A Beatitude of Expectation - September 2022
Poise is a word that has real depth of meaning. For the artist, writer, actor and musician, the word points to that all-embracing but infinitely small moment when all one’s creative forces are gathered together in a beatitude of expectation prior to the appearance in form of some specific work, a performance for example. It is the culmination of days and months and years of disciplined preparation; the outcome of mistakes, of blind alleys, false starts; the result of ‘toil sweat and tears’ that have been endured because all the while there is the sensed presence of the glorious vision of what might be – and what will be! This would never have been persisted in, were there not from the start that presence of joy and certainty about the enterprise at the core of the artist’s being.
And now everything becomes compressed into a vortex of energy, a moment of infinite poise. It is the “still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards”, as T S Eliot so beautifully expresses it. And he continues: “at the still point, there the dance is.” Now the vortex of energy explodes into the scintillating appearance of something so new and so beautiful that we know it must always have existed, just waiting for the right group and the right time in order to appear before the astonished gaze of humanity.
How perfectly does this understanding of poise describe the life and work of people who, as well as being concerned and constructive citizens, have added the arduous task of spiritual development to their lives. They apply this joyful discipline to their creative work, increasingly understood in group terms, and focusing on the unseen worlds of the more spiritual planes. Here poise takes on additional meanings. What is the razor-edged path to truth other than one of total poise, the balancing of the pairs of opposites, the rising above the dualities of pleasure and pain into the synthesis of love and joy? What is the rainbow bridge, spanning to the spiritual triad, but the transcendence of the thesis/antithesis of the concrete mind into the synthesis of straight knowledge and beatitude?
We can also very usefully think of poise as being central to our triangles work. The gradual transformation of the planetary etheric body from a system of squares – with all that this connotes of oppositional posturing and relentless conflict – to a matrix of triangles that fosters cooperation and right human relationships. This is poise on a planetary level and it is the goal of our dedicated daily triangles work. It incorporates a spiritual vision of the future that will be gradually manifested by our group poise. This poise achieves that urgently needed spiritual balance, resting in the vision of love and goodness which we call the Plan. We can be sure that in due time it will appear before the astonished gaze of humanity. May we hasten the day.