There is no circumstance that does not offer some gain to the life of the soul. We make our choices according to the best wisdom and reasoning we have at the time and those are our points of crisis and all we can do is try to learn from them.
Robert: Welcome to Inner Sight. Inner sight is simply seeing that which is always present but not yet fully recognized. You have within you the ability to see yourself and the world around you in a new way with new eyes. So, stay with us and together we’ll look at the world and ourselves with inner sight. Our topic for today is crisis. I have a thought from Alice Bailey, the founder of the Lucis Trust organization who sponsors this show. Alice Bailey wrote twenty-four volumes of books and all of the dialogue that you hear on this show emanates from her work and so does this thought: “There is a crisis in human affairs. This crises must be viewed in terms of opportunity and not in terms of cataclysm or catastrophe.” I really agree with that. Any time that I’ve gone through a crisis, I know that when I look back on that crisis that many times I’ve grown, I’ve become a stronger human being, I’ve learned about my weaknesses, my shortcomings, and I’ve become aware of the areas of my life that I really have to work on and improve. I can’t say that I like to go through these crises but those are the times in my life where I’ve really grown the most. What is the real meaning of crisis and why does it have such a negative connotation?
Sarah: Crisis, according to the dictionary, is a decisive point or a turning point that leads to something better or something worse, depending on how you handle it. That brings to mind kind of a hackneyed phrase, but I’ll trot it out anyway: that the Chinese character for crisis is a combination of the characters for danger and opportunity. That’s what’s implied in what you were saying in your introduction and what’s implied in the statement by Alice Bailey, that it has to be viewed in terms of opportunity, but because it does provide a point of choice and decision, there is that danger that you might choose wrongly. The spiritual path teaches us, even through our mistakes, that we can learn sometimes the best lessons through our mistakes. So, I think we mustn’t stand on pride and fear too much. None of us would willingly make mistakes, I don’t think, but when they happen, we can still mine them for the gold they might contain within them. I think that’s what you were saying when you look back on crises and realize that you’ve really gained from them.
Dale: You know, I think crisis has a negative connotation because it’s usually been associated with some kind of tragedy or something breaking apart, whether it be the family unit or a business or a health crisis. People go through these crises all the time. Something seems to be breaking down. A situation that was considered to be stable and sure, now is seen to be falling apart, so it becomes a tragic event in people’s lives and that’s what they tend to associate crisis with. But as you say, it’s an opportunity if they can see it that way, an opportunity to grow and to move beyond that stage.
Sarah: I think people have the tendency to second guess themselves, second guess their choices. We probably all do that. We look back on our life and think maybe I should have done something differently, maybe I should have handled something differently. I think that starts even when you’re a young student. One moment of crisis that occurs to me from what you were saying is when you finish your schooling and you have to make a choice about what you’re going to do with your life. I can well remember being presented with the advice of a friend of my parents that I should have chosen the path that would lead to a large salary, and I can still remember that moment sitting there on the step listening to this man tell me this and feeling absolutely astonished at why anyone would want to choose a path in life just for the salary it offered. But that was back in the sixties.
Dale: Then you went into the Peace Corps.
Sarah: (laughing) He thought that was a very bad choice because he was quite right, it didn’t offer much of a salary. So, we can second guess ourselves all our lives, but you know there’s that poem by Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken,” where he said, “Two roads diverged in a wood and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” Well, we make our choices according to the best wisdom and reasoning we have at the time and those are our points of crisis and all we can do is try to learn from them.
Dale: Yes, as I said earlier, we come to these points where choices have to be made and can be made. I think it’s for a real purpose that we arrive at these points because something deep within us is trying to tell us something. If we arrive at a certain plateau and things begin to fall apart and we wonder what’s going on, what’s happening, why is all this happening to me, well, I think maybe the soul or that inner self is really forcing the process and creating the kind of situation that has to be resolved.
Sarah: So, you’re saying that the soul could actually present us with crises.
Dale: Yes, I think so.
Sarah: That’s quite different than how traditional society looks at crises. I think one reason that crisis has a negative connotation is that most of us probably think we’ve done something wrong if we come to a crisis, we must have slipped up and made a mistake because we’ve entered into a situation where things seem shaken up, we’re facing the unknown, and things aren’t humming along ever so smoothly.
Dale: And that’s the very time that the soul may create more pressure, bring more light into your life and cause more discontent, thereby creating a lot of doubt in your mind. That’s exactly what the soul intends to do.
