Now or Never
Focus of Essences
condensed from Be! and Truth is Discipline
Martin Exeter July 29, 1984 am & pm
Over the years, in essence, I have been saying what is represented by these words: “Be steadfast. Be strong and of a good courage. Be.” That is an interesting little word composed simply of two letters. It provides a form for the release of essences. Each individual is responsible for his or her own essences to be released. The word “be” itself carries no particular significance, except as it is the form properly clothing the essential essences. This is true of all words. Human beings are inclined to bandy words about without much consideration. Sometimes things are said that the person who said them would wish he hadn’t. But one cannot get them back. The only safety, in speaking words, is to BE, so that the essences are present in one’s own expression, and the form of the words will then clothe those essences. What is said will be fitting, creative, even beautiful. What an outpouring of verbiage there is the world around moment by moment, mostly form without substance.
We have form on earth to provide a facility for essences. If the form, with its mental and emotional abilities, takes over the task of producing forms of thoughts and words and deeds, then we have a chaotic condition—the essences are excluded. We are here to be, providing the form for the release and expression of the true creative essences of life. These are already present; we do not have to make them be; but the clutter needs to get out of the way from human minds and hearts if those essences are to take their fitting forms. And the fitting forms are thereby caused to be creative in nature, to be in fact what has been spoken of as the Word. All things were made by the Word and without the Word was not anything made that was made. This is the fact, regardless of the nature of the word.
We have become increasingly aware, I trust, that we do create our own circumstances, our own world, through the expression of whatever word characterizes us. This is an individual matter. We all live in the same world but each one has a different experience in that world and of that world, simply because each one determines the nature of the world for him- or herself. If the true essences of life are permitted expression, then the world, the circumstances, the unfoldment of experience, is accordingly. There is the availability of beauty, of heaven, because the essences of life are present. We have, in times past, wished for those essences to conform to our own personal determinations, based in human likes and dislikes, in the way that human beings would wish for things to be. But the same old words keep spilling out in the same old ways in expression of the essences, not so much of life as of the absence of it.
There is actually no reason at all why the world should be the way it is, except that human beings have made it that way, and we are individually included in the number of those human beings. Our concern is properly to discover what it means to be. The personal identification of that particular word is summarized in the two words, I am. If I am, that is evidence of being.
Do you need assistance to be? Of course not, you already are. Human beings are looking for assistance all over the place. Maybe there is a need for assistance, to allow a person to come to the realization that he doesn’t need assistance. That is about the only kind of assistance that is required. Unfortunately it is the human habit to want to pile assistance upon assistance, somehow imagining that along the way if you get enough assistance—part of this is usually called education but there are other kinds of assistance too—if you get enough assistance, then you will finally be. That is a ridiculous idea, because obviously one is. The whole view that one needs assistance keeps one locked in subjection to everything else but the experience of being.
No doubt most of you originally contacted the Emissary ministry because you wanted assistance. Some assistance was provided (because most human beings are incredibly dumb!) that all of us might come to the point of realizing that we already are, and we do not need someone else to tell us how to be. No one else knows anyway. One can only know for oneself. But the human mind-set has the assumption, to start with apparently, that one isn’t, and therefore one must receive all the assistance necessary, finally to come to the point of being. We are born with all this stuff cluttering up the personal experience so that the fact of being tends to fade into the background and the individual imagines that he has to become something. You don’t have to become anything, because one already is. Is a person to become more than he is? How would that be possible? Perhaps it could be described in other terms: an unveiling of what one is. It is all there already. It gets hidden increasingly, as time goes on, by all the stuff that is further accumulated, beyond the hereditary inheritance, during the course of a lifetime, until there is so much weight of material that the individual cannot survive and the fact of being vanishes. But there was a potential present during the course of the lifetime to allow the unveiling of the fact of being oneself.
