Tonight I would like to meditate with you for a little time on the subject of time, of the principles involved in the realization of eternity. We look out into the world and we can see the evidences of chaos, the evidences of inharmonious patterns of self-activity, of destructive tendencies. And then bringing the observation nearer home, perhaps you can remember when there were certain chaotic patterns within yourselves, discords in bodyor mind or heart, divisions and uncertainties which resulted in patterns of discord, friction and misunderstanding in relationship to those round about you.
You have experienced something of the fact that when the human mind or heart yield to the Only Begotten Son of God, the Spirit of Love and Truth and Life, there is peace on earth, in the earth of the human body with all of its capacities. And as there is peace on earth in yourself, there begins to be the expression of God’s goodwill through you to others, there begins to be that which allows for harmony, understanding coordination with your fellows. But we have likewise recognized that the actual outworking of such an experience in life depends upon obedience to the One Law, Glory to God in the Highest, a love response to God which allows God’s Love to abide in you that you may abide under the Shadow of the Almighty. And so as the Christ expression of Being is born in you there is in you that which establishes the reality of Glory to God in the Highest and on earth—in the earth of your own bodies—peace physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and goodwill toward men, the reality of service, of that which blesses and builds according to the Will and Plan of God for the children of men. All of this is of vital importance to a basic understanding of the principles which we must bring to focalization in meditation upon our chosen subject for tonight.
We remember the word that is written, “For one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” No doubt you can all remember, each one according to your individual pattern of experience, a time, or perhaps many times in your own life when time passed swiftly, unnoticed, when by reason of your enjoyment of the circumstance, your centering of interest, your pleasure in the outworking, whatever it might be, that time as such lost its meaning to you. In looking back in memory you will recall that such moments were moments in which you were not aware of friction, discord, rebellious attitudes or disturbed emotions. Perhaps you can also remember a time, perhaps in the night time, when because of sore emotional distress you could not sleep and there were disturbed thoughts and attitudes, a lack of peace in the physical body, perhaps due to some illness, or a lack of peace in mind and heart, and time moved oh so slowly. It seemed that the dawn would never come.
Here we have briefly touched upon the two patterns of function and experience which introduce a sense of relatedness to the question of the timelessness of time. And it is obvious from your own experience, without regard to what I may say about the subject, that the discordant, chaotic pattern clauses one to be conscious of time. It causes one to be aware of time of the elements of time. But those patterns where there was peace, harmony, a pleasant circumstance, allowed what is called time to pass swiftly. Now we recall our text: “A thousand years with the Lord is as one day, and one day is as a thousand years.” Leaving the second part of the statement as being unnecessary to our immediate consideration we note that a thousand years with the Lord is as one day. A thousand years without the Lord would seem to be an eternity of hell. Some of you, having lived much less than a thousand years, have thought you had found a hell that would never end in any case. “Where one day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as one day”—it is the second part of our statement in which we are interested instead of the first “A thousand years with the Lord is as one day.”
The Master said “For the elect's sale the time shall be shortened”—that the sense of the passing of time will be shortened. For the elect's sake those days shall be shortened—but without that shortening of time no flesh should be saved. According to the Master's word the outworking of the Divine Plan and Pattern has for its purpose the saving of the flesh. Except those days be shortened no flesh should be saved, but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened. What is the characteristic which distinguishes the elect? Who are they? What are they? They are those who have elected of themselves, chosen of their own wills, their own hearts and minds, to center in God, to be with the Lord on earth, not waiting until they die and leave the earth to be with the Lord.
We recognize that generally speaking human beings imagine that they cannot be with the Lord on earth, which is the same as saying that it is impossible for the Lord to be on earth And yet there are so many evidences of His Presence and the working of His Spirit. The Master's whole teaching, His whole example, was designed to reveal to man the way by which man can be with the Lord on earth. And those who choose to accept His invitation “Follow me” are the elect because they have elected to be with the Lord here on earth while they are in the flesh—for the purpose of salvation is to save the flesh. The outworking of the Divine Plan, the manifestation of Divine Power, has the purpose of saving the flesh of man, and that flesh is here on earth. We share the state of those who are living in the flesh. And so, if we are with the Lord, the timelessness of time begins to be a reality to us.
