Essences of the Edenic Programming
from Take Up Your Soul And Walk
September 12, 1982 p.m.
Martin Cecil — I'm going to invite Hugh Malafry to participate in the beginning part of our service hour this evening.
Hugh Malafry — You see before you living proof that things can hot up in an afternoon. Much more heat to come as we put ourselves, each one, on the threshold of our own experience and take the steps necessary.
I have been thinking of this matter of extrinsic and intrinsic factors in the makeup of man and finding, in a sense, in the extrinsic factors quite a level of superficiality which, nevertheless, tends to beguile human beings with their significance: matters such as race and religion, cultural factors and of course the more personal factors of having survived childhood and gone on to not-so-comfortable teenage years—and so it goes. I think we are sometimes a little beguiled by those of other cultural backgrounds, thinking that somehow perhaps the secret is there in that culture: black is beautiful, or brown, or whatever. Is it really? Any more than white is beautiful? Superficial factors! Back of the colors and the cultural traits and the atmospheres in which these things exist is the same old intrinsic human nature with its fears and its appetites. No matter where we go in this world we find fundamentally the same intrinsic fallen human state.
And then again, while that intrinsic state is more inward and in a sense more difficult to put one’s hand on, is it not, too, just a program that derives from aberrant cultural function; that is, the affairs of human beings as they try to manipulate the ways of God into some kind of pattern suitable to themselves? Is that not also fundamentally superficial compared to the deepest levels of an intricate and inward design? Even in the realm of memory, is there not deeper memory? Where does the passion for justice come from, the love and yearning for home in human beings? There are yet deeper memories throughout the human family. I doubt that one could go anywhere in the world and find a group of people who knew what was required in an external sense to let the fullness of man, the man of truth, emerge. People juggle patterns, juggle programmings; but as it was very accurately put, there is nothing new under the sun, just different clothing for the same old human nature.
It occurs to me that one of the most stunningly beautiful aspects of this ministry is that the extrinsic patterns of function and education that it provides are in fact one with the intrinsic nature of man. That doesn’t mean that as things heat up there are not educational structures to flow and make available more malleable, shapable substance in the current of the spirit, But it does engender in me, and I feel it must engender in our hearts, the deepest sense of respect for the extrinsic patterns of programming that are provided by this ministry. If there should be disrespect in that regard, or failure to appreciate, that would in itself be an evidence that the intrinsic hereditary structures of man were blinding one to the provision at hand. But, given that, given that threshold, that culminating quality of our momentary experience which places us on the edge of the unknown constantly, is it not with a combination of respect and appreciation, thankfulness for what is and has been, coupled with a sense of adventure and wonder, that brings us beyond the mess of human appetites and fears into the quick of the fire of the spirit in this moment?
I’ve been thinking, too, about the structures that pass away and the substance they release. We can see a world held in irons by prejudice, by fear, by concept of all manner of description, locking up substance in patterns that say, “If you will express anything, it must be expressed this way in order to be acceptable on earth.” Human programming: taking care of us it seems, these days, from the cradle to the grave—and they’re not so far apart sometimes. We have our own educational structures. And as they begin to pass away, what is it that is really happening? As they begin to pass away from filling our consciousness with concepts about being right to our highest understanding, and doing the best we know how in the moment with right attitude, and so on, what is actually happening? Is it not that this programming is becoming simply unconscious to us, that the structures which represented the deepest levels of programming—the Edenic state, the Edenic programming, the nature of man, the Man of Truth—is it not that those are simply providing a foundation for something emerging which can be fluidly trusted?
When I was learning to drive a car, I recall how painfully self-conscious I was of every action. But then I learned to drive a car and there was something to do with the car: drive it down the street, go wherever you had to go. There were purposes to be fulfilled by using it. It came alive in a sense, because the act of learning what it meant to drive that car had become spontaneously available in a formation of skills that are appropriate to the moment.
Life is more important than the body, but the body is essential to life. Is this not something of the threshold on which we stand as the deeper levels of the intricate, the intrinsic nature of man begin to find expression? We may be delighted to the very core of our being that extrinsic and intrinsic factors for us are one. The structures give way to free the substance up for use. Deepest of my concerns at this point in my own experience, and in working with others as that is fitting, is what happens to that substance.
There is a fashionable rebelliousness that comes when one graduates from school: “Oh I don’t know that I’m going to go out into the world and do it the way everyone else has done it. Maybe I’ll knock around for a few years or maybe I’ll just see how I can slip through the system untouched by the professional requirements of that system.” Also, there is the kind of rebelliousness which says, “Now that the substance is being freed up we'll just do whatever we need to do”—whatever that is! Well what do you do, all dressed up and nowhere to go: fritter away substance: in a sense let the life essences bleed away? I've watched people follow their own substance into oblivion.
