We Should Be Able To Talk To One Another

We  Should  Be  Able  To  Talk  To  One  Another

Martin Cecil   September 29, 1971

 

What about the men?  Where did they go?  Did they resign or retire?

I'd like to point something out, and this is particularly to the men, because my heavens, we need some men on earth! I do not have too much opportunity to speak to you, men or women, on an individual basis. But I do have opportunity to talk with each one, on a collective basis of course, every Sunday. I set aside two hours to talk to you. I take time to talk to you and the vast majority never reply. I am thinking of this particularly in relationship to the men. 

Of course I know all of you, men and women, are doing your job; you're handling your various tasks, and this is tremendous. We wouldn't have anything without it. But anything that is done is meaningful and achieves something only to the extent that it is based in what we have called spiritual expression. It must be something coming down from God out of heaven into the earth. Now obviously the very core of what it is that is coming down from God out of heaven into the earth comes to focus in the services on Sunday. Here is the provision that not only is offered to those who are present but is later transcribed and goes out to everybody else. Here is the very center of things. 

If a person does not have a right pattern of relationship to that, then he cannot possibly be mature. To be mature we must be restored to the experience of spiritual being. We can't stay merely material or physical beings in our experience and be anything other than childish. 

Where is the point to which one may relate most valuably in the experience of the increase of spiritual being? At the core, isn't it? In relationship to what is coming down from God out of heaven. Not to what is happening out on the periphery over here. Some are inclined to feel that they're doing their job, they're doing their task, they're taking care of their responsibilities out on the periphery, but never relate to the spiritual core which comes to that specific focus week after week. If you cannot respond—reply, is that not another word for respond?—to what is provided on this basis, you cannot mature spiritually. It's impossible. No matter what you're doing out there in relationship to the various fields of activity for which you are responsible. That has its place, but it only has its place in relationship to the spiritual factor, and if the spiritual factor isn't properly present, what is out there has a very small percentage of its potential value. 

I emphasize this particularly in relationship to the men, because this is the most vital aspect of our whole ministry, is it not? That there should be the Son of God made manifest through the son of man. This doesn't exclude the ladies. They have a part to play and seemingly they're playing it after a fashion. But what about the men? Where did they go? Did they resign or retire? Is there an attitude that says, "We'll take care of these things but we won't assume responsibility in the core"? Only by assuming responsibility in the core is there any hope for manhood. And it doesn't just happen. It's something that requires that one move. There are those who sit around waiting for the spirit to move them and it doesn't.

Now it looks to me sometimes as though there are people sitting around here hopefully expecting the spirit to move them and it never does. Of course the spirit never stops moving and it's the lummox who's sitting there who is the point of failure—not the spirit—because there is something to be done and what we're about just simply goes by the board if it isn't done. And if we realize that we're here for a purpose, this is the purpose. Isn't this the Third Sacred School? Isn't this related to spiritual expression? "Oh," you say, "Yes, in our daily doing." Well, that's nice, if it ever gets that far. But it has to have a starting point by which it comes down from God out of heaven into the earth. Provision is made constantly on this basis to move people, and if a person just nods his head and says, "Well, that's nice. I've heard that before, but it was nice," and that's all there is to it, that person has certainly not been moved. 

One is only moved when one opens oneself to be moved. It's not a matter of daring the spirit—"You move me now. I'll be here for the comment period but the spirit better get busy and move me or I'm not going to say a damn thing." And so there's a damn silence. Now these are things that one might say are quite down to earth. They're not mysterious or mystical or something strange. We either assume responsibility, we either accept focalization, or we don't. If we don’t, nothing happens. If we do, something happens and there's no mystery about It. Why? Why should it be that we can't converse? Surely we should be able to talk to one another. Can we break through some ceilings and begin to emerge into the core of things and really take responsibility? There are those men who do it, of course, or we wouldn't have anything. I thank God for them. 

So I bring this to your attention. We block ourselves so much in these things and then we try so hard to do what we're doing out here on the periphery and it's such a strain and such an effort and we have to work such long hours and everything else. But you know, when we let our consciousness change all that changes too. Everything changes when something comes down from God out of heaven through us into the earth. Not slipping by us somehow and getting to those out there somewhere. It is through us at the core that it happens, and here is the area of our responsibility. 

I have received information that the men's meetings here are really something and I believed it. I haven't attended men's meetings because I trusted that something would appear where I was present and this, of course, relates to the services and the comment periods. Men's meetings may be good practice but the real work is right here. I thank God for those who have spoken. “Not by might, nor by power, by my spirit, saith the Lord.” These words have often been spoken. This is the way, the truth and the life! By the spirit of the Lord which appears on earth as spiritual expression through human beings. Unless we are acquainted with the meaning of the words “spiritual expression” in our own experience, we are certainly not yet mature. This is first. 

Many people have said, “Yes, the spirit is important; it comes first,” but the concept of what that meant has been such a piddly little thing so often. The spirit is the power of God. It isn't just a nice attitude on the part of a human being. It is the power of God. The consciousness of man can’t change the consciousness of man. You can't change your own consciousness. You can't change somebody else's consciousness. I certainly can't change your consciousness. How does the consciousness change then? By the working of the spirit. 

