Cone Response

Cone  Response

Uranda   February 15, 1953

We have all heard much about the essential step of repentance. In the Master's prayer we find the words: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” We read again that God is faithful and just to forgive if man truly repents. There is some realization of the meaning or significance of repentance as such; but the pattern of life experience in the world, and the pattern of life experience here, indicates that human beings do not understand the principles involved in relationship to what is called forgiveness. Very often human pride stands in the way of true repentance. But until there is an understanding of the processes of forgiveness, as they express outward from God to those who respond, there can be no adequate understanding of what repentance is. Human beings often think they have repented when they have not. It is not enough merely to repent, no matter what understanding one may have of the meaning of the word. There must be forgiveness offered and forgiveness received, for until that forgiveness is received in the individual, in relationship to his own life, it has no meaning to him. The distortions, the discords, the ill patterns of every sort, which spoil the potential beauty and wonder of life on earth, all show that man has not learned how to repent and he has not learned how to receive forgiveness. We have often considered the words: “All things work together to perfection for those who love and serve the Lord.” Since we have recognized the reality of the One Law, and understand something of its basic principles, we know that the starting point for this transition out of the realms of distortion into the realms of beauty and harmony and effective function must be governed by that One Law. It is in this Law that we find our starting point. But all of this, seen more or less intellectually, brings us to a point where there is a need for a comprehension of something that must be spiritually discerned. There is no way of adequately expressing it in words alone, and yet this morning, if we would take full advantage of our opportunities, if we would fully enjoy our privileges, we need to experience a deeper realization with respect to this point of truth.

Last evening we were considering briefly some of the principles involved in relationship to the exactness, the precision, with which the laws of God work, the necessity for correct timing. As we recognize that all that God does is scientific and that the only scientific things that man comprehends come from God, that the precision of function, whether in the universe or in the human body or in the atom, all originates through God's creation and the working of God's laws, we can see that, since we are made in the image and likeness of God, it is important that we ourselves share that pattern of exactness, that pattern of order, that pattern of precision, in our function in relationship to God. Since man's function has been haphazard in its nature—it is only, as it were, by accident when he connects up with the current of God's power—we have discords, inharmonies, difficulties of every sort. This morning, as we approach this vast subject from the standpoint of repentance and forgiveness, let us remember that the Master said, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” This in itself signifies that we are connecting links between God and others, that the attitude which we extend toward others is going to determine the nature of our relationship to Deity. Anything that is to move, any current that is to flow, must be connected up.

If you send a letter to someone in Toronto, or New York City, or some other place, and if that letter is stopped for some reason halfway there, it will never be delivered, it will never connect up; you will not get an answer and you will start wondering why. If the letter is to have any meaning at the point to which it is addressed, it must reach that point. Every time we mail a letter, put a stamp on it, and trust the mail service to carry it through, we take that fact for granted. It is something that is so commonplace to us that we, generally speaking, do not think too much about it. Put on an address; if it is not clearly written, trust somebody to stop and figure it out, and think about it, guess at what it means; throw it in the mailbox and expect it to get there. Generally speaking it does. And if we stop to think about it we must recognize that the mail service, as it works for instance in the United States and Canada, is really a very wonderful thing. But the effectiveness of it depends upon the fact that the letter gets through and is delivered at the point to which it is addressed, to the person to whom it is addressed. Suppose you address a letter to someone in New York City and it gets safely through to New York City, but someone there should say, “Well now, this is addressed to New York; it is in New York. It won't make any difference whether it goes to John Jones or John Brown. John Brown is closest; I'll put it in his letter box instead of carrying it on to John Jones.” It does make a difference. When you wrote the letter you intended it to go to a certain party. Merely getting it to New York and handing it to any one of five or six million people is of no avail; you want it to go all the way to the right person. As surely as this is true of letters, or other things, it is likewise true of vibratory factors. The vibratory factor must get through and connect up if it is to have any meaning.

