My Body My Ministry
Martin Cecil January 14, 1979
"True worship of God is the central link in the chain of connection
between Creator and His creation here on earth."
Over three thousand years ago these words were spoken by Moses: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart.”
“Hear, O Israel.” Those who have ears, let them hear: Worship God. What a very simple, straightforward commandment—the commandment of life. Human ears have been open to other commandments, which have proven to be the commandments of death. Regardless of how good some of them may have seemed to be to those who heard, every one of the commandments, other than the commandment to worship God, leads to death. However it isn’t a commandment to worship God according to the doctrines of men. There should be nothing intervening here—just Worship God. Obviously in the world today this commandment is scarcely heard, let alone obeyed, and yet it is the only way by which salvation may come. Using the word salvation, we see this as relating to human experience on earth. Every other conceivable suggestion is made by which man is supposed to experience salvation. Some believe in this, some believe in that; there are many advocates of this and many advocates of that but there is only one answer—Worship God. Actually do it. Don’t imagine that you are doing it by conforming to the doctrines of men.
There is much that might be called black magic in the human world. Perhaps foremost in this field is what is called religion. Religion says: Worship God my way; conform to my doctrines and you will be worshiping God. Masses of human beings have been led down the garden path on this basis, partly at least because they really wanted to be led down the garden path. Very few in the general sense have really wanted to know the truth. “Don’t tell me the truth; just tell me how I may get by.” And so religion has provided many doctrines in this regard and human beings have followed them blindly along the path which leads to death.
In order to reach the point where God is being truly worshiped there is the need for symbols. Religion has provided these symbols; they have also been provided in many other areas of human experience. But the use of symbols, which incidentally words are, has almost invariably shut the door on any further movement toward the truth, because the symbol has been taken as though it were the truth. But there is the need for symbols. However in utilizing symbols whatever is seen for the moment on this basis needs to remain open-ended. There needs to be a consciousness of the fact that this, whatever it is, is not the last word. The use of one set of symbols rightly leads to an understanding of another set of symbols, which leads to an understanding of another, and another, and another. As there is true progress in this regard each successive set of symbols is recognized as being less substantial. They are in the process of becoming so transparent that the truth itself may be known.
Our concern is to allow whatever is seen now, from the standpoint of the symbols which are acceptable now, to open the door to a symbolical understanding of something else. We will use symbols to begin to make this larger understanding comprehensible to us but we will not marry the symbols. We see that symbols are useful, necessary—they will always be so but perhaps in a little different way. Now their only purpose is to open the door to an understanding and the actual experience of the truth. I am sure you are all quite aware, to the extent that you have been moving under the influence of the spirit, of the fact that what you thought you knew last year—certainly ten years ago—was quite different from what you know now; but by the same token what you know now is just temporary. Don’t glom on to it as though it was going to be valid in the days to come.
Human beings in their human state are very insecure. They want something that is going to be dependable and so they try to construct these forms of symbols in such a way that they are going to last, because it is imagined that security is based in form. Get a really solid form, something that won’t move, and you may feel secure. There is no form that could be produced which would allow for permanent security. Security is not in the form. We may wisely say, “Security is in the spirit.” But do you know what that means? Really? To some extent no doubt, but I suspect there are moments when you don’t feel all that secure.
You may say, “Is this ministry really secure? Might it not collapse? What would happen if Martin wasn’t there anymore?” Various thoughts cross the mind no doubt; and the individual may say, “Well I don’t feel secure anymore; I do not wish to be associated with this which I see as moving toward a state of collapse.” Here of course is continuing evidence of the fact that the individual is placing his security in the form. The form that is now in existence is going to pass away. I don’t care what the form is, it is going to pass away, and you will feel very insecure if you are depending upon this form. It will pass away because it is right for it to pass away. It passes away in order to allow for the emergence of something else, and then that something else will pass away. This is constantly occurring within the scope of our experience. Why buck it? Why object to it? Why pin our hopes on a form that is going to pass away? We know that that is futile, in theory.
