“A great awakening is in process”, Alice Bailey wrote some decades ago—an awakening which is coming through, not in spite of, the widespread conflict so visible throughout the world. Such is the critical tendency of the lower mind that it’s easy to recognise conflict, particularly on the personal level, and to react to it emotionally, for the desire for peace is an intrinsic quality of human nature. An attribute that’s not so fundamental, but rather one that must be learned, is the power of goodwill to be a bridging mechanism in the resolution of conflict. In fact, the very nature of the conflict of ideas and of emotional desire is that the subjective forces which generate conflict eventually reach a stage “so acute that it will finally exhaust itself, and people will turn, with relief and with a longing to escape from further turmoil, towards right human relations”, Alice Bailey wrote.
Dare we hope that we are approaching that stage? Is the widespread conflict we see in political systems, cultural differences, economic inequality, and the environmental crisis reaching the point of cleavage that will enable the needed shattering which is the aftermath of crystallisation?
The writings of Alice Bailey speak of the fire of the will-to-love—a love which encompasses the greater Whole, which fosters a long range vision, and which quickens the “spirit of relationship” in human hearts and minds. This fire must be applied first to the personal life, burning through the borders and walls created by materialism, separateness, and suspicion. Such is the nature of fire that, when the blaze is sufficiently intense, it can jump the gap or cleavage generated by those walls, revealing new pathways to right relationships that previously seemed unbridgeable, or even unimaginable. Every bridge effects the uniting of two polarities, but first, one pole must become activated; expecting “the other side” to make the first approach isn’t the answer.
Particularly for people of spiritual aspiration, there is a need to cultivate what the Bailey writings call the sense of that which is imminent. The seeker has to awaken to those ideas and realisations that hover on the verge of human recognition, and to make the necessary preparations within oneself that will enable the seeker to become a cooperator in revealing these possibilities to humanity. In practical terms, this means that the bridging of cleavages must begin by monitoring the quality of one’s thoughts and reactions to conflict. It remembers the progression from conflict to harmony: that understanding doesn’t come when goodwill has been established, but rather that goodwill provides the foundation which makes understanding—the psychological recognition of differences in perception—inevitable.
The insight provided by an esoteric perspective on the present world crisis is not only a hope, but a guarantee.
