The Great Turning of the Tides

In the comfort of our own homes and daily life patterns, it can be easy to forget the plight of other members of our human family. But the global family of nations is now realising the need. As the 80th General Assembly of the United Nations draws to a close, it is now apparent that leaders of the majority of the world’s nations are acknowledging the desperate need to end the suffering of the Palestinian people. With this global recognition of truth, we are beginning to see the impact of the great turning of the tides between the passing age and the new age of the heart which is gathering strength and momentum.

For many it is a time of turbulence and uncertainty when what had previously seemed secure ground now appears to be dissolving beneath their feet. But those who cling to the familiar, and to their old sense of self, are standing in the way of the life-stream of evolution as a greater Life is inexorably making its Presence known. In the turbulence of conflicting tides, the choices which will carry us forward are becoming clearer. A subtler discernment comes into play as we identify and release old patterns of thought and ways of living, and begin to live towards a new upward cycle. The Tibetan Master offers this advice to a disciple faced with the parting of the old and new ways:

Be not satisfied with your mental activity and your dedicated idealism. Reach beyond them to the soul whose nature is love and whose identification is with humanity and not with a school of thought or a group of ideals. …You stand at the parting of the ways, my brother. Will you come on to renewed service, to new ideals, and to a fresh cycle of creative living? Or will you settle down into a crystallised condition and to an ardent struggle to become creative and to express ideals which are perhaps already superseded in order to make room for higher and better ones. Thus you might stand still within the aura of that which is old and make no further progress, waking up later to the realisation that creative living is a spontaneous happening and that your ideals have been superseded by greater and more spiritual ones.” Discipleship in the New Age, vol II, Page 532

In every moment of our daily lives, we choose what to think, feel or do next. Many of these choices are habitual responses triggered by life patterns established from our past experience of the world and are made without re-examining them in the light of new realisations. It is often said that we are creatures of habit, but we can also be unconscious prisoners of our habits, and it sometimes takes a crisis to unlock that prison and free us into a new cycle of creative living. In these times of transition there are many crises that are breaking down old barriers and freeing a new consciousness to flow in through the awakening human heart.

The human soul is beginning to manifest itself through the realisation of truth. When the soul registers truth it is no longer bound by the limitations of the material plane. As anchorage in truth increases, the soul is raised from its physical moorings and enters the world of spiritual realities. It is the soul that maintains a sense of continuity between the ages and stages of consciousness. And as the heart of humanity opens, the light of the soul reveals the way.

Each step of that way is made by choice and every choice creates effects. As we stand at the midway point between spirit and matter, idea and form, we are creative agents of the radiatory Presence of the One on Whom we live and move and have our being. The Tibetan Master reminds us that:

“…the expression of the creative faculty is radiation and magnetism. These bring to its possessor the material for creation and a magnetic capacity which arranges in due form and beauty that which radiation has evoked. Creativity is a consequence of a particular state of mind and a specific state of being; it signifies a point in evolution wherein the disciple is definitely radioactive. He can no more help creating in some form or another than he can help living. …” Discipleship in the New Age, vol II, Page 539-540

Our challenge is to bring the opposing forces into perfect balance and so create a full expression of the good, the true and the beautiful. It is no small task, and the effort brings much pain and suffering, but only the human kingdom can achieve this divine purpose. The Tibetan Master points to why pain is part of the human role in the unfoldment of our world:

The capacity to suffer, which is distinctive of humanity, is the outstanding conscious reaction to environment of the fourth kingdom in nature, the human.  It is related to the power to think and consciously to relate cause and effect.  It is a process on the way to something undreamt of today.  …  This same ability to respond through pain is not to be found (in the sense in which the human being comprehends it) in any of the subhuman kingdoms, nor in the superhuman kingdoms …  It is related to an aspect of the creative intelligence, an aspect and characteristic peculiar to humanity. … In this solar system, it has been developed and brought from latency to potency in connection with the substance of the human bodies through which the human soul is gaining experience.  It holds the secret of beauty in manifestation, and its first expression can be seen in the creative perfection of certain phases of art for which man, and man alone, is responsible.  No other kingdom in nature creates forms, produces colour and sounds in harmonious relation, except the human; all of this type of creative art is the result of aeons of conflict, pain and suffering.” The Rays and the Initiations, page 243

Inherent within us all is the urge to beauty, harmony, right relationship and peace. Pain arises when the urge of our divine Self to expand beyond past limitations struggles against the crystallisation of old forms of identity and ways of living. Pain leads ultimately to the liberation of the human spirit into its true expression and destined future. Something of this struggle is expressed in the poem, Art, by Herman Melville:

In placid hours well-pleased we dream
Of many a brave unbodied scheme.
But form to lend, pulsed life create,
What unlike things must meet and mate:
A flame to melt—a wind to freeze;
Sad patience—joyous energies;
Humility—yet pride and scorn;
Instinct and study; love and hate;
Audacity—reverence. These must mate,
And fuse with Jacob’s mystic heart,
To wrestle with the angel—Art.

                                                                                                 Herman Melville

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