You are the only one who can say, speaking of yourself, I am. One can only experience being for oneself. One cannot get it from somebody else. One cannot be filled up with what already is by devious educational and other means. It may be useful to develop some abilities to do this and that but the development of those abilities will never make you aware of the fact of your own true being. It is important that one should become aware of that before one covers oneself up too much with all these superfluous educational assistances that are deemed to be so vitally important in this world which human beings have made. Just take a look at the world which human beings have made on this basis. It doesn’t impress anyone, I am sure, with a revelation of beauty, peace, harmony, coordination, creativeness. There has been creativeness of a kind of course—in the ability to create nuclear weapons, for one thing. People are all hung up on those these days. Anyone who fights against nuclear weapons is contradictory. Ultimately if you really get into a battle about it you will have to use nuclear weapons! And that will eliminate nuclear weapons, probably, but it will also eliminate everybody that is around. So that is not a very sensible way to go. Fighting against war is the most ridiculous thing imaginable. Fighting against anything actually increases what you are fighting against, because you are pouring your life force into it.
Stop fighting and be, that there may be present a focus of essences—spirit in form, in the world the way it is; not trying to make the world be something else. It is exactly the way it should be on the basis of what has been present in human beings. It is exactly what human beings deserve. We have all had our part in producing this. How is it going to change? Presumably by letting our contribution change, as an individual. What needs to change is one’s own experience of being. “To be, or not to be: that is the question.” It may ultimately prove to be the question—it has proven that way in individual lives for countless millennia. But there is nothing in fact to prevent anyone from having the experience of being, except the insistence upon not being, upon imagining that one can somehow get what is needful through somebody else.
Many of those who came to participate in the Emissary ministry thought they were going to get something from me, I suppose. I have had some experience in assisting people to reach a point where they realize they don’t need assistance. That is a tough nut to crack! because it seems that people so easily revert. They begin to come clear, then: “Oh no, nothing is happening; this isn’t real.” But we have seen that what is needful is that there be a point of essences in form on earth, steadfast, consistent, so that there is a basis for change. Change doesn’t come by manipulating forms—we still do it. It comes because this focus of essences is being maintained, day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out, year in and year out, decade in and decade out, century in and century out. How long do you think that is required to be done? One can only discover the answer to that by doing it. The present human life-span may be inadequate. Insofar as the individual experience is concerned, what does that matter? Is being going to vanish? Of course not. To be, without thought of reward, without expectation of some idea of fulfilment, without anything—just to be.
Obviously it hasn’t heretofore been possible to find a sufficient number of people in the world to let this be so for the required length of time. We have had people who have associated themselves with our Emissary program for a while and then drifted away because they didn’t see happening what they thought should happen, or some other reason. But to find those who have what it takes to stay steady, to hold the line, to be—that is what is required. I am most thankful that it seems there are those who are proving this out. We are more fortunate than people who have lived in the past because it is clearly evident that something is really coming to issue in the world which never has so far. There have been those along the way who have understood something and held steady, regardless of anything that happened, regardless of the enticements of external forms, so that the world has continued to exist to this point—that is, the world of human beings. We have had the opportunity of clear vision in this regard, so that for oneself one assumes the responsibility. I am. That is all I know, after all. Do you know anything more? Do you know that your neighbor is? All you actually know is, I am. Your neighbor may be sitting there. You may interpret the electromagnetic aura that is next to you as a physical body of such and such a shape, and such and such a background, and so on; but all that is your interpretation contained in your own consciousness. The factual thing is that all you know is, I am. All any of us know, is that.
As far as I am concerned, I am. As far as I am concerned you are also contained in my consciousness. I suspect some of you may be real! But switch it around; from your own standpoint the same thing is so. You do not have to become what you already are. This is true of any of us. Get the baggage of human concept and belief, human emotional reactions, out of the way so that you are no longer governed by them, and what you are becomes apparent. So often the individual will qualify the statement, “I am,” with various words: “I am inadequate,” for instance. It isn’t true. It merely seems to be true because you do not know, yet, what it is to be. You are still hoping to be in the future. Never! You are now. We all are now. It is the only time we will ever be; not coming in the future. But people are hopeful: “Maybe tomorrow.” But tomorrow never comes.
It is now or never. That is true in every moment. To be—that we may participate in providing a focus of essences on earth—to keep the essences steady, to keep, in our own experience and expression of living, day by day, the clear release of those essences of the spirit of God. Let that be held steady. “Oh, that is impractical. Nothing would ever happen on that basis.” Something has already happened on that basis. We have the proof of it in our own experience; some things have occurred of which we have some awareness. The things that have occurred have gone into the past now. A lot of people have an airy-fairy awareness, hopeful that something might be better. But to actually find a new expression of essences in form is a modern-day miracle—the evidences of some things that wouldn’t exist except for the fact that there was something of essence held steady over the years.
