The Journey Continues – Chapter 13

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 THIRTEEN – The learning Process

For the circle has been well-nigh trod and the end approacheth the beginning.

We are told that in early days of the human race Members of Earth’s Spiritual Hierarchy walked among the people and taught them the Mysteries of Life that held significance beyond the physical world and yet could be expressed through and within that world. The Hierarchy in turn had received these ancient Mysteries from the Great White Lodge on Sirius, the Brilliant Star of Sensitivity, of which Earth’s Hierarchy is a lower reflection in the vast scheme of the cosmos.

These ancient Mysteries contain the story of human destiny and bear great significance to us all at this moment in time. The world proceeds on its evolutionary path, cycle and cycle, and the human race moves onward as it is subjected to the varying energies and forces impinging upon consciousness and making impact upon the planet with all its kingdoms and systems governing growth.

At this moment in time we have arrived at the closing of one cycle and the opening of another as our planet moves out of the influence of Pisces and into the very different energies of Aquarius. There are many greater and lesser cycles in the scheme of things and we call the one mentioned an Age. It is during this time that the emergence of the Earth’s Hierarchy is expected with its Members functioning openly once more upon the physical plane of living. The reappearance of their Great Leader, the Christ (by whatever name He is known in the world’s religions), is awaited also with a lively expectancy. The ancient Mysteries will then be restored upon the planet.

There are many ways in which this restoration may take place, for the nature and type of Earth’s peoples has such variation, as does the manner or mode of their expression. There will no doubt be, and already is, much teaching available to guide humanity the next step upon the upward way. However, in our time, understanding must move on from the dependence on forms with the resultant outcome that we may observe in human affairs and expression across our world. We fail to realise that any form of teaching is only of use as it reveals to our conscious awareness the living process behind all forms, and consequently, just who we truly are and our role and purpose within the grater scheme.

The forms themselves must change progressively in order to accommodate advances and new possibilities emerging and coming within range as we proceed on our journey through time and place. This failure to understand the nature and purpose of form is the cause behind all separative attitudes and the resulting conflict so evident upon our planet.

In the coming time it will be understood that the Mysteries are not revealed alone by the teaching of information, albeit of universal principles, but may only be apprehended by the recognition of that which resides within ourselves. Our focus of consciousness must move from identification with the outer form life and move into the awareness of our energy body within which exist the energies with which we may work.

We must become directors of our own destiny as a vaster picture of our true birthrights, our origins and our journey through time upon this planet reveals itself to our sight. At the same time we may become aware of our place in the greater scheme as we recognise the role of our planet within its exceedingly extensive and hitherto unrecognised relationships.

We can as yet only imagine what this realisation can mean in terms of human relationship within our world. We may discover that the tedious and never-ending process of working to restore balance, peace and sanity by addressing the effects – the visible results of separative attitudes and actions – will be rendered unnecessary as the many apprehend and embrace the understanding that humanity is one, the expression of spiritual being, and the varieties of type, culture, religion, etc. are but the living diversity of a human race in process of expression.

A member of the Group spoke of her experience in the business world:

“It is interesting how realisation appears to overwhelm us suddenly – such moments seem to occur in a single moment and yet must be the result of a process of gradually changing perception until, in that moment, the whole pattern towards which we have been moving suddenly is revealed – and then that pattern also is, at a later moment, seen as part of an even more all-embracing pattern of meaning and significance. The truth has been before us all along and yet the moment of ‘seeing’ is new.

“I was aware, during one of the last sessions of an outplacement training course for people whose jobs had just been made redundant, that a dynamic happens in a group in a classroom where integrating energy seems to flow through those who consciously work with the energies to draw the group together and also activate the potential in others. My realisation of this dynamic grew as I became aware of another person in the course who saw herself as a teacher of others and yet seemed to repel everyone. She was so self-centred that she saw everything and everyone through her own centre of the universe, distorted in a way that just did not meet or synchronise with anyone else’s view. She ultimately moved to an isolated space while the others gathered within the energy flow.

“There was no personal will being applied but a will-to-good and a will-to-growth that was let loose to do its beneficent work. We allow it to flow through by our very recognition of it. It seems important to clearly identify the energies to allow the growth of the new expression. The new energies carry such a releasing freedom that allows for a new learning process to unfold for the individual and within the group.”

Can we imagine our world if the next generation of children is taught according to the principles and the realities about which we have been speaking? May we visualise a new civilisation emerging built upon the foundations of a realised brotherhood of nations and of peoples? Are we able to anticipate the spiritual speed with which a new and more advanced and cooperative character will come forth into the world of expression, offsetting wastage of energy and misrepresentation of our true being in misguided, separative building? If so, our future is assured.

There are many of today’s children who respond naturally to the new energies and the new teaching and there are those teachers who have the insight to guide them, draw out their potential and prepare them for their future roles and leadership. These teachers recognise that true education is gained through experience, the taking of responsibility and the ability to focus upon the essential and not upon external distractions. Knowledge is by no means neglected but it is understood as a part of the whole learning process in the development of balanced, rounded-out, responsible members of communities, moving through into wider spheres of expression.

