To Know Him Is To Love Him
To Love Him Is To Know Him
Uranda September 12, 1946 (2:30 p.m.)
I have emphasized many times that
the only thing we are interested in is the genuine article, no imitations. It
has to be real to be of value. When human beings learn to love God, then the
works of God begin to appear on earth, because there is no other way. Unless we
find out how to love God—how can we come near to Him; how can we receive His
blessings; how can we open our eyes; how can we live for a day?
I have often thought that human
beings are such peculiar creatures. How can we do any of these things and not
have a desire, more than anything else, to love Him; for to know Him is to love
Him and to love Him is to know Him, and when you are with God, so that God is
with you, you are greater than all the powers of this world. When we work
together in the Love of God, that Victory which the Master established is ours
to share. How did Jesus Christ gain that Victory? By loving the Father. He and
the Father were one. How were they one? Through Love.
One of you mentioned today, in
talking with me, that whereas you had in the past been particularly conscious
of the presence of your Lord within you, you had now come to a place where you
were not so conscious of the Lord within as you were of the LORD of Lords. That
made me very happy, because if you are one with your Lord within you, you are
not conscious of something separate from you with respect to your Lord, and
then you really begin to be conscious of the LORD of Love. Then you begin to
live, and so that oneness manifests with your Lord within, which you cannot
fail to have to the degree that you begin to be aware of the Reality of the
LORD of Love, and that oneness, then, with the LORD of Love and the oneness
that is established between you as members of the One Body, fulfills the test
the Master gave: “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye
have love one to another.”
And how do you have that love? By
loving Him. Otherwise, it could not be; otherwise, there would be frictions and
conflicts to set one above the other, and so, we grow in oneness, and I think
that the years that have passed testify, and the things that have been achieved
testify, the words you have spoken, the things you have done, all testify, that
you feel a oneness with me. You have felt for a long time my oneness with the
LORD of Love. You are beginning to know Him as He is, and to know Him is to
love Him and to love Him is to know Him, and so it is that oneness is
established in every direction, and that oneness is of God. It was in that
oneness that our Master gained the Victory.
It is in that
oneness that we are privileged to share that Victory, and as we share it
actually, right down here, in a practical, everyday sense, in everyday life, we
make it possible for our brother man to see, know, understand and share with
us; but except there be a Light, how can any come out of the darkness? You have
seen that Light and have come into it and shared it, and you know that there is
enough for all, that there need not be any darkness, and so again I would say
that it is only as we let these things be an actualized Reality here on earth
that we can cause, or allow to be caused, the fulfillment of that which was
established and begun by Jesus Christ. Unless this becomes an actualized
Realization that lets the Power flow out into the world, or unless someone else
does it, what the Master did is in vain—and that, to me, would be utterly
unthinkable. It must be real in us and manifest through us, that all who will
may share, but even if there were only a few—not that I anticipate that it will
be only a few—it would not be in vain.
© Emissaries of Divine Light
Your Heart
Song
from
Where There Is Vision, People Flourish
John Gray November 3, 2002
Where there is nothing credible to
trust, fear abounds. We could all
confidently say that there is a lot of fear in and among human
beings, and that’s been pretty much the case all along. We may try to assuage
our fears, diminish our fears, or forget our fears, but fear abounds. It’s not
actually true that there’s nothing credible to trust, but it may seem that way
if we don’t see what is credible to
trust.
I never noticed before recently
that the words “scared” and “sacred” are formed of the same letters. Likewise,
“reactive” and “creative” are formed of the same letters. You just move the “c”
around in both cases. The words differ only by a way of seeing. The choices we
make about what we see and how we see make all the difference. How do you see
things? How do you receive what comes to you? Scared or sacred? Reactive or
creative? Just move the “see” around.
In our personal circumstances,
which may feel like but aren’t really
global events, it’s not what happens that matters so much—it’s how we handle what happens. After all, most of
the time we don’t dictate what happens. Things happen! But we are always fully
in charge and responsible for what we do
about what happens: how we behave, how we express ourselves. This does not mean
that we’re meant to be simply reactors to circumstances, waiting for things to
occur and then coping with them or, perhaps ideally, dealing with them in a
right attitude. No, we human beings are made in the image and likeness of God
and are intended to have vision.