Sarah: All of that’s good. We’ve talked before on this programme about friction in the spiritual life. The friction of the soul against the interests of the personality is painful, but it also produces growth. Most of us would think friction would be a very bad thing, but in fact it’s the higher, more inclusive, more expansive energy of the soul bumping up against the personality, which always seems to seek the preservation of self-interest, the status quo and the material comfort. So, those are reasons for the negativity.
Robert: I’m intrigued by what you said earlier about looking for the gold in a situation. Is it best if we always look for the blessing within the negative situation?
Sarah: Absolutely. That’s something I really believe—that there is no circumstance that does not offer some gain to the life of the soul. If you find yourself in prison for having committed a terrible crime — that would be, to me, one of the worst things that could befall a human being — even there you have to start thinking about how you can turn that situation around and find something you can profit from. Every tragedy can teach you something. Shakespeare told us this centuries ago. He said, “Sweet are the uses of adversity,” and he said, “find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones and good in everything.” In other words, he was saying there’s nothing on Earth that doesn’t offer something useful and teachable in it, if we have the eyes and ears to discern it. So, it’s a way of living life that is transformational.
Robert: I guess maybe we’ll make that our thought for the day here, and that is to look for the blessing in everything.
Sarah: In everything!
Robert: Always look for the positive, look for the blessing, and I guess if we search hard enough we’ll find it.
Sarah: And don’t whine. (laughter) I’m a great whiner, but you know, I don’t like it. Don’t whine.
Robert: Okay! Would you say the world is in a state of crisis right now?
Sarah: Yes. Wouldn’t you?
Dale: Yes, and it’s a good thing really, because it’s been in a state of crisis for quite a while now, the last hundred years at least. We’ve had two major world wars, and we’ve had a number of local wars and smaller wars within countries. There are still wars going on and there’s the big crisis now in the Middle East and in Afghanistan. It’s very painful to go through this, but there are — as we said earlier, about the soul — there are soul powers that are working out here, soul values and soul forces that are, I think, instigating this from the inside, from the inner planes. It’s a cleansing process. There’s a lot of negativity coming to the surface and evil forces coming to the surface and it has to be resolved.
Sarah: What is that law of healing in the book by Alice Bailey Esoteric Healing that says, “good draws evil to the surface”? That’s a way of looking at what’s happening today. I think people have a sense since September 11th that we are really at a point of crisis in terms of having to change something about the way we live our lives. We’re not sure what it is, but I would say our basic values and goals, which are far too materialistic, our orientation toward maintaining our own personal comfort when so much of the world is suffering, the intolerability of hatred and separation between peoples, which I think we all realize is untenable. We can’t allow these pockets of hatred and animosity to exist. Something has to be done to overcome these cleavages that separate whole groups of people from each other. To me, that’s all come to light.
Dale: Right. There is a lot of crystallization being carried out. Attitudes are crystallizing, and these are long held beliefs that are actually impeding any forward movement in human consciousness. This is particularly true in fields of religion and politics because that’s where so much of the light actually is being shown, and these ancient attitudes are coming up now for resolution and people can see them. They’re on the surface, they’re being acted out at the physical level and it’s creating a lot of discontent, but it’s also providing a lot of light about the next step that we have to take.
Sarah: In some ways you could say that some of these things that are coming to the surface have been there for a long time: hatreds and animosities and the oppression of certain peoples, and the imbalance in the economic distribution. Those have been with us for a long time, but maybe it’s a sign of our growing sensitivity and compassion for our fellowmen, that these things are no longer tenable. So, in a way that’s positive.
Dale: Sure. I think we have to look beyond this point of crisis and see what’s possible coming out on the other side because humanity has been through this before for thousands of years. Just looking back to the year 1400 — and this is written about in the Bailey books so I want to mention it here — just prior to the European Renaissance. There was a lot of crystallization built up at that time, particularly in politics and in religion, and the spiritual guides on the inner planes determined that much had to be done about breaking up this crystallization. That happened, and out of that came the glorious outpouring of the creative energies of the Renaissance, in art, in culture and in music. There was just a tremendous outpouring of creative activity, and that’s the sort of thing that can happen again today once we get past this stage, because there is a tremendous amount of creative energy in human consciousness that is just waiting to erupt to the surface.
Robert: Sarah, what you said a moment ago about separateness and divisions and humanity contributing to the evil of the world reminded me of what you said at the last monthly meeting we had, about the epiphany that occurred to the Buddha when he discovered what the source of all human pain was. Would you mind telling us that? I’d like to share that with the audience.
Sarah: Well, he realized that suffering was based on desire which keeps us imprisoned in our own selfish self-serving wants and needs. The sense that we are isolated from the rest of the world is a basic misconception of life at the most profound and essential level. We are beginning to realize today that we are all interconnected. I don’t think we have even begun to take into our consciousness what that really implies and how we have to change the way we live. But at least we’re beginning to realize that there is a connection between living things, and I think we’re going to be spending the next century becoming more and more sensitive to that and more sensitive about our impacts on each other.
