One With The Rising Tide

from

One  With  The  Rising  Tide

Martin Exeter  and  Chris Jorgensen

January 27, 1985  100 Mile House, B.C.

Chris Jorgensen — Let the redeemed of the Lord say so! I am delighted with the privilege and opportunity of standing before you, and to say so.

It was a very precious and powerful hour that we shared together this morning, and I found my experience to be all-consuming. Every fiber of my being, every morsel of my mind, every ounce of my feeling realm, was totally present, moving with the Word, spirit—all-consuming. I found that the world, the many activities in it that go on day in and day out, just receded from view, and there was only the spirit of the Lord God.

I was giving consideration to the question as to whether an experience such as I shared in the hour this morning is sufficient—to have an experience of giving my all to the Lord, to His spirit, the movement of that spirit, in an hour of service. It is, but for those of us who live in a unit there are 164 other hours in the week in which there is space to give one’s all, to be fully consumed. It’s not enough to just come and to be present in a service setting and to move with the Word. That movement is something that rightly takes place in every moment throughout the week.

This afternoon I was reading the Bible, as I often do, and I was giving consideration to the other creative cycles that have appeared on earth to allow the restoration of mankind. I was noting that in each particular creative cycle that has occurred there were critical points, crisis points, in the movement of the creative cycle, where the individual or the group of individuals absolutely needed to be in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing. As one scans the story that is contained in the Bible there are numerous such occasions. I am thinking of the time of the children of Israel and their experience of coming out of Egypt. Certainly they had various critical points along the way where they needed to be in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing, crossing the Red Sea, for example.

I found myself reading the passage in Numbers relating to the time when the Lord God, through Moses, sent twelve spies into the promised land to scout it out to bring back a report. As I am sure you recall, ten of the spies said: “The people be strong that dwell in the land, and the cities are walled, and very great: and moreover we saw the children of Anak there.” But two, Joshua and Caleb, had a completely different view. I would read something out of Numbers, chapter 14, of their experience:

“And they spake unto all the company of the children of Israel, saying, The land, which we passed through to search it, is an exceeding good land.

“If the Lord delight in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give it us; a land which floweth with milk and honey.

“Only rebel not ye against the Lord, neither fear ye the people of the land; for they are bread for us: their defence is departed from them, and the Lord is with us: fear them not.”

Here was a particular critical point in the unfolding creative cycle it had been going on for years and years. The children of Israel cried and died through the night and said, “No, we won’t go. We can’t.” And in a very particular way they were denying what it was that the Lord God had brought unto them. Of course we recall their experience: they wandered in the wilderness for many years. There was a sense of failure.

I was also reading something of the story of our Master and His experience in the creative cycle that was unfolding at His time. In reading His story it’s evident that there were critical points in His ministry where something needed to be met in a very specific way. One such occasion was after the feast, the supper, when He went with the disciples into the Garden of Gethsemane and He commanded the disciples to sit and pray. He took with Him three a little farther on—Peter, James and John—and He himself went farther on and began to pray. And as you will remember He came and found them sleeping:

“And he ... saith unto Peter, What, could ye not watch with me one hour?

“Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

“He went away again the second time, and prayed ...

“And he came and found them asleep again: for their eyes were heavy.

“And he left them, and went away again, and prayed the third time ...

“Then cometh he to his disciples, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.”

Here was a particular critical point, a point of pressure, of proving out, and there was failure. I mention these because I have been giving some deep consideration of where we are now and the creative cycle of restoration that is currently moving, that I’m moving in, that we’re moving in together. I feel we are at a critical time, a point of testing, a point of proving something out, particularly in regard to the Rising Tide of Change events, Here’s an opportunity that is with the body, a chance to bring right into the world of man a spiritual event, to actually let heaven be on earth. Such a thing hasn’t occurred for millennia.

It occurs to me that if there are those willing to allow this to happen there would be something on earth that would be undeniable, unstoppable. It would perhaps even change the very circumstances that come our way on a daily basis. But it’s not a matter of looking to someone else to provide the goods at The Rising Tide of Change—to Martin perhaps, or Michael, or someone else. It is rather the acceptance of a stance on my part—and each one can say that—to let spirit be absolutely represented in living, not just in the Rising Tide event in Vancouver on April 13, but in this very moment in this hour of service, and in the hours to come, that through our individual and collective living there is a channel available, a setting of heaven available, through which the spirit of the Lord God can move, can act on earth, right at the very level where man is. As I mentioned, this would be something undeniable, present in form on earth again after all these many, many years.