Vision—defined as
the ability to see in the darkness. Vision—the ability to see where and how
different factors and energies will converge in the future. Vision. Human
beings are intended to have vision—sensitivity to the precursors of form.
It is what Martin Cecil, spiritual leader to many, used to call heavenly consciousness: awareness of the
factors and energies that are emerging, before they appear in visible form.
Saying this, I’m not suggesting
that we’re supposed to be clairvoyant, seeing the future before it occurs—not
the details, anyway, not the forms that are going to appear. But the direction
and the flow of things and how things are going—yes! we are intended to have vision of that kind. When we do, we’re
poised, we’re balanced, we’re ready; we’re not thrown by what occurs but are in
place to receive it and manage it wisely. We need not see the details of
something coming, because we’re ready, because our internal state is poised,
balanced, and we have a feel for how things are unfolding.
In consciousness, we’re positioned
ahead of forms which are emerging. After all, as creator beings, made in the
image and likeness of the Creator, we are accommodating the process of
creation, which is to say we are providing the means by which creation occurs,
by which invisible essences emerge. Invisible essences determine the forms of
the future. Poise, balance and equanimity are hallmarks of heavenly
consciousness, or of real vision.
This is very different from
coping. Coping has to do with circumstances which have already formed, and it’s
terribly stressful to be behind or under circumstances. When this happens, it’s
because we failed to pay attention and things got pretty material while we
weren’t looking. When we opened our eyes, maybe we found ourselves underneath a
circumstance—and it was heavy! Then, next, out come our habitual coping
strategies. But what’s really required is simply the restoration of our own
vision, so that we regain our poise and our equanimity. Do that, and suddenly
the circumstances which seemed large and burdensome and could scarcely be coped
with, look differently—not the way they appeared when we were underneath them,
anyway. Perspective changes considerably when we are on top of things rather
than beneath them.
We’re meant to be light on our
feet, able to move with the flow of things, and to be comfortable in the
process. Resistance to change is an almost universal human reaction. Could that
be, at least in part, because human beings imagine the ultimate noble coping
behavior is to stand rock still in the face of the gale? Actually, we’re never
really stuck still in that sense. We live on a planet that is not only
revolving on its axis but circling around our sun, and the sun is in turn part
of a larger system which is in motion. Like it or not, nothing is standing still.
In fact, stability, poise, equanimity, are products of motion, not of being
stuck in one place. If our own sense of security and safety is wrapped up in
being grounded and rooted and all that, we’re going to get pushed around by the
next storm that comes by, and only hope we can cope. But if we’re light on our
feet, we have a sense of how things are going and flowing, then we can move and
dance with whatever comes along. Like I said, this doesn’t suggest that we know in advance, like a psychic, what’s going
to unfold. No, we don’t know the forms of things. But nothing is a big
surprise, and everything is a small delight.
Being totally caught by surprise
is not natural to a human being with eyes open. And where there is vision,
there is welcome, not coping. We welcome what comes along, even if we don’t see
every little detail, and how we’re going to be affected, and how everything
else will play out. No. It’s all okay because I’m okay. If I have vision, if
I’m poised and balanced and have my eyes open, then I receive what comes in an
attitude of welcome. If we receive what comes in an attitude of welcome, we’re
never caught being a victim of our circumstances. We’re aware that our own
consciousness provides focus for the motive energy of spirit within the circumstances
as they are. That’s being creative, not reactive. The choices we make about how
we see things makes all the difference. Just move the “see” around!