Whenever we speak of eternity it is something so obscure, something so vague to the human mind. It is something which most people have no consciousness of holding in relationship to themselves. To what degree do you have a consciousness of true relatedness to eternity? You have a consciousness of relatedness to the passage of time as human beings think of it, a consciousness of the years that you have lived, that are passing now. And so often we hear something about how old a person is—the expression that one feels old, or is getting old, or something of the sort, with the passage of a few short years. The consciousness of the passing of time is much with fallen man. But what consciousness of relatedness to eternity do we have? If a thousand years are as one day there is no subjection to the passing of time. Time as we think of it in the first place is simply a means of measuring the movement of certain celestial bodies—the earth in its movement around the sun or the moon in its movement around the earth, the sun in its movement through the cosmos in relationship to the vast universe of which we are a part. The sense of time as such comes with the feeling that time is passing one by.
Perhaps a simple illustration may be helpful. If you stood beside a railroad track and a streamliner came by you would be very conscious of its speed, of the fact that it was passing you by. In its passage along the track it would give you a sense of great speed, not in yourself but in the train. If you were, on the other hand, riding in that train, you might, as you looked out the window, have a sense of speed but you would share a consciousness of movement in the train. The train would not be passing you by. It is the difference between being out of attunement, or out of eternity, in the sense of the things that are eternal, or being in eternity. Actually, of course, we are in eternity whether we know it or not. But the consciousness of being in eternity is important, of movement with eternity, of being in the train, not of having the train of time passing us by. What is essential to this consciousness?
We have noted that chaotic conditions, discordant feelings, a lack of peace in body and mind and heart, prevents the consciousness of being in eternity and establishes a consciousness of being separate from that which is eternal. In such a state one tends to have thoughts of death or of the things that lead to death. But when one has an awareness of the eternal, one’s consciousness is filled with thoughts of life, vibrant life, and the joy of living that life. When the Spirit of God is allowed to come into heart and mind because the human being obeys the Law and becomes centered in God, peace fills the earth of one's own being and there is goodwill toward men. So often human beings feel that it is difficult to have goodwill toward men. They feel that they are justified in having resentments, ill attitudes of various kinds toward others. Such attitudes establish a sense of separateness from others, but the working of God’s Love under the One Law provides a sense of relatedness with others.
All of this points to a central basic truth: when we are with the Lord in the true sense we are, vibrationally at least, with those who have relatedness to us whether they are present in person or not. And there begins to be a sense of wholeness, and with that wholeness there comes a wholesomeness. Unless there is a consciousness of relatedness to that which is eternal within yourself, you cannot have a sense of wholeness. If the consciousness, then, the sensing of one's own being, is centered in lack, in limitation, in those things which detract from wholeness, there is perhaps unconsciously the rejection of the eternal which would be the starting point for wholeness. We cannot deny the Lord, we cannot betray our trust, and refuse to let God's Will have any meaning in us and have this sense of wholeness. Anything that rejects the eternal reality of the Divine in relationship to yourself is denying the Lord.
“One day with the Lord.” One day with the Lord—it could be a moment or it could be a thousand years, because one would lose the sense of the passage of time because one would be in the eternal, in the movement of time itself. Time would not be passing one by—one would be in it. But only as that wholeness begins to be a reality can one begin to experience in any real sense this consciousness of relatedness to eternity. It is right and proper that we should use the division of day and night, of moments, of hours, of weeks, for convenience sake in relationship to the organization of our coordination. We have noted that that which excludes a consciousness of eternity or relatedness to eternity is always in some manner chaotic, discordant. We look to the heavens and we see the movement of the stars in their appointed courses, we do not have a sense of something chaotic but of something utterly magnificent, in order, in timing, in relatedness.
The organization of our relatedness is essential to coordination, essential to that which permits us to have the reality of peace and the development of a sense of wholeness. So often the Master said, “Thy faith hath made thee every whit whole.” Very often the human being did not allow that wholeness to be a continued reality—he reverted from it. But he had to so yield to the Master’s Will, to a centering, to a faith in God, that at least for that moment, sharing something with our Lord and King, the individual was in reality completely whole. Generally speaking the individual lost his polarity, tended to go his own self-active way. And was not whole very long. He was whole in the complete sense for only a few moments. But he had to allow himself be drawn to that point of centering which allowed true wholeness in order to experience the type of healing in body and mind and heart which was made manifest in the Master’s ministry. “Thy faith hath made thee whole.”
