from
This Is The Day
Martin Cecil April 14, 1974
This has been a special day. To some extent we could say, in our own experience, “This is the day the Lord hath made.” Here is something that needs to be understood with respect to all days. We sometimes think of days as being special because of celebrations such as Easter or Christmas, or maybe because of someone's birthday, or one of the many holidays that are included in the calendars of this world. It seems as though human beings imagine that a day can only be special on this basis, but all such days are man-made; they are not special because the Lord made them. Is it not an exciting thing to awaken in the morning and know that this — whatever day it may be — is a special day because the Lord makes it, He has a means of making it a special day? If this is really the case, there is no day that isn't a special day. No longer do we have to wait, like most human beings do, for the weekend, anticipating something special and then usually being disappointed.
Every day is a special day when the people of the Lord are present to let it be made so. We do not have to awaken in the morning and wonder is this Monday or Thursday, or whatever, with a view to establishing in consciousness the sort of day it's going to be. Monday in the world is supposed to be rather a poor sort of day. According to this calendar classification tomorrow will be Monday! Too bad, isn't it? But I don't think that is our attitude anymore. Monday will be a perfect day because the Lord makes it so and we are willing to let Him, just as this day. For various reasons, it seems that there has been a greater willingness on the part of all concerned to let it be the day that the Lord hath made. And there's no problem about rejoicing and being glad in it; it's the natural outcome. It is a special day because it is made so by the Lord in the experience of our own living. So may it, and so shall it, surely be in each day.
We also see the day in larger perspective, not simply as a 24-hour period but as part of an ongoing creative cycle. Day follows day in this sense too, and in this sense each is the day that the Lord hath made. We begin to find a certain attunement in the larger cycle. Human beings attuned with the usual daily round find, as the years go by, the days seem to pass more quickly; there is the sense of time running out. But if we let our consciousness be raised to see the larger cycles we begin to find that we have a relatedness to those cycles. It is said that a thousand years are but as a day in the sight of the Lord. We have no business restricting ourselves solely to the little 24-hour cycles day by day, or even to what we call the yearly cycle. We recognize the days of creation as they relate to the purposes of God unfolding here on this earth, and we see these days covering periods of thousands of years. If we are participating in this creative process then this gives us a better perspective with respect to what we call time in the dimensional world.
We are concerned with these larger cycles. This doesn't mean that we neglect the smaller ones, but we see the smaller ones as being small and we find an attunement moving in our own experience of living with those larger days of creation which we were particularly noting this morning. The first of these days, in this particular cycle, dawned some four thousand years ago. Do you not have a sense of relatedness to that? If it remains just a story which you have heard or read, about someone called Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, then of course there isn't too much sense of relatedness, unless one could somehow trace one's ancestry back that far. I suppose it's probable that very few people are not related to Abraham in this way. This doesn't only include those who call themselves Jews.
No, our sense of relatedness is not based in externals; it is based in the truth of things, in what is really happening. Our consciousness has changed to this extent, so that we are capable of looking with understanding eyes upon what has been transpiring in the world, which we begin to see as our world, a world for which we are responsible. We do not think of it merely in terms of identification in a present physical form. This is the fact of the matter at the moment. We have a physical form; we have a structure in consciousness which enables us to function in the present moment in the dimensional world, but we are certainly not limited to the dimensional world. Our responsibility is here now, so we attend to it. We are deeply concerned with what is emerging in the present moment but we do not allow that to blot out our consciousness of relatedness to something far greater — far greater in the sense of an unfolding creative cycle— because what is done in the present moment has meaning by reason of that greater unfolding cycle.
As wonderful as this day is, it is a very little thing when seen in the perspective of the larger cycle, the larger days of creation. Even the days of creation which we recognize relating to what we have called the First, Second and Third Sacred Schools are quite brief. Those of you who have been to Class know something about larger days than that, some of them running into hundreds of thousands of years; and of course, using this method of calculating so-called time, there are cycles which are far greater even than that, cycles which do not particularly concern us at the moment. Do we begin to have a sense of belonging in this larger pattern of things? That sense of belonging is natural to those who awaken again to the truth of being. We only lose a sense of relatedness when we become subject to the petty circumstance of the daily experience. Then it begins to appear that we are somehow hemmed in and imprisoned, we have very little elbow room, we are being squeezed into a smaller and smaller space until we end up without any motion at all. What a miserable condition, when the truth of what we are has no such limits.
