Joy

When I was asked to take part in this afternoon’s Triangles Webinar, I wondered what angle of approach would be most useful and uplifting. And it seemed to me that it would be a really good idea to try and offset the anxieties that are so prevalent in the world today and which particularly all on a spiritual path must experience with varying degrees of acuteness.

A frequent way for many people to deal with such things is to retreat into denial – the ostrich putting his head in the sand. This is the road to failure. Another way is to fatalistically accept what seems as inevitable, which in practical terms is a denial of what human intelligent creativity and ingenuity can do. Another way is to put an unreasonable faith in the Hierarchy to wave their magic wand and instantly put everything right. This is really a denial of the responsibility we all have to put right our mistakes ourselves. I wrote a poem about this some years ago. I think it encapsulates the need of humanity to realistically assess the reality of the present world situation in its enormous variety of manifestation and recognise too that it is us, humanity, who are responsible for many of the problems we see and it is up to us, humanity as a whole, to take action to remedy the situation.  The poem is really about the reappearance of the Christ.

                        ‘And he will come again,’ they say.
                        But they’ve said this for so many,
                        Many centuries of grief. And the cries
                        Of butchered children, of slaughtered
                        So-called infidels, of murdered
                        Martyrs down the ages ask,
                        ‘Is this what you intended?’
                        And the superstitious fears of
                        Kept-closed minds, the rigid
                        Orthodoxy of distorted truth
                        All stand accusing the light
                        That should have been.
                        Do we blame it for going out? or
                        Ourselves for our collective ignorance,
                        Our unwillingness to even want
                        To see things as they truly are.

                        ‘But he will come again,’ they say,
                        ‘And put right all these things!’
                        I’m not convinced.
                        We have to right these things ourselves,
                        And in doing so the light - our light -
                        will shine and show him then
                        The pathway back to earth
                        Can be wisely stepped again.

It was that great European mystic, Meister Eckhart, who summed it up beautifully and succinctly. “Without me, God is helpless.” Humanity exists as an outpost of God, as it were, in order to ground and manifest the divine Will in the material world!

In more spiritual terms we, Humanity, are the planetary centre of creativity. We are learning gradually and painfully that it is love, not selfishness that must be the motive behind all our activity. When selfishness is the motive, disaster is the result, when love is the motive then amazing things can – and do! – happen.

So we need to be brave and learn to see things as they really are, without that fear-filled anxiety that can so disempower us, or the wishful thinking that generates false hopes. Once we have achieved this stance then we determine to follow our natural and right desire to do what we can to serve the world. One way that we can do this is as responsible, loving and active citizens whether on the local, national or international level.

But we need to add to this the inner work of aspiration and discipleship, of developing the link to the light and love of the soul. As we daily visualise and magnetise this link we come to realise that this is really the most important part of our service to the world. We are building and guarding humanity’s lifeline to the inner spiritual realm of Hierarchy.

We can see that the many millions of people throughout the world who have discovered this in their own lives, especially when they work together – and this is really important – can sense ideas of the new possibilities that are hovering on the borders between latency and actuality, waiting to manifest through the many wonderful group initiatives that we can know about and the many, many more that we sense though do not know about in detail.  

That is where the work we all do in our daily triangles meditation fits in. We are linking up as a world group made up of people from different faith and spiritual traditions who are united in our common goal of bettering human living and lifting us all nearer to the light. The triangles network is scintillating with creativity helping to build the new world over the debris of the old. It is radiating light into the dark corners of the human psyche exposing the unacceptable thought and desire patters that humanity has created over millennia – never a pleasant experience. But now we can acknowledge them and redeem them.

For me it is these understandings, experiences and recognitions that can help put our contemporary anxieties into a better perspective. For in truth we have discovered something really wonderful. The nearer we approach the light and love of the soul, the more we experience a deep joy. This is a joy which recognises what has been called the “unconquerable nature of goodness and the inevitability of the ultimate triumph of good”.

Yes there will be pain on the way to this; yes there will be successes and failures, human happiness and sorrows. That is inevitable in a material world, as the Buddha taught us two and half thousand years ago. But deeper than these surface things is the eternal presence of the soul whose nature is love and whose quality is joy. This loving joy is what motivates us to serve. When we see the kernel of truth in all that we contact, and we automatically choose the truth or the real, then we next learn the lesson of joyful action, and then the path of bliss can open before us.

So let use our triangles meditations to radiate joy, for joy lets in the light. Joy fires the imagination. Joy enlivens our hearts. Joy destroys the barriers of separateness in our minds. Joy transforms everything.

--- Simon Marlow