From my standpoint, I have been looking for those who would be trustworthy, who would be there providing this focus of essences and not wandering out whenever they felt like it. If they found something particularly alluring, then over the horizon they might go. So far, out of the population of the world, we have possibly a few hundred who have a sufficient experience of being for themselves that they can be trusted. They will always be where they need to be. They can’t be distracted anymore. You can see that this has been quite a task. It has been the dilemma in the field of essences, to find human beings on earth who would allow this to happen, so that the mess might be cleared up. But everybody was still convinced that they could clear it up some way on their own; and so it got worse and worse and worse, because they can’t. It can’t be done that way. It requires the focus of essences. Only that will do it. And we ourselves, if we have been steadfast in this, know that this is the way it works. Things begin to come together, fall into line.
Things only begin to happen when there is that central focus of essences held in position. Then the creative action of cause may be present within the consciousness of mankind. When that is consistently there it will transform the consciousness of mankind. There are those who are not happy about letting themselves be transformed. Well the transformation then occurs in a different way, but it occurs. There is integration, there is disintegration, both. It is part of the creative process. But it only happens constructively, in the sense of fulfilling purpose, when there is this focus of essences held steady. We and others have awakened to that necessity and have done something about it. Some have done something about it totally, some three-quarter-heartedly, others half-heartedly, still more quarter-heartedly, and some went over the horizon.
My sole concern, and I am sure it is for many of you, is that this focus should be maintained. That is all. I am not going to tell you anything with respect to what you already are. You are the only one who can know that, and you know it by expressing the essences. When you express the essences, you are in this focus of orientation, of creative action; and you find yourself related to others who are expressing the essences, not because anybody forced you to be so, or made it so somehow. You just discovered suddenly that it was so. Here it is. Perhaps the cloud that has been mentally present for so long is thinned a little, so that we are not quite so unwilling to admit the fact that we already know—to admit it mentally and emotionally and physically. And behold, here is the facility, the means by which all things are indeed made new, because the consciousness of mankind is in the process of being transformed. Whether anyone likes it or not has nothing to do with it. That is the way it works. Here we are in the position of being. Let us be.
As you know, this will be the last time I will be present with you in the Chapel for a season. On such occasions I have in times past usually felt it to be incumbent upon me to leave some sort of pertinent message, shall I say. I have no intention of doing this. If there is any message to be delivered, you deliver it. I will give you opportunity to do this after I personally have left the Chapel. This is your job, not mine. There is something properly forthcoming in a straightforward, disciplined manner through each one. You would probably be here until the early morning hours if each one spoke. Maybe that would be all right too. Who’s going to say? I have tended to set a pattern of providing something for an hour at service time, but because I have done this does not indicate that this is one of the laws of the Medes and Persians. It might be fitting for somebody to get up and talk for five minutes and then suggest everybody leave the Chapel. Or maybe it might work out that there was something rightly to be said and considered for two or three hours. “Oh, but that would interfere with”—what?—“my TV, or whatever.”
My final comment relates to the matter of discipline. For a long, long time you have been very aware that the two essential characteristics of truth are design and control. Is that not a definition of discipline? There has probably been a sincere effort to express the truth without the benefit of discipline, and to the extent that this is true it’s all gone for nothing. There hasn’t been the experience of truth. Truth includes design and control—discipline. Truth is discipline. Human minds and hearts don’t like discipline very much; bodies too rebel. Is that not indication that we don’t care for the truth? Certainly. There is something absolute required, the absolute obedience of our equipment, so that there is no question that what is required will be done—no more fat and flab.
Over the years I have, I think, exhibited a quality which is looked upon by most as being something real, namely patience. As far as I am concerned that’s gone. I have no patience whatsoever for those who are in position to assume disciplined responsibility through their equipment, and haven’t done it. There is no problem about the discipline except in the equipment. From the standpoint of the one I am there is no difficulty: “I intend to do what I should do, and I am going to require my equipment to keep an eye on the ball and follow through.” I wonder how this has been done heretofore? Oh, I have nothing to say about that on this last occasion because that’s your business! You are going to be here after all—I’m not. I’m going to be someplace else. Maybe I will rightly have something to say there, and maybe I will still allow for a little patience with those who have not yet reached a point of having had the opportunity of knowing the truth.