Robert: It’s also interesting that the latest science in quantum physics says that this reality — that we’re all separate and individual — is a false reality and it’s an illusion. The true reality is that we are all part of One and we’re all connected, so it’s amazing that Buddha was saying that many hundreds of years ago.
Sarah: He was way ahead of us.
Robert: We’ve spoken about reincarnation on this show many times. Does reincarnation or rebirth play a part in crisis?
Sarah: I think they do because even traditionally it’s said that God never gives you a burden too great for you to bear, which sort of implies that whatever our crises or our tests and problems are, they are appropriate for us at the time. That to me is demonstrated by the realization that this is one life in a very long series of repeated experiences on Earth. We aren’t here for the first time or the last time. It’s a continuum. In this lifetime, perhaps we are revisiting some things, some decisions, some mistakes that we’ve made in the past and finding a chance to put it right.
Dale: Yes, another name for the Law of Rebirth or Reincarnation as it’s commonly called, is the Law of Opportunity. Of course, that’s what crisis is. It’s the opportunity to make the right decision to move forward and to clear the decks of bad karma and move on. This tends to take the anxiety out of the whole idea that I have to be perfect in this life. We’re taught in Bible school Christ’s teaching, “Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” How are you going to do all this in one lifetime? It may create anxiety in some people if they think they’re not perfect. They’ve made all these blunders in their life, and they go through these terrible crises. The point is you do have a lot more chances ahead of you. As you said before, what we are in this life is a product of what we have been in the past.
Sarah: That reminds me of that saying that you get the face you deserve by the time you’re fifty. (laughter) Well, you could extend that and say you have the life and the circumstances you deserve right now, considering what you’ve done and been in the past.
Dale: I think that’s because if you look at it from the standpoint of the soul, that’s what it’s trying to do. It is constantly working, little by little, life after life, towards integration — integration of your emotional state, your mental state with the soul — to lift those forces and energies of the lower self and integrate them with the higher values of the soul so they can be expressed in the world. It says in Alice Bailey’s writings that integration is the keynote of the evolutionary trend in this world, in this planet.
Sarah: Another aspect about rebirth and reincarnation to me is that it brings in the element of justice, which I find very reassuring. A lot of us probably have a sense that life isn’t fair, that some people get a raw deal, other people have it really easy, but in fact, life is very fair and infinitely tuned to the achievement of a perfect justice. Again, this is one stop along a very long way. What we see right now is just one small part of a very long path, but it is perfectly adjusted for the present need of the individual. That’s where the crisis comes in. These are opportunities where we can change and grow. It’s a redemptive way of looking at life. You can take your circumstances even when they’re really bad and redeem them, turn them to something that serves your spiritual growth.
Dale: We’re never given by the soul, or the soul never puts us in a condition that we can’t handle or demands that we become something that is impossible to achieve in this particular life. It’s always doable if we just are able to step back and see really where the problem lies, and then be honest and make a correction.
Robert: Well, I certainly like your definition of life a lot better than Sartre’s definition that life is the interruption of pleasant nonexistence. (laughter) I don’t exactly agree with him on that one. Alice Bailey said that the pursuit of an even tenor is not always the best course in a crisis. What do you think she meant by that?
Sarah: I think she was saying that to stay with the known and the familiar can be deadly to the life of the soul. So many people are absolutely intent on preserving that familiarity, that calmness, that harmony, that equilibrium, which can lead to a kind of a status quo without growth. Having a smooth sailing through life might be a lifetime that hasn’t really been tested or productive in terms of expanded understanding. It might, from the soul’s viewpoint, be a failure.
Robert: That’s interesting and I agree with that. I remember a friend of mine who left Harvard Law School and was about to be make a million dollars a year but decided that instead he was going to take a job in the Caribbean. He spent the rest of his life just basking in the sun. Perhaps to the soul that was a failure of a life. That’s about all the time we have for our discussion today. You’ve been listening to Inner Sight. Now we would like to close with a world prayer called the Great Invocation. It’s a call for light and love and goodwill to flow into the world and into our hearts. Let’s listen for a moment too these powerful words.
Sarah: Sarah closes the program by reciting the adapted version of the Great Invocation.
(This is an edited transcript of a recorded radio program called “Inner Sight.” This conversation was recorded between the host, Robert Anderson, and the then President and Vice-President of Lucis Trust, Sarah and Dale McKechnie.)
(Transcribed and edited by Carla McLeod)
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