What Matters

What  Matters

John Gray   January 21, 2018

The calendar indicates today is the third Sunday of January 2018. Sunday is usually considered the seventh day of the week. In many languages, as in English, it is the “day of the sun.” In Spanish it is Domingo, or “Lord’s day,” and I understand the Russian word for Sunday translates into English as “resurrection.” Whether sunny or not, every day is the Lord’s day and a day of resurrection.

So, here we are on the Lord’s day. How is it going?

Events in the external world constantly clamor, even demand, that people react to them and form opinions about them. What we see, hear, or read of “the news”—though there is usually not much new about it—evokes in most the ingrained human habit of immediately electing to like or dislike, agree or disagree. Judging “that’s good, and the other thing is bad,” is so deeply inbred and automatic that it seems normal to people. Pamela and I have acquaintances who are proud of their adamant opinions on just about everything. This is how humanity is controlled, isn’t it? If everybody is involved in judging and reacting to externals there is no room in their hearts and minds to know anything else, is there? There is more noise and clamor than ever these days—a cacophony, if we pay attention to it. It is more vital than ever that we not let our hearts be troubled, externally involved, or fearful.

Decades ago, when Bob Hollis was EDL Treasurer, he had a small framed sign on his Sunrise Ranch office wall that read, IDM. It was a visually catchy parody of the blue-lettered logo of the corporate giant, IBM. When a visitor noticed the sign and asked about its meaning, Bob would take considerable delight in explaining what IDM represented. “It Don’t Matter,” he’d drawl through his toothy grin. I took that as the Kansan’s way of saying, “in the world but not of it.” It isn’t a statement of apathy, or of aloofness. We are not trying to withdraw from the world, hide in a cave, or isolate ourselves. There is no way to do that, anyway, except in imagination. We have physical bodies; we are definitely in the world. I take the attitude, “You gotta love it all!”

Recently David Barnes sensitively selected and posted on The Great Cosmic Story a service entitled, The Spiritual Body of the Son of God, given by Martin Cecil on March 16, 1980. In it, Martin again made clear how things are going, in, and for, the material world:

“What is happening in the material world is no threat to the spiritual world. In fact it is a cause for rejoicing, spiritually speaking: ‘Rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to... the earth.’ We need to see clearly that it is woe to the earth. The question is whether we can see that clearly and face the fact of it realistically without fear, without panic, without any futile endeavor to try to correct the thing. It can't be done. There is no way. Those who have not had the opportunity of seeing and understanding what the real way is may take the attitude... that there is need for a great deal of protest. But protest never achieves anything... One is being governed by what one is protesting against... ”

Not judging and not protesting doesn’t mean I don’t care. I’m simply not going to be controlled by what’s going on. Is that easier said than done? Yes, it is! Let’s keep perfecting our abilities to be in the world but not of it while there’s yet, it seems, a little time.

So, what is the alternative to the world of woe? Martin goes on:

“Exactly what the alternative is in its manifest experience is something that is not known. It is futile to speculate about it. It is futile to speculate as to when the ultimate crunch comes. Thus far the news, the bad news, of the point of no return having been long past, has been kept from the awareness of most human beings on earth. You can imagine what chaos there would be if the conviction of this suddenly came to everybody!—the conviction that everybody was moving toward an impenetrable barrier beyond which they couldn't go; they were going to smash up against it, which is what is happening. We don't attempt to speculate as to how long it takes for human beings to hit the barrier. We are not concerned with that. We are concerned with the one and only alternative. It isn't a material alternative.

There is nothing that can be done materially speaking to correct the situation that is now present and a fact in the world. No matter how many sincere people there may be on earth attempting to straighten things out somehow, they have undertaken an absolutely impossible task. It can't be done. ‘I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away.’ Gone! What is the nature of the new heaven and the new earth? Let us not speculate, other than to recognize that it can be known only from the standpoint of spirit.”

So, there we have it.

You may notice that I have no reservations about quoting Martin and Uranda and selections from the Bible, when I know of no better words to express the spirit. Pouring out through the words uttered by Great Ones in the past conies the same spirit that birthed them, ever fresh, now. Only the words age, and most of them pretty gracefully. To believe they're outdated is to trip over one's own ignorance and fall in the dark. To merely rely on others’ words to somehow provide vicarious attunement is equally foolish. To accept deeply in our hearts words that inform the Word as the spiritual portals they are, and to move in the current that flows radiantly through them, now—in this is wisdom and fulfillment.