Consciousness is not changed by consciousness. It's changed by the spirit of God and only that way. It's the only thing that can be it. So there's no use struggling with ideas as to how we're going to be able to follow out this technique or do these exercises or whatever, mentally; or even spiritual exercises, so called. The spirit gets the job done when the person lets the spirit get the job done, and he’s not in there trying to get it to work the way he thinks it should work, or in there just sitting doing nothing. The spirit gets the job done when we let the spirit get the job done. 

The spirit is concerned with the restoration of man, not with just healing this person or that person. The concern is with the restoration of man. Individuals play a part in this, yes; but not when they are self-centered! And how much of the so-called spiritual activity in which human beings engage is basically self-centered! The restoration of man means that the whole world of mankind comes into alignment, and whatever doesn’t come into alignment ceases to be mankind. When the alignment is established, then the spirit pours out—and that is the restoration of man. Now we have had some slight indications of an outpouring of the spirit. Occasionally a focalization develops—there is an acceptance of focalization sufficiently for it to develop when we're together—and something is felt; and it's a wonderful thing to know the movement of the spirit. But let us not become self-satisfied and say, "Oh, well, that’s nice. This should be the way I feel all the time." How do you know? It's not a self-centered thing. Whatever happened that perhaps in that instance made you feel good was of value, not because it made you feel good, but because it was an outpouring of the spirit in relationship to what is happening in the whole. And we are concerned with this, having the absolute conviction, the absolute assurance that only what happens by reason of the spirit amounts to anything. 

Our Master when He was on earth said, “I of myself can do nothing”; and from the standpoint of self-centered human consciousness, that is exactly true. On a self-centered basis we can do exactly nothing—only on the basis of the working of the spirit of God. Should we then neglect any opportunity to permit this experience to come and to be released because we're here? We must draw close; “Come near unto me” was the word through Elijah long ago—the word of the Lord through his lips. And our Master said, “Come unto me.” 

There must be a coming to the focus point of spirit and an ability to function in relationship to that. We may be ever so expert in fields out here somewhere, but if we're not experts in this field, we can do nothing. Of course we have some experience in this regard, but we need a much more vivid focus—something which is in focus—not something which is blurred; something which is absolutely exact, and everybody who should be there is there and right there and doesn't have to be maneuvered to even come close. When we begin to allow this focus to come because individually we have accepted for ourselves focalization, then something happens, because spirit makes it happen, not because we figured it out and said, "It should be this way or that way" and try to do this and build that, and accomplish the other thing. It is the action of spirit that gets the job done and nothing else. No amount of intellectual effort, no amount of physical effort, no amount of emotional effort will ever get anything done; just the spirit of God in action on earth, or anywhere else, for that matter. That's the way things get done. That's the reason why we have a universe. That's the reason we're alive here on earth. The spirit giveth life, the spirit giveth all things; and unless we know how to participate in letting this focus of spirit come to its absolute intensity of centering, what can be done? We have a blur, and in the end nothing's done. 

I bring this particular focalization to point this evening because it is vital to all of you. And remember that, while we have opportunities in meetings and radiation groups and all this, the true focus is right here in the Chapel; and if you don't deliver the goods here, you're not really delivering them anywhere. I think this should be more or less obviously true when I'm here in person, but it's also true when I'm not here in person, when somebody else is here providing the focus. But here is the core of things in the external sense, and what you offer, what you do, how you behave, what your spirit is, what your attitude is, how alive you are, all this is what determines what happens, because this is the evidence of the extent of the working of the spirit. If we close it off right at the core of things, how is it going to be able to get anyplace else? And so how vital this is. 

Don't forget it. I say these things to you because I love you and I trust you, but I love and trust the Lord more; and it is necessary to say what is necessary when it's necessary. And never, never is it putting anyone down—never. The only way a person can be put down is to put himself down; and some people do that as a means of evading the issue. Always what is offered by the spirit lifts a person up when there is response to the spirit. If there isn't response to the spirit, then the individual's in trouble. But there is response in you. And so we share these hours profitably together. But let us make it as profitable as it should be because we know what we're doing. 

Do you think I have ever come to give a service—or any others who have had to give services regularly—and sometimes haven’t felt like it? Could you pick out the occasions, by observing me, when I didn't feel like giving a service? There was no difference, none at all, because the way a person feels or what he wants in his self-centered, nonsensical, meaningless human ego doesn't count at all. That doesn't mean a thing. Why give it any meaning? We have meaning as men and women in Christ, in the truth of being. Let us make very sure that we permit this meaning to find expression through us when it should, right on time, and in the way it should. And let's not excuse ourselves. The spirit has no trouble, and as long as you are still alive the spirit is present. 

It has been good to share this evening with you in this fashion, not an evening to just make everybody feel on top of the world and wonderful and "It's beautiful and how well we're doing!" and all this. No, you're not doing so good. We could do a lot better. But how wonderful to relinquish our blindness so that we see it, and not only see it but let the spirit do something about it.

© Emissaries of Divine Light