Receiving News Bulletins - Our Spiritual Workout and Service
Service: the Natural Expression of the Soul
Triangles Webinar - February 14, 2022
Michael Galloway
We frequently speak about Triangles as a planetary service, but what exactly does it mean to serve in this way? Nearly all spiritual paths advocate service work of one sort or another as an essential part of their spiritual practices. For some it is work with the poor or the homeless, volunteer work, or dedicating their professional lives to human betterment. Increasingly, many consider contemplative practices such as meditation or prayer a form of service, and seek to work in the realm of thought and consciousness for human and planetary betterment.
Subjective service, such as the sort undertaken in the Triangles work, can be described using the symbolism of the cross. That which one receives through vertical alignment, higher contact with the soul and the greater group of souls, must be interpreted and distributed horizontally to one’s fellow men. The aspiring server seeks to take their place at the center of this cross and from there to never move. They stand as a bridge between the world of spiritual reality and the worlds of human living.
Subjective service is predicated on the esoteric fact that divinity ever exists within all things—it is indivisible in its essence, yet manifests itself in time and space as a Hierarchy of graded lives. Those higher up on the ladder are closer to the source of that greater life, while lower units of life depend upon the higher for spiritual sustenance. The whole process of evolution is the exteriorization of the higher through the lower. This results in the redemption of the lower, raising it upward; it also brings the higher down into manifestation, thus fulfilling the Plan of life itself.
Subjective service is a way of cooperating with this Plan, of aiding the divine circulatory flow—the exchange of energy between God and his manifested world. To do so, one must begin by learning to manifest the soul through all aspects of their personality—to become the soul in all that they think, feel, and do. For the soul is the mediating principle between spirit and matter—it is the principle of relationship itself and its nature is love.
We are told that the Law of Service governs the activity of the soul on its own plane. To manifest the light, love, and the many powers of the soul, one must therefore learn to become responsive to this law and to allow it to govern one’s thinking. The impulse to serve is a natural instinct of the soul, but it is not so natural for the personality. To the personality, service is an ideal or a goal, something to be attained. But to the soul, service is simply an expression of its natural state. It is not an activity which must be initiated, nor is it necessarily something which must be given. True service therefore arises from within the soul itself, for the soul serves by its very presence. This presence is love, light, and sacrificial will. The radiation of these qualities in the world of human living serves the greater good, for it keeps the Plan progressing and moves human consciousness onwards toward its evolutionary goal.
The soul is group consciousꓼ it knows itself to be one with the group. This fact is the reason behind one of the popular definitions of service given by the Tibetan: “Service is the utilization of soul force for the good of the group.” Service is the urge to group good—it brings about the fulfillment of group desire rather than personal desire. In this way, the law of service awakens the heart center in those who respond to its influence. The awakening of the heart is the first step towards group awareness. When the awakening of the heart includes also the mind, it brings about a fusion and at-onement between soul and personality. This soul-personality fusion brings eventually an unimpeded channel for spiritual energies to pour into human consciousness. This naturally drives the incarnating soul into some line of work in the world. This work spans the whole diversity of human enterprise. But in every case, the server is challenged to work in the realm of thought, governed always by truth, with an intelligent grasp of the problems humanity faces, and with a growing recognition of the Plan as the soul perceives it.
This is only possible because the server has one foot in both the spiritual and mundane worlds. They are able to stand at the center of the cross.
I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.
Rabindranath Tagore
Receiving News Bulletins – Our Spiritual Workout & Service
"The fact that we see the world picture as one of outstanding chaos, of striving ideologies and warring forces, of the persecution of minorities, of ....world anxiety and terror does not really mean that we are seeing the picture as it is in reality. We are seeing what is superficial, temporal, ephemeral and concerned with the form aspect.......A closer study of the forces, which are producing the outer turmoil may serve to clarify our vision and restore confidence in God's Plan and its divine love and loveliness1." However, in order to see beyond the form, we need to cultivate the art of disidentification, discrimination and an ability to stand steady in spiritual being.
The worldwide movement of creative meditation of which Triangles is a part, is dedicated to laying the foundations of the new civilization through prayer, meditation, and service. We could say in all honesty, that our souls are urging us to remember our commitment to participate in this work, and to belong to this vanguard of the New Age. This is an act of service that recognises and supports in thought the activities of individuals and groups around the world working together as builders of the new civilisation. If we believe that energy follows thought then our positive thoughts aid them and their efforts, and we become active members of this planetary team event.
