The Best of Times

The other day a friend gave me a newspaper cutting with this surprising headline: ‘2016 : it was the best of times’. Reflecting on the year that is past, I don’t think many of us would have said that! It seems to have been a year of great world challenges, and for many people, serious personal ones too. But the newspaper lists some surprising and wonderful statistics (actually given in a reader’s letter):

‘We are living in a world that is getting richer, in which the number of people living in extreme poverty has for the first time fallen below 10 per cent. Since 1990, almost 1.1 billion have escaped extreme poverty. World hunger reached its lowest point for 25 years in 2016 and, for the first time ever, the death penalty has become illegal in more than half of the world’s countries. The world got healthier too: since their peak a decade ago, Aids-related deaths have fallen by 45 per cent and infant mortality has halved since 1990.’

When so much of what we read and hear in the media seems negative and often very depressing, a report like this is truly a reason for New Year celebration!

White Eagle encourages us all the time to think positively, reminding us of the power of good thought to transform negative conditions and of the healing magic of the Star. ‘Read something negative, think healing Star magic’ is my philosophy, but how heartening it is to read something positive like this; it truly does lift the heart!

Just before writing my blog I found by chance these affirmative words of White Eagle in the book of his teaching Spiritual Unfoldment Volume 3:

‘Think of spiritual evolution as a most perfect procedure…… all the broken fragments of life are used and brought together in an indescribably lovely way to perfect the pattern of man’s life on Earth.’