None of us should have any more patience extended to the intransigent equipment. It doesn’t want to do what you know very well should be done. Who cares? Do it! So there is the matter of discipline, and the need no longer for patience in the sense of buttering each other up to give us excuse for not doing what we know should be done, for not requiring absolute discipline on the part of mind and heart and body. Then something can happen. During this process we don’t find ourselves between a rock and a hard place, because insofar as the angelic presence is concerned—and I look upon you all in that vein—there’s no question. I require to be done what is needed to be done, and you require to be done what is needed to be done. We are in agreement. Where’s the fuss?
But I do stand here—and over the years I have provided a point of focus, saying in effect I am. But not saying in effect, I am therefore you do not need to be. That would be kind of a lonely state of affairs for me, if everybody took it up on that basis. No. I say “I am” and I expect you to say the same thing. No doubt this has been done up to a point, but I’m not going to kid you anymore and say, “Well that’s nice and you have been doing so well, and isn’t it wonderful, and I’ll extend a little more patience.” But how long? Until when? As long as patience is in the picture with those who know what needs to be done, and haven't done it, that insures failure.
While you may not have realized it entirely, throughout I have expected you to do what needs to be done. You haven’t always fulfilled my expectations, but at times you did. So you know it can be done. But you reach a point where surely one can’t say, “Well it will be more convenient in 1985; something very significant is going to happen in 1985, and probably something even more significant in 1986.” What it is, you tell me! I think something significant is happening now! In this year of 1984, July 29, 9:11 p.m. Pacific daylight time, the most significant thing on earth is happening in my experience. How about you? Because I have, over the years, taken the stance that I am, and you have learned to trust that in some measure, and to feel that I’m not going to let you down, you must come to a point when you do not care if I let you down, because you have taken the responsibility yourself. Then regardless of what I do—I may duck out, or do anything—what needs to be done will be done. Isn’t that so? Isn’t that realistic?
So we share the same understanding, the same focus of identity, the same job; and all that centers in the one little word: BE. There is only one who can be. Why not accept that one as oneself: I am, and all things shall be done through my essential earthly equipment; it’s all I have, as long as it lasts. The job gets done in this fashion because each one may say, I am on hand to do it. I am not waiting for somebody else to do it. I am not offering excuses because I am still identified with my equipment, excuses which say, “I am not ready to do it.” Who isn’t ready to do it? The equipment? Are you going to insist upon identifying with that lie, saying, “I am not adequate”? Lots of people have said that.
It may have appeared to my equipment that it wasn’t adequate, but I know better. I know that what needs to be done I can do regardless of any concepts about inadequacy on the part of my equipment. I’m not listening to all that rubbish. I know what needs to be done. I know how it can be done with the equipment that I have. That can be said by each person. It doesn’t have to be a special dispensation that will make it possible for me to really take responsibility. You know that’s nonsense! Yet you have supported the nonsense for a long time, agreed with it. Each person has equipment that, in its own eyes, excuses itself as being inadequate. Who cares what the eyes of the equipment say? You have sufficient ingenuity, sufficient spiritual expertise, sufficient power, sufficient understanding, to use such equipment as you have to do what you need to do. We don’t all need to do the same thing. We don’t want any duplicates anyway.
We are providing what might be called the motive power. It keeps on rolling because we are there to see that it does. And we’re there to use our thinking processes to determine how we might participate in letting it happen. Why not use your powers of observation? Why not use the ability to think a bit? Why not use the ability to sense things, and begin to let it all come together because you are functioning from the standpoint of the one I am? Then you will find there are things to be done. You may originate those things in your own consciousness and include others in them; or someone else may originate them—but you are not waiting for someone else to originate anything. We are no longer inert, I trust, but at last the animating Spirit of the Living God is beginning to emerge through the substance of our own experience.
It is good to let a little fire come into this area. I am not just going to duck out of here and say, “You look after it”, because from my past experience I don’t think much would happen. Maybe my past experience doesn’t apply anymore. I trust it doesn’t. That would really be a gift! But here we are sharing one identity, one most varied but harmonious essence, one body, one job—the job that I am concerned to do. I shall find out whether you are concerned to do it too, as time goes on.
© emissaries of divine light