“Where there is no vision the
people perish.” And where there is vision, people flourish. Without vision, in
the sense of the ability to see in the darkness, to perceive the flow of
invisible energies and how they will converge in the future—without vision, we
feel lost and afraid. But with vision, we see the circumstances of our lives
and of our world are all there to be welcomed. And how we greet something
entirely changes how we experience it. If we wish something weren’t happening,
for example, what kind of an experience do we create for ourselves? A
psychologist might say that the adult response to something we wish wasn’t
happening is to just accept that it’s a fact and cope with it. But the
spiritual adult approach would be to realize that what’s happening is part of a
larger outworking of factors, and we have a part to play—our creativity, our own
sacredness brought into play—in causing what’s outworking through ourselves and
human beings everywhere to be creative rather than reactive, and to be sacred rather
than scared.
What would you do, if you weren’t
afraid to do it? That’s a good question for introspection. Fear prevents us
from doing things that otherwise the inner motive energies of our lives would
have us do. Our risk-taking—I don’t mean craziness—but our wonderfully
venturesome natures spring from the places in ourselves where there’s no fear.
In those places we know it is safe to go with the flow of life. The flow leads
to unknown destinations, and that’s great too. We’re explorers; we’re helping
create something that’s never been before. What would you do if you weren’t
afraid?
Being scared obscures the sacred,
and being reactive blinds us to the creative. People who are otherwise
intelligent get themselves into positions this way, by reacting, where they
cannot see any other way to go. Then of course all the mental faculties of
rationalization are brought in to back their viewpoint, even if it’s wrong.
Being reactive to circumstances is stressful. Stress itself isn’t an event;
it’s the result of reaction to an event. What would you do if you weren’t
afraid?
When we’re not afraid, we’re naturally
more aware of the larger processes of life that we’re part of. Our hearts are
at rest. “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” [John
14:27] Prayer has to do with the state
of our hearts. I heard a wonderful definition of prayer recently: “Prayer is a heart song which comes to the lips
without mental editing.” Prayer is the longing of our hearts, not the mental
words we might wrap around that longing or the meaning we might attribute to
it, but a willingness to be internally uninhibited enough to let that heart
song emerge. That’s prayer. Prayer is a creative act. It’s an entirely false
concept that prayer is about a lowly, destitute supplicant asking for a handout
from a distant, all-powerful being. We’re not beggars on the streets of life.
We are creator beings, made in the
image and likeness of God. Our prayers, our heart songs, are rightly among the
ways God creates. We participate in creating a future that is not yet in form
by our prayers, by the longings of our hearts, whether we’re conscious of those
longings or the tones of those heart songs, or not. At times when we’re
unafraid, hearts untroubled, at peace, filled full, that is when our heart
songs express without reservation or editing, and the music fills us. We’re fulfilled.
Heart song music resounds and expresses on out into our worlds, and it creates
a garden around us, and nourishes it and keeps it.
“Out of the abundance of the
heart, the mouth speaketh.” Whatever is abundant in our hearts, whatever we
give home to in our hearts—these are the things that influence the directions
of our life experiences in the most profound ways. We go in the directions of
our deepest heart longings, really, whether we know that or admit that or not.
That’s why I often ask myself and others the question, “What matters most?”
What do you really care about? What is your passion? Asking such questions is a
way to get in touch with your heart song. And what is that heart song? What is
that prayer? In my experience it’s the way the divine puts in its most initial
appearance in human form on its way into the world.
May the circumstances of our lives
unfold in the flow of that heart song. And, add heart song to heart song to
heart song to heart song, and what have we? A choir of many voices with a
magnificently moving sound. Magnify further yet, and it’s the power that
creates the whole world anew.
So what do we see when we’re not
afraid, when we don’t harbor fear in our hearts? Immediately our heart song
fills from the inside out, and its most basic and deepest essence is love. When
you’re right in yourself, when all is well inside, all is well with the world
too. There’s nothing to cope with. Things are as they are. The question is—What
am I going to do about it? When you’re really right in yourself, it’s easy to
express your love to the world, to love other people.
Being who we really are, our heart
songs resound loudly. People whose heart songs are sounding are attractive to
others. People like to be around those kinds of people. It’s not because they
necessarily have the wisest things to say or great insights or revelations. No,
it’s because they’re in the flow of life, and we’re in the flow of life
together, and that’s exciting. That’s passionate, that’s fun!