So, we are, just by noticing and subsequently building positive forms of thought nurturing the seeds of the emerging new civilization seen amongst the current chaotic affairs of the everyday. We are silent, active Observers who in our minds eye are searching for those specks of golden new consciousness that herald a new way of being, and we cannot do this by avoidance and withdrawing from taking in a daily dose of current affairs.
Many of us know of others who are so overwhelmed with the negativity and confusion and conflict that surrounds us locally and globally that they have chosen to withdraw and isolate themselves from all news-streams. Nevertheless, we are each energetically immersed in these currents of consciousness whether we realise it or not.
Therefore, external solitude does not isolate us wholly from direct physical influences because our subtle vehicles are merged within an ocean of etheric astral and mental forces So, we are ‘unavoidably’ affected by all the emotional and mental tides that sweep through humanity, and by the many cross currents set in motion by powerful groups and individuals. And we are exposed to this daily whether we choose to be or not, and so we are never isolated from the rest of humanity.
It is worth considering our modern life as a wonderful training ground. It enables us to control our physical endurance and develop skills in action, and above all to work with spiritual detachment because everything is relationship and relationship is everything.
So how do we capitalise on this opportunity of a spiritual workout when we take in our daily dose of current affairs?
At first, we need to cultivate and adopt an editorial approach in order to deal with the rapid bombardment of different news items crowding the mind with an array of ideas and images of very different kinds. This assorted stimulation can often lead to all sorts of opposing emotions and a scattering of mental clarity and balance. This gives rise to a blunting and weakening of the innate psyche and its alignment with the Soul, thereby, reducing an individual’s capacity to empathise with loving understanding. Many new insights are factored out and overlooked as a result of this casual approach.
What then is the remedy?
Instead of being passive receptors we are advised to adopt the stance of the Observer, the silent non-judgemental Watcher. An ability to access the innate wisdom resource of the Higher Self in this way enables us to perceive beyond the superficial. Consciously standing in spiritual being we are able to manage the emotional responses stimulated by many and varied news items. The stance of the Observe gives rise to an ability to become detached, discriminative, tolerant, aware, and responsive to the environment. With this sensitivity it is possible to notice and register soul inspired work being undertaken by ordinary people doing extraordinary service on behalf of others and the planet.
Krishnamurti was given these verses by his teacher in the early part of his training and it sheds light onto this inner attitude of constant watchfulness:
Waiting the word of the Master,
Watching the hidden Light
Listening to catch His orders
In the very midst of the fight.
Seeing His slightest signal
Across the heads of the throng.
Hearing His faintest whisper
Above earth's loudest song.2
We can strive to adopt this stance as we listen, watch or read about the news. We realise and know how great human suffering is in these times. We also feel the call of the Divine in the depths of our being, which is constantly urging us to do better, to lighten the load of human misery and suffering. In short, we can aspire to read the newspapers with the eye of the Spirit, the Soul, and with an open Heart.
Footnote:
- The Destiny of the Nations
- Taken from ‘At the feet of the Master’
The late Florence Garrigue – Founder of Meditation Mount in 1971, used to urge her co-workers to listen to the 9pm News with the view of ‘finding out what the Hierarchy had been up to’ that day.
‘The power of the soul pours like a steady current through my life. I sense it in my attitude to life and in the light it brings as it sweeps through all the aspects of my nature. May that power strengthen my will to serve.’ DK the Tibetan
-o0o-
The Sundial House Group for Creative Meditation
[email protected] www.creativegroupmeditation.org
We tend to judge by outer happenings and by what we see for ourselves and we are act be overwhelmed by the more sensational aspects of our present times and engrossed with the immediate situations and dilemmas. But without minimalizing the problems that face humankind today it is what is happening behind the scenes that is of most significance the deep understanding underlying causes shaping outer affairs.
It is these far reaching elements and forces that we need to begin to understand for here in the hidden background lie the clues to the climactic changes all about us and the long term hints as to what our course should be. Everything in manifestation has sprung from some inner cause every trend is the expression of unseen energy and we should not let surface turmoil cloud our vision of the more universal implications of all that is going on today.
By stretching our thinking beyond the immediate we can realise something of this divine occasion of the present times and of how much the future depends on us now.