Move In Step With Life
Martin Exeter July 13, 1980 p.m.
For so long human beings have endeavored to do what they wanted to do on earth, with little regard for what the real purpose of life was, that it has seemed unnatural to experience spiritual maturity—a state of affairs that has been lost to human experience for so long it takes a little while to get accustomed to the idea. It is the same sort of thing, I suppose, for a baby when it is born into the world, any one of us, to get accustomed to the idea of being in the world; some strenuously object. But we have some increasing consciousness of what the real state is, not so much from the standpoint of our experience yet but at least of a larger vision.
“For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: It might have been!”
For anyone with any measure of spiritual maturity and spiritual vision there are so many “might-have-beens.” Over the years I myself have had opportunity to handle such things in myself when I saw the passing of what easily might have been. One might almost come to the point of tears at times, inside at least. It was said that on one particular occasion the Master wept because He saw what might easily have come in the creative cycles spoiled. Here is something that perhaps we might profitably look at—because while we ourselves may at times have spoiled something, if we do assume mature spiritual responsibility for others we will repeatedly experience the foolishness of others which spoils things. I have seen creative cycles working to a point where something tremendous might have occurred but somebody began to judge or got impatient, somebody quit, and everything in that cycle was lost. I wonder how keenly we are aware that when there is a failure of some kind you can’t repair the damage. I wonder how this could be illustrated for our understanding. Again I am a little cautious about using analogies in case they become a part of the Emissary ritual.
Life moves on. This is the most obvious characteristic of life. There is a connection here between life and time. You can’t halt time, you can’t halt life—it keeps moving. Human beings for a long time have been out of step with life. The result is that a greater and greater lag develops [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/exact-alignment.html] between the human experience and the action of life itself; we are inclined to keep dropping further and further behind. Life moves on, but we’re fiddling around in some restricted area, reacting to this or trying to work something else out; and we are more and more separated from the experience of life in consequence, because life is not going to hang around with us while we do that sort of thing; it just goes on, and we get left behind. If we get left far enough behind, the connection becomes so tenuous that it eventually breaks. We need to see that life has a schedule. Yes, it keeps moving regardless of human beings. There is no one on the face of the earth who can stop it, so we had better pay attention.
Life is a characteristic of God. Life is creative therefore; it builds. We say, “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.” Life does the building. Life has built a lot, seemingly a lot of it without any help from human beings at all. Nature moves easily because it is alive. What human beings have built on earth, this tower of Babel, is not really alive. It only appears to be alive because of the blood sacrifice which is offered into it. The lives of human beings are poured into this monstrous thing that has been built, so that it appears to be alive. Everyone is convinced that it must be sustained at all costs. Every generation is offered in human sacrifice to this. It is becoming such a sophisticated monster these days that it is found that it is hard to discover more prospects sufficiently trained in expertise to feed into this monster to keep it alive. [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/two-pyramids.html] What an unnatural thing. It has nothing to do with the true design. It has resulted from theft: human beings stealing what they are able to lay their hands on and creating something in their own image and likeness. The principal characteristic of the image and likeness of human nature is to be dead.
So there is this monster. And there is the true state, which operates in any case on the basis of life, even if human beings are not particularly participating in the operation. They are all involved in their own operation. The operation of what is called nature is seen merely as an adjunct to the human scheme of things. But regardless of all these futile human efforts over the millennia life is still present on earth and everywhere else in the universe, doing its thing. By reason of life there is creation. God creates. In the beginning God creates. In the beginning of each moment the creation continues, and life is the means by which this happens. Human beings have been principally a drag in the matter, falling further and further behind the movement of life, so that what might have been because of the movement of life in human experience could not be. How sad: what might have been.
We seek to present ourselves before the Lord, that life might have an opportunity of working in association with ourselves because we are going to stay with it; we are not going to drop behind. We are going to let life have its way, that there may be on earth the evidence of spiritual maturity. That is the only way it comes. When the human form with its capacities moves in concert with life there really is something on earth powerful and effective. Life merely moving through other forms here on the surface of the earth, forms other than man, achieves a great deal, doesn’t it, in spite of the absence of man. What would happen if man were present, present with life?
We need to come into step. Life is creative; it is a matter of building. In order to illustrate this we might use the analogy of a staircase. There is a staircase of life, upon one step of which we now stand. If we keep standing on that one step, life moves on up the staircase, so to speak, and we can never catch up on that particular staircase. We have to find out where this step, at the level where we have been, fits into another staircase that is moving with life. We can’t linger, we can’t fiddle around, without being left behind. We can look at this simply in the light of delay, but we can also look at it from the standpoint of some sort of reaction. We may have found a step which for the moment has seemed pleasing and comfortable; we want to stay there. Well, that is delay. But on the other hand we may become involved in a reactionary attitude of some kind and eject ourselves from that step. We will land up on another step somewhere but not on the same staircase.