When there is wholeness there is the consciousness of relatedness to God, the consciousness of relatedness to God's Power, a welcoming of the working of God's Will—not resisting it but welcoming it. And until that wholeness means more to us individually and collectively than anything else we cannot say that we have accepted Divine centering. It is something upon which we merely meditate occasionally, something which we try to work out in some fashion. It is not real. The starting point for wholeness is centering in the Center of the Whole, the beginning of the coordination with the whole. But as long as human beings try to establish that coordination with respect to the parts of humanity which are not as yet related correctly, which are discordant, he cannot know this process of rebirth or illumination. We look out into the world and see the discordant factors, and if we try to work out some means of establishing a pattern of harmonious relatedness with all of these individuals round about we find that it simply cannot be done. When you try to please one human being, you displease some other human being. Someone is always ready to take exception to anything you do whether it is good, bad or indifferent.
You cannot have a centering on the basis of pleasing people and ever know peace or fulfilment. And if one takes the attitude that the important thing then is to please oneself, matters only go from bad to worse. Until we recognize that these parts which are human beings out here, which have not yet come into the pattern of correct correlation, cannot find that wholeness until they come to Center, one can surely with ease comprehend his own necessity—and that it is only in establishing a correct pattern of relatedness with Center that one can know wholeness. The pattern of human relationships is so mixed up. It disregards so completely the nature of human beings that actually, if by some arbitrary imposition of Divine Power which would simply shift people around into their proper relatedness one to another without regard to human will or desire or purpose, direction of response—if somehow Divine Power were simply imposed suddenly today—almost every human relationship would be dissolved, because almost without exception the pattern of human relatedness completely disregards the Divine Pattern. Of course God is not going to impose His Will in any such fashion. I am not suggesting this you know. I only wish to emphasize the basic fact that until human beings begin to let themselves be governed according to the Divine Plan, the Divine realities of centering, they cannot have wholeness.
In the first steps of the outworking pattern of wholeness there will be limited factors present always. We cannot expect anything else. But gradually the essential adjustments will be worked out—gradually human beings begin to realize that if anyone will stay centered there will, sooner or later, be a correct outworking in the pattern of Divine relatedness. Human beings have imposed their own human wills, determinations and desires without regard to the true pattern of relatedness in the Divine Design. If the individual is not in the Divine Design how can he have a sense of wholeness? How can he know the reality of God’s Will? I wish to emphasize somehow the fact that human beings have disregarded the pattern of wholeness, of correct relatedness. Not being themselves centered, they could not maintain that polarity which would allow the coming together of the parts of the whole which should have relatedness—and out of all of this there is discord, inharmony and friction. Only God's love can begin to correct these ill conditions. Only as we love God in obedience to the One Law can we begin to let God's love correct these conditions within ourselves.
The point is that we have chaos until we come to Center and as long as there is chaos, our consciousness has a sense of relatedness to the passing of time, not to our being in the Divine Design, in the framework of the eternal. We could, looking out into the cosmos consider the stars to be the Body of God in the absolute, ultimate sense, the visible Body of God, the cells in their appointed places in this vast Body. And we have a part, a relationship, to this realm of form. Instead of being cells in that larger sense, we would be minute particles, perhaps a part of an atom—each one—not as much as an atom in the Body of God, but a part of an atom. Nevertheless we have a part and a place in the realm of form, and that Divine Design, the whole, makes possible the reality of eternity.
If we are separating ourselves from that centering, that Body of Being, we cannot hope to have true peace, we cannot enjoy the blessedness of life, we cannot know what it is to have our souls restored to a pattern in the Divine design where we are a part of the movement of time, where our own cycles of movement are as sure and certain as the rising and the setting of the sun, where we have as much reason to understand and know continuity of being as the stars in the heavens—not something that is going to pass sway. We look at the stars and feel how they have been there for untold thousands of years—and they will be. We are supposed to be a part of that, not of something that comes for a moment and then is gone, not having time pass us by—but a part of the very Body in which time operates. But we cannot have that sense of wholeness until we begin to have a true consciousness of centering in the whole, of being a part of the whole. And if anyone would begin to know himself in relationship to the whole, as a part of the whole, he must begin at Center. He cannot possibly find relatedness in this realm of chaotic relationships.
