Divine Relationship—Fitness Of Things

Divine Relationship — Fitness Of Things

Martin Cecil   April 25, 1980   Assembly

Winds Of Birth

Fitting sound is a creative blessing. Our experience in the realm of form has obscured so much of what is really present. The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, and yet even we who should know this have acted as though it wasn’t. If the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand we are in fact within it. In an awareness of this fact, then obviously our behavior would be conditioned thereby. If there is any consideration of these things in human consciousness, usually it relates to a struggle to somehow get into the Kingdom of Heaven or to get away from the vicissitudes of earth. If we managed to get away from these we’d get away from the Kingdom of Heaven too. The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. We are present in it now. There are moments when we really know this to be so, and in those moments our experience is a transcendent one. Why have we been doing so much fussing about humanly constructed problems and difficulties? The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Here is our natural dwelling place. In the Kingdom of Heaven the creative processes are at work. Participation in those creative processes is life. Life is joy unspeakable and full of glory.

We give much thought and consideration to creative processes, to the working of the Law of the Kingdom. In those creative processes, the positive and negative, as they have been referred to, are always present. They are already operative from the Kingdom’s standpoint. We do not have to make anything be so in this sense, but merely to become aware of what is so, sharing in what is so. There is a vast variety in the Kingdom.

Back of human experience there is what might be referred to as a herd instinct. [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/giant-stature.html] Where do you think this comes from? It comes from the fact that we have some measure of animalistic, earthly hereditary. Human beings rather easily find themselves lost in the herd. It is a wonderful thing, in our observation of nature, that a flock of birds, for instance, can fly in close formation, wheeling and turning and never colliding. There is a reason for collective function of this nature, which is quite natural in the animal kingdom; but this has also been included in human earthly heredity because of misfunction in times past on the part of human beings. We find ourselves with this background. It is even said that human beings are gregarious animals. I suppose human beings might be, but Man isn’t. He is not governed by the sort of controls which work with animals. We certainly, I am sure, have seen the fallacy of endeavoring to return to nature, as many people have attempted, as though they were animals—just another species of animal that needs to fit into the ecological system somehow. That could never be done, because man rightly is not just somehow another species of animal. He belongs in the Kingdom. This needs to be our natural experience, one which transcends any herd instincts.

There is a Body of Wholeness insofar as mankind is concerned, and we have begun to find something of this in our own living. There is a natural relatedness between the various aspects of the Body of Man, which is rightly the Body of God, but they never fall into a herd category. Out of herd function come lynchings and such things, which makes human experience lower than the animals, certainly. In the Kingdom, in the creative processes which naturally operate in the Kingdom, these work in the Unified Body which is Man, and there are natural relationships in this Body, essential to the operation of the Body. These relationships could be described in sexual terms, but they are found to be necessary to the operation of the Body so that there is a Body, a Living Body, present in the Kingdom on earth and capable of participating in the creative functions natural to that Body as a whole.

The resurrection of the Body is required that there may be a Body on hand capable of action. We may think of this in terms, presently, of the Body of the Archangel, or the Body of the Son of God, the Body of which we have an immediate awareness. That Body is incapable of health, of operating as it should, without the parts fitting together—not in the sense of a herd, because each part is uniquely individual. When we have considered such things as relationships, for instance, in our Emissary considerations, they almost invariably have tended to deteriorate into herd associations, as though there was little difference from person to person and there was little difference from relationship to relationship. A flock of birds is composed of individual birds; they’re all of one kind, they all look very much alike. I suppose under careful scrutiny one would find some distinctions, but for the most part we do not distinguish one bird from the other.

It is not so with human beings. It certainly is not so within the Body of Man. There is a pattern of uniqueness; therefore there is a pattern of unique combinations. [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/the-nature-and-work-of-shekinah.html] We should never suppose that we need, all of us, to be aware of what these combinations actually are. It would be impossible to encompass such a design in human consciousness. So we do not need to have an awareness of everything that might rightly be occurring within the healthy operation of the Body of the Son of God. Individually speaking, we need to mind our own business. Fortunately, in our own physical bodies the parts tend to mind their own business, which is more than can be said for some experience in this Emissary ministry.

If we consider the word “tolerance,” in the human sense it usually means that one is willing to let people get away with anything; you’re tolerant. But true tolerance is based in the fact that there is no necessity to know everything because the Body is a whole and totally operational, and you tolerate the operation of every part of the Body in the assurance that it is part of what is required for health. With the judgmental approaches of human consciousness, there is much interference in the emerging creative operation, by indulgence in inquisitiveness. We only need to know what we need to know, and fundamentally, that is one’s own unique, personal expression. This will undoubtedly fit with respect to some others, both in the immediate vicinity and further afield, but it will not particularly fit with everybody. Now this is something that has been misinterpreted by too many, when it seemed that two people were supposedly incompatible. They were only incompatible if they were trying to operate in the same space. The heart is incompatible with the liver if they try to duplicate each other’s operations. But when they are in place they are compatible.

