Conflict, Crisis and Transformation on the Path to Global Cooperation
The following talk was given at the opening of the New York Session of the 2020 World Goodwill Seminar “The Spiritual Dynamics of Crisis on the Path to Global Cooperation”
The main theme for this event contains two essential thoughts: the role that crisis plays in the spiritual life of an individual, a group, a nation and the world of nations, and the thought that humanity is on a path to global cooperation. And in this first session, we want to explore these thoughts from an Ageless Wisdom perspective.
It is a core part of World Goodwill’s work to shine a light on the idea that the path towards cooperation is written into the DNA of humanity – whether we like it or not it is our spiritual destiny to transit from a competitive age to a cooperative age. This is a process that is underway. The only question is time - how many generations will it take before cooperation becomes the dominant pattern in international relations?
The suggestion is that as a species, humanity, is on an initiatory path; that all of us together, as a unit, are undergoing what has been referred to by some writers as a Great Turning in the orientation of human identity, human thought, human spirituality and human action. What begins with a reorientation of energies and thoughts expresses itself in relationships – all dimensions of relationship from the subjective to the objective; the vertical to the horizontal; the inner to the outer.
Observing the passage from competition to cooperation in international affairs gives us an objective way of assessing progress in our entrance into a New Age.
Cooperation on a national stage and on the world stage tends to grow in cycles. What appear to be sudden transformational periods (like the founding of the UN and the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) tend to be followed by periods of realignment when not much may appear to be happening as forces of materialism challenge newly established norms. The norms are tested to see if they can hold and to see how deeply they are embedded in the structures and patterns of international relations. Constant and repeated presentations of conflicts challenge the new higher norms. This can sound like a depressing picture. Yet from a spiritual perspective it is out of this dialectic between higher principles and habitual, instinctual patterns of competition and power that the way we think about global cooperation becomes wiser and more intelligent. Instead of outright rejecting the forces opposing cooperation we are driven to understand these forces as an aspect of ourselves and our own nations. As a result of repeated conflict, the incentive and intent to cooperate becomes clearer, less ideological, in a sense less aspirational, and more practical and rational – in terms of what works and what does not seem to work. The cycle of conflict and crisis intensifies experiments with fresh creative ways to enhance cooperation. We certainly have seen this in studies of international affairs from diplomatic circles, academic institutions and think tanks around the world.
This process of conflict and crisis is a sign that Life is testing us ... testing us as individuals and testing us as nations and as humankind … throwing down challenges … inviting us to ‘see’ where we stand in the relation between our ideals and principles and the way we show up and are present in the world.
Different mythologies speak of this time as a transition from an age of separation and competition to an age of cooperation that is being driven and empowered from higher forces of soul and spirit – potencies of spiritual power, the Christ, the Buddha, and all the prophets, rishis and saints of all traditions. Spiritual and esoteric sources describe light pouring into the mind of humanity, revealing previously undreamed-of realities of wholeness and interdependence and ecologies of interpenetrating levels of being. They also speak of forces of love and pure good heartedness pouring into the human psyche, expanding and deepening the spirit of relationship and the intelligent awareness of being part of something so much greater than one’s individual incarnation. These forces of love pouring into the human also allow us to see our own small individual incarnation as an expression of something universal – all the chaotic energies of transition in humanity as a whole are reflected within our own lives and our own path.
Esoteric sources also speak of a third quality of energy pouring into humanity at this time, stimulating the will. Of course, will energy carries danger – is it the higher or lower will that is being ‘fed from above’? But while sensational news highlights the intensification of the will of separatists and groups concerned solely with their own interests, higher expressions of the will are also being stimulated and these receive no attention in the media because they are ‘behind the scenes.’ But, the incoming energies are causing a deepening of the will to love; the will to cooperate with all who are motivated by higher principles, and a new living will to build justice and respect into our relationships, our communities, our nations and our world; into our economics, politics and education.
These incoming energies not only inspire and open us up to new vistas of wholeness, they also disturb, provoke, awaken the Pandora’s box of unredeemed, unresolved forces in ourselves, in the psyche, in our nations and communities – the incoming spiritual energies provoke crises.
Just as an individual’s passage from childhood through the teenage years to adulthood is not some clear linear trajectory towards maturity and wisdom, so too is humanity’s path towards global cooperation not a linear path. How could it be when the path to cooperation can only emerge out of freedom and freely chosen decisions?
The intersecting crises of this time are symbolized by a global pandemic which challenges the world to new levels of cooperation within nations and between nations. It also challenges us to develop a new relationship with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The goals and targets measure human development in quantifiable material terms – acquiring data to measure progress in ending poverty wherever it exists; measuring the quality and access to water and sanitation; access to quality education; the empowerment of women; and so on. But achievement of the Goals depends more than anything else on a mobilization of intelligent goodwill amongst the peoples of the world. The transformation that is implied in the Goals depends upon a deeper transformation of thought, attitudes and values. It requires a reorientation towards the goal of building international relationships that reflect the Oneness of all Life, the essential sacredness of each and every human being, and the presence of the divine in all beings in the manifest world. Nothing less than a reawakening of faith in the universality of Life and the sacredness of Life in all its diversity is required in our time. Only then will the part and the whole be seen in right relation – as a synthesis of Life in expression.