2008-05-17, by John Ringland
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Here are some informative and uplifting insights about the current
process of global transformation, in the form of excerpts from an
article
in a recent World
Goodwill newsletter.
It is also related to articles of my own about
global awakening.
Nations as expressions of the soul of a people
The nation state is such a fixture in our experience of the world
that it is good to try and understand what a nation really is. The
goodwill approach views a nation as more than a collection of human
beings within a geographical area: it is an ensouled entity in its
own right. A nation has the tendency to altruism and the capacity for
selfishness just as any individual has. It has its own strengths and
weaknesses, and its own unique contribution to make to the world of
nations. It faces challenges and tests which are there to bring out
the best, but which can also bring disaster if the wrong path is
chosen. After all, a test is not a test unless there is both the
potential for success and the possibility of failure.
A deep psychological renewal of the nations of the world is
arguably the most urgent of all the pressing problems and issues that
face us today. The reason is not hard to find. Nation states are
still the main decision makers in the world. Without national renewal
on a broad scale, we will not have anchored the needed values and
motives and soul contact to truly face and resolve the other pressing
problems we all face. With psychological renewal a nation can
recognise the chains that blindly shackle it to the past and break
free from them, can transform selfish personality motives into the
desire of the soul to serve, and can become receptive to previously
unregistered new ideas and discern new paths forward. It is obvious
that without this deep and transforming renewal, involving as it must
recognition of and contact with the soul, all efforts at dealing with
problems remain superficial, tinkering with effects and not working
with causes.
The original meaning of the word psychology is the ‘science or
study of the soul’, and one of the important legacies that Alice
Bailey has given us is an in-depth study of the soul, its energies
and consciousness, in her Treatise on the Seven Rays. These
rays are the primary energies that qualify all life within our solar
system, and this includes the soul quality as well as the form
nature, or personality, of the different nations. Here is a brief
outline of the Rays and their effects on individual, group and
national consciousness.
... see the article
for these details ...
The Spiral Dynamics perspective sees our present humanity
attempting to negotiate the most difficult, but at the same time the
most exciting, transition it has ever faced. It is not merely a
transition to a new level of existence but the start of a new
‘movement’ in the symphony of human history. The future offers
us, basically, three possibilities: (1) Most gruesome is the chance
that we might fail to stabilize our world and, through successive
catastrophes regress far back. (2) Only slightly less frightening is
the vision of fixation in the blue/orange/green societal complex.
This might resemble George Orwell’s 1984 with its tyrannic,
manipulative government, glossed over by a veneer of
humanitarian-sounding doublethink and moralistic rationalizations,
and is a very real possibility. (3) The last possibility is that we
could emerge into the yellow level and proceed toward stabilizing our
world so that all life can continue.
So how can psychological renewal of a nation be achieved? The
answer must be principally found in invoking the life and energy of
the soul. But first it is important to assess the values which govern
national decision making. When these are conditioned by selfish
goals, an excessive attachment to material things, by policies of
national aggrandisement, and by an unwillingness to allow all to
share in the nation’s prosperity, then we can be sure that they are
overdue for change to more spiritual values. What are these? A love
of truth, honesty and goodwill in relationships, a growing focus on
giving rather than taking, a desire to arrange for an equitable
distribution of resources. These are soul values. We can assess a
nation’s ability to manifest the soul by how it applies these
values both to its internal life – how it fosters the sense of
responsibility and creativity among its citizenry, how it treats its
children, its elderly, its mentally ill, and its criminals, and to
the quality of its relationships with the world of nations.
For the nation the influence of the soul is always present, though
at times tenuously. It is embodied in the lives of those of its
citizens who have reached the stage of personal unfoldment when
contact with the soul is consciously made. They may often be an
ignored minority, but they are there. They are the conscience of the
nation and its true visionaries. In times of national distress it is
these exponents of soul life who can come to the fore and inspire a
new direction in the national life. Examples of this abound all over
the world not only in myth, legend and historical events, but, and
perhaps especially, in our present time too. It is these true leaders
who evoke an enlightened public opinion, which is now so strong a
force that, in recent decades, it has reshaped whole countries and
moulded the way that we think about the world. So it is clear that
the opportunity and responsibility for helping a nation to manifest
the soul rests with these people.
Some great statesmen have been notable instances of this. US
President Eisenhower, in his 1953 ‘Chance for Peace’ address,
outlined the principles which would govern his government’s foreign
policy – “No people on earth can be held, as a people, to be an
enemy, for all humanity shares the common hunger for peace and
fellowship and justice. No nation’s security and well-being can be
lastingly achieved in isolation but only in effective cooperation
with fellow-nations. Every nation’s right to a form of government
and an economic system of its own choosing is inalienable. Any
nation’s attempt to dictate to other nations their form of
government is indefensible. A nation’s hope of lasting peace cannot
be firmly based upon any race in armaments but rather upon just
relations and honest understanding with all other nations.”
