October 2010 Sydney Goodwill Newsletter

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Dear Friends,

The United Nations International Day of Peace
Tuesday 21st September 2010

This is an especially important Peace Day as it takes place during the Heads of State Summit at the United Nations on the Millennium Development Goals. For more information see:

www.un.org/millenniumgoals and www.undp.org/mdg/basics.shtml

Global Meditation Vigil for the UN International Day of Peace

We can participate powerfully and subjectively wherever we may be by joining people all around the world in a meditative vigil. Please consider registering your participation in the global Meditation Vigil for UN Peace Day on Tuesday, September 21st. This will be part of a wider Vigil for the Day involving many different spiritual and religious groups from around the world. See the attached letter of invitation and links to the central website.

Register at: www.intuition-in-service.org/IISvigilTIMER.html

Find more information at: www.intuition-in-service.org/peaceVigil.cfm

Sydney -- All day celebration "Peace is a Human Right"
Tues 21st September - Martin Place

Everyone is very welcome at any or all of the day's programme held in Martin Place from 7am to 7pm. It will be a celebration of Peace!
See the attached Summary of the day's events in Sydney (word document).
For more information see: mfpa.org.au

* * * * * * * *

The rhythmic pulse of the year breathes again into our annual global celebration of Peace. And so Life turns through the cycle that brings us to an ever deepening appreciation and celebration of peace – the heart's desire of all nations, individuals and kingdoms in nature. At this special time we are more aware than ever of the Spirit of Peace and the uplifting and enlivening release He brings.

We are told that this Great Presence is also known as the Spirit of Equilibrium and this quality, permeating the rich diversity of our world may bring us home to our heart's desire – the soldier home from the war; the persecuted home from oppression; the deprived home from want; the troubled home from fear. And coming home we find brotherhood, relationship, love and life more abundant. Where once we fought a rearguard action against all that seemed to militate against our journey home, now we can turn our eyes home and leave the battle behind. It is, in essence, so simple that we can hardly grasp it and are often distracted by the complexities of the defences we have set up to protect it.

"This Spirit of Peace is not the sum total of an emotional and static calm, bringing to an end the turmoil on the Earth and instituting an era of peace. He is, in a mysterious sense, the Spirit of Equilibrium; He works with the Law of Action and Reaction and the inevitability of His activity will be recognised." [The Reappearance of the Christ p 74]

The crises unfolding around our world are bringing us to the realisation that the sense of separation and isolation is an illusion which time and space eventually dispels. What do we find when that fog clears? Perhaps we find that inasmuch as any one person, animal, plant or crystal is harmed in anger or for separate gain, so ultimately are we all lessened. As the life we share is depleted – so are we all. At the 63rd annual UN Department of Information Non-Governmental Organisations Conference held recently in Melbourne, Australia, and attended by 1,600 representatives of 350 NGO's from 70 countries, there emerged a common understanding that just as there is equity in the basic needs of all so there is sufficient to equitably meet their needs from the world's resources in a way that sustains the life of all kingdoms – each essential to the balance of the whole. Inspiring initiatives from among the many were:

• The Medical Missions of the Tzu Chi Buddhist Foundation who work with environmentally, socially and healthfully sustainable hospitals and practices. Their hospitals are environmentally sustainable institutions that foster preventative care as well as treating disease. They are centred within a community of support through volunteers, recycling, eco-design, home-grown organic produce and ongoing research and education. See: www.tzuchi.com.tw/tzuchi_en/About_HL_Center
• The Afghan Institute of Learning where quality education programs are created for girls and boys, women and men. They combat health issues that arise from ignorance and isolation from government infrastructure and take real education according to need right into the heart of communities. The powerful and essential role of women was recognised in the statement: "If you educate a boy you educate a person, if you educate a girl you educate a family." See: afghaninstituteoflearning.org

Each NGO fills an essential needed part in the movement towards a more accurate expression of the divine life we share. It was generally recognised by the attendees that until the poorest and most vulnerable have their needs met the lives of all are precarious in every way – physical, emotional, mental and, most essentially, spiritual. It is the essential spirit in all that brings the power, strength, will, inspiration and creativity that is needed to address all the dimensions of our living. Dis-ease is ultimately dis-solved by the realisation of our interrelation and interdependence with the whole of life.

Equilibrium is restored when we see through the eyes of the whole. Everything, every part, is seen in its capacity and essential place. At the conference, Jamesa Wagwau, the Education Manager of New Vision, Uganda's leading Newspaper, addressed a question of priorities by pointing us simply yet eloquently to the fingers of a hand "See how tall this finger is and how small this one is and yet each needs the other to be fully effective on behalf of each other and the whole."

A sense of divine proportion emerges as we shift our point of being and identity from the separate and isolated personal and move into the greater life that lives through all its parts. The Tibetan Master writes of divine proportion: "... 'walk humbly with their God.' This...is one of the most advanced injunctions in any of the world Scriptures and is found in The Bible. It has no reference to humility as usually interpreted and understood. It signifies the ability to view all life with a sense of divine proportion and from the angle of spiritual mathematics, and (paradoxical as this may sound) with no sense of dualism...It involves acceptance and comprehension of purpose, and this in such a manner that the consecrated personality... walks the ways of Earth as a channel for the three divine qualities (love, will and intelligence), but also as a channel for that which these three qualities will enable him later to sense, know and reveal." [The Rays and the Initiations p 258]

Cooperating with that abundant life-flow we find everything comes to hand as needed because we are in tune with that greater intuition flowing through us. The urge to force and conflict fades and we become swept up in something of such awesome power and exquisite beauty that words fail (imbued as they are with an older and fast-fading sense of human being-ness). The Tibetan Master writes of this indescribable state: "...We have no adequate word for this quality or type of sensitivity, for it is not something which we can consciously understand, nor is it a form of conscious reaction; neither is it awareness as we use that term. It has been occultly defined as something akin to 'immersion in a realised state of Being,' because the initiate is a conscious aspect of that of which he forms an integral part." [The Rays and the Initiations p 723]

Glimmerings of this ongoing expansion in human consciousness shine through the recognition by the NGO conference that there are no such things as "beneficiaries" and "donors" since everyone gains through the shared experience of redistributing resources to where they are needed. The same light shines through the inspiration of creative artists who bring through an intuited flow less tainted by separation and who, immersed in that greater consciousness, may touch the "raincloud of knowable things".

See what a lovely shell,
Small and pure as a pearl,
Lying close to my foot,
Frail, but a work divine,
Made so fairily well
With delicate spire and whorl,
How exquisitely minute,
A miracle of design!
- From The Shell by Alfred Tennyson

"The angels keep their ancient places--
Turn but a stone and start a wing!
'Tis ye, 'tis your estrangèd faces,
That miss the many-splendored thing."
-From The Kingdom of God by Francis Thompson

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.
- From Auguries of Innocence by William Blake

For service opportunities to support the spiritual foundation of the United Nations see: www.aquaac.org/un/found.html

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