If there is observance of something which doesn’t seem to be on Tone, as we might think of it, in the behavior of somebody else, then what effect is that going to have on us? Are we dependent upon the form which we are judging, or are we dependent in our immediate expression upon the spirit, so that regardless of what anyone else may do, regardless of what anyone else may say, we provide what we know to be right and on Tone. There is the place where we are secure, because the Tone is sounding throughout the whole universe. It has never ceased to sound. It is the one constant, and if we are associated with that constant then obviously we have a sense of security. But if we are associating ourselves in identity with what is changing, with the symbols that are passing away, and we are hopeful for the symbols that are coming as being adequate to make us secure we will constantly be on edge because we are placing our dependence upon something that is not dependable. There is nothing wrong with the fact that it is not dependable—it’s all right; it’s part of the creative action; it’s a part of what is happening. But we do not depend upon what is happening; we depend upon what is making it happen. Our centering is in Cause—but we need to see this in a practical sense, so that we are not constantly building up our hopes with respect to forms.
But let us look for a moment at this matter of the way we describe what it is with which we are associated, perhaps calling it “this ministry”. As long as you call it that in your own consciousness it is separate from you and you are taking the attitude that you are in position to judge the ministry. It is not the fact of the matter if what is described by the words the Ministry is the truth. It may be that those who are associated with this ministry are not total revelations of the truth. One might say, “Well that is to be expected at the moment.” If it is, why judge it? Individually our sole concern is to reveal that truth, even though for the moment we may be aware that we are not yet in position to do it totally. Well if one is not in position to do it totally oneself we may presume that the same applies to somebody else. As long as we see this ministry as something with which we may or may not be associated we do not know what it is. Only when it reaches the point where we say within ourselves, “This is my ministry, my ministry of living now, moment by moment,” does it begin to be real in our experience.
I have described this ministry as the body of the Archangel. Here is a symbol, which I have offered. I know it is going to change, because if you cling on to that concept you are stuck. There is the necessity of experiencing the reality, whatever it is, and doubtless we will move through plenty of symbols before that reality is experienced.
When Jesus was establishing the Communion Service, He took the bread in His hands and blessed it, and everybody has been watching the bread, the form. He said, “This is my body.” Obviously it is a symbol, isn’t it? He was not speaking about what He had in His hands, although that provided a symbol. This is my body. He was speaking of all those who, identified with the truth, revealed the wholeness, the body, the living form in expression, which He accepted as His body: “This is my body.” He was looking out at the disciples and beyond them to everybody, accepting the responsibility Himself, knowing very well that there was scarcely anyone on the face of the earth who did likewise. Is it just as true today as it was then, where we are inclined to think within ourselves of “the body”? No—My Body! If we are associated with the truth it is My Body, not “the body,” not “the body of God,” or “the body of the Archangel,” because that concept in human minds takes it away from oneself. “Well it is the Archangel’s body; I may be associated with it, I may not.” If it is your body you cannot help but be associated with it.
If Jesus said, “This is my body,” and He said, “The works that I do shall ye do also. Follow me. Be ye therefore perfect,” then logically it is the responsibility of each one to accept identity as He did and to say: This is my body. This is my ministry. Until we do that we are always shoveling it off onto somebody else and we are looking around at the form of things, judging the form of things, and saying, “This is not what I expected.” Well what did you expect? The manifestation of the truth? Do you know what that is? How are you going to find out? By looking at someone else? By looking at the form of things? No, by expressing the truth yourself.