Beginning to know something of the unfoldment of the larger creative cycles and of our present part in that unfoldment, we have become aware of reality to an increasing degree. Often in times past we have used the word “unreal” to describe the human condition — and that is exactly what it is — but to most of those who used that word it didn't carry much conviction. The human condition seemed to be the reality and the larger picture was unreal. Here we have another indication of what is meant by reversed polarity. When the true polarity is reversed the unreal appears to be very real and the real quite unreal. This also relates to the flip in consciousness needful. The flip occurs by reason of the change of polarity back to the normal condition. We have been functioning in an abnormal state, a subnormal state, for so long. In one of the verses I read this morning there is indication of these things in these words: “And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.”
“Every one which seeth the Son” — is aware of Shekinah, is aware of the True Tone of Life — “and believeth on Shekinah.” What is it we now believe? Most people now believe in the value of their memories — memories of past events, for instance — as a guide to future function, or occasionally to present function. In the human condition of reversed polarity belief relates to what we call externals. We have a great deal of confidence in the stability of external things in various ways. This is why when there is an earthquake it is such a shattering experience to people, because they were before convinced that the earth was stable — this is one of the very foundational beliefs in human consciousness — so that when it begins to heave around this shatters their belief. Human beings believe in the imaginary state present in their own consciousness; they believe this is the real thing. They can see it, after all, with their own eyes; they can feel it, they can hear it, and smell it, and everything else. They know it's right there and they know exactly what it is, they think; they believe they do anyway. But as for God, as for the Lord, as for Shekinah, all this is pretty ethereal, elusive.
Where is human belief? Presumably we recognize that it's mostly in the wrong things, but merely recognizing the fact that this is so doesn't cause it to change. And human beliefs in this regard are rather deeply embedded. We believe that the world is the way that everybody believes the world is, and we agree with others on this score. Of course there are slight variations, mind you, in our interpretation of the picture, but it is with respect to a darkened state of consciousness that our beliefs are firmly held. Now here Jesus was talking about something else: “Every one which seeth the Son,” becomes aware of the True Tone, “and believeth on him.” In other words, the conviction of stability is in that tone and not in the surroundings, not in the peripheral structures in our consciousness, not in what we call the world, the things and people in the world.
“That every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life.” They will have it. This is the implication here; this is the experience of life. In Shekinah is life. The reality of life can only be known to the extent that Shekinah is known. You and others have experienced something of the True Tone. Could you define it? Yet to the extent that you have had the experience you know it. We say perhaps that it is something sensed, because we can't find words to describe the experience. But it's known. To know something, we don't need to be able to define it. This would probably be heresy in school, wouldn't it? About the only way that a teacher can be sure that his students know is to have them define what they know. In a sense, if we know we do define it, but not in the usual fashion. Our knowing is defined in our living. Our living will reveal the extent of our knowing; however, it will only reveal the extent of our knowing to someone who also knows. The life of Jesus revealed the extent of His knowing but at the time there were very few who saw it. But in spite of ourselves — or what we have thought of ourselves, the image we have imagined was what we were — in spite of that, we have been moved somehow to become aware of the Son, to become aware of the True Tone of Life. We can never properly become conceited with respect to what some people would call spiritual progress, a larger perception of the True Tone, because it came to pass in spite of what we thought we were; it came to pass by reason of Shekinah.
So it would not be surprising that as we awaken to what is happening we discover the reality of eternal life. Shekinah is eternal. In Shekinah is life. Life is eternal. We begin to be associated with this life of Shekinah and our perspective broadens, our sense of proportion changes, and we find ourselves associated with the larger cycles of creation extending over thousands of years. And we don't feel strange about it. It no longer feels unreal to us. It is the real thing. This very moment is included in a particular day of creation, and this day of creation is not separate from other days of creation. It is part of one vast tapestry, the tapestry of life itself, with which increasingly we sense our unity. Life is not separate from us, obviously so or we wouldn't be sitting here. Life is here; in Shekinah is life; Shekinah is here. The creative word of Shekinah is spoken. The days of creation unfold; they unfold regardless of the antics of imaginary people. In their unfoldment the imagination, the dream, passes away, and all that is left is the reality.
As we share the unfoldment of this creative cycle in this very moment, we know our relatedness to the whole, and that is everlasting life. Whatever is unreal within the scope of our present consciousness will surely pass away, simply because it is unreal. Whatever is real, in the consciousness of the Lord, will not pass away. The word of Jesus was: “My word shall not pass away.” Shekinah shall not pass away. The Shekinah state of consciousness in the dimensional world shall not pass away. As we awaken to that state and yield more fully to it we are included in it, included in the consciousness of the Lord, included in the eternal experience of life. And this we begin to know; it isn't anymore a hopeful imagination. So many good people try to have faith. There is no need to try to have faith. The very attitude of trying to have faith indicates that one doesn't have it. Awaken to the truth. Awaken to a consciousness of the Son. Stay true to that consciousness. Believe on it. Accept it as a basis for your experience and be willing to let the unreal dissolve. Human beings have been so accustomed to the unreal state of affairs that it is a terrifying outlook when it begins to be recognized that the unreal world that was thought to be so real is dissolving. Frantic and desperate attempts are made to try to keep it from dissolving, to try to defeat God. Such attempts could never succeed, but they are made by the fearful and the unbelieving and all the rest of those who classify themselves in the realm of imagination, in the realm that is occupied by phantoms — phantoms which seem to be present by reason of the absence of the reality which actually is present but unperceived by the darkened state of human awareness.
