 Dear Friends,
A more peace loving bloke than Geoff you couldn't wish to meet, but when he was at school he had shooting lessons. Now you might think there would be little room for spirituality in such an exercise, but two of the things Geoff's shooting instructor taught him became indelibly etched on his soul, and are now an established part of our family legend:
1. If you want to hit the target, you must be ‘cool, calm and carbolic' (in other words, if you want to succeed, there can be no room for any emotion save an imperturbable stillness).
2. The time to stop aiming is not, as you might think, when you have fired the bullet, but when the bullet is in the target, (in other words, until the bullet has reached its mark, you neither flinch nor waver, but remain perfectly focused on your aim).
Right. So what did we tell you all that for? Well, because, when you think about it, such instructions are an excellent guide when you're trying to reach any sort of target, especially a spiritual one. What is our target, then? Judging by all the emails and letters we receive from you daily, our common 24-hour-a-day goal could be expressed as follows: to bring as much healing to our planet as we possibly can. You send us so many suggestions for doing this that we can only conclude that, as a result your prayers, thoughts and efforts, and those of millions of others like you around the world, this planet must be surrounded by a wave of loving, spiritual energy such as has never been seen before.
So, to return to our ‘shooting’ analogy, we can say that the ‘bullet’ has definitely been fired. Nevertheless, one look around us is enough to show that it certainly hasn't finished reaching its target just yet! And that's why we mustn't stop aiming. What do we mean? Well, just imagine. Through our prayers and meditations, we are invoking a huge amount of loving, spiritual energy on the higher planes. Now it could be supposed that, once invoked, that energy would just do its work on the material plane without any further intervention. Yet that's only partly true. Of course love will find a way to express itself through any crack that becomes available. People will be inspired by the spiritual energy we have invoked, without necessarily knowing why.
But the whole process could be speeded up immeasurably if we didn't ‘stop aiming until the bullet is in the target', the target being the material plane, not the planes above it. As Marianne Williamson says in Everyday Grace, love needs to be not just felt, but expressed in the material world. And that means we need to go further than expressing love on an individual level, towards those we come into contact with every day. If we want to love, rather than to be responsible for the killing, maiming and exploiting of our fellow creatures, we need to let our corporations, governments and institutions know that we do, and then make the choices that will show them we mean what we say. And we need to do even more towards creating structures in our society that can provide alternatives to the exploitative, destructive ones we have now. As Mary Sparrowdancer portrays so vividly in Love Song of the Universe, none of us need feel too small or insignificant to participate in this task of allowing the Spirit to build society anew. ‘If you suffer a wound – an injury, is it not the effort of a few tiny cells that brings about the healing of the wound?' Without our willing, working hearts, minds and hands, spiritual powers can do so little.
And that's why we must stay cool, calm and carbolic, too. There is so much going on around us at the moment that could give rise to anger or despair. Many of us have tried, in the past, to deal with these uncomfortable emotions by rejecting them or blanking them out, or telling ourselves we don’t get angry at all and then getting depressed, instead. However, the real purpose of anger, once all the value judgements and desire to wound are taken out of the equation, is to galvanise the human body into action, to give a signal that action is needed. So if we don't repress such feelings but instead convert them, the moment they arise, into fuel to fire our determination to bring love into this world, they will have achieved their proper purpose, and our hearts can stay ‘cool, calm and carbolic', poised and ready for whatever action is required of us by the Spirit.
Many spiritual teachers say that, on the higher planes, the tide of destruction has already turned. Indeed, it's bound to have done, partly in response to the huge wave of prayer and loving thought mentioned above. Well then, refusing to allow ourselves to be diverted or discouraged by any world events, however apparently threatening, let's resolve to do everything in our power to make the coming 12 months the time when the tide turns on the material plane as well.
May the Earth be carpeted with the flowers of our loving actions.
With much love from all of us.
Geoff, Ann, Martyn, Jackie, Jacqueline, Eileen, Sarah, Lynette, Regina, Irina, Penny, Belinda, Catherine, Richard, Brian, Will, Phil, Alison, Mary, Derek, Eddie, Louisa, Jon, Sam & Pat
Text & photographs © Cygnus Books 28-Nov-2006
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