I am sure there have been occasions in your experience when you may have thought of something or other that had occurred as being pleasing; it was in the past now but, according to your memory at least, it was pleasing. There is a sort of lure here. Now you find yourself in a rough world; therefore it seems desirable to get back there into that prior state. That prior state may be way back, or it might even be just yesterday. If one is in the present moment and looks backward to something that happened in the past, desiring to be there to re-experience what had been known before because it was comfortable or warm or whatever, if there is a reversion in this way, obviously it is something unreal; something imaginary; it’s a fancy. This is what happens to many people: reverting into the past and trying to live in that experience. It is better than the one they have now; therefore they try to live in that experience. But that experience doesn’t exist in the present moment; it only exists in the individual fancy. This basically is a factor in virtually all mental and emotional illness, where people are trying to live in a world of fancy. Virtually everyone does it, but most people don’t do it completely; they can be recalled into the present moment.
But every time this is done a person is, to that extent, disconnected from life, which is moving in the present moment. It is not moving back there, because “back there” doesn’t exist in the present moment. So a separation occurs on this basis or, as I say, on reactionary bases of various kinds. Sometimes after some violent reaction a person sees the appalling damage that was done. He is very repentant and he wants to let it all be restored again, but it never can be. That step is lost; that step is gone. That is why it is said that the Master wept on that particular occasion: something was gone. And no matter how much everybody might have liked to have gotten it back, it was gone! We can’t get it back, and we find ourselves on a step at a lower point in the cycle of life than we would have been had we kept moving on that staircase. This lower step doesn’t exist anymore in actual fact in the present moment. Life is moving on that higher step in that particular staircase, so you have to move out of that particular staircase and find another.
This is something that has been repeated and repeated ad nauseam during the course of the unfoldment of this Ministry. I wonder how many staircases we have covered. [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/the-stairs.html] Nothing is ever gained by losing connection with the staircase, the step of which one is on right now. Let’s stay on that staircase, not on that step but on that staircase. In other words life moves on and we are to move with it, which means relinquishing that step.
It may be said that there is a little creative cycle which works out for each step. At the beginning of the creation of the heaven and the earth, “The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” That is always the case at the beginning of a step. It is always the case at the beginning of any particular aspect of a creative cycle: it’s dark. Well the human mind wants to know, wants to find someone to tell it what’s happening, so that it can get adjusted to it. But that is not the way it works. Life is doing the building, not the human mind; and life is moving in these creative cycles. It is our responsibility, if we are spiritually mature people, to stay in step with that movement, and we will find, using the analogy of the staircase, a particular step where we are now. But there is one just ahead, and relative to that step just ahead, always darkness is upon the face of the deep; but because we are yielded to the movement of life which moves us onto the next step. We don’t move ourselves onto the next step by any effort that we can put forth mentally or physically. Life does the building. “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.” Life propels those who are willing to be propelled, from step to step. Regardless of what the human mind thinks about it, that is the way it works; and it is none of the human mind’s business to try to figure out what it is that is happening or what it is that should work next. Let it be what it is in the creative cycle, and it always begins with darkness. That’s fine. We don’t object to darkness at night, do we? We find that a very satisfying time. We go to bed and we can get some sleep. That is the way it works, isn’t it? The mind needs to settle down, be quiet.
So in this spiritual movement with life, in the creative cycle, life is bringing something forth by reason of the fact that we are present. Let it bring forth whatever it is. It is not going to bring it forth better, or an improved version, because we indulge in a great deal of speculation as to how life works. It achieves absolutely nothing except frustration and futility, which I suppose is an achievement in a way, because it may bring a person to his senses, that he is wasting his time. How much effort has been put into this business of the human mind grinding out all its ideas about God and life! Who cares what way it is from the standpoint of the concept of the human mind? It isn’t any of those ways in fact. Life just merrily goes on its own way, regardless of what human beings are thinking about it; and if we associate ourselves with what is actually happening and not with what is happening in the imaginations of our brilliant minds we move up the staircase. A person who is capable of moving with life up the particular staircase of the creative cycle where he or she finds himself is exhibiting spiritual maturity.
Each cycle starts with darkness. Because it starts with darkness the human mind feels uncomfortable, even though it has experience of being quite comfortable when night falls. There are various aspects to the creative cycle on each step. The initial one is darkness before you take the next step. But then the cycle works out: there is light. We can see what we are doing, we experience what we are doing, we understand what is happening, and it is all wonderful, and we go along with it. But if we decide that it is all so wonderful we would like to just keep on that step, then we are separated once more from life. Life is characterized by movement, and we must keep moving.
Our interest is in life. Our concern is to live. How about having the conviction of life, so that our total interest is in living?—to let life be our experience now so that we move in the natural cycles in which life is moving. When we are with it we move in those cycles. We don’t try to figure them out, and if there is darkness on the face of the deep we are quite content. That is the way it is at that point. That is part of the creative cycle. Leave it in life’s hands but move with it, and very shortly, as you may recall according to the story, the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters and the Word was spoken, “Let there be light: and there was light.” Day dawns.
