power of creative sound, filter through our common language. We might speak of “sounding” someone out (about their real thought or opinion) or of having “sound” judgement or being “sound” of mind or body. We mean “well-formed” or “healthy” or “true” to type in an essential sense for sound is the source of all creation. We might speak of “sounding the right note” in some new undertaking, a note that is in harmony with the purpose behind it. We also speak of something ringing true or false. The language we use itself carries meaning and intention beyond the surface of the words – if we are listening. We know scientifically that sound is a vibrational frequency relating two poles and appears as a wave moving and weaving between them. The music of the spheres may be heard as the relating between Spirit and matter or between atomic nuclei and their orbiting electrons or the creative manifesting that pours out of all relationships around a central purpose.

Back in the 1930’s the Tibetan wrote of future developments that “…will grow out of the study of sound and the effect of sound and will put into man's hands a tremendous instrument in the world of creation. Through the use of sound the scientist of the future will bring about his results; through sound, a new field of discovery will open up; the sound which every form in all kingdoms of nature gives forth will be studied and known and changes will be brought about and new forms developed through its medium. One hint … the release of energy in the atom is linked to this new coming science of sound.” [A Treatise on White Magic, page 335]

“When…Humanity itself is in process of becoming creative in the higher sense, and when this synchronises with a major creative planetary activity, then a cycle of very great disturbance eventuates which necessarily affects every individual within ‘the race of men.’ … This indicates the emergence eventually of a creativity of such wondrous dimensions that the world will stand amazed; nothing like it will have been seen before. A creative planning for human well-being and a political expression, implementing this planning, will demonstrate in every country; a creative thinking will be apparent which will express itself in writing and in poetry; creative imagining will produce the new art, the new colours, the new architecture and the new culture; a creative responsiveness to the ‘music of the spheres’ will bring forth the new music. All this will be in response to the creative reorganisation and the newly directed energies which are engaging the attention of the planetary Logos at this time.” [The Rays and the Initiations, page 552]

Wisdom and beauty whirl around us in brilliant space and may be apprehended when our personal “noise” is stilled and we are open to vaster truths. The music of the spheres may seem only a faint echo while we are distracted but resounds as a divine symphony of life more abundant when we turn and tune our senses into it. At a point of heightened listening – of poised, expectant tension – we may hear again the Father’s voice and the true note or sound of all parts of creation.

Visit our Website at www.sydneygoodwill.org.au for information on literature, books, meetings…