Loosed on Earth Loosed in Heaven
Instantly!
Martin Cecil April 17, 1981 Assembly
“Whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” So many people seem to sit around waiting for something to be loosed in heaven in their own experience while keeping things bound on earth. Action is needful—one must do something. If one undertakes to loose a bond on earth, to do something that is factual in an external sense, one cannot do that without at the same time having loosed something in heaven. One must have, if nothing else, changed one's mind. If something has been bound and has been kept bound in your own experience—and each person knows where those binding cords are, at least some of them, enough to get busy with a little loosing.
If one undertakes, facing the fact of some bond, to do whatever one has not been doing, so as to loose that bond, by undertaking to do that something is already loosed in heaven—its an instantaneous experience. It's interesting to observe how so many of those who call themselves Emissaries have been inclined to sit around and wait for this supposedly heavenly magic to occur in their own experience, without them ever doing anything about it. But nothing is ever loosed in heaven until the individual deliberately looses it on earth first. And undertaking that deliberate loosing on earth, instantly it is found that it was loosed in heaven. You can recognize certain areas in your own experience where you have taken deliberate action. And what a tremendous sense of freedom immediately puts in an appearance. Of course shortly thereafter, maybe the beast, or the devil, or whoever it is may rear his ugly head and try to convince you that you're not really free in that regard. And you need to see this in relationship to yourself, but also in your handling of others. It seems as though a certain amount of repetition is required to convince anyone that something has really happened. I'm not thinking of the repetition that seems to have been necessary on my part, for instance, in speaking to many people over the years, because that alone hasn't achieved anything. It is only as there have been those who took it to heart and deliberately acted that it has achieved anything. It wasn't achieved by me—it was achieved by the person himself or herself, who actually did something.
We all are well aware that it takes repetition to establish a habit. It seems to take repetition to break a habit too, doesn't it? You decide, should you have been a smoker for instance, to quit smoking. That person who takes this deliberate action, saying, “I'm not going to smoke a cigarette now”—that's the only time he can say it, after all—may be inclined to say: “I've given up smoking.” Well in this present moment, yes. But the bond will reassert itself for certain. And this is so in any field. I merely use that as an illustration. The bond reasserts itself and the deliberate action has to be taken again and again and again, and a habit is established on the right basis. The loosing in heaven becomes the natural state of affairs. Once there is acknowledgment that one is loosed in heaven, one is loose, one is clear, one is in position to experience freedom as it relates to this particular area, whatever it is. Deliberate action in a very down-to-earth and mundane way it might be said.
Of course to know what that deliberate action should be one has to do some thinking—thinking as opposed to rationalizing—because one can always rationalize oneself into not doing anything. “What's the use?” is one of the favourite expressions of the devil. He delights in indifference—lukewarmness—and nothing happens. If a person becomes really active in doing the devil's bidding so to speak, he gets into such trouble because of that that it may be sufficient to cause him to stop and think about what he's doing, and therefore to take some deliberate action to allow a change to come. But of course the person who is more or less indifferent is like a lump of dough without the yeast—and it just sits heavily on the stomach.
We recognize that there isn't anyone who is participating in this recreative process that does not have to experience re-creation. Why should that be so difficult to understand? We, I'm sure, recognize it in relationship to ourselves, and it's true with respect to others. So we are willingly capable of giving space for changes to work out in all. It doesn't matter who it is, this must happen everywhere with all of us. I am sure no one is exempt in this regard, and yet how often there is an expectation with respect to somebody else that they should behave perfectly—I suppose that would be the word. But what would that mean? To conform to one's present ideas of what such behaviour would be? Who really knows? If we do not have the experience of such behaviour ourselves, how could we tell what would be right for somebody else?
So we permit space, and clearly we have all been given space in this regard, by the Lord at least, even though we may have felt at times that somebody else was hemming us in, in some way. It was felt at times by some that I was responsible for hemming people in, that I didn't give them the appointments that they expected to receive. I have never made an appointment yet! So don't blame me if you don't receive any appointment. People appoint themselves. Their capabilities will develop their field of action—their own capabilities, not someone else's. And if the field of action doesn't open according to expectations, well maybe your expectations were wrong anyway. But in addition to that, it involves the extent of your own developed capacity and ability to sound the Tone, because that's what gets the job done.
All things are made by the Word. Well if we don't speak the Word things won't be made by the Word, that's all. And we will feel frustrated or whatever it is. Presumably we’ve all learned how to handle what before may have seemed to be frustrations, not blaming somebody else because they hemmed us in and prevented us from expressing all our marvellous qualities of divinity, but because we hadn't yet learned how to express them ourselves—because that's the only thing that can stop it: the dirty windows that we put in front of the expression of what is already there waiting to come forth.