Now we have to find out what the relatedness is, within the range of our unique individual experience. And it will be unique for each one. There is no one else who will rightly duplicate your experience. There have been, as we know, many attempts in the Emissary ministry to duplicate experience, which absolutely prevents health. Not surprising, then, if individually speaking there has been a good deal of ill health around, because various ones have been trying to function in a way that was not fitting. Now one of the things that we are concerned about is wisdom, the sense of the fitness of things, so that we are able to discern the right pattern of relatedness within the Body of Wholeness of which we are parts. We’re not going to find out what this is by examining external forms. We find out what it is to the extent that we have spiritual discernment and the ability to function in harmony with the spiritual design which we begin to discern. And it is a spiritual design.

We have noted that the creative processes with which we are engaged are in fact sex [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/sex-4-levels-of-being.html] but in a far larger context than we may have thought of it. But beginning to discern spiritually, and having some sense of the fitness of things, we know where we belong and where we do not. And if we discern some place that we do not belong, we certainly would not feel that we were being excluded from that place and therefore had a right to feel badly about it. We discern where we belong, that’s all, and we discern where we do not. And it certainly would not make us happy to be where we do not belong. Not that we are seeking happiness particularly, but this would be one evidence of being where one did not belong—unhappiness, that is. Gossip is an evidence of people being where they do not belong. And while it may be said that someone or other is not happy unless he is gossiping, it is merely a particular form of misery to which the individual has become accustomed.

So let us see that we are uniquely individual, and that we have uniquely individual associations with others, and that we cannot devise a design in form which would be fitting for everyone. This has been the futile attempt that has been made in the human nature world, to try to get everyone to be equal, whatever that means. We are all unique. Not better or worse, but unique, not the same. And all relationships are distinctly unique—obviously, if they are composed of unique people. There have been some concepts that certainly have tended to crystallize in so-called Emissary consciousness with regard to relationships. I don’t know whether I need to define these concepts—I suppose you know what they are. None of them are right; none of them could be, because this is a living experience, unique from moment to moment. There is a state of uniqueness at every level, in every way, in every direction. And if we start to crystallize things into some supposedly right design we will lose the uniqueness, we will lose life. We will separate ourselves from life.

Now we may have an awareness, by reason of spiritual discernment,

of various necessities relative to the development of the composition of this Unified Body.

We have an awareness in this regard with respect to our own flesh bodies, so that we know something about the positioning of the organs, etc., and what they do. We have some understanding of the operation of the various systems in the body. If we have a responsibility in the conscious sense within this resurrecting Body on earth, then presumably we will have some awareness of how it is put together and how it operates; something we will know about the organs and systems of it, which may be quite unnecessary for most people to know. The awareness that we have as individuals with respect to our own bodies is focalized in a rather restricted area. You don’t have any sense that your foot understands all this. It is generally thought of as centering somehow in the head. The vast majority of the Body is not the head.

So it may be necessary for us, functioning from the Holy Place,

to have a more extensive understanding of what goes on.

But insofar as we ourselves are concerned, if we have this understanding, we will at the same time develop a sense of the fitness of things. We know where things belong, and we will be keenly aware of the fittingness of the relationships with which we ourselves are associated. And because some particular pattern of relationship is fitting for you as an individual, this will not indicate that it is fitting for anyone else on the face of the earth. By the same token, in our observation of others, let us not judge the situation on the basis of what we might sense at this point, at this level, of what would be fitting for us. Just because it is fitting for us does not mean it is going to be fitting for somebody else, and because something is fitting for somebody else does not mean it is going to be fitting for us. Here again we come into a freedom, an openness, a clarity, which allows the spiritual design to take form at the level of spiritual substance.

Spiritual substance, whatever quantity and quality of it there might be, is not separate from physical substance. Heaven and earth are one. If we recognize the necessity of making a spiritual approach, this does not exclude physical things. We have, in times past at least, been accustomed to making a physical approach; this is the state of human nature, a physical approach to physical things. Looking at it that way, it is obvious that there is no basis for any pattern of right control here, because the approach is being made from the level of the thing that is being controlled, not from above. Control always comes on the basis of the Law, from above down, from inside out. But the control is not separate from the controlled. Heaven and earth are one. We cannot make a spiritual approach to the creative operation and exclude the physical levels—at least, if we try to do that, we will land up in a realm of imagination. We only come out of the realm of imagination to the extent that there is the experience of wholeness. If we just look at things from the standpoint of a part, we land up in imagination.

