Magnetic Seed of the Future

At this time of year we enter the uncertain time between seasons, reflecting the uncertain nature of the current world in which what is known and familiar seems to be crumbling in the face of new realisations about our past way of living. There is a constant flow of revelation as we face the outcomes of past practices, manifesting in many ways such as the impact of climate change and the growing protest movements for justice and freedom. Yet while this in-between time is a time of endings, it is also a time of new beginnings. Just as we have the first glimpses of the new season – winter in the south and summer in the north – we can also glimpse a new world, one that is both new and yet also deeply remembered in the seeds of our immortal soul. This shift from ending to beginning is highlighted in the Easter Festival, the resurrection of Christ, and His demonstration of the triumph of the life of spirit over the death of the material form.

Between end and beginning, past and future, great possibilities hover at the edge of comprehension, ready to rise above the mind’s horizon into clarity and light. And deep within us is a stirring memory of the glory of that realm into which Christ ascended – a realm of light that transcends the darkness of world tension, chaos and suffering. Through His living demonstration in human form, He showed how we can enter the greater world of light hidden behind the veil of material form. The light He radiates continues to shine through that veil and to ignite the spark of memory in every open heart.

We come forth from the realm of light and into this world, but we gradually forget as the veils of matter and material need close around us. William Wordsworth expressed the incarnating process so beautifully in his famous poem, Ode: Intimations of Immortality:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature’s Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.” Ode: Intimations of Immortality: William Wordsworth

As we stumble through this dense world and become confused by the divisiveness of its separate forms, life’s bumps and bruises help guide us back to the memory of the beautiful world from whence we come – and we find our way home. The memory of it echoes down the ages in the call of the magnetic heart. Another poet, T. S. Eliot, described the journey in these lines from Little Gidding:

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling
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 flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.” Little Gidding: T. S. Eliot

Those who first hearken to that call rise first. They may be the last in terms of worldly success and poor in material possessions, but if they are open to the riches of the heart, they will hear the call and reflect the radiance of the higher worlds. As the Bible reminds us:

So the last shall be first and the first last”  Matthew 20:16

The mind may lead one to achievement in the material world, but the heart carries us to heaven. When the heart rules the mind, the divine nature can express in the world. Mankind’s gift is the ability to rule from the plane of mind. But it is a divine rulership when the heart is the ruler from that plane. Then the true Self is at the centre of being and radiates through the planes and the outer forms.

Returning back to our true identity, our enlightened being, from out of the world of dense matter requires will-power. It takes will to hold to the vision and listen for the sound of that half-remembered world. But the way opens up as we serve the good of the whole by applying the will-to-good. This is the uniting force that carries forward the great Life in Whom we live and move, and which contains all in its embrace. Those who embody the will-to-good open the way to the new world. The Tibetan Master reminded us that:

The will-to-good of the world knowers is the magnetic seed of the future” The Rays and the Initiations, page 110

 

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