He must come to Center, that which is already a coordinated focalization in the whole. Our LORD and KING Who came to earth to reveal the things of God to man and make it possible for man to know the wholeness of being, that which man has so far rejected. Our LORD and KING provides us with a centering point in relationship to the whole. And until we accept that and find our correct pattern of relationship to Him and keep it, we cannot know our correct relationships with others. Until the pattern of our personal relatedness to our LORD and KING is the most sacred thing on earth to us, until no human being can disturb that, until we reach a point where it is so sacred to us that we would not let what anyone says or does or thinks destroy it, we do not have a consciousness of relatedness to Center.
If some one else, no matter who it may be, has the power to disturb your consciousness of relatedness to our LORD and KING so that you do not hold that sacred above all things else, you are accepting subjection to the chaotic patterns of non-relatedness and you will not be conscious of being a part of the whole, in the whole, and you will feel that time is passing you by. You will not be a part of the Body in which time operates. What is the most sacred thing to you? If it is your relationship to Center so that nobody can disturb that, then you are beginning to have a relatedness to the whole because you have relatedness to Center, and others will begin to have some consciousness of relatedness to you as they begin to have consciousness of relatedness to Center.
What is it that has permitted my life and my ministry to be a blessing to you and to others? This one thing. You began to sense, one way or another, that I had a consciousness of relatedness to Center, something which to me was absolutely sacred, something which I would not allow anyone to violate, something that no one could destroy. And plenty of people attempted it in all kinds of ways. But that stability of relatedness to Center, no matter how you sensed it, was that which drew you, and held you until you could begin to have a consciousness of relatedness to Center. And the moment you allow an actual outworking of that consciousness of relatednessto Center you begin to be whole. It cannot be any other way. You begin to be actually whole, and all things begin to work together to perfection in and through and for you because you love and serve the Lord.
“With the Lord a thousand years is as one day.” When we are with the Lord, centered, when we are letting His Love and Truth and Life have meaning in us, we are no longer subject to a sense of the passing of time; we are a part of that which is timeless, within which time is operating merely as a means of measuring the movement of the earth around the sun. Time no longer passing us by; we are a part of the Body of God, a part of the whole, and therefore we are made whole, and the movement of the cycles of the bodily functions of God no longer gives us a sense of being passed by, a sense of time—we are in eternity.
There may be time, yes but there will be a timelessness in time. As it is written, “And time shall be no more,” in the sense of time passing us by; in the sense of ability to measure the movement of the earth around the sun there will always be time, day and night, but time shall be no more. Why? Because we come to a point where we have a complete consciousness of relatedness to the whole, a complete centering, and we are whole, and being made whole, we begin to know the wholesomeness of being, the reality of God's love, the reality of the Divine design, of the control factors. And we are a part of that. We share it. We are already in it but do not know it, and we do things contrary to that. The movement in the Body of God is something that we are not going to stop when we are not conscious of our part in the whole, of having relatedness to Center. We are always trying to do something which would destroy God if we were successful. We cannot destroy God, so the self-active human being simply destroys himself. The timelessness of time, the consciousness of sharing in eternity—that is our privilege and opportunity if we will let it be so. When we begin to be in love with the Lord of Love, when we begin to yield to the Spirit of His Presence, when we begin to know that Center is the only thing that counts in reality, we can begin to ignore those things which would distract and destroy, we can begin to let God's Power work through us within the scope of our focalization of responsibility.
We can refuse to be a part of the chaotic world. We can refuse to be a part of that which denies the LORD and crucifies the expression of His Spirit on earth. We can begin to be a part of the Body of God, and keep that Body sacred, recognize its sacred, holy reality in the flesh here on earth. And that begins to allow wholeness and wholesomeness. We begin to live in the Kingdom knowing the Power of God and the Glory of Being a part of God now and forever.