We are part of a Whole, and we share in the substance of the Whole in the spiritual sense—and also in the flesh sense, incidentally. So we see this unique state of affairs, and we never try to establish our own experience on the basis of what we imagine is happening with somebody else. We have seen how this has been done from the standpoint of the group developments in our ministry, for instance. “Look at Sunrise Ranch, and that will tell you how this group should take form.” No, it won’t. There has been the idea with some religious people that it was necessary to imitate Jesus Christ. What a blasphemous attitude! Would it be a creative and fulfilling world if all the people in it were imitations of Jesus Christ? Can you imagine a more awful state? We don’t need to be imitations of anyone but genuinely ourselves. And being genuinely ourselves we will find, as the dominion of spirit becomes our experience, an ability to discern what the nature of our relationships with others really is. So we are not trying to make other people fit into some conceptual design that we have extracted from our emissary concepts.

We may have an awareness in a general sense of the functional state of the Body in which we play a specific part. Now I am thinking of this part as relating to the Holy Place, [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/resanctify-vessels-of-temple-martin.html] the focus of spiritual consciousness, that aspect of the Body which is capable of enfolding the Whole Body and having some awareness of what is going on in that Body. And incidentally, as individuals, if we do come to the point of factual spiritual expression, then we enfold our own individual bodies and know what’s going on in them. Most people are completely oblivious to what is going on in their bodies until the body finally acts up in such a way that they can’t miss it. How sensitive are we to what is going on in our own individual flesh bodies? Most people don’t notice anything until they are flat on their backs, in other words until whatever the problem is has taken control. Well, did it suddenly leap out of space and grip you? No. It had been something that had been going on for quite a time before. And when we begin to discern these things, we are in position to handle them in a reasonable and intelligent way before ever they get to the point of something to lay us out, so to speak. I think there is the idea that there are some evil spirits lurking around, just waiting for an opening so that they may come in, and then you have the flu or whatever it is. If we are so ineffective with respect to our own flesh bodies, how on earth do we imagine that we could be of any value in handling this greater Body out of the Holy Place? Of course we wouldn’t be in the Holy Place.

Spiritual discernment, spiritual sensitivity, a sense of the fitness of things—all these descriptions relate to what is rightly our experience, so that there may be an ability to live as individuals. And until that is known, how do we expect to include someone else in our living? The human beings rush to set up house, so to speak, with others at the slightest provocation, without ever having learned to handle themselves. So two inept people get together, and as we have been learning, one and one multiply troubles in that direction as well. But there are right patterns of association; but they all spring out of spirit, not out of the form. The form simply shares with spirit in whatever the design may be. Well, if, as people usually do, the form is promoted as being the thing of greatest moment, then all sorts of forms begin to get together without ever having the spirit determine what it should be. And it’s not surprising if there is a good deal of confusion.

But when the spirit determines, and there are those individuals who are letting it happen, then there is a vast variety of relationships involved. Each one is unique, each person is unique, each relationship is unique. Now it may be that with respect to certain ones there is one central relationship which is persistent, [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/friendship.html] shall we put it that way. It carries through because it has a particular spiritual purpose to do that. If this is the case and is the experience of these two people, they don’t need a marriage ceremony to make it stick. The marriage ceremony doesn’t make it stick anyway, does it?—not these days. It is there. Marriage ceremony may be a wise step in the matter because of the legal implications here, and in that sense one can render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. But it makes absolutely no difference to the actual union that is present. It doesn’t make it more and doesn’t make it less; it is whatever it is.

Any union, when it is a true one—when it emerges out of the spiritual design of what is necessary at this time—will allow certain creative fulfillments to occur. But let us not get hooked on the form of it. This is what has occurred in certain religious approaches, but all these things—whatever the particular social state may be, and wherever—have been developed because they were useful in the particular formation that was appearing. And while things are not quite as rigid as they used to be, monogamy presumably is the idea in Christianity, but it is not the idea in Islam, for instance, necessarily. All these various patterns—and there are many of them—have been developed for human convenience and for various reasons of that nature, and then been given some sort of a religious slant so as to make people toe the mark. Well, that is really of little significance insofar as we are concerned, because our approach is from the standpoint of spirit, from the standpoint of the creative operation, first of all of the forming Body, and then, when the forming Body is operational, the Body has something to do to allow the expression of the Son of God on earth in creative action. Well, all these rigid forms of structured concept that human beings have had have prevented the free flowing of the substance that was there into the pattern of creative design that was necessary, first of all to let the Body become operational.