We have these cycles because of the earth's rotation, which are comparable to the steps in which we may be moving with life. These steps are related to what is happening, not only to us but to everything else. That is one type of step in one kind of staircase. We may recognize another type of step relative to the variation in the lengths of the days and the nights during a year. The days are getting shorter; we are moving towards the winter solstice when days are very short. There is a pulsation here, a movement from step to step; and there are various staircases and various steps, but they are all in unison; they all work together. And if we are on one step, we are on all the other steps too. It behooves us to stay on whatever step we are aware of, because thereby we find ourselves associated with all the other creative cycles that are moving. And we are not afraid of the dark. We should have sufficient experience of this happening, over and over again, that we get used to it. Here is the evidence of the creative cycle moving. Let’s find out what it is going to be, by just keeping moving on through. There is no need for trepidation if there is association with life.
There is reason for trepidation if we lose our connection with life. This is what human beings do, because they think it is much safer to hang on to the things that are known. Doing that, there is separation from life to that extent, and it is not safe; it is deadly. The only safe thing to do is to move on and allow whatever it is in that creative cycle to reveal itself. It is in life’s hands. It is in the hands of the Lord. We are not going to buck Him. We are not going to argue about it. We are certainly not going to get into a battle with the Lord about it. We just simply are willing to let it unfold the way it should. How very beautiful this can be, and we need no longer find ourselves considering those words: “For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: It might have been!” It is sad when a step is missed, because we have to move right over onto another staircase then.
We have some experience of these things. Because of that experience there is a certain understanding of what it is with which we are associated: the real movement of life, the resurrection and the life. It is the only safe thing. We have the opportunity of being with it, a willingness to move from step to step with ease and naturalness. When we move with life we participate in creation. Something is being built, a living vibrant form. We may think of this form in terms of the Body of the Son of God. That’s part of it—life pulsing naturally and easily through that form because all the parts of that form stay with it. Here is the basis for health. There is no individual health that you can somehow extract from somewhere and get it for yourself. We either all are healthy because there is a Collective Body which is healthy and we are participating in that Body—then we know the meaning of health—or, as long as that isn’t so, there is nothing we can do to make ourselves individually healthy in any true way. We can perhaps be a little less unhealthy but what it would be to experience the reality of health is an unknown quantity. So we share this opportunity of moving together with life. We have some experience of it.
This which is being created by life is being created all over the earth but it emerges in a conscious way with certain ones who then have the opportunity of consciously staying with life in the expression of spiritual maturity. Here is the resurrection occurring. And the resurrection is not just of Emissaries, so called. The word Emissary is a good word, it points to something that is quite valid and very meaningful, but it is not exclusive: the resurrection of the body—the body of man, of which we are all also a part—the resurrection of the body of man into the experience of the Body of the Son of God. We play our particular parts in this because our concern is with life—the movement of life, the quality, the character, of life. This is our supreme interest. Nothing else can hold a candle to that. When that is supreme to us we begin to live. We begin to move with life and because of this, life is moving in the flesh on earth freely, to achieve what is needful of achievement because of that freedom of movement.
We don’t have to have a philosophy. You know that it isn’t a matter of philosophy. It isn’t a matter of thinking about life. There are all kinds of humanly created structures based in this business of thinking about God and thinking about life and trying to believe what is thought. We have all the major religions of the world and all the sub-classifications of people thinking about all these things, but in fact most of them doing virtually nothing. So that isn’t the way. We don’t need to study any of the religions of the world; we don’t need to study the political systems of the world, or any of the systems that human beings have created on earth—these dead monstrosities into which life is fed generation after generation. Human sacrifice, blood sacrifice! That didn’t disappear in the past somewhere. It is more massive in these days than it has ever been in the past. Everybody goes along with it. Oh yes, it is to be expected that our children will all be fed into the maw of this monster—Moloch!—just to keep it alive or give it the appearance of being alive. It isn’t alive. The only life associated with it is the life which may still linger on in human beings, and it doesn’t linger on very long.
But being associated with the real experience of life because we are willing to move with it, we are not going to fiddle around; we are not going to waste time fussing about all the things that human nature fusses about. If you are fussing about something, then that is human nature, and you don’t need to magnify what it is you are fussing about as though it was something tremendously important. The fact that you are fussing about it is the evidence of your own subjection to human nature. Leave it behind. Keep moving, so that you don’t miss a step and so that you don’t find yourself under the necessity of moving into another staircase. As I say, this has happened over and over again in smaller ways and in larger ways in this Ministry, and it is a sad experience whenever it happens, for anyone who has any vision and awareness of what was taking place. Foolishness! We can easily let go and keep moving with life, the beauty of life, the glory of life, which brings forth according to whatever is true of its own design. We need to learn to trust it, to trust the Lord, so that we don’t think we have to keep improving upon what life would bring forth if we took our sticky fingers off it and let it move easily and freely to bring forth all things new to the Glory of God.
Regardless of where we are geographically speaking we are all together in life, we are all together in the present moment, we are all together in the Spirit of the Living God. Let us move all together on the staircase that is present with us now, so that we do not have to experience unnecessary sadness. How beautiful life really is when we are willing to let this be revealed in our momentary expression to the Glory of God.
© emissaries of divine light