We consider ourselves to be adult human beings. We look at the sky tonight and we see that the stars are obscured by the mist. There have been times when during the day we looked at the sky and could not see the sun because the mist and the clouds intervened in the range of our vision. The moment it is a cloudy day and you cannot see the sun you do not become hysterical and say, “The sun is gone. It will never shine again.” And though it is a bit cloudy and we cannot see the stars so clearly tonight—they are obscured or invisible—you do not become hysterical and start reacting and say, “The stars are gone. We will never see them again.” We know it is a matter of a little mist. They are there. The stars are there as surely as when we could see them clearly. If this be true of the stars or of the sun how much more true it is of God? Suppose there is a little mist within the range of your vision. Suppose there is something that does not allow you to see the stars clearly—the stars of Divine Reality. Do you become hysterical and say, “God is gone. The Divine things are no longer with us.” Why not be mature all the way?
Out of communion comes healing.
Out of communion comes life. Because there is life in form on earth, there is
communication. Because there is life there is creation. All creation is by the
Word. Without the Word was not anything made that is made. Life is rightly
describable as artistic. It isn't a ham-fisted affair. There is great delicacy
in life and yet great strength.
Forms may be damaged, but
life remains unharmed. There is no such thing as “loss of life”—loss of forms,
but never loss of life. Life is therefore eternal. Associated with life, we know the experience of the eternal nature of it. Life can be lost to form,
but not to itself. Because human beings have been centered in form loss characterizes
their experience. This is seen to be tragic—there is the experience of loss of
every sort simply because the centering is in form. Centering in life, there is
no real loss.
Forms change; we've all
passed through quite a number of physical bodies. Various ones have been used
up along the way—bodies which as Life
we have inhabited, have been of different sizes and shapes, different ages, but the same life throughout. We do not mourn the passing of the baby form,
nor of any of the subsequent forms, all of which have passed away—have been lost
one could say. We didn't constantly hold funeral services for the passing. It
wasn't a sad affair. Most people are pleased to grow up, as they call it, where
the form reaches a point of being adult. Subsequently there are still other
forms which come and go, day by day—a completely new body in seven years. So we
have a present one which is acceptable to life, to ourselves, because it is
useful. It can be used in various ways. It is a marvelous tool for right use.
It is right use when it's used by life, which springs forth from the Word which
is God, which we ourselves are.
We commune together by reason
of life, by reason of the Word, by reason of God. We are one because of this.
There is oneness already established. There is a particular focus of that oneness
present here, present in this room, present in these physical forms of flesh.
It is all so easily seen, a differentiation of that in form. But because it is
so differentiated it does not produce a state of separateness in experience; it
merely makes possible the achievement of far more than if it was just one body
here present. The spirit, the life, the Word, contains within itself all, all
that is to take form, all that is to be expressed, in the eternal moment. We
share communion by reason of life, which is a characteristic of the Word. Out
of the life of the Word a creative expression appears in individual ways, unique
ways for each individual. But even with respect to each one of us, those ways
are not duplicated. A constant, unending source of creative expression is
available, is what we are.
We are content to allow
this expression in a particular way to appear through these physical forms in
each moment as it puts in an appearance. There is no end to the possibilities
here. We accept our own physical forms with their mental and emotional space
for our expression. To bring forth what is fitting by reason of this form and
its consciousness might be thought of as being restrictive. Sometimes the mind
has the idea that it would be much better if it was housed in a different body,
different shape of different size, different color, or whatever. But the
characteristic of life is that it happily and joyously accepts the facility
that is present; therefore this is our attitude toward ourselves and toward
others.
We find that the design
which has taken form in such unique ways individually has done so for a very
particular reason, not by chance. Understanding this because we are moving
easily in the natural pulsations of the creative forces of life, we have no objection
to anything. Because we see the value of the great variety that there is, we
have no desire to be somebody else in outer form because what we are in outer
form now is exactly what is required for our individual expression of life. I'm
sure that we have all come to the point of being sufficiently contented in this
regard. Obviously there are many people on earth who are not, and this may have
been true of us in times past. Sometimes the human minds says, “Well I didn't
ask to be born into the world; certainly not in this physical form with its
limitations.” No, the mind which has such foolish ideas didn't ask because it
wasn't anywhere to be asked. It's just a product of life. But the very fact
that life took form in the way it did is indication that it is quite willing to
do so; and that is us.