A member of the Group spoke of her present experience teaching in a High School:

“Considering education and the youth of today, my view is that change is being forced on us by our children and their perceptions. Energetically they know they are free and they can’t be forced to do anything they don’t choose to. They are strong willed and have not yet experienced a need for respect or boundaries. We learned respect through fear. Our great challenge is: how do we give them an understanding of boundaries – respect, responsibilities and right relationships – in this new Aquarian age?

“As much as people may want to go back to the old ways, more discipline, to have them do as they are told, we have to find new ways. I feel humanity is much further along the path with these wonderful energies coming in – and am always pondering my commitment ‘to strengthen them within their soul’ – some are so evolved with a strong soul link showing, others are developing the strong personality (a strong sense of self) needed for the soul to be interested, and others are just lost, reactive and experiencing life without control or rhyme or reason.

“As teachers the trust needed to be able to work energetically with students, fulfilling he soul’s needs whatever that might be or mean, is the challenge. It requires a great trust of self, the ability to relate and to identify at that level and to open to the possibilities that are presented.

“It is the ability to go into the classroom with possible outcomes and ideas but the intention to work the energy and energies as best one can. Working group energy made up of many individual and needy students is the challenge. I was forced to rearrange one stream of the Year 7 Art classes halfway through the year. Very little learning was going on.

“We organised a Self Directed class, two Teacher Directed classes and one Opportunity-to-Learn class. It was so successful that all Year 7 classes are based on this format this year. We had the Primary Teachers identify students on this basis (prior to entering High School) so that next year we’ll have two Self Directed classes and three Teacher Directed classes, one Literacy/Numeracy and one Opportunity-to-Learn class. The School has made a commitment to go ahead with this program. The Opportunity-to-Learn class has nine students and special programs have been written for these students – ‘lost souls’ who have difficulty relating to others or engaging in learning other than ‘doing their own thing’.

“It was interesting this year because students knew where their energy fitted and they did not feel disadvantaged by the classes they were in. My great dislike of graded classes is that we are giving students expectations of their worth or worthlessness and I was worried that it may happen when I was forced to change the classes.

“I am continually questioning the principles and how they apply to education. The difficulty is to go out into ‘the new’ knowing that I don’t know what it will look like because if I know, then it’s the old – boy, is that trust and it’s the best game in town!”

As we move through this transitional time and more fully into the new era, we may expect the newer intuitive ways to guide and express through the teaching and learning process. And indeed this planet of ours is a schoolroom in its every dimension, if we may but apprehend it and act upon that recognition.

A newsletter written by one member of the Group for the Christmas period 2001 defines clearly this transitional moment in time and the human challenge we all face to apprehend the issues and the opportunities. As we observe the past and the future revealed in the light of the present we are challenged to learn from this panoramic view of outmoded expression and of new and greater possibilities existing clearly before us, side by side. And then to move onward discarding all that needs to be left behind and that can retard the next movement in consciousness within the next cycle of our learning process.

This newsletter appears below.

Dear Friends,

As we enter the Christmas and New Year holiday season the annual pattern unfolds – commemoration of the past followed by celebration of the new. There is first a return to old connections; a re-uniting with old friends and family; a resurgence of tradition and historical connection and, for many, a reminder of our spiritual heritage. Timeworn rituals are observed in the present.

Then an expansive focus embraces all families, groups, nations and religions when they celebrate, as one, the promise of a new year. At this point we step beyond the reflective, backward-looking nostalgia and are freed into a new day and a fresh page on which to write the unfolding story of the divine nature manifesting in the world. On the one hand we are submerged in tradition and on the other we meet the future free of past care. We retain the essentials of our long history but a new vision replaces the burden of surface detail. The trauma of the past drops below our focus and a new future expands before us, redolent with promise and solution.

This magical moment has been portrayed dramatically in movies where the heroes, following some calamity such as shipwreck or road accident, suffer amnesia and forget who they have been up to this point – whether they are married, have children, were rich or poor, of honest or wicked bent. Yet they retain their sense of being in the world – they can speak and act appropriately and appear to retain all knowledge except that relating to their personal identity in the world. In many of these stories they are set free from past ill deeds and consequences. They are able then to live from a set of fresh and true values that seem to be automatically present despite the loss of many worldly layers that have been cultivated up to the moment of the trauma.

This new being they have become is unresponsive to any claims of the past and sees clearly and truly what is unfolding in the moment – wholly open to what life brings moment by moment and with a deeply inherent sense of truth. This new being is without prejudice, partisanship, preference, fears, doubts or debts. He stands at a point as though between incarnations, between worlds, where past experience is essentialised but does not veil insight into the next. This is a clue, perhaps, to that mysterious injunction: ’except you come as little children, you will not enter the kingdom of Heaven.’