In a speech in 1994 the then president of the Czech Republic,
Vaclav Havel, noted that, “In today’s multicultural world, the
truly reliable path to coexistence, to peaceful coexistence and
creative cooperation, must start from what is at the root of all
cultures and what lies infinitely deeper in human hearts and minds
than political opinion, convictions, antipathies, or sympathies –
it must be rooted in self-transcendence: transcendence as a hand
reached out to those close to us, to foreigners, to the human
community, to all living creatures, to nature, to the universe;
transcendence as a deeply and joyously experienced need to be in
harmony even with what we ourselves are not, what we do not
understand, what seems distant from us in time and space, but with
which we are nevertheless mysteriously linked because, together with
us, all this constitutes a single world; transcendence as the only
real alternative to extinction.”
Inspiring oratory like this illumines and lifts the consciousness
of the nation and gains the respect of the world. But it is not just
in the area of government that these people work; all areas of human
interest and activity are fields that offer opportunity for the
expression of soul purpose and values. Science and education are
obvious areas where the light of the soul is pouring through and
illuminating the world. A less obvious example is the military,
where, since the 2nd World War and the founding of the United
Nations, there has been a growing emphasis on constructive
peacemaking and peacekeeping as opposed to aggressive war making.
In the field of law and justice two closely related and creative
ideas are finding expression. There is firstly the concept of
restorative justice – generally applied to individual cases; and
secondly the idea of the “Truth and Reconciliation” commission
where restorative justice is applied at the national level.
In the developed world justice has tended to focus on punishment
and it is only comparatively recently that moves to redirect justice
towards the idea of reform and rehabilitation have gained limited
ground. In the indigenous world however it is often a different
story. Punishment is not seen as a helpful concept. Paula M. Young,
assistant professor at the Appalachian School of Law in Virginia
writes: “Many traditional cultures including native Hawaiians, the
Maori people of New Zealand, First Nation people in Canada, South
African Tswanas tribesmen and the Navajo in the United States use
conflict resolution processes designed to promote healing of
relationships and peacemaking within communities through dialogue,
negotiation and problem-solving between victims and criminal
offenders… This approach to crime has gained the name ‘restorative
justice’.” Conflict between people is inevitable, but when it
occurs, restorative justice can help to restore the balance in a just
and fair way. In resolving the harm done it works to prevent it
happening again.
It is of course an obvious development to apply restorative
justice principles to larger community groupings and national levels
in the form of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions. And it is
heartening to find that these initiatives are flourishing and
pointing the way to an unprecedented group healing and national
rehabilitation. To date, more than thirty nations have held such
Commissions. The first one to gain the attention and admiration of
the world was the one in South Africa chaired by Archbishop Desmond
Tutu. In his words, “[t]he Commission was an essential part of our
democratic transition from apartheid towards a more just society.”
There are many examples of national transformation through the
arts. A wonderful instance is the West-East Divan, an orchestra
bringing together young Israeli and Arab musicians and transcending
the barriers of hatred that characterise that region. It was founded
through the joint effort of Edward Said, the late Palestinian-born
writer and professor, and the conductor Daniel Barenboim, who asserts
that “Music says everything about unity and harmony. The musicians
in the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra work together toward a common
goal. That in itself is a revolutionary concept, considering where
they come from.” The orchestra is “a musical version of what I
think about the Middle East, a vision I can have of the Middle East
where everyone is able to contribute and where the whole is greater
than the sum of its parts”.
Another example is the initiatives of ‘Barefoot Artists’ who
work with poor communities across the globe helping people heal and
thrive through self-expression and action, creating beauty to
transform their environment while inspiring self-determination and
empowerment. Founded by Lily Yeh in the 1980s, it is based on her 20
years of experience using art for community building, empowerment and
economic development in inner city North Philadelphia and in poor
communities internationally. In 2005 the team spent three weeks in
Gisenyi, Rwanda, working simultaneously on two complementary projects
in the Rugerero area in Cyanzarwe District to help with the work of
healing community relations after the genocide.
Such is the wonder of the human spirit that these are not unusual
deviations from a misperceived pattern of human selfishness. Rather,
they are just a tiny fraction of the thousands of initiatives in
every country in every part of the world where individuals and groups
are consciously anchoring the values and energies of the soul into
the life of the nation they belong to, and leading, in Alice Bailey’s
words, “to the revelation of divinity through humanity”.
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