We have that willingness,
the mind and the heart of the form in which we are incarnate may still be
somewhat cloudy and without the awareness that might be possible, but it is
sufficient unto the day, is this evil, this level of evol. And as life, as ourselves incarnate, we're quite content with
it. We realize that it will not stay the way it is; there will continue to be
reincarnation, day by day. There is a truth to reincarnation, you see. There
is a right use to be made, and we find ourselves together as individuals for
the express purpose of making right use of what is available to us—happy,
thankful for what is available to us. We wouldn't be here in this setting if
these beautiful facilities were not the forms of our incarnation so that we might
be in position to put them together in this particular configuration.
As we share a consideration
of these things mentally and emotionally, here is the beginning of
communication, communication which has sprung out of an already existing
communion. We wouldn't be sitting here together, we wouldn't be happy to be
present with one another in this particular setting if the communion wasn't
already a reality. We need to acknowledge that it is so.
Minds may wonder at times,
but here we are, angels of the Lord incarnate and in communion, content to be
incarnate the way we are incarnate, and willing to let whatever facilities of
incarnation may be ours to be used righteously. Right use. Part of that right
use relates to the matter of communication, communication which emerges out of the
state of communion through these facilities of incarnation to allow for those
creative actions which are necessary for the fulfilment of the purposes of our
incarnation. We are here for this, not for the sake of our facilities of incarnation.
This of course is the attitude that the mind is inclined to take, “I'm here for
myself.” It isn't true; it's a lie. Obviously such attitudes must be
relinquished if the experience of ourselves on earth in these facilities of
incarnation is to be known. So we're no longer interested, we never were
actually, in the twisted views and emotions of the facility of incarnation. But
we know that even these have a purpose which can be useful to us, because by
reason of such things being present in these facilities of incarnation, we find
ourselves associated with the whole body of mankind. We awaken now to a
conscious understanding of these things and our concern is with the awakening of
the whole of that body to the experience, not necessarily a conscious
experience but to the actual experience, of the facility of incarnation for the
Son of God.
This is a recreative process
which unfolds on the basis of the sequential working of the Four Forces. At no time is any one of
the forces absent, but always there is one dominant. The relationship of the
subdominant forces changes also. We begin to discern the rhythms that move, not
in set periods of time as such, but according to the natural flow of spirit in
the purposeful creation of what is required. Our facilities of incarnation, as
individuals and together, must
become more naturally proficient in allowing this movement of the creative pulsations
to occur.
There is always the
central need to discern what it is that is emerging in a particular focused
way. It will come, no doubt, through somebody and if we are moving with the
true pulsation we'll find ourselves easily associated with what it is that
comes through one particular person. I have provided the focus of something
here so that the capability of so moving might be easily developed in our
facilities of incarnation because you are all desirous of moving with what is
being brought to focus through my facilities of incarnation. But as I have
pointed out, this is not the ultimate requirement because there is something
coming to focus in the emergent body as a whole and in various aspects of that
body at particular times, in particular ways.
One needs to discern when
something begins to emerge through someone, that it is what should be the focus
of what will naturally thereafter develop. If we miss that focus then one can
surge back and forth, so to speak, in the ocean without ever allowing anything
to happen in a creative sense. There is always something coming to focus and we
need to be alert to see it, not to be so full of ourselves, in the sense of the
facility of incarnation, that there's no space to enable us to discern what it
is that is emerging in any given moment.
We may have all sorts of ideas,
and wish to express them, but there is something very specific happening from
the standpoint of communion—if it's only from the standpoint of communication
there may be all sorts of things bandied about but it won't mean anything very
much. There is always something coming to focus, and it will appear through somebody
if that somebody is alert to it in the first place. And that gives the
opportunity for others to discern it because they themselves were
also associated with what has been brought to focus by this one person.
Now this is an artistic matter. It requires perceptiveness and an artistic
sense. We're responsible for a conscious focus of life, and artistry therefore,
on earth. Life itself is an art as it emerges into expression on earth. We need
to be awake to that art. Now that art may have particular focalizations through
different people in different ways. All living is art, and there are various
ways by which this art of living may be communicated. Any communication in this
regard relates to the creative process.
Focus of direction is
given in any field artistically if it is given rightly, if it is a right use of
the facilities of incarnation. And it relates to the creative process with
which, in oneness with life, we are concerned. We see this in terms of the
restoration of man. Therefore anything that is undertaken is a useful tool to
begin to provide a process of specific re-creation relative to the focus of
responsibility which that individual has in the overall design. Now of course
this wouldn't be meaningful except as there is communion already established so
that the one who is letting something be brought to focus, in the proper time,
in the proper way, is participating in communion firsthand—is therefore a part
of what it is that is totally happening in the overall creative process. But
here is something being brought to focus in this particular individual's field
of responsibility and he uses this which is available to his hand to participate
in the creative process.
