Divine Disturbance
Disturbing the Waters
Martin Cecil April 2, 1967
The spirit of God moves upon the face of the waters in the initiation of the first creative day. The waters are going to be disturbed, but disturbed by the spirit of God. Spirit is symbolized by air, and when air moves over the surface of the ocean, waves are formed; there is a surface disturbance. The spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters disturbs the surface of the waters—troubles the waters, we might say.
There is a need for the troubling of the waters, when the spirit of God moves on them; but generally speaking, this is not the stimulus that is accepted by human beings. Other spirits trouble the waters: the spirit of anger, for instance; the spirit of irritation or resentment; the spirit of jealousy or envy; the spirit of fear—many kinds of spirits that are not included in the spirit of God. And human beings are accustomed to letting the waters be troubled by these spirits. These spirits assert themselves and the individual is troubled.
The stimulation of the spirit of God is necessary. The disturbance that is needful can come, and must come, on the right basis. We need to recognize that there is a requirement in this regard. The spirit of God needs to move on the face of the waters, to trouble them. If we are so occupied with being troubled by evil spirits we probably will not be aware of the movement of the spirit of God. There is, perhaps, a smoothing-out process between one experience of the troubling of the waters and the next. We are accustomed to being troubled by the evil spirits, so we cry unto the Lord in our troubles and He delivers us from our distresses for the moment; things smooth out. But then we need to keep open toward the Lord and His spirit, that the further troubling of the waters may take place.
From the standpoint of our collective program, the spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters properly produces some divine disturbance. It brings a challenge; it stimulates something. We are concerned with letting the spirit of God move upon the face of the waters, and it is going to be a disturbing experience in various ways. We need to see this, so that we don't object to it. We need to be stimulated. Otherwise the continued unfoldment of the recreative cycles cannot occur as it should. So the spirit of God does move upon the face of the waters when we have sufficiently relinquished our attunement with the evil spirits which have heretofore been disturbing the waters.
It is the mistaken view of all too many that response to God is simply going to calm the waters once and for all. We have been troubled heretofore, and now it is going to be so peaceful and nice. Not yet, or only temporarily, because we have not experienced the recreative cycles which would bring us again into the Divine State. In one sense we have a long way to go, partly because the whole world has a long way to go, and we can't isolate ourselves from the rest of humanity. If there are those who are to return to the Divine State, it is so that they might bring their brothers and sisters with them. It is not a special dispensation for some particularly delightful people who please the Lord. We are concerned with moving in the recreative cycles, letting the spirit of God move upon the face of the waters. Amongst other things, it will move upon our present view of what is true, it will move upon our present experience of what we think to be true, and it will disturb our ideas and our experiences.
I might say that the Training School is no place for those who do not wish to be disturbed. I might say that this whole ministry is of no interest to those who do not wish to be disturbed. Because there is a great deal of disturbing to be done. I'm not saying this to cause fear or so that you might look with some foreboding toward what is going to occur. I don't think that any of the disturbance that you have experienced so far has been too troublesome. There are those disturbances which might be comparable to the process of being tickled. That is sometimes disturbing, isn't it? And yet there is something rather delightful about it. If we keep moving, it can be mostly of this nature. If we become balky, then the movement of the spirit of God upon the face of the waters raises higher waves instead of just the ripple, and it seems to become a little more disturbing. Some people even become seasick. We nevertheless recognize that the first step in the creative cycle relates to this: the spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters.
If anyone has some rather firmly held views, convictions perhaps, of the truth, if anyone on this basis thinks he knows, beware, because the spirit of God is going to move upon those waters and it will be, to the extent that the individual insists upon maintaining the view, a disturbing experience. The truth is true, and we need to yield our ideas about it, that we may come into the experience of the truth itself. And this is something yet to be known, I don't care who the individual is; we have not arrived. One of the most deadly attitudes is the attitude which assumes that a person has arrived. We take delight in new vision, in new understanding, in the broader horizons that open before us, but we never assume that what we see now, what we know now, or think we know, is the ultimate. There is more to be known. And we learn to be flexible in our movement. We never become rigid. We never jump to any final conclusion.
As we are flexible, as we present a yielded face of the waters to the spirit of God, the spirit of God moves on them. There is a rippling of the waters; then they smooth out again and a new vision is there. There is cycle upon cycle of the disturbing of the waters by the spirit of God. But this only happens when we begin to open ourselves to the spirit of God in order to let it be so. Let us not merely open ourselves to the spirit of God so as to stop being disturbed by the evil spirits. This is as far as so many people's vision goes. “Smooth it out for me, God, and I'll be content” is the attitude. It is a first step perhaps, but we need to see beyond it and be willing to let the spirit of God continue in the creative cycle, moving upon the face of the waters. And as we are willing that it should—there is a disturbance, there is a relinquishing of the old—what happens? The creative command is spoken, “Let there be light,” and we see something new; we become aware of something that we had not known before, and what we thought we had known before is seen differently because of the other things that have come within the range of our vision. There is a greater ability to discern with perspective. And these changes continue as we are willing. The spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters. The individual who makes the easiest and most rapid progress is the one who is content to lay his all on the altar—everything that he thinks he knows, that he thinks he understands, all the progress that he thinks he has made to bring him to this point. Is the individual willing to relinquish all that?