Suppose the human being does something wrong and he is put in an uncomfortable position because he did that wrong thing, and being put in that uncomfortable or embarrassing or hurtful position he says, “I am sorry I did that.” He may think of that as repentance, but it is very possible that he is only sorry that he has been embarrassed or made uncomfortable or put in a hurtful position. He is not actually sorry that he did it, only sorry that the circumstances worked out so that the uncomfortable situation developed. In such a case we can see clearly that such function is not repentance, it is not a turning in love response to God. All things work together to perfection for those who love and serve the Lord, and not for anyone else. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.” With what? “With all of your being.” That involves centering, then; and if we are centered in love response to God we are connected up with God. If we merely talk about God, if we merely think about God and do not by love response connect up with God, the current does not get through. You can think about sending a letter to someone in New York City and never do it; you can talk about it and never do it. There must be a love response that gets through to God so that you are connected up. Then the next point is to serve God, which means to yield to His will, to let His control manifest. Next let us note that most things are not under the control of God on earth, in a direct sense. There is an overall pattern which establishes a limit to which man can go, and something of that control gets through at different levels in different ways, but the pattern of human function, generally speaking, is not under God's control. All kinds of things are constantly happening, constantly taking place, which are not of the divine design. And since these things are constantly taking place, on the basis of human impulse and determination, there are always unpredictable factors with respect to every situation.

I wonder if I could paint a word picture of something which must be spiritually discerned if it is to have any meaning. Let us suppose that the level of the sea of glass, the point to which God's power, design, will, extends in perfect function, is three hundred feet above the earth's surface—of course that is an arbitrary point, for the purposes of painting a picture, revealing a principle—but suppose that to that point God's power flows with perfect release, the design is right, everything is working in perfect precision; but coming to that point, we come to the realm of what we call the outer sphere of things, man's realm. Suppose we picture the mental blanket or cloud which man creates as being, generally speaking, about one hundred feet thick, extending about a hundred feet above the earth's surface, and suppose we see the two hundred feet remaining between the top of this mental blanket and the bottom of the sea of glass as more or less open or seemingly empty space. Everything is of perfect design and function from above to a given point, and then below that the manifestation of that divine design, that current of power, depends upon man's correct function.

Let us note this mental blanket for a moment. It has the appearance of being a dark cloud, in some places blacker than others, and a certain amount of lightning playing back and forth in it. This represents that in which human beings, generally speaking, live; and most of their reaction patterns are one to another—not response to God, but response one to another. Suppose, in this picture, we imagine that every time there is a true response in any direction, that response takes the form of a cone, a cone which has its large end or base at the point of the individual and the point sticks outward toward that to which the individual responds.

Now this cone, illustrating the pattern of response, may manifest in form for only a moment or for a long period of time, and it forms in any direction. If the individual responds to that which is below him the cone instantly takes form in that direction. As you look into this cloud with spiritual vision you see these cones as horns sticking out from individuals. They flash in and out, sometimes hold steady in some direction for a few moments or a few hours, but they are not stable. During the time they are in form they act as the antenna of the individual's receiving set; they determine directional reception. Some individuals have these horns flashing out this way and that for a few seconds or a few moments, moving about so rapidly, in so many different directions, that when you listen with spiritual hearing to the point where they are receiving, you have nothing but a hodgepodge of meaningless sounds and impulses, as if someone had the radio turned on quite loud in volume and then sat twirling the dial back and forth, covering every station in the range of reception but leaving one station on for only a moment or two, a minute or two.

Now we note again that almost all of these cone-shaped focalizations of response are within the range of human beings themselves, in relationship to themselves, and looking from above one sees that only rarely does the point of a cone ever appear above the top of this dark cloud, pointing upward toward God, and then it generally manifests there for only a few seconds and is gone. Seldom, as you look at this cloud from above, seeing it extending out on the earth's surface for thousands of miles, seldom do you see a cone form—with its base in the cloud—truly take form and point upward toward the sea of glass. But when it does, an amazing thing happens. If that cone holds steady and true and keeps its point upward, immediately another cone forms from the sea of glass and comes down to the point of the responding cone until the points touch, and if the responding cone holds steady the two blend into one thing and there is an open window, an open channel, for the release of things divine into the world. But that release from heaven, or the sea of glass, from the inner vibrational realms, will be on the basis of the need that is present in that which is focalized in response, not on the basis of what God would arbitrarily project into the realm of man at any given moment. God never determines, in any arbitrary sense, what is going to come from heaven into the earth, never, because the moment there is a true response that holds, that which comes from God from heaven through that response into the world will be on the basis of that which is focalized in response and the needs that are present there. That which God projects into the world is always, and must always be, conditioned by the conditions that are in the world, at least until ill conditions are cleared away and the divine design holds true in the realm of form. So human beings themselves determine what they shall receive from God, even when they give a pattern of response to God.