It is said, “…one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” (II Peter 3:8) Given that, it was less than an hour ago that Martin spoke the words I just read!

Let’s be solely concerned with the truth, with what’s so. As for all the rest, so what! This is not to say we don’t care about the world and our people. Humanity is rightly the body of the son of God, the body in which the spirit of God lives and expresses. This is the only reason humanity matters, but who really knows this? Most are all wrapped up in self-centered existences. Because human beings are God’s collective body here, the Lord doesn’t want anybody to perish, but to repent of ego identity.

The way to experience this was opened by the Lord Himself two thousand years ago—or two days ago!—and clearly re-focalized in the consciousness of humanity over the past century by Uranda, Martin, and a few others. What has been so established on earth does not pass away. Heaven and earth may, but not the Word. Let us continue in it. Didn’t the Lord say to us just the other day, “If ye continue in my Word then ye are my disciples indeed…” (John 8:31)

Putting some well-known lines from John 3:16-17 into the present tense: “For God so loves the world that He gives his only begotten Son, that whomsoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sends not his Son into the world to condemn the world…” If we substitute God Being for God in those lines, we can more readily understand and accept the statements personally.

The root of the word condemn means just what we’d think it does: “to blame, to censure, to disapprove, to doom.” Can I be in the world and love it all, anyway? Certainly, if I’m not of it. It’s essential to not get sucked into judging what’s going on. Doing that takes us out of action and usefulness insofar as the Lord is concerned.

Almost thirty-five years ago (or is that about an hour ago from the divine perspective?), Martin said, “Never underestimate the power of spiritual expression… Here is the power back of the whole universe brought to focus through the angels of God incarnate and in expression in human form on earth. Obviously, it is a power not to be played with by impure hearts and self-active minds; it is not available to impure hearts and self-active minds. Lacking that power, of course, they have been used to develop the other power: that of fission, that of disintegration. The angels of the Lord on earth are aware of the power of spiritual expression, the power of the Holy Ghost. They are aware also of such power as has been stolen by the unholy ghost, the power of disintegration. The latter is clearly demonstrated on earth in these days; it has come right out into the open where it can be seen. It is presumably a very noisy power, very violent, generating tremendous heat and light at a certain destructive level.” (from The Power of Creation Martin Exeter, April 17, 1983)

The natural world and Planet Earth itself feel the brunt of human behavior. Despite all the abuse, there is nevertheless profound beauty and wonder in the way life expresses through myriad forms. I’ve thought at times, walking on trails in a nature preserve near where we live in Southern California, about how the beautiful trees and grasses mask and soften evidences of a history of violence. There are old lava flows and jumbles of granite boulders strewn across hills. The hills themselves are evidences of the earth’s surface having been thrown up or down, twisted, and exposed. Some nearby Los Angeles residents might be aware that a big enough subterranean earth-shrug would obliterate manmade structures in seconds. Yet everywhere the earth goes on giving and giving and giving. I don’t know where the limit to that is, but there must be a point where enough is enough.

This and Martin’s words I read remind me of a Biblical passage:

“But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.” (II Peter 3:10)

Is that scary? This day has been foreseen for a long time. Do circumstances convince us that something is terribly wrong? Having global political characters with itchy fingers near nuclear buttons may test our equanimity! Or maybe it’s coming time for the rebalancing of the solar system that Uranda spoke of? Who knows? Let’s throw any speculations to the wind and welcome whatever.

What we do know is that the Lord has a body on earth through which to act.

We know this to the degree we are conscious parts of it.

Think of all the people you know in your life, people with whom you have heart connections. Every one of them has, in turn, an array of direct connections with many more, and so on and on and on. We’re all connected throughout the world by heavenly conductive substance through which we each give our spiritual expression, our only begotten sons. Let us never think small. May we indeed, as Martin often said, never underestimate the power of spiritual expression.

We so love the world that we constantly give our only begotten sons—the spirit of God in expression—into it and to everyone. This is how we come into the world now and now and now. But we are not o/the world, and do not judge or condemn it. We are not identified with it, and thus not controlled by it. It is what it is. When we love the world and we love one another because we love the Lord first, His spirit has the means of restoring His world through the connectedness we have with everything and everyone. This is our purpose in this life. What could be more fulfilling?

johncgray@aol.com