So we are clearly aware of our own personal responsibility in these matters and we begin to have this larger vision of which we have been speaking together, seeing the whole body of mankind, seeing the whole mind of mankind and the whole heart of mankind as one thing, one thing with which we are ourselves inseparably associated. We can't get out of it, except by dying presumably; then there's no more body to participate in the process. So we are sharing in this larger vision and we begin to see various things that are taking form, various ways by which things are happening. Things need to dissolve with respect to every area in which something begins to come to focus and really move. Are we going to stand in the way or are we going to be right there? And if there were any bonds in our own experience relative to these things are we going to take deliberate action to see that they're disposed of? Because when we do that we'll find freedom coming in heaven. It won't come in heaven before we take that deliberate action.
I would say that our fulfilling of spiritual responsibility, the responsibility that we recognize we carry, has been hindered greatly because there has been a rather resistant attitude toward taking the deliberate action that is required. Of course not so much perhaps these days in this way, but in the past people got involved in some reactionary attitude toward something or other or someone or other, and they would sit down in the muck and mire for weeks waiting for the magic of heaven, to clear their consciousness I suppose, or to clear somebody else out of the way—that was usually the thought—rather than take deliberate action. Because if one is reacting, well, one is reacting. It's me who's doing it, nobody else. So I'm the one then who has to take the deliberate action, and the deliberate action allows the clearing in heaven. The loosing on earth permits the loosing in heaven. The loosing in heaven never comes without the loosing on earth first.
Now we're all presumably candidates for very particular responsibilities of stewardship in the creative process that is working out on earth. We've all been associated with this focus of dominion and control on earth. So we have a responsibility in this regard—many responsibilities if we see it in individual terms. All put together we can take the total responsibility. But in order to be the right person in the right place at the right time there is always the necessity of whatever would lead up to our ability to experience this. The Emissary ministry in an isolated sense has no importance whatsoever. There are hundreds of thousands of cults of all kinds on the face of the earth. Why add any more? That is the self-centered state. But in the development by reason of the loosing of the bonds on earth so that there is a loosing in heaven there comes the awareness that here is a conscious focus for the whole mind of mankind, to provide the direction for mankind in the fulfilment of those purposes for which man is on earth. This awareness has been brought into the picture in various ways. Here is the most vital thing that is happening on earth now. The question is, do we have a vision with respect to all these things? And always there is the factor of human personality getting into the picture which looms so large to some that it obliterates this vast picture, like the penny before the eye.
So we all share in the necessity of loosing on earth those elements that have kept us bound in heaven. The things to be loosed relate to what is happening in the external sense by reason of what is occurring in heaven. And we see our relationship to what is happening, our relationship to the people through whom it is happening, in a particular sense, and we recognize our own relationship to all of that, because we all have specific parts to play. And we see where we are yet bound individually and personally, and we take deliberate action to free it up.
Sometimes that deliberate action takes the form of actually doing something that would be—would have been—against our nature to do in the bound state. Human beings being bound say, “Well this is my nature to be bound, and no one can expect me to go contrary to my nature. I have this attitude and I act and speak and think because of this attitude, and that's natural to me. Nothing could rightly change that.” Well here is where the deliberate action is required, to do something that does change it. I never like to see things become a general policy, shall I say, but if a person—in order to loose their own bonds—needs to do something let him go ahead and do it. That doesn't necessarily involve everybody else. And in any field this is the case, and there is no need to sort of look around to see what somebody else is going to do: “Well I'll do it if so-and-so will do it.” What nonsense. One is aware of one's own bonds. Do something—and it's loosed in heaven. But don't imagine that because you do it once that for eternity it's now loosed in heaven for you, because it is always a thing of the moment.
Of course we do develop right habits as well as wrong ones—the habit of giving expression to the Word of God on earth. And we need to be free to do that. In order to be free in heaven to do that we have to take deliberate action with respect to the way things are in our experience on earth. You see what needs to be done with respect to yourself. That's all I am concerned with because that's what we're here for—to allow something to happen in fact, not in fancy, as has been the usual case! We won't be very effective in opening doors for others to act if we haven't acted ourselves.
"Whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." But by the same token, whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall for sure be bound in heaven. The changes that have so often been looked for have been inhibited because of the unwillingness to loose on earth. Each individual necessarily has to look at these things for him-or herself because it is an individual matter. If it's done by all individuals then it becomes a collective matter because of that. But only because of the individual awareness of responsibility. And so I draw this aspect of the matter to your attention as we come to the close of this first week of Assembly morning sessions. What is done here in Assembly is a vital matter as to what shall be done everywhere else. And if we are capable of observing the fact that there are some things that may need to happen elsewhere, we know how to set it in motion.
© emissaries of divine light