So, scared or sacred? Reactive or
creative? It’s just a matter of where the “see” is. What do we see? What’s our
vision? Do we see in the darkness? You can walk around your home in the dark
because you know it, right? You don’t have to literally see much in the
darkness. You get around anyway. Well, this is our world, after all. When we’re
quiet and at peace in ourselves, we know every inch of it. You can walk through
your life without fear of anything. It’s all familiar. It is, after all, our
creation.
“Prayer is a heart song which
comes to the lips without mental editing.” Our prayers are the innermost ways
that we become aware of the kind of future we’re creating. We may know with
assurance that according to our prayers, according to our heart songs, so will
our life experiences flow. Let’s find out every day what we do when we’re not
afraid, by doing it—by doing it.
Choose the sacred rather than the scared, and the creative rather than the
reactive. And being, then, in the midst of and a bit ahead of circumstances
rather than beneath them or behind them, light on our feet, what a difference!
When you’re looking, eyes open, you see other people who are also looking and
have their eyes open. We find many special colleagues when we’re looking, even
in the dark. We know them and they know us because our heart songs closely
resonate. These are our people, and where there is vision, the people flourish.
According To Thy Passion
Sunrise
Service Number Forty-Four
Uranda January 29, 1950
“A pure heart is a passion-filled heart”
Passion can overcome passion. To my mind
that opens up such a wide field of consideration and meditation that it is
questionable how far we can get in an hour or so. Remembering the Law of the
Positive and Negative, remembering the Principles of Polarity, we can recognize
that passion in the wrong direction carries one downward; passion in the right
direction carries one upward. There is no such thing as true Response without
feeling. Man's heart and emotional nature, purified, allows one to see God.
The pure heart is a passion-filled heart, but with pure passion that is attuned
to God. The heart is always filled with passion of some kind, to some degree
while there is any life or feeling.
We remember, in The Song Celestial, there is the expression describing one who sits
“passionless.” Now, that has led to a certain amount of misunderstanding—passionless
in the sense of the destructive passion, but that attunement with the Divine,
if it be real, cannot be without passion. Let us consider another Principle for a
moment. Unlike things do not readily correlate. There must be some similarity,
some likeness, some point of meeting, if there is to be an influence from one
to another. If there be no point of meeting, If there be no point of
correlation, then there can be no influence one to another.
We have recognized long ago the
necessity of eliminating destructive passion from our lives. When the deep
current of feeling or passion comes because of self-centeredness, and a
wellspring of resentment creeps into the heart, there is destructive passion.
When a person feels self-pity, when a person feels that he has been abused or
neglected in some fashion, there we have destructive passion. There is, of
course, lust, which is likewise destructive, but too often people think of
passion as being lust. Lust may be passion but passion is not necessarily lust.
Anger is passion. Any deep feeling of any kind whatsoever is passion. If that
deep feeling be destructive, then we are moving in the wrong direction. When a
person gives way to temper reactions—anger—we
have destructive passion.
Now, remembering our point with respect
to correlation, and recognizing that there are these unhealthy, destructive
passions in the human heart that has not been cleansed and purified, the
unregenerate heart, by what means can we establish that contact which will
allow the cleansing? It Is obvious that passion cannot be dealt with without
passion; otherwise, there would be no correlating point, no connection, no
means of transferring influence. If there be no passion, passion cannot be
changed. We have recognized these destructive passions and we recognize, then,
according to the Principle and the Law, that destructive passions cannot be
dealt with without passion.
What is the nature, then, of this
passion by which cleansing and purification can take place? If we undertake to
make the heart a void, a place where there is no feeling, we cannot do it, and
the infilling of the heart with that which is Divine can come only from God. If
we try to fill the heart with human strength or mind, it will be filled with
something destructive. The pure heart is a passion-filled heart, but it is
pure, Divine Passion, unmixed, untainted, unsoiled with the destructive
passions to which human beings so often give place in their hearts. No man, no
woman, can purify his or her own heart. It cannot be done. Until the heart is pure,
the individual cannot truly see God, and if there be no contact with Divine
passion there is no starting point for purification. One may listen to words of
Truth without much feeling; one may hear words of Truth when there be no
Response, and those words may seem hard—but the Word is: “God is Love.” If
there be love then there is passion, for you cannot separate love and passion;
it cannot be done. The Power of Purification is God's Love and it must be felt,
and we must feel it more deeply than anything else. As long as any ill thing or
any supposedly ill thing can engender a greater feeling reaction in us than is
established by the passion current in God's Love, we are obviously subject in
the wrong direction, but passion can
overcome passion. Praise God that it is so.