Now, if after wrong function man does repent in a true sense and begins to respond to God, this cone begins to take form, pointing upward. But then, if before it has fully formed in its upward response he begins to think, “Well now, if so-and-so hadn't said that, I wouldn't have done that wrong thing; or if so-and-so hadn't of done the other thing”—he begins to search out excuses for himself—what happens to the cone of response that started to form upward? It begins to vanish, and he begins to have a pattern of response outward under the blanket, under the mental blanket, toward some other human being. According to his concept he repented, he was sorry, he turned toward God. He started to do so, but he never let it have a chance to connect up, to get there. And then, with human pride at work, his focus of his cones or horns of response began to be toward people, conditions, something contained within this mental blanket that covers the earth. Then that was not true repentance and he did not receive forgiveness. Now God offers forgiveness to all, but man must receive it if it is to have any meaning. Therefore we see that until man's response to God connects up with God and holds steady, man cannot begin to receive that which God would give to correct the condition. Forgiveness cannot be a fact in our lives until we allow God's power to so work that the results of the wrong action do not appear—to change things.

Forgiveness is not merely something that is to be expressed as an idea from the lips; it is something that must actually connect up and work. So forgiveness, in the sense of that which God offers to you, and to all human beings, is something that must be allowed to manifest as the power of God, which corrects the ill condition and allows the divine design to appear where there has been distortion. The wrong action distorts, spoils, destroys; the right action from God begins to repair the damage done. Human beings act as if they thought that all they had to do was say, “I'm sorry; I repent,” and then go about their own business, in their own way, and that is all there is to it. Such an attitude, such function, is not true repentance and does not allow true forgiveness, because nothing ever connects up to change the situation, to correct the damage done. And only God can correct the damage. Until that cone of response takes form above the world's mental blanket and holds steady so that the cone of positive radiation can come down from above and connect up, only then does forgiveness begin to manifest. But if the human being begins to feel that peace that results from response, the joy, the reality of God's presence, and says, “Well now, it's all taken care of,” and he turns his attention somewhere else, his own cone of response dissipates, the connection is gone and God's power never has a chance to correct what needs to be corrected. That correction does not take place in a moment. It will probably touch many lives, depend upon the response of many individuals; it is something that will work out gradually. It will take time. Once the damage is done it takes time. Suppose you have a wound in your body. Generally speaking, you expect it to take a little time for that to heal. Just so, that which you have done that is wrong, that has destroyed and hurt, is not going to be corrected in a moment, and you have not received forgiveness until it is corrected; not merely the idea that you are going to be sorry and repent and say, “God, please forgive me,” and then go on and do as you please. You do not receive forgiveness on any such basis. You must connect up with God's power, and stay connected up so that God's power can undo the damage done, so that the ill pattern can be corrected. Then you have forgiveness. The power of God must be allowed to operate in actual fact on earth, in you and through you.

As long as it is true that, looking at this picture from above, we can see for hundreds of miles and seldom a point, a cone point of response rising above the cloud, pointing to the sea of glass, we cannot hope to have power enough made manifest on earth to allow the conditions on earth to be changed. That which is from God must connect up with man; man must connect up with God—not just halfway, not just thinking about it, but allowing it to actually work. Then, as man holds steady in his love response to God and refuses to respond to everything that takes place round about him, he begins to be a means by which the power of God manifests, he begins to have a stable cone of response pointing always upward. He refuses to respond to that which is round about himself in the changing, fluctuating pattern of things. He begins to be stable. So it is with any man or woman who begins to realize the privilege and the responsibility of being a child of God. Only as this point of response rises to God and holds centered there, regardless of anything else, can all of our talk about the Fatherhood of God have any meaning, and only as we allow the wisdom and the power of God to work through us in our relationships with others can all of our talk about brotherhood have any meaning. We have the conditions on earth which need to be changed. Of that there is no doubt. Waiting for God to do something about it is waiting in vain, until we give a response to God which will let His power work on earth. It is up to us. Are we going to be creatures of chance, fluctuating, living in the darkness of this cloud? Or are we going to rise above it, let our cone of response take form in love response to God, and let it stay steady, regardless of the storms round about, regardless of what anyone may think or say or do, holding it steady to God so that God's positive current of power and wisdom can connect up with us and flow through us and begin to change things? God's forgiveness is in actual fact the process of changing things; for the forgiveness has not been received until things have been changed. It is not something that merely works in the mind and is done and can be dismissed. It is something that must have a relationship to all phases of being. Forgiveness manifests in the physical body as healing of the body. Forgiveness manifests in the mind as illumination. Forgiveness manifests in the heart as purity and peace. Only as we begin to truly respond and yield and let go, holding centered in God, can we let the things of God appear in our lives; and only when they do appear, and the empty places are filled with that which God designed, can we say that we have received forgiveness.