We think of the fire as having color and texture. One of the things I was noticing about fire recently is that it ascends; it always points up. Even if you turn a burning log upside down the fire points up; it burns upward. There is radiant fire, and fire that naturally burns upward; it refines, it lifts up. As the fire burns brighter and hotter the responsibilities become increasingly more specific, requiring finer containment. Nothing that we have learned has actually passed away in the sense of the spirit of the Law, the spirit of truth. The man of truth is more on hand in fact because the noisy outer man is less on hand, and there is something to ascend before the throne of God.
That’s where the substance belongs. It takes a certain level, texture and fineness of substance to come into the presence of God. Man is here to let that refinement occur in the substance that needs to come into His presence. And we may think of this in terms of the intrinsic factors of our spiritual expression or we may see them as being one with the extrinsic factors of the provision of this ministry. Really, what is the difference ultimately if the true man is present, provided we are responsible for our spiritual expression, each one of us? This substance, this fine atmosphere, is not here to follow out reasserted factors of human nature or to flush out some as yet impure element of the intrinsic or extrinsic programming of man, but to be available to the deepest sensibility of all, the sense of truth, the essences of the Edenic programming, the essences of the Divine state, and to flesh that out. That places upon us, more than ever, the responsibility to be absolutely precise in an orientation from which emerges every thought, word and deed of our lives for the greater generation and the purification of the whole earth—this by reason of the fact that there is an angel on hand, whose environment is fire, living through the body of the living God.
Martin Cecil — There is an angel on hand to do what is required. That doing is only made possible because there is a human soul present. All human souls have been intrinsically and extrinsically programmed in the earthly sense. This programmed soul has assumed an identity, as though it really were something of itself. That identity is called by your name.
I am reminded of an occasion recorded in the Bible of a fellow who was found lying on his bed by a certain pool which was reputed to have healing waters. He had been lying there a long time, because he assumed that his healing required that somebody should put him in the pool. Nobody had done it for thirty-eight years, so he was still waiting. This is rather a good picture of any human being. Regardless of how physically healthy a person may imagine that he or she is there are always factors of personal experience about which to complain. Everyone has his or her personal limitations. Most people try to fool themselves into believing that by playing certain roles they can transcend their limitations. People everywhere aspire to these roles, imagining that by playing them they are going to be more important, more worthwhile, more fulfilled. Game-playing, isn’t it? Children playing games. The world as it now is operates on this basis.
There is one present who says, in effect, as it was said to the man who was lying inert by the pool, “Take up your bed and walk. Get up from that supine position. Take up your bed”—what heretofore you’ve been lying on, namely the programmed state of human nature which tells people how to behave. It tells people that they are sick, that they are getting older, that they are dying. Take up your bed and walk! Stop believing all the lies and rationalizing them so that they appear to be true. There is someone present, real and true, who is capable of taking up that bed and using it to advantage. It’s not a matter of trying to pretend that one doesn’t feel so good, or whatever it is, but the question always arises as to whether that is going to dictate to you what your behavior should be. Take up your bed and walk!
Who are you? I can ask that question and I’m sure you could give me a glib answer. “I am an angel”—that’s a good one. Is that the fact or are you a player of games, a role-player who puts weight and meaning in the role that is played? If there is any purpose to the role that is being played, the weight and the meaning is there by reason of the one who is playing the role. The role itself is a husk. Mind you, there are some roles that are significant, needful. But how easily those concerned slip into the programmed state where the role is the thing, so that a person feels that if he isn’t playing that role he’s ceased to have any meaning. I think it’s most useful if a person loses the particular role in which he has put so much store, that is if the person has been doing that. I don’t say it’s necessary that everyone should lose their roles, but certainly if anyone has put his meaning into the role so that if the role was no longer necessary he would feel meaningless, then obviously that individual is in a bad way. The role is running that person’s life.
Take up your bed and walk! Take up your soul, in whatever way it may have been programmed intrinsically and extrinsically, and be about the Father’s business. The one who takes up the soul and walks is the angel of the Lord. The soul is for use, and in that use roles will be played. But the role does not change in any way the one who has taken up the soul and walked into that particular role. There are many roles that are useful, but only when these roles are played by a true person—by the angel. Closeness is primarily in spirit, regardless of the geographical position of souls. If it is useful for souls to be together for some particular creative purpose, then the angels concerned may let this occur, but only because it is for a purpose, not because the souls imagine that they would feel better if they were closer together.