So we are faced with a critical time, but it’s not a serious and heavy business. It is serious, and there is responsibility to be accepted in living, but I know, and I trust you know too, that as we are willing to do that, to provide space in our own consciousness for spirit to move, be expressed, there is a sense of lightness, a sense of ease, even humor. On that basis then there is no space for a fear of failure. This is something that has clouded the consciousness of mankind in a particular way. Failure is impossible as long as I am present, as long as I am on hand. So, in a very particular way the body is coming of age. We have had the space to live and to be educated; it is now the time for doing. And I gladly accept that responsibility, individually and certainly with you, to let the Son of Man again be in form on earth now.

Martin Exeter — There are some very interesting points here in what has been said. I have given consideration to the possibility of no more mailings. As long as the mailings are simply used for personal benefit they are being misused, after a certain point. There is another reason for them beyond the provision of what may, to start with, be needful for the increase of the individual experience of association with the Word and with the tone of life. So I have thus far refrained from withdrawing what I have spoken of as my personal letters to all concerned. Another way that I might have handled this matter was to proceed to give expression to something that was totally out of character and see what everybody would do. I was speaking this morning about lies. Now this might be a reason for lying: to give everybody a chance to be true to the truth. I haven’t done that yet, at least not purposely!

There is this very strong sense of failure in human beings everywhere. Because of this sense of failure there is a sense of insecurity. The failure has occurred of course, as we recognize, because of an original stance which someone or ones took relative to their responsibilities on earth. Here was a point of failure. Perhaps, to start with, it didn’t appear to be very much of a failure and may not have been translated as a failure at all because, up to that point, nobody knew what failure was; so this was perhaps deemed to be just another aspect of success. It was anticipated that it would be of that nature: otherwise the stance wouldn’t have been taken. However it proved itself out to be failure. And human beings have never had as a strong point, apparently, the willingness to admit failure. They are quite conscious of the fact of it but seldom reach a point of admitting it. They always have their justifications and excuses and they can give you a long rigmarole of the reasons why: the failure that occurred wasn’t really their fault. But failure is failure, regardless of whose fault it is, and I don’t think there’s anyone on the face of the earth who can exclude themselves from that matter of fault, because all have participated in the failure; and so there is the sense of insecurity, which has always hampered a return to the true stance.

Chris spoke of the historical past in connection with the Israelites and the Master. Here were occasions when there was failure—various lesser failures I suppose you could say, until finally the point was reached of absolute failure. There was a rising tide, one might say, in that Old Testament period, coming into form in a very small way, to start with, through Abraham, who brought it to focus, accommodated it to the extent that he did. This rising tide of spirit was at work in human hearts and minds everywhere but came to the surface and to point in this one man particularly, and because of that something was initiated. At that time it was rather a slow process, at least slow from the standpoint of the human view of things; it involved many generations of people. It continued on after a fashion as there were those who did accommodate the movement of that tide. Various ones had parts to play—Isaac, Jacob. Joseph in particular allowed something to come very keenly to point in his willingness to accommodate that rising tide which was continuing.

This was all one movement of a creative process, unfolding over the years, and of course it eventually emerged in a special way through Moses, who himself accommodated that tide very well and provided what was necessary at that time, as the others had before him. But there was failure, regardless of this, regardless of the fact that the way was really rather easy, because those attitudes which were common in human beings at that time were utilized in the process. Some have wondered why there was all that war and killing and battling by the children of Israel in those days; of course it wasn’t solely by them, everybody else was battling too. But this was the general attitude of human beings, the general level of consciousness, the general way of behavior. It was a very material or physical approach, and we have recognized that fact. That was the way it was then. There doesn’t seem to have been all that much progress since that time, as most are still caught in that state of affairs where it is imagined that the battle is the thing—not only war in the usual sense these days, but everybody is battling with words or however, as though this was the way to go, as though some supposed problem is going to be solved that way. Never.