The truth is that “the Lord our God is one Lord”—not four billion on the face of the earth, just one. If we accept the truth that the Lord our God is one Lord then we cannot help but say within ourselves: “All this is mine, my body. I alone am responsible for sounding the Tone, regardless of what anyone else does. And I am not responsible for judging what other people do. I will be fully occupied with sounding the Tone. I will be a little cautious about imagining that I really understand what it is with other people but I know very well what it is I am responsible for: to sound the Tone.” Once a person comes to the point of saying within himself, “This is my body, the whole reality, this is all mine,” so that his expression is on this basis, then that individual is speaking in the name of the Lord. How could we speak in the name of the Lord without having that state within ourselves? What does it mean to be “in His name”? To have exactly the same attitude as we have recognized was the attitude of the Lord when He was incarnate on earth—that is one aspect of it at least—and Jesus always took responsibility for Himself. “This is my body. I am the son of God. I am the one.” The Lord our God is one Lord. There is a human identity being maintained, and human beings speak in the name of that identity, the human nature identity of mankind. We are always speaking in that name, and that one who has that name has been called the accuser, amongst other things—the accuser, the liar, the devil. Human beings speak, and act, and exist, in the name of the devil, dying in consequence. But somewhere along the way, surely, it is necessary to reach the point where we are no longer subject to symbols but acknowledge the truth.
“And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.” The identity which had been assumed is relinquished. That is the way it is cast down. The accuser is very close, isn’t he? You know damn well he is very close. Well let him be cast down! You cannot do it for anybody else, only for yourself, because your identity in the human sense has been in the accuser. That is why he has continued to exist insofar as you are concerned. Nobody else can make him continue to exist insofar as you are concerned. Only you can do that. “And they overcame him”—this is an indication of rising up to a different level of identity—“they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.”
We love our lives unto the death when we are identified with the accuser, because that brings the experience of death. As long as we exist in that state we are in the process of passing away. While human beings are alive they indulge in this practice but when they are dead they cannot do it anymore: the accuser passed away. It is rather a sad thing if at that point all that can be said is, “The accuser passed away, praise the Lord.” Why not let the accuser pass away before?
“And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb.” It was a symbol of something! We may have a clear understanding of these things of course. We know what blood symbolizes. We know what the Lamb symbolizes. Do we? We have a theory! Blood, the symbol of life; the Lamb relates to spiritual expression. All right, by reason of the life of spiritual expression the accuser is cast down; of course, because spiritual expression does not include accusation. Oh these are nice words explaining something, but how much do we know what it really is? We only know what it really is when there is the life of spiritual expression in our own experience, and there certainly isn’t that life in our experience as long as accusation remains. “And by the word of their testimony.” Here is the sounding of the Tone: the Word which is the Word of the one Lord, known in expression by reason of our own living, the sounding of the Tone.
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.” If we hear, then we may understand and we may assume the position of leadership in what has been referred to symbolically as the Third Sacred School. Each one who accepts this Commission knows within him- or herself that “This is my body. This is my ministry. If my ministry is made manifest on earth nowhere else but by reason of my own expression, well that does not deny the fact of my ministry.” But we know very well that it is emerging through many. Let us relinquish the symbols which set it apart from ourselves, maintaining it in the human nature state. It is unreal in that state. As long as inside ourselves we are thinking of it as the ministry, the body of the Archangel, the body of the Son of God, or whatever, it is over there and we have not accepted the responsibility of being in His name. This is my body. This is my ministry.
There have been those who have said to me, “Your ministry—I will support you in your ministry.” No you won’t! That’s a lie! We are in agreement when you say, “This is my ministry,” and you do not merely say, “This is Martin’s ministry,” or somebody else’s ministry. That is ducking out. That is being dishonest. You have no part in it in actual fact until you reach the point of saying, “This is my ministry,” and even if I should deny the whole thing and say, “To hell with it!” it is still your ministry. Do you understand that? It has no validity until it is. You are just a bunch of, what? children following the Pied Piper! It must be your ministry, just as it is my ministry. I don’t propose to deny it, but don’t trade on that fact! Let it be true of you. Then there begins to be the evidence of manhood and womanhood on earth, the revelation of man once more, to the glory of God. Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord.
© Emissaries of Divine Light
