Clarifying Our Own Understandings

In the midst of such diverse world views, how do we begin to gain for ourselves a sense of how Divine Purpose and Will are working their way out and avoid getting hooked into small, superficial, exclusivist, limiting or life-sapping agendas? How do we begin to discover and understand that all the events and issues around us mean something, that they are clues to deeper exciting spiritual realities and vast transformative processes? It becomes very evident that we need to be able to bring to all world events and current issues deepening understandings around:

Purpose: Purpose implies that there has not only been intelligent design in the ongoing creative process but that there is continuous purposeful direction toward some higher goal and state. What might be God’s desire or purpose for the cosmos, planet, humanity, each person, and how has that purpose been worked out to date? What might that purpose be asking of us now?

Big Picture: We will interpret all world events and issues according to the size of the reality which governs our life. How big a picture can we begin to glimpse? How simple or complex is it? How far does it extend in time and space? Is it as small as ourselves and our own desires, or is it as vast as the cosmos?

Plan to date: Not only does history have profound overall meaning and purpose. There is evidence that it is part of a complex plan of unfoldment being worked out by God and humanity in partnership. Global events, crises, trends, patterns, cycles, rhythms, deeper outcomes and transformations (large or small, and deeply affected by human attitudes and choices) are all pieces in the planetary and cosmic jigsaw puzzle which is being created and fitted together piece by piece over a vast time and space frame.

Energy: Events and time periods each contribute, in an amazing and divinely ordered sequence, very different cosmic energies, and it is these differences, and their interactions, which help catalyse new phases in the planetary and cosmic journey of unfoldment. On the whole the West has traditionally, and to its real detriment, had a very poor understanding of energy. Now it is crucial that we bring to all current issues a basic understanding of: the different impacting cosmic energies (such as the uniquely different energies of each 2,100 year Age); the energy flows of different types of cycles and rhythms; the impact of the energies of certain time periods, events, individuals, groups and nations.

Significance of the Present: If there is purpose, then the quality of every moment is significant, because it forms one minute part of the working out of that purpose. In the midst of the media bombardment, we need to be very awake to the significance of every: event, person, leader, attitude, choice and action as they each contribute to the unique energy and character of every present moment.

The Spiritual Role of Crisis: Almost all news coverage involves crisis. In the West we have tended to run from or try to eliminate crisis. We have therefore been slow to appreciate both its immensely significant spiritual role in catalysing unfoldment at every level and how vitally important it is that humanity as a whole learns to understand and maximise this powerful evolutionary process.

Future: We can choose how we view the future. If we see it as an inevitable continuation of a purposeless present, then we will passively and carelessly drift into it, unconcerned about the quality of the choices we make in the present. If we see it as the next phase of a vast divinely initiated and propelled cosmic journey which we are incredibly privileged to be part of, then every choice we make will deliberately seek to enhance that journey, for all humans and the planet at large.

The Role of Humans in Helping to Determine the Future: Natural events, such as volcanic eruptions, will impact on the future. But far more significant are human events. Because, as humans, we have free will the future is largely determined by our individual and corporate attitudes, fears, hopes, desires, prejudices, choices, and actions, along with our capacity or lack of capacity for love, forgiveness, compassion, self-sacrifice, right relationship and right use of power. All of these will stand or fall on whether our vision is large enough, and on whether we have the courage, will, daring and commitment to put it into place. We have a responsibility to do this as well as possible, in co-operation with Divine purpose and plan, the highest future, and the ‘yeasting’ and outworking of the Kingdom of God on earth.

The Challenge of the Present

If this is a time of God’s ‘new thing’, as one Age gives way to another, then the old formulas, old preconceptions, old containers, and old ways of seeing will no longer be valid. We have to find new ways of perceiving events and issues. And we have to begin to recognise that they are not just challenging other people or other nations, they are challenging us to make changes – in perceptions, processes and practices.

It is clear that while we increasingly live in a world which is, to all intents and purposes, a global neighbourhood, it is also clear that many governments and factions (political, religious, economic, scientific etc) have vested interests in attempting to ensure that suspicion and separation are where it’s at.

At this moment in history, global economies and morales are sagging under the weight of individual and corporate fear. Holidays are on hold, spending curtailed. Many people have gone into, and are operating out of, siege mentality. Walls are erected, international trade and goodwill suffers. Much of this fear and suspicion is generated not only by fanatics and fundamentalists of all religious and political persuasions, but by the media.