From whence springs this passion? It
springs from God's Love, and when we recognize that feeling currents that are
destructive have no rightful place in our hearts, and when we open our hearts
willingly, gladly, to the passion of God's Love, then that passion cleanses
away all other passions, pushes them out until the heart, being filled with
Divine Passion, is pure because it is not a place of mixed passions but a place
where the passion of God's Love abides continually—and the Master truly said: “Blessed
are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.” The pure passion of God's Love,
filling the heart, makes the heart pure. When the heart is pure, filled with
the passion of Divine Love, do we stop living effectively? Some people seem to
think we would. Some people seem to imagine that they have to have the passions
of hate, the passions of fear, the passions of resentment and all the other
destructive passions if they are going to maintain individuality. If the
individual is going to try to maintain independence from God such things are
essential, and he will have but a short time in which to play the game for such
things lead to death and oblivion, but if the human being stops being so
concerned about maintaining his independence from God and is willing to let
himself be absorbed into God, that he may become one with God, even as the
Master said: “My Father and I are one,” and even as He prayed that the Father
should be in Him and He in the Father—He in us, we in Him, Oneness—does that
Oneness obliterate true individuality? We have seen, in our studies in the
Third Sacred School and in our experience, that it does not do so, but, rather,
it allows the true individuality, unsoiled, to begin to appear.
We go back to that oft-repeated
statement of Truth: According to thy
Response so be it unto thee. Where rests the passion? That determines the
direction of movement. That is what is being said in that statement, for there
can be no response in any direction without passion. We could translate it,
then: According to thy Passion, so be it
unto thee, and if thy passions be of God's Love, then shalt thou arise and
shine, but if thy passions be of the self-activity of the human mind, then
shalt thou move in the paths of darkness until the tomb shall enclose thee.
According
to thy Passion, so be it unto thee, and if there be no passion there is nothing. How
often have I sought to stir up your pure hearts in the passion of God's Love,
only to see you largely unmoved, accepting the Word of Truth abstractly but to
such a high degree unmoved, saying within yourselves, “Yes, but I feel this and
that, and I feel such and such a thing, etc., etc.”—excuses, on and on. “Oh, I
do not feel good physically,” or, “I am depressed in my mind, and I feel these
things so keenly that I cannot be expected to feel the passion of God's Love.”
How human beings excuse their dullard attitudes! “If so-and-so did differently,
and if such-and-such a thing were changed,” then the individual thinks he would
not be caused to feel such things so keenly, and maybe there would be a little
room in his heart to feel the passion of God's Love; but, lo, as soon as one
thing is changed something else demands attention. The human mind never gets
around to the point of not being able to find something else to feel
destructive passion about—left to itself, from the beginning to the end of
life it can always find something to feel destructive passion about. So man
goeth to his long home—dust to dust returning—but when the mind is stilled
and the passion of God's Love begins to have meaning the individual finds that
all these other passions are as naught.