Anyway that rising tide in the Old Testament time did begin to emerge out of the warring condition, particularly at the time of Solomon, and there was an opportunity for something to occur there which would have been unprecedented—it was somewhat unprecedented, to start with—but there was again failure, and so very shortly thereafter the whole opportunity disintegrated. It might be said that in that disintegration it gave the appearance that the tide had gone out again. I don’t think that’s really what happened, because one aspect of the rising tide is disintegration, and if there is no focus for the integrating part of it then all you see is disintegration. But this doesn’t say that the tide is not still rising.

The evidence of that continued rising of the tide of course was the advent of the Master, in the person of Jesus, and He accommodated that at the time. The tide had continued on from the level of physical action in the old warring ways to an opportunity to begin to understand—in other words to allow the mind to come out of its arrogance and begin to comprehend what was really going on. This was quite possible because there was One present on earth who was accommodating this rising tide and bringing it to focus, and was quite capable of providing what was necessary to allow others to come into an understanding. But, for whatever reason—I think the reason is usually called human nature—it wasn’t accepted, it wasn’t allowed to happen, and again there was failure. Of course the failure of the Israelites, originally, has been persisted in, particularly in what is called Judaism, as though what failed back there could be retrieved. And there is the claim to be the chosen people on the part of a certain section of humanity, because this was the case at one point in the process of that particular aspect of the rising tide. But all that came out of that was failure, disintegration, and so whatever endeavor is made later, or now, relative to that failure, still carries the sense of failure with it. And all concerned do have that sense of failure—it’s accurate, an accurate discernment.

Well the same thing happened insofar as the Master was concerned; here again was failure. And there have been those who since that time have endeavored to get it all back again, something that can’t be done. It can never be done, even with our own failures—that should be more or less obvious. The failures that we have experienced in our personal lives heretofore, can you go back there and do anything about them? No. The failure itself needs to pass away insofar as one’s own experience of victory in the present moment is concerned; then the failure’s gone. But there has been this failure and the sense of insecurity consequently, because it is assumed that everything is going to fail, and the proof positive of this fact is that everybody dies. No matter how successfully you may imagine that you have lived, you wake up one morning dead! But it doesn’t do you any good, does it? No, here is a very vivid evidence of failure which is repeated constantly before the eyes of those who have not quite reached the point of utter failure yet.

So we are aware of the rising tide again. We have some consciousness of two particular occasions when it happened in the past, and now it begins to come to point again, come to focus again, but this time it’s at a little different level of things. It isn’t at a level where everybody is going to be convinced mentally, caused to understand mentally; it doesn’t work that way anymore. That was lost nineteen centuries ago; it could have come then but didn’t. Trying to make it come now that way is futile. Of course it is very popular in the world. Everybody believes in this seemingly: that somehow or other you can get enough mental understanding, enough knowledge, to do everything that’s required to make the world an inhabitable place. But it doesn’t really look as though that’s the way the world is being made, does it? It becomes more and more uninhabitable.

There is this critical point, and there have been many—as Chris indicated—both larger and lesser critical points. This begins to give some indication of a larger critical point when, if one is governed by failure, one will naturally fail. And it’s taken for granted these days: everybody fails. But the rising tide is not a tide of failure unless it is resisted. There is a very great deal of resistance to it. Many of those who are resisting don’t think they are resisting; they think they are moving with the way things are going on earth—high tech and all. But that is hardly accommodating the rising tide of spirit. There’s a rising tide of computer hardware and software and all this sort of thing; but the real rising tide is not supposed to be accommodated by computers but by people, and this has a relatedness to these events which are coming up this year.

There is a certain outline beginning to take form as to certain subjects of consideration which may come up at these Rising Tide events, subjects such as business, education, art, all these sorts of things. Well a lot of people have interest in various areas and may still be looking for some breakthrough or other with respect to those areas but, from our standpoint, from the standpoint of spirit, that is not to be anticipated, because all these areas relate to the state of mankind the way it now is. If there is interest in these areas, that can be used to advantage because it may help people feel a relatedness to what is going to go on; but in coming to the Rising Tide event it isn’t really in order that business people can discuss business, or educational people can discuss education, or the artists can discuss art. It simply is an opportunity to bring people into association with the atmosphere and the creative action of spirit. They come in order to experience what the creative expression of spirit is in living. They may feel that they can carry this into their business, and that’s all right. If that is actually done, of course the business is transformed and probably somewhere along the line ceases to be what human beings imagine business to be.