We become accustomed to this process. When we function correctly in it we are willing to yield all, now. Being willing just to yield it, let it go—then the spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters will allow for the creation of light, new vision, new understanding, and you will have at that point more to lay on the altar, more that you have come to understand and experience. But you are willing to let it go. You are not trying to hold on to anything. Let it go, so that this cycle may continue. And as you do it each time, you come to understand the process. You are willing to move in the cycle, and it's not a hard thing at all. These are steps leading into the Kingdom. We can move in these creative cycles, letting all things be made new, consequent upon the fact that the spirit of God is moving upon the face of the waters. We trust God. And if we find that there is some disturbance, as we move correctly it is a delightful thing. We have a new attitude toward it, and because we recognize it as a part of this process it is part of the experience of fulfilment. We have a new outlook, a new understanding, and we welcome the disturbance, the stimulation that is brought to pass by the movement of the spirit of God. We need to be stimulated; we need to be disturbed in this sense.
Let us recognize there is a vast difference between producing a disturbance on the basis of an evil spirit and permitting a disturbance to come by reason of the working of the spirit of God. I have occasion, from time to time, to initiate processes of disturbance insofar as you are concerned. Particularly if you begin to become too self-satisfied, I initiate something that disturbs. It is most needful that it should. To those who are yielded and responding it's a delightful thing. There may be a few rueful smiles perhaps, but it is a most satisfying thing; it brings fulfilment in the creative cycles.
There have been those who have perhaps had some recognition that there was the need for disturbance of some kind, but they have tried to produce it on the wrong basis, by injecting something into the pattern that didn't belong. Probably the individual felt frustrated and he was sure that something should be moving that wasn't moving, and so on the basis of his feeling of frustration he injects something into the picture and it doesn't belong there at all. It may cause a disturbance all right, and it may be good training for other people not to become involved in it—everything can be used to advantage—but, of course, our concern is with the generation of the substance which connects spirit with form, and that sort of a disturbance dissipates the substance. It is only the disturbance engendered by the movement of the spirit of God that increases that substance. It is part of the generation process: the spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters and causing a ripple upon the face of the waters, disturbing the status quo of the moment, that all that is not true to that which is to emerge in the creative process may pass away, and that which belongs in the creative process may be reorganized into a new pattern. And this is a repeated performance, as we have noted already—the spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters.
Let us not delude ourselves that this is going to produce a state which is anticipated according to the human concept of heaven. We need to relinquish our human concepts, in any case, and let it work the way God has designed it to work, without trying to impose our own views on the situation. Let it work according to the Divine Design, allowing the first creative day to come first.
The future of the world has indeed been placed in our hands, not because there is something special about us as human beings, but because we have the awareness, the understanding, the recognition, of responsibility for doing what needs to be done. If there are others who know what needs to be done we praise the Lord for that. There certainly are some others of whom we are aware, but the point is that we know. The very moment a person begins to know this, the responsibility for the future is in that person's hands. Now we recognize that it is not merely an individual thing; but it is an individual thing as well as being a collective thing. In fact it isn't a collective thing unless it is an individual thing. There has been a tendency at times for people to shuffle off the responsibility onto the collective body, as though the individual didn't have any particular responsibility; the body as a whole was going to carry it. Well the body of the whole must, of course, but the body is composed of individuals, and if the individuals are not carrying their particular responsibilities as they should, then there is nothing to carry the responsibilities from the standpoint of the whole. So we are responsible. The future is in our hands.
Our Master said something to the effect that He didn't bring peace, He brought a sword. And this is true. It isn't a matter of bringing peace according to the human concept of what peace would be, but of bringing the sword of truth, which causes disturbance to human concepts. It causes discomfort to human beings who hold on to their concepts. But unless these things are disturbed there is no means by which the reality of peace can be experienced. So we share the responsibility of bringing a sword, and the future of the world is dependent upon this sword, the sword of the spirit of truth, which needs to operate from the body of mankind. This is the spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters, by which the creative cycle for the whole world is re-established. We let it move in ourselves first, before we know what it is. We have some awareness of this process now and can the more easily allow it to work in our own experience.
© emissaries of divine light