There is no passion like unto that of
God. There is no passion that can withstand the cleansing passion of God's
Love, and when we let our hearts be filled with God's Love, so that only the
passion that is of God is found in us, then our hearts are pure and the
passions of this world have passed away, and then we can see God. But, when the
passions of the human heart hold sway, what does the individual see? He says, “I
see so many things, that I cannot be expected to see God. I see evil here and
evil there. I see dark, foreboding things. I see such ill things in my
neighbor, in my wife or my husband or something else, that I cannot possibly
see God.” Yes, unbridled passions of the human heart blind the eyes, and
blind-folded the individual walks his darkened way into the ultimate of
darkness—but there is no necessity of being blind-folded. We are not asked to
be as a candle under a bushel, but as one set on a candlestick that it may give
Light unto all that are in the House. “Let your light so shine,” but can there
be a shining of the Light without a flame, and can there be a flame without
passion? No, if we are to be obedient to the Master's Command, if we are to be
true to that Name by which we are called, there must be the flame of passion
burning in our hearts from whence the Light may shine, for there is a “Light
that lighteth every man that cometh into the world,” but it is that tiny spark
of Divine passion which, when fanned to flame, begins to cleanse and purify,
driving all earthly passions hence, that we may live in the Kingdom on earth.
“Blessed are the pure in heart for they
shall see God.” If I had come before you in these years gone by without any
passion in my voice, without any passion in the current of my expression, how
far would you have been influenced? Perhaps I could have used brilliant words
without any passion. Intoning them without feeling. Hark back to a single time
you have heard me speak and tell me there was no passion there! Can you name
one single time? I think not. Without that passion you would not have been
influenced. Your heart would not have been touched. You would not have been
moved along the Way, the Truth and the Life. There is hope for every individual
who lives and breathes, and anyone who says, “There is no hope for me,” speaks
a damnable lie, using his mouth to voice the vaporings of the serpent. So long
as life is manifest the Way is open, and anyone who says, “I cannot,” only lies
to God and to himself. “And there shall in no wise enter into it anything that
defileth, or maketh a lie.” What is it that defiles? The destructive passions
of the human heart, and those destructive passions live on as long as the human
being listens to and voices the lies of the serpent.
We must let the Truth have meaning if it
is to bring Liberty in Reality. The beautiful Patterns of Truth must be seen in
the Fire of Divine Passion, and According to thy Response, so shall it be
unto thee. According to thy passions, so shalt thou go, and if thy passions
be governed by the bigotries and the pettiness of the human mind, then the path
leads downward, but if thy passions be to God, if thy passion is to the Passion
of God, letting the Fire of His Passion find expression in every thought and
word and deed, then shalt thou be lifted up, even as He said: “And I, if I be
lifted up, will draw all men unto me.” (John 12:32) Can you imagine those words
spoken without feeling, without passion? What would they mean, what would they
do, be they ever so true? No, you know that when our Master spoke those words
the Fire of Passion was burning in every sound of His Voice. “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they
shall see God,” and, according to thy passions, so be it unto thee.
I would read a portion from the Master's
Prayer in concluding His Ministry [John 17: 18-23]
Can you imagine these words spoken? If so, you
know the Passion that filled them
“As Thou hast sent me into the world,
even so have I also sent them into the world.
And for their sakes I sanctify myself,
that they also might be sanctified through the truth.
Neither pray I for these alone, but for
them also which shall believe on me through their word;
That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in
me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us;
that the world may believe
that Thou hast sent me.
And the glory which Thou gavest me I have given
them; that they may be one, even as we are one:
“I in them, and Thou in me, that they may be made
perfect In one;
and that the world may know that Thou hast sent me, and hast
loved them, as Thou hast loved me.”
O LORD of Lords and KING of Kings, I thank Thee for
these Blessed Ones who are beginning to let Thy Passion fill their hearts, that
they may know truly the Way, the Truth and the Life, that they may let the
Flame increase until the Light shall shine, giving Light to all who are willing
to open their eyes to see the Path that leads into the Kingdom here on earth. I
thank Thee that the increasing Current of Thy Passion in their hearts draws
them closer before the Gate, that being blended in the Eternal Flame they may
walk into the Kingdom and abide therein, to Thy Glory and to the Blessing of
the children of men. I thank Thee, O LORD, that it is so established, IN the
Christ, now and forever. Aum-en. The Peace of our LORD Jesus Christ be with you now
and always as you abide in the Light of His Eternal Passion. Aum-en.
Divine Passion is always
controlled.
Human passion is characterized by the fact that it is not under control.
Divine Passion is characterized
by the fact that it is always under control.
© emissaries of divine light