Now this is something that
relates to the artistry of living as a whole, because everyone is responsible in
the particular focus of the moment, and of individual ability, etc., which is
present, because we're all doing things moment by moment. We're all artists in
our own particular fields. And everything we do relates to this creative, or
re-creative process when we become aware of it consciously. We are concerned with
the conscious mind of mankind, with those who become aware of it consciously.
Most people go through a
day unconsciously; they just surface now and again, momentarily—but scarcely
any who bring anything consciously to focus, not for human purposes, not for
self-centered purposes, but in the re-creative process for which the angel of
the Lord is incarnate on earth in the specific form which, it might be said, he
has chosen. So there is artistry for each one of us in our living, that relates
immediately to what is occurring in our part of the overall picture of the body
of mankind. There are many, many fields where we have opportunity to bring
order out of chaos in our own personal realms of living. And we do that because
the angelic awareness has come through sufficiently into the consciousness of
our means of incarnation so that we see the connection—consciously see the connection.
Here is the beginning of
conscious action on earth and it relates to the most insignificant things
apparently. Very few people come right back to the insignificant thing. They at
least get out a little way, over there.
Some see their field of service way over there, when they have not as yet
accepted the responsibility of the thing that is right up against them. And
only to the extent that one has accepted that responsibility, consciously
seeing its connection with the purpose for which we are on earth, can we begin to
let what we handle rightly close at hand include the handling rightly of things
a little further afield. Certainly there are many things that need to be
handled rightly that are further afield, but we're incapable of doing that, we're
wasting our time in trying to do it, until first we have accepted the
responsibility of the thing that is close at hand because we consciously see
how it is connected with our greater field of responsibility.
We do not keep our field
of responsibility confined. There is a tendency for people to feel that they
are capable in certain directions only, and they insist only in moving in those
directions. And if that is what happens, the individual becomes lopsided, very
unbalanced. It's not a true expression; there is an
increase of unbalance in the larger picture then. So there is the necessity of
seeing the balance in one's own living and in one's own experience. We're all
present in the field where we are to take care of what is present in that field.
And I would suggest that for each individual, close to oneself there is a field
that is really common to us all, where we may experience balance because we were
quite willing to take care of this, and to take care of that, because we see the connection that
goes out beyond.
Now this is the light of
the world beginning to come on, because there are those who actually see what
they're doing. Amazing that we've had these spheres of living all around us,
close to us, and probably we never noticed them. We saw great vistas out there,
when tying your shoelace the way it should be tied is the thing that needs to
be done to bring order out of chaos—keep your shoe on your foot. “Where there
is no vision, the people perish.” Well this is the vision that is required
relative to what we are doing moment by moment. We do what we do artistically,
and we let that artistry include areas where we don't imagine we are artistic. We
are incapable of specializing in a creative way until we are first balanced
within ourselves, balanced with
respect to what we need to do in our own immediate field—having
the vision to see that as being directly connected with the creative process
that is working out everywhere.
When there is movement in
this way then positive direction is given in all these different fields so that
it's left no longer merely to the chaotic movement back
and forth in the subconscious, irrational mind. It begins to have a focus of
life here. There begins to be direction. There begin to be those who have the
world in their hands because they have their own affairs in their hands, every
aspect of their own affairs, nothing left out, balanced.
The communion is present,
but there is the opportunity to share a translation from the standpoint of communication;
and this communication, to the extent that it has been shared, has opened a
door for further communication, in the individual sense, with respect to the
immediate worlds around each one. As that is handled rightly the communication
then moves out because the connection is not only theorized about but is recognized
as being there;and the individual doing this sees it doing that in
the larger picture.
It is a beautiful art in
which all are invited to participate. And it recreates all things—makes all
things new in each succeeding moment because there is an awareness that it is not
only a spiritual matter in the more or less formless sense, but a spiritual
matter that relates to immediate forms of living. Heaven and earth are one—this
is the way it becomes known. What is brought forth in our living comes out of
the state of communion which is known, and thereby the Word is made flesh.