This is the last service I will be present at in the Dome Chapel for a season. I am taking my soul elsewhere. I delight that we have these times when our souls are in close proximity. But that is only valuable to the extent that there is the unification known in spirit. We are close in spirit. But the fact that our souls may be in the vicinity of each other is not the cause of the closeness in spirit; it may be the result of it. Presumably it is in this instance, because the gathering of these souls together is for a creative purpose. If we really participate soulwise in that creative purpose it is enjoyable to the soul. It is delightful to the one who is incarnate, relating to the specific needs of the administration of the creative cycle on earth. So we bring our souls along into the Chapel this evening. That’s fine. I will not have this pleasure and opportunity for a while but this doesn’t mean that we cease to be together. We cease to be together soulwise maybe, but that isn’t the important thing anyway, except as it is useful in some creative purpose that is being undertaken. From the standpoint of spirit I am not going anyplace other than where I am. Isn’t that true of you too? We are all where I am—there ye may be also.
I have a soul, you have a soul, and if these souls could usefully be put together in some configuration, as this evening, then let’s do that and participate in the creative process that is thereby made possible. But if we are not participating in that specific aspect of the creative process, each of us is still himself and we are still in place—that one place which is the place of spirit: I am. Each of us could say, “I am incarnate on earth and delighted to be, because my soul enables me not only to be on earth but to play a part with other angels and their souls in the creative requirements which are presently on the move.”
We are aware of the clamorings of the soul, present because of prior programming in the human state. We need to be in position to stand aloof from it so that we’re not involved with it even though it is there. People find themselves with what might be described as human nature traits and people struggle with these traits all their lives and never get anywhere. They know that because of these traits maybe they lose their jobs or they get in trouble of one sort or another. A lot of people will never admit that it was their own traits that got them in the trouble. They say it was somebody else’s fault. No, it wasn’t somebody else; it was our own human nature acting up that caused the trouble. I am sure everybody has had experience of difficult times, uncomfortable times, painful times, which later were seen to be most valuable. We may run into trouble—I don’t know anyone who hasn’t; some make a big deal out of it, some learn something from it and go on their way rejoicing. But we come to the point where we behave, soulwise, according to the heavenly programming, even though there may be some lingering programming out of the past. We are able to observe it and give it no weight.
The human traits with which a person struggles just simply drop away when they are given no more life through struggling with them. Life is to reveal the Truth, the glorious Truth, and the soul learns to come along with that willingly, happily. We might stress that word happily—not grudgingly. The old traits from human programming pass away. They die because they are given no more life. If such things have life in our experience it is because we give them life; nobody else does. We’re here to take up our bed, our soul—it’s been a sleeping one—take up our soul and walk, stand erect and go where we need to go, do what we need to do! Certainly it isn’t lying around by a pool hoping to be healed. Take up your bed and walk! There is one present—you—who is capable of doing that. Whatever may be the state present in the soul may be used to advantage in the creative processes.
So we express strength, for one thing. We express the Truth; and because we express it we know it, the only way it can be known. We know what we express. All right, if you want to know the truth, express it. Simple. Where is the problem? When the Truth is known freedom is the experience, the freedom of the one who is incarnate on earth to play a creative part in the greater fulfilment for which each one is incarnate. And as that fulfilment comes there is joy unspeakable and full of glory. There is happiness. The creative process is perfect—give it form. Whatever is needful soulwise will put in an appearance, not for the purpose of satisfying the soul but for the purpose of letting God’s will be done, for the purpose of allowing the creative fulfilment to be known.
We discover as angels moving along the way just how that is possible, what souls are available to participate in the process, what souls are being held out too. We can only use the ones that are available. And as angels we bring them to where they need to be. But whether one soul is next to another soul or far-distant from another soul makes no difference from the standpoint of the angel of the Lord, from your standpoint as the one who is present, because there is no separation in spirit. Once such a big deal ceases to be made of the spurious requirements of the soul then the emphasis comes where it is rightly put in spirit, and we become aware of the heaven. That’s where we dwell; that’s where we abide. And because we abide in heaven, heaven comes into experience on earth.
So with these particular words I conclude our evening hour together in person soulwise, but we remain together in spirit. Let that be so. That is the most important thing. Then whatever needs to happen from the standpoint of the souls involved can be handled quite easily to the glory of God.
© Emissaries of Divine Light