Blessed ones, that which first begins to appear in your life because of your love response to God is simply the starting point for the filling of the empty places in your lives, and that starting of the process of filling may not come the way you think it will, it may not start in the place where you think it will, it may not appear in the form you think it will. And if the moment something starts appearing from God and it is not what you think it ought to be, where you think it ought to be, in the way you think it ought to be, and you turn away from God, you react, then you spoil the pattern, you break the contact; and even though you did for a moment have a contact with God, you still do not receive the forgiveness, you still have the problem on your hands, you still have the results of ill action to contend with, and the power of God is not at work in you and through you to clear the ill things. The process of receiving forgiveness is the process of receiving healing so that in body and mind and heart you may be what God intends you to be—a man, a woman, in Christ, through whom the works of God manifest according to the will of God, according to God's plan—until there shall be so many points of stable response to God that all the space between the sea of glass and the realm where man lives becomes filled with the cones of response pointing upward and the currents of God's power coming down into the world, by which the darkness of the cloud shall be dissipated by the light, the turmoils and the storms shall be calmed and heaven shall come into the earth, because we let the power of God have meaning in our lives, because we let the will of God be done on earth as it is in heaven, because we have come to live that which the Master taught us to pray, live in acknowledgment of the fact, the truth, that Thine, O Lord, is the kingdom and the power and the glory. Until we yield to the reality of God's love and stay stable in our centering, we cannot receive on earth that which God would give.

As you begin to realize the significance of this picture which I have sought to introduce to your consciousness, you will be able to see why so many things that you may have thought ought to have been made manifest have not been. Perhaps you can begin to see how you have defeated yourselves over and over again, how you have thrown away the blessings which God would have given, how it is that the thing that manifests on earth is not what God designed. Even when you begin to do the right thing, even when the healing process starts, the thing you are receiving from God is not what God designed. It is the thing that is necessary to fill in the empty places; it is the thing that is necessary to begin to cause all things to work together to perfection. It is not the thing that God designed. It is the thing that is necessary because of ill conditions. And until you let God fill in the empty places, until you let His design begin to take form, He cannot begin to give to you, in the direct sense, that which He designed, that which He offers. So if you keep God forever busy taking advantage of every little speck of response that He receives, seeking to bless a life here and bless a life there, heal a little bit here and heal a little bit there, you may be receiving something from God, yes, you may have touched something of His power now and again, but you are still not receiving what God designed, you are still not receiving what He offers you, what should manifest because you live. And so only those who stay centered in true love response to God, and truly serve Him, regardless of time elements or anything else, can have all things work together to perfection.

Blessed ones, it takes time for the healing processes to work out, it takes time for the power of God to begin to reach through the pattern that you have established, to correct something in someone else's life somewhere else. You are not a separate individual. You are a part of a whole Unit—mankind, the human family. And if the healing process goes to work in you it must go to work in the body of mankind. If you have a wound on the end of your little finger, that wound will not heal without regard to the rest of the body. You cannot say, “Well I'll cut my finger off and let it heal all by itself.” It would not heal, would it? Nor can you be healed cut off from the rest of the body of humanity. You have to be a part of that body and let the healing process work in relationship to the whole body, and then something begins to work out. But it will not be according to your concept, your idea. You are not going to impose your will upon God and get away with it. If you have your cone of response pointing upward to the sea of glass and suddenly you start getting positive toward God, what happens? Your cone of response shrinks and becomes nothing. It is gone, and you have no more contact. Why? Because the only thing that can keep your point of response centered in God is love, love response for God—not trying to tell God what to do, not trying to impose your will upon Him, but yielded to Him and letting His will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Then we begin to receive healing. But all of that healing process must work out, all of the clearing process, all of the forgiving process, before we can begin to receive what God has designed for us. Until that time comes all we can receive is what is necessary because of our own limitations and distortions. You may say, “Well God designs that too, doesn't He?” Yes, of course. He will fill the need, but the mere filling of the need which you as a human being have created is not receiving what God designs for you, what God would give you in the beauty of Being and the wonder of Life. And so, let us receive what God would give. God bless you, each and every one.

© Emissaries of Divine Light