Invoking the Future: Upcoming Initiatives at the United Nations

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World Goodwill Meditation Group webinar
31 August 2022
Invoking the Future: Upcoming Initiatives at the United Nations

Introduction

Standing in the present, recognizing the power that ancient inherited thought-forms, desires and glamours have in the mind and heart of the present – it is important not to be overpowered with a sense of the heaviness of these inherited ways of thinking and being and the hold they inevitably have on human affairs.

But we have to be able to understand the essential glamours and illusions that have conditioned that past if we are to chart a way forward that progressively frees us from the glamours. Rather than framing the future in impossibly idealistic images, we need to direct our gaze towards those areas in human affairs where principles carrying the newer liberating energies right relaationship are already becoming points of focus for collective thought and will.

As we look to the future in this way, we can invoke those principles of right relations and the Spiritual Beings Who inform them and who are their Essence … and, most importantly, we can be looking out for the evocative effect these principles are having on human affairs in the present.

And so it is that in this context we can now turn our attention to two forthcoming events at the United Nations headquarters in New York. Both events will be a culmination of a carefully nurtured process of dialogues, study papers, research projects involving government representatives, professionals, business people, community groups from every region of the planet. Both events are designed to explore, develop, and clarify a vision for the future that will bring us as a species closer to the principles that are at the heart of the United Nations – unity in diversity; freedom; cooperation; sharing - in essence the principles of Right Human Relations.

In the spirit of World Goodwill’s Cycle of Conferences Initiative, we can think of our time together today as an opportunity to shine a light on the essential thought-form that will be under construction during these two events.

The Transforming Education Summit

The first event is the Transforming Education Summit. It will be held next month at the UN, amidst all the events which accompany the important opening of anew session of the General Assembly. For two days, Friday and Saturday September 16 and 17 at the UN and through ZOOM there will be a wide array of gatherings involving young people, educators, academics, business people – all sharing visions of what a quality, transformational education might look like in the near and distant future and how it might be possible to provide a quality education for all. While this will inevitably contain a wide variety of visions and interpretations it provides an opportunity to empower the principles of a new education, highlighting qualities, the atmosphere of the classroom, and the skills needed from teachers. The third day of the Summit, Monday September 19, is the Leaders Day when Heads of State and National leaders present national statements of commitment and participate in a series of round tables – all focused on the education needed by their citizens to adequately prepare for the challenges of an increasingly interdependent world.

Its important to realize that a summit like this at the UN is a major event, involving years of preparation. For the Education Summit this included an International Commission with leading educational thinkers reflecting different perspectives hosting a series of discussions over two years that culminated in publication of ‘Reimagining Our Futures Together: A New Social Contract for Education’. The work of the Commission was discussed in the World Goodwill Newsletter, Issue 2, 2021 which had as its theme: Education: Unveiling the Light of the Soul.

And as a sign of some of the thinking at the heart of the coming Summit, it is worth noting the following statement from a paper prepared as part of the Commissions work:


“Education needs to be repurposed and redesigned to build not just human capital for economic growth but to create global citizens for human flourishing. We describe global citizens as lifelong learners who possess the critical consciousness to drive ‘active citizenship’, to recognise the inherent interconnectedness and dignity of all life and instil the values of acceptance, equality, respect for diversity, empathy and compassion.”
https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/education-global-citizenship-for-human-flourishing/75764/ Anantha Duraiappah & Nandini Chatterjee Singh, Education: Global Citizenship for Human Flourishing.

The work of invoking the future can hold these thoughts in the light, visualizing their radiation touching influential educators in every region.

Summit of the Future

The second event at the UN which will take place in September next year, is a ‘Summit of the Future’ setting out, in Secretary-General Antonio Guterres words “a New Agenda for Peace”. The idea is that the Summit will provide a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to reinvigorate global action, recommit to fundamental principles, and further develop the frameworks of multilateralism so they are fit for the future”. The incoming President of the General Assembly, Ambassador Kőrösi, of Hungary, has said of the Summit of the Future that it will be one of the most significant undertakings of the UN since the adoption of the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs in 2015. “It will be a vision of what kind of world we are going to have for many, many years to come. It will be a vision of how we would like to imagine ourselves, the human society and international community, and how we are going to transform the world.”

The Summit of the Future is one of the main results of the Secretary-General’s wide ranging 2021 report Our Common Agenda which relied heavily on the need to restore trust and cooperation as the core values from the local to the global level. As the Report states:


“Everything proposed in this report depends on a deepening of solidarity. Solidarity is not charity; in an interconnected world, it is common sense. It is the principle of working together, recognizing that we are bound to each other and that no community or country can solve its challenges alone. It is about our shared responsibilities to and for each other, taking account of our common humanity and each person’s dignity, our diversity and our varying levels of capacity and need.”


The Mantram of Unification includes the invocation: “Let the Future Stand revealed”. As we consider these two coming summits at the UN, one just a couple of weeks away, and one over a year away, we can hold this thought in mind: “Let the future stand revealed” … and Let the group of servers involved in these summits be inspired now, in the present, to deepen their understanding of the energies of trust, cooperation, sharing and goodwill so that they may better serve in the mobilization of these energies in all fields of life.

And may the United Nations be guided anew by its Purpose of becoming


“a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment” of the common ends of strengthening universal peace and of achieving “international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion;”

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