 Dear Friends,
First of all, a huge and heartfelt THANK YOU for all the loving messages you sent for Cygnus' 10th anniversary. We celebrated the occasion with a lunch party on 10th September, all of us contributing something small... and we ended up with a great big feast! The whole day had a very special, magical, almost poignant quality – a treasured memory indeed.
But of course, this wonderful celebration took place just 24 hours before the tragic events in the USA began to unfold. Certainly, a new chapter in everyone's lives. This terrible shock had the effect on us – as we're sure it did on you, too – of wiping everything from our minds except a single thought, which has been with us ever since: Peace. Peace for EVERYONE. How can we contribute??? Bearing in mind that the real cause of world events is to be found in the invisible world of our collective thoughts, intentions, beliefs and desires, and not in the world of visible matter, what can we do that will foster peace?
A beautiful suggestion came in an email message sent out on 12th September by Neale Donald Walsch, Marianne Williamson, James Twyman, James Redfield and Doreen Virtue. Here’s part of it:
“What can you do TODAY...this very moment? A central teaching in most spiritual traditions is: What you wish to experience, provide for another. Look to see, now, what it is you wish to experience – in your own life, and in the world. Then see if there is another for whom you may be the source of that. If you wish to experience peace, provide peace for another. If you wish to know that you are safe, cause another to know that they are safe. If you wish to better understand seemingly incomprehensible things, help another to better understand. If you wish to heal your own sadness or anger, seek to heal the sadness or anger of another. Those others are waiting for you now. They are looking to you for guidance, for help, for courage, for strength, for understanding, and for assurance at this hour. Most of all, they are looking to you for love.”
That made a big impression. Another thing that impressed us hugely was this: By ‘coincidence’, at the time of the American disaster, a group of Tibetan monks had just come all the way from Dharamsala in Northern India to an isolated smallholding called Rhosyn Gwyn in West Wales, to construct a peace mandala entirely out of tiny grains of sand. They began work on 10th September, and finished 14 days later, creating a mandala whose unbelievable intricacy and beauty you can see on the front page. We were only able to watch the monks at work for a few hours, but from this, and from talking to helpers, we learned – and experienced – much.
The monks began with a blank, square, blue surface. Their first task was to pinpoint the Centre, and to be aware that present in it, as in all true Centres, is the power of Divine Compassion, which they call Chenrezig. Then, having drawn some preliminary lines of force, they worked peacefully and patiently from the centre outward, until the ‘Power which is in the Centre’ had filled every corner of the ‘square of matter’ with its beauty, harmony and order. What a vivid demonstration of how the Power in our own innermost Centre, and in the Centre of the Earth, can work, if only we give our consent and cooperation!
Interestingly, one of the most instructive things, we found, was the behaviour of the monks when they made a mistake. We saw how the misplaced grains of sand were removed and transferred to the right place, not hurriedly and forcefully as we might have done, but with exactly the same amount of loving care, patience and attention as the monks had been using throughout. That, we thought, is how we should deal with our own mistakes, our own dark side, not to mention the areas of darkness we think we can see in other people. Rejection, repression, impatience, condemnation, retaliation – these methods, though perhaps understandable, do not work. They do not heal. The greater Self, the Centre, on the other hand, always heals. And it does so through patient acceptance, absorption.... and transformation.
The most powerfully impressive thing of all, however, was what the monks did with the sand mandala when they had finished it. They swept the whole thing up, poured it into a nearby stream and let it float away, knowing that the power of Divine Compassion, with which the grains of sand had been charged by their potent actions, would be transferred to the water and carried by it over the whole Earth. Now, whenever we walk by a river or the sea, whenever it's raining, which is often, and whenever clouds gather, which is often, too, we think of that peace mandala, and the power of Compassion. It is there. No one, no thing, can ever take it away from us. It only waits for our consent.
Thus we discovered what, for us, would be the most useful contribution we could make to world peace. We can do our best to allow the power of the Centre – which is capable of bringing peace, harmony and order to all things – to work through into every detail of our thoughts, our feelings, our relationships, our lives. And, when this greater light exposes the shadows more clearly, as it inevitably will, we will react not from the small self, with its natural aggression and rejection, but from the greater Self, the Centre, with its wide, all-loving embrace, patience and understanding. This persistent action, we believe, will lend more power to our prayers than thought alone could ever do. And finally, thanks to the insight given us by Neale Donald Walsch and friends, we will do our best to give what we want most to receive – the insight and tools capable of bringing true peace to ourselves and the world. In that sense, we hope you will find this issue of the Cygnus Review rewarding, and full of gifts that you, too, would like to give.
With much love from all of us!
Geoff, Ann, Jackie, Derek, Martyn, Jackie M, Sue, Samantha, Regina, Jon, Sam, Sandra, Pat, Karena, Louisa, Mary, Emma, and Belinda.
Text & photographs © Cygnus Books 20-Nov-2001
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