Living in the world the way we do, obviously there is the necessity to approach these things with some intelligence, not being inhibited so that we cannot do anything because of what someone else might think, but certainly not splattering around what would engender unnecessary difficulties. Nevertheless we see ourselves that if there is movement from the spiritual standpoint that, in a sense, it will turn the world upside down. That is something that was said about the beginnings of Christianity, wasn’t it? All these people were turning the world upside down. Well, the world is wrong side up, that’s a sure thing, so perhaps it needs turning upside down. But in any case, we have to approach what is necessary, even though we begin to discern what is necessary, with great caution. And there are not too many thus far who have discerned what was necessary, because almost immediately there was some discernment, it was trapped into a concept of some kind.

What is initially discerned is not what it will be; it is just the beginning emergence of something into one’s awareness so that there might be a continuing movement in allowing the spiritual associations to be revealed in their physical forms. There are those who attempted to have what they would term “spiritual relationships.” Usually this means a platonic relationship, something that is up here, so that evidently no bodies are present. Well, that would be a state of imagination, wouldn’t it, because the fact of the matter is that bodies are present. So there always is a physical relationship where there is a spiritual relationship. [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/spiritual-sex-and-physical-sex.html] You can’t help it; heaven and earth are one. This does not say that all the spiritual relationships are the same, or all the physical relationships are the same. Of course they are not. They are unique.

And one has certain associations spiritually speaking—it all springs out of spirit—which are essential to the health of the developing Body. And there are other associations which if they were forced together would ensure the ill health of the Body. Now there would be nothing wrong with this person and that person. It is only something wrong when they try to push themselves together when they do not belong together. Then everything is disrupted, and the two concerned are not very happy. There is a sense of incompatibility, which is right! There is nothing wrong with the incompatibility. What is wrong is trying to make it compatibility.

We do not have to be closely compatible with everybody. This does not mean that we cannot be friends. It doesn’t mean that we cannot understand each other. And it doesn’t mean that we need to be buddy-buddy with everybody. Now there is a little concern, perhaps, when I say that, because it may seem from the human standpoint to encourage some sort of a crony condition: “Well I am buddy-buddy with this person.” I don’t think that that particular way of describing a relationship would hold in the Kingdom. I don’t think of a buddy-buddy with anybody. That is a state where human nature supports human nature. So we have a variety of proper spiritual relationships, which are revealed in a variety of different ways and forms. And the expression of these spiritual relationships in form are an essential part of the handling of creative responsibility within the Body.

Approaching the consideration in this way, we may find ourselves with a clarity which at the same time is very conscious of the specific nature of the relationships that do put in an appearance, and they are handled with the greatest delicacy. And there are no conclusions to jump to, which people are inclined to do so quickly. There is a willingness to let whatever it is be whatever it is at the moment, without an attempt to make it be something. 

Words are inadequate. I often hear people say, “Well, yes, I feel something with this person. Let’s see if something will develop here.” And they go off into a realm of vain imagination. You don’t have to see if something will develop here. If something will develop, it will develop if you let it, but you don’t have to go chasing after the rabbit, as though you were going to thereby discover what this remarkable relationship should be. It becomes obvious. If it isn’t obvious, then don’t fuss with it. Let it alone. It will never become obvious in the sense that it is recognized as being something—without having been made into something—if you don’t let it alone. But people associate with one another and they get into hassles, and then they say, “Well there’s nothing here.” And then they go apart again. And then they come back together again—all this thing going on with people trying to find out something. What a waste of time. Why not be about one’s own business? and leave the other person alone. And on this basis we discover what associations are right and proper. Of course when something begins to put in an appearance, particularly if it relates to a member of the opposite sex, then, “Ah now, what’s this going to be?” Forget it! Let it alone. It will be whatever it is, if you let it. If you make it into something, it won’t be right anyway.

So we may share in letting this unfoldment take place as there is a clarity here. And that doesn’t give us license, in this realm of clarity, this realm of freedom. It still belongs to the spirit of God. It doesn’t belong to us. But we are clear about it, and we are willing to allow whatever it is to begin to be discerned. And we are going to discern it spiritually first. Let us be alert to spiritual discernment, then. We have an association here in the Assembly that was not deliberately put together by you as individuals. It is something that came together on the basis of spirit. And various patterns of compatibility appear, some more compatible than others. It happens very easily if we let it.

© emissaries of divine light