How blind and ignorant human beings are in that state. They amass what they call knowledge about this distorted condition and about all the seeming absences of what is really there. But we see the truth and are willing to allow the unreal to dissolve, the former things to pass away, letting Shekinah make all things new in our own consciousness. Man was created to be responsible for this world. He let it slip through his fingers. The garden vanished from the earth because it vanished from man's consciousness. Let it be restored to his consciousness and it is restored to the earth, because the earth is simply an extension of his consciousness. How simply all things can be made new, but never as long as human beings cling to the unreal imaginary state to which they attach so much importance. To assist others to awaken to the truth, we find ourselves in this unreal condition with those whom we would assist. Obviously it is impossible to cause people immediately to realize the unreality of the state in which they exist, because they are existing in that state.
But again we remember how the true creation occurs: through the Word, Shekinah, the True Tone — the True Tone in actual reverberating expression in our own daily experience. This is what causes the former things to pass away and all things to be made new. You are not here present, to the extent that you may be present, because you were told that what you thought was real was really unreal or because this state of affairs was thoroughly explained to you. Explanations, after a fashion, may seem to have been necessary, but why? Not to create all things new in you but to help you to relax sufficiently so that you could become aware of the Tone and let it reverberate in you. Do you still believe in your own intelligent ability? Is this one of your beliefs? It's a false belief. Believe in the Son, in the Shekinah, for this alone gets the job done. Explanations and outlines satisfying to the human mind may be offered to some extent to keep the human mind busy while the Tone, the Shekinah, gets the job done; to keep the human mind out of the way, while imagining that it is doing something very important, that it's really beginning to understand the truth now. Nonsense! It doesn't understand anything. But if it can be set on one side the true magician can achieve the true purpose. Even in the human realm of so-called magic the individual needs to be distracted, doesn't he, so that he doesn't really see what's going on. He thinks he sees what's going on and then is amazed at some point that he evidently hadn't. And maybe you have had something of that experience as you have come along the way in association with the true magician. You have been distracted in various ways so that something could happen in you in spite of you, and then you suddenly found that you hadn't been so intelligent as you thought. In fact, from time to time I am sure that you have awakened to the fact that you have been stupid. But no matter; it's all in a good cause! — the cause of Shekinah.
So, together we have to this extent been gathered in one place. “And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear.” The dry land is appearing. We have some awareness of it, awareness of a new people, a peculiar people, a chosen people; not a people who chose themselves. This is what human beings like to think they are doing. The human ego says, “I make the choice.” Do you really? Too bad if you do! No, Shekinah makes the choice, or at least the only choice that has any meaning, and we find ourselves caught in that choice; but it's not an unpleasant experience, is it? It's a joy unspeakable and full of glory. We become aware of a new people, a new nation, if you please, the citizens of a new kingdom — at least new to human beings. The dry land appears. To whatever degree the waters of truth emerging through you and others, the waters under the heaven, under the place of Shekinah, are gathered together unto one place, the dry land appears. And so it is.
Is this not something in which one can easily believe? Do we have to believe in it, really? We know it. We know it to the extent that we have participated in it, to the extent that it is our own experience. It doesn't have to be explained to us; we simply know it and are content in that knowing. To the extent that we do know we realize that we are a part of the whole creative cycle extending over thousands of years. We are associated with this, we belong in this, we have always been a part of it — a new consciousness of the truth in the experience of our living — and we become aware of love, the meaning of that word. Shekinah! — the cloud of glory, the light that glows, the fire that burns. Here is where we belong; here is the reality; here we share the creative cycles which unfold in their days to achieve what is essential in bringing resurrection to the consciousness of man on earth. “And they were all with one accord in one place.” Consequent upon this experience comes what has been designated as the outpouring of the holy spirit. Human beings have had lots of imagination about that. What is it? You know to this extent what it is. It isn't a wind whistling around the Chapel or cloven tongues of fire sitting on your heads. It is what you know of Shekinah now: a new state of consciousness, a new polarity, where the real is real to you and the unreal is unreal to you.
This is the day that the Lord hath made. Indeed we rejoice and are glad in it. Each moment is included in the day which the Lord hath made. And so we continue to move together under the heaven, letting the dry land appear increasingly, to the glory of God in the cycles of resurrection.
© Emissaries of Divine Light
