Sydney Goodwill Goodwill is love in action
The Journey Continues is a sequel to Journey of a Lifetime: A Group Story and continues the account of the group’s journey through more than thirty years’ work. We continue to post a chapter each month. Here is this month’s chapter. Please Note: Copies of the book are available from Sydney Goodwill.
CHAPTER ONE – What is Life
What is Life? What is it that appears to have gone when something dies? Where is it? What is it that is obviously present at birth and in growth? We say ‘it just is’ but cannot truly begin to define it. We can see how it differs from the second aspect of Deity, Love, or from any qualities we care to name. It is not qualified by anything. It is not limited by anything. It cannot be owned exclusively by anything or anyone.
The recognition of Life moves us on from the teaching of ‘sharing’ only as an expression of Love. Once we enter a conscious awareness of the nature of Life itself we have realised that ‘sharing’ is an inevitable and normal expression of all life. It cannot be otherwise. As we stand within the Life aspect our expression through all planes of being functions for the good of the whole and the individual expresses his or her potential thorough individual capacities, in cooperation with their group and directed with love and wisdom.
In such a scenario we can offset the prevalence of the past, in its emphasis on the individual capacity for creating grand personal egos, and educating and training everyone to a narrow system which failed to bring forth into accepted expression the valuable potential of those who differed from the strictly or perceived required expression. Of course, recognizing separation, this system has trained people to take their positions in the marketplace of competition found on the planet at this time throughout the many and varied avenues of human involvement and endeavour. It is now time for the recognition of that cooperative interaction born of our realisation of the Oneness of life.
One cannot take life. It is neither created nor destroyed. We express in life and through life, but do we express Life? So what is it we are talking about? Who can put words to it? We may think of life in terms of that energy that enlivens everything. Nothing has existence without life. So do we express it or just through it? If we say life has a purpose then in a sense we have made it into an entity. Is it an entity? Is it energy? Is it both?
Life just is. And entities great and small express Life according to their level of awareness. There is a vast difference between a member of humanity expressing Life and the Logos of the planet expressing Life and yet it is the same Life. Life is and for aye remains.
What does it mean to work within the Life aspect?
A group does nothing unless it can reveal something through its life expression. This is not premeditated or organized but is an automatic and inevitable outflow of the vitality of its very Being. This realisation transcends those older and better understood group methods wherein people gather around an organised working group, or students gather around a teacher, with an emphasis upon personal relationship and upon the receiving of instruction. That there is personal emphasis in such groups may be denied but how often the personalities of those concerned may be to the fore in one way or another.
We all as workers in this New Day recognise that unless we truly apprehend the new elements emerging in this time as Life speaks anew, unless this vision inspires us to embrace new approaches to truth, we are in danger of endeavouring to press that which is newly emerging into outmoded forms. Unsupported and uninformed by the new life energies, these forms will disappear.
What is it that is hovering over the consciousness of the workers of the world who in turn are responsible for identifying and presenting that which will reveal the next step for humanity as a whole?
We are moving beyond the demand for personal readiness or even for group unity or harmony of relationships. These qualities necessarily exist within the group life.
What is it that these workers need to understand? Where to focus their being. In what though? What is it? That is the question. In the first book Journey of a Lifetime we asked the question ’What is it that we see seeking emergence?’ The approach we now take is to identify a way of being, where we need to be focused. It is difficult to clearly elucidate using words like ‘where’ unless we understand that we are using ’where’ to indicate position ‘in a state of being’ – in a state of awareness. We understand that not only are we not in any way separate from this state of being, from what Life is expressing at this moment, but that we are also fully conscious of it. There is completeness about this. We cannot just have little snippets of information from around the edges. This is a state of being before diversification.
We need to stand within this being. This is taking a deeper plunge. This is working from very Being itself. This is working from and within the Life aspect, not just ‘from the inside out’ as was understood earlier in the group life and expression. The group entity itself is capable of this movement. Group members may understand in varying degrees but everyone is incorporated within the group entity which moves onward as a group. As never before the importance of the group is realised.
What is being revealed at this moment is that capacity to identify, and consciously, within a state of being. And what that says in essence, and what that says in expression, is that we are conscious participants within it – within the emerging expression of Life in our time. Life needs its expressive agents all the way out into planetary expression, flowing outward through the many world groups.
In Journey of a Lifetime we realised when we asked ‘What is emerging and how does it emerge?’ that we were not separate from it; we were involve within it. Now we realise that we must become its living expression. This is another step, a new phase, in the group life. There is much more we do not yet apprehend. There are still unknown factors. It is said that not even the highest initiate sees with any clarity the next thing that lies ahead of him or her. There is a vital awareness that we stand in readiness as a group at the point of revelation the edge of Aquarius, group with group with group, within the one great world group of workers.
Life-sharing
When we consider working within the Life aspect we are not talking about the personal life or the soul life but of that which is beyond them both, the all-inclusive Self. We are faced with the necessity to comprehend the nature of ‘identification’ as we enter the realm of synthesis. It is said that we cannot begin to understand what identification is unless or until we have experienced identical at-one-ness with even one other person; once experienced we find a door opening. When we enter into anything that exactly expresses a principle, even though it may not be the totality of it possibility, we have heard the ‘sound’ that enables us progressively to enter the fullness of it – of identification with it. We come to a point where we realise ‘that are no other selves’.
From the realisation that we are identically at-one we share life. It is life expressing and we have no other concern or wish than to express that; it is beyond any personal or lesser desire. Then opens increasingly deeper, expanded realisation of what identification means. When we start off with the realisation of identical at-one-ness with one person we cannot help but proceed because there is nothing separate or separative within this awareness. We come to the place of knowing ’there are no other selves’ and it matters not whether other people we meet think there are other selves. We know there are not.
As life-sharing proceeds, expands, deepens, we are aware of the vastness of that centre within which we dwell. Because we are experiencing identical at-one-ness we find that every other being is part of it. Where is there ever a division? Divisions are only created by limited awareness. And, my friends, there is no division. There is diversity. That is not division. That is expression.
We are all expressions of the one Life at varying stages of realisation or ‘unrealisation’. It is the most freeing experience one can ever possibly imagine – whenever we enter into anything we break through into a new area of consciousness. We break through into a far vaster dimension than our first touch with it. Having grasped a principle, understanding how it operates, we can employ it, set it in motion. But the old problem exists: to break through into something new we must leave something else behind. And this is where people are reluctant. “I might lose my identity.” “I may lose my comfort zone, my security blanket – the things that hedge me around.” “I don’t have to face the big, wide universe. The big, wide world was bad enough.”
We stand at a challenging and opportune stage, because of the direct impact of Shamballa energy made upon human consciousness, in the year 2000 and because of the recognition that identification, the monadic, the will aspect, the first aspect of Deity, is making its presence felt. It is seen emerging through group statement and if you are a worker then it is a matter of conscious choice. We elect to move with it and break through or stay where we are which has never been so uncomfortable as it now is. If people but understood, it is far more uncomfortable to stay back than it is to break through. These are always the illusions.
When we break through we break through into such a greater sense of freedom we wonder why we ever held back. It does, however, bring its own responsibilities. It does not allow anyone to be indifferent, lazy or inactive. What is indifference, laziness or inaction any more? We are living. This is life. Life and motion are synonymous terms. How can we be static anywhere? How can we arrest our movement forward? It is unthinkable. How can we choose to stay in a confined space when Life beckons? This is where it is.
And so it was with such thoughts and deepening understanding that the Group entered a fifth phase in its life experience and in its work. And every member knew that all were a part of a single group entity.