Now at last there is something which allows people to begin to come clear of their problems, so that they don’t imagine that all that is necessary is to try to solve their problems. What is necessary is that the person should awaken out of a dream-filled sleep into the real world. Everybody talks about the real world as being that sleazy place out there, but the real world we refer to, for sake of a word, is heaven. It is an invisible world until the earth reflects it; then heaven becomes a visible world. But there’s nothing to reflect until there are those who are present in heaven, those whose stance is in heaven, those who have moved out of the realm of failure into the area of what would be called victory—but it isn’t really victory either; it’s the only real realm there is. It’s a matter of waking out of this nightmare state into the experience of what is really there.

This is what all are being invited to experience—not all are going to hear that invitation consciously, very few presumably, but a lot more will hear it subconsciously if it is actually extended. I suppose it’s the same sort of invitation that was issued in words by the One called Jesus when He said, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”—an invitation to come out of this laboring world, where everybody seems to be pretty heavy laden, to let that go. I don’t know why that should be so hard, except that people imagine that they have to carry these immense burdens on their backs until they become too much and are crushed to the ground. “Come unto me.” So that invitation is extended, not so much by human beings, although human beings are needful on the scene of things in order to articulate the invitation, but the invitation is being offered not by human beings but by the spirit of the Lord God. If we are in position to accommodate that spirit, so that the invitation is issued, that’s what we are here to do.

I trust we will do just that, in company with many others who also participate in the process with us, because we begin to understand how it’s done. It’s done by reason of spirit and it’s not done by the efforts of human minds. It’s done because spirit is present and in action and there are a sufficient number of obedient human minds and yielded human hearts to let it happen. If those aren’t there nothing happens. So the only reason why we would be there is to let this happen. And there must be something already happening, or we wouldn’t even have conceived of the events. This wasn’t some brilliant human mind thinking up an idea—it’s something that rose and is rising through many people. There is a distinction in our own experience in this regard because we have a greater capacity to accommodate it with understanding. Most people do not have that capacity to accommodate it. They accommodate it after a fashion but usually interpret it with their self-active minds, so that it comes out to be something other than it really is.

We have been in the process of leaving behind what we have in times past called self-activity, and this requires a certain educational process; but somewhere along the way we come to the point where that self-activity has been educated out of the picture—most of human education of course is educating it into the picture. Then finally there begins to be space for what may be brought forth by the creative action of spirit, and as it is brought forth through the creative action of spirit we know it to be our own expression: “I articulate it”—and we’re not waiting for someone else to do it. Someone else, we trust, will be doing it too; and if they are it all fits together, it’s all one thing, we’re not in conflict anymore.

So we share this beautiful exciting opportunity which presents itself to us now and will continue to do so, because the rising tide is not going to stop. I suppose sometimes a person is capable of stepping out of the rising tide, so to speak, or excluding it from his own experience, having already sensed it to a certain extent, but surely no one in their right mind would do that; and we find it reaches a point where that would be quite impossible. We find ourselves to be identified with the rising tide; this is what I am. So we share the responsibility of letting it be brought forth in this way.

People may come to these events for various apparent reasons. We give them various reasons for coming, as they think, but they are all coming for the same thing, whether they come as businessmen or educators or artists or whatever it may be. They all in fact are coming for the same thing: the greater experience of spirit in their own living. It doesn’t matter what the role they are playing is, the greater expression of the spirit can easily appear in that role. But it isn’t the role that is important; the importance is the fact that there is a greater expression of spirit. That’s what carries weight, and we know that carries weight. As we increasingly know that, these external factors begin to recede into the background; they don’t carry weight anymore. And we stop fussing about all the things that we have been fussing about in the past, of an external nature. People are always fussing about their marriages, their children, their … oh every sort of thing, simply because they are all wrapped up in this business. If they get up where they belong they can see the thing with perspective and everything can be handled quite easily, no problem. As long as we have problems, as it has been said—and I think Bill Bahan said it frequently—we are the problem. So they all need to be dissolved because we are in a place where they don’t exist.

Here is the rising tide of change, and I delight to accommodate this with you and with others, that it may reveal victory on this last occasion rather than a repeat of failure, which it always has been heretofore. We have no precedent of victory except in the individual sense, just one person, and that is sufficient for us, I’m sure. But we need to set the precedent collectively. Well, let’s do it!

© emissaries of divine light