The New Testament story of the rich young man not yet ready to move onward also points to the requirements of a new phase. We may understand this story in a deeper sense than the obvious meaning, on the outer surface of life, usually attributed to it. This young man’s ‘richness’ was that of his wide-ranging sense of awareness, his aspiration and his developed faculties, resulting from his long, long evolutionary experience. The Christ tells him that he must leave behind his past achievements in order to be free to apprehend that which is beyond his present horizon and then to move forward the next step upon the way.

These injunctions point to a revelatory new moment of essential truth – a truth that cannot be changed or stripped away – the moment when spirit expresses in the world. The niceties of cultural, national, religious, social or familial convention and dogma are stripped away and things are seen for what they are in truth and in the eyes of God – terrible, awesome and wonderful. How then shall we be and act in the world?

As the traumatic impact of the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York (September 11th, 2001) the human world as a whole stood in that moment of shock, in amnesia, jolted out of the burden of past loyalties into a moment of clear sight unaligned with worldly expectations. Before the old familiar world began to flow back in to cloud vision once more everyone had been changed – many irrevocably. And it was said, ‘The world will never be the same.’

So what is different? What touches us deeply that was previously unknown? What have we left behind? What new identity is revealed? The imagery and rhetoric with which we have described and circumscribed our view of the world is no longer able to define or contain our new experience of it – yet language is our tool to anchor this shift in our experiential life. We are using old words but must re-define them even though they carry the danger of old understanding. Words such as business, war, economy, shares, military, religion, democracy, are being used in new contexts but can be dangerously misused allowing old prejudices and rationalisations to poison the metamorphosis. Yet there are new words ringing the changes with increasing resonance – unity, global, cooperation, interdependence, rights, human, mutual, freedom, responsibility.

In the moment between the past and a very different future, through this space between the worlds where only essential truth can be known, let us allow this liberating and empowering energy to do its beneficent work. We, in truth, have nothing to lose. We, in essence, are completely unencumbered. There is nothing real (or really nothing) that need drain away the living force, the enlivening energy that flows freely and equitably through all things, all people, all creation in the world.

It is a matter only of recognition, of realisation of the whole dynamic pattern and allowing a flow-through of the facilitating energy to draw out the best in all, for all. How simple! The new energies carry such a freedom for the individual potential and in harmony with the freedom of others’ talents as well. The possessive acquisitiveness of the personal ‘bottlenecks’ or ‘eddies’ in the current are contained and bypassed by seeing them clearly and allowing the flow to bypass them and move on to its destined greatness. They will either realise or collapse under the pressure of the increased current – and ultimately come closer to their own realisation.

At this moment of the ‘parting of the ways’ we can be in danger of being sucked down by the undertow of the tide pulling back into old habits of living, thinking and feeling (and like the ‘rich young man’ turn sadly away) unless we, in our new objectivity, clearly distinguish them from the empowering energy of the new living water of Life that is pouring into a world thirsty for freedom. True discrimination is crucial.

The forces that would retard can be very close, even intimately so or integrally within otherwise ‘worthy’ activities with which we may be involved. We can be blinded by a mystical faith rather than knowing with a clear penetrating insight that will not balk at naming what it sees in order to empower what serves the world or refute a separative motive. A personal inclusiveness can be dangerous in the outer world of form where we can embrace a Judas and open the door on disruption and evil. Rationalisation may call white black and vice versa and so turn the key to evil. It can be a tool for good or evil and is no sure ground for confronting malign forces. The true difference lies at the point of motive and purpose behind the outer seeming and acts.

From the perspective of spirit we can differentiate between the old disciplines of good character values that a personality may pride itself on (be recognised for) and that new clarity of knowing what is true from the perspective of the whole. Glamour, untruth and evil have facility in the world of form and so, if we allow, can exploit our apparently ‘good’ qualities against us such as the blackmailer relying on a victim’s love and loyalty, the ambitious man gaining position through good people’s unwillingness to criticise, or the tyrant exploiting pacifism to speed his destructive course. For humanity harmony is through conflict and not by avoiding the necessary confrontation to identify, name and refute what is untrue. Harmony can only exist in truth and only in truth can there be freedom, empowerment and life.

Christ told us: ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me.’ We have also been addressed as ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory.’ This Christ aspect, this soul, this way to immortal spirit, lives in the world through us. Such is the future fast approaching.

* * * * *

There is no way around it. Life on this Planet is, and has ever been, a learning experience and Life invites us, each and every one, to participate with a fully conscious awareness of the process, taking charge of our own destiny.

Let us stand then in conscious awareness at that ‘midway point’, between the past and the future, between spirit and matter, and lay hold of the essential truth of which the newsletter author speaks.

Let us understand what we have all learned, now distilled within us as our own true essence – that which has brought us to this present time – so freeing ourselves from the forms and structures which no longer have the capacity to make revelation in a new time. And let us embrace the understanding that those deeper Mysteries call to us from new horizons of awareness and of being.