FROM SACRIFICE TO JOY
In a letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul exhorts them, as ministers of God, to be “as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things”.1 As these words reverberate and infuse us with their power – intact, even after two millennia – we understand the urging to disregard temporary experiences of sorrow or scarcity and to be motivated only by what is real and eternal: the grace of God.
As we journey through the many layers of meaning within these words, and reach what may be the deepest one, we find ourselves facing more than an exhortation; we find ourselves facing sacrifice.
Sacrifice – from the Latin Sacrificium, to make sacred; historically, a religious ritual for expiation or atonement; in more modern secular terms, giving up our time and energy or possessions for someone else, or for a cause. In a yet deeper layer of meaning: letting go of personality attachments and surrendering to the soul’s light; relinquishing our false sense of being a separated entity and embracing the reality of being a small part of the greater whole.
The daily practice of Triangles is a magnificent opportunity to perform this daily sacrifice – this sacred act. Alignment with the Triangle Divine – the source of power, light, and love – allows detachment from personality distortions, separateness, and polarities. This is not a common act of giving up. It is a willing act of surrender. We can then identify with our deepest nature as essential parts of the light, love and sacrificial fire of the Divine; we stand then in true humility, embracing our smallness and accepting the responsibility of our greatness. For we are points of distribution for this light, love and fire so that the whole of humanity may receive it and wake up to this, their real identity. This is how, “having nothing”, no attachments to the personality, we end up “possessing all things”: Divine light, love and power. And this is how we “make many rich”.
Triangles is a daily practice of identification with the soul, of group fusion and of union with the whole – a sacred act, indeed. When we are able to take a small seed of this experience into our everyday activities and service and let it flourish there, the whole of our life becomes a sacred act, nurturing the group and nurtured by it, held by the inclusive power of the whole.
The Divine Triangle seeks to expand Itself through the sacrifices that we embrace. It is then that the Way of Sacrifice becomes the Way of Joy. “The Way of Joy leads to the Place of Peace. The peace of God is only found in losing sight of self and seeing naught but that which must be done and done today.”2
1. The Bible, Corinthians 2, 6: 10 (NKJV)
2. Discipleship in the New Age, vol.I, A.A